|
Three Landscapes of
the Subject
William Wordsworth, "Tintern
Abbey" (esp. ll. 1-49; 65-102)
"Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the
Banks of the Wye During a Tour. July 13, 1798"
FIVE years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.--Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view 10
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, 20
Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone.
These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration:--feelings too 30
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world, 40
Is lightened:--that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,--
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft-- 50
In darkness and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart--
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee!
And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity, 60
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope,
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led: more like a man 70
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all.--I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love, 80
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.--That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes 90
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels 100
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,--both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul 110
Of all my moral being.
Nor perchance,
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once, 120
My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all 130
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee: and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms, 140
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance--
If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence--wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream 150
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love--oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!
1798.
Renée (pseud.), Autobiography of a Schizophrenic Girl,
with analytic interpretation by Marguerite Séchehaye; translated
by Grace Rubin-Rabson (New York: New American Library, 1970, c1951)
— as quoted in Fredric Jameson, "Postmodernism and Consumer
Society," p. 120:
| I remember very well the day it happened.
We were staying in the country and I had gone for a walk alone
as I did now and then. Suddenly, as I was passing the school,
I heard a German song; the children were having a singing
lesson. I stopped to listen, and at that instant a strange
feeling came over me, a feeling hard to analyze but akin to
something I was to know too well later—a disturbing sense
of unreality. It seemed to me that I no longer recognized
the school, it had become as large as a barracks; the singing
children were prisoners, compelled to sing. It was as though
the school and the children's song were apart from the rest
of the world. At the same time my eye encountered a field
of wheat whose limits I could not see. The yellow vastness,
dazzling in the sun, bound up with the song of the children
imprisoned in the smooth stone school-barracks, filled me
with such anxiety that I broke into sobs. I ran home to our
garden and began to play "to make things seem as they usually
were," that is, to return to reality. It was the first appearance
of those elements which were always present in later sensations
of unreality: illimitable vastness, brilliant light, and the
gloss and smoothness of material things. |
William Gibson, Agrippa
(A Book of the Dead (ll. 264-305)
I hesitated
before untying the bow
that bound this book together.
A black book:
ALBUMS 5
CA. AGRIPPA
Order Extra Leaves
By Letter
and Name
A Kodak album of time-burned
black construction paper 10
The string he tied
Has been unravelled by years
and the dry weather of trunks
Like a lady's shoestring from the First World War
Its metal ferrules eaten by oxygen 15
Until they resemble cigarette-ash
Inside the cover he inscribed something in soft graphite
Now lost
Then his name
W.F. Gibson Jr. 20
and something, comma,
1924
Then he glued his Kodak prints down
And wrote under them
In chalk-like white pencil: 25
"Papa's saw mill, Aug. 1919."
A flat-roofed shack
Against a mountain ridge
In the foreground are tumbled boards and offcuts
He must have smelled the pitch, In August 30
The sweet hot reek
Of the electric saw
Biting into decades
Next the spaniel Moko
"Moko 1919" 35
Poses on small bench or table
Before a backyard tree
His coat is lustrous
The grass needs cutting
Beyond the tree, 40
In eerie Kodak clarity,
Are the summer backstairs of Wheeling,
West Virginia
Someone's left a wooden stepladder out
"Aunt Fran and [obscured]" 45
Although he isn't, this gent
He has a "G" belt-buckle
A lapel-device of Masonic origin
A patent propelling-pencil
A fountain-pen 50
And the flowers they pose behind so solidly
Are rooted in an upright length of whitewashed
concrete sewer-pipe.
Daddy had a horse named Dixie
"Ford on Dixie 1917" 55
A saddle-blanket marked with a single star
Corduroy jodpurs
A western saddle
And a cloth cap
Proud and happy 60
As any boy could be
"Arthur and Ford fishing 1919"
Shot by an adult
(Witness the steady hand
that captures the wildflowers 65
the shadows on their broad straw hats
reflections of a split-rail fence)
standing opposite them,
on the far side of the pond,
amid the snake-doctors and the mud, 70
Kodak in hand,
Ford Sr.?
And "Moma July, 1919"
strolls beside the pond,
in white big city shoes, 75
Purse tucked behind her,
While either Ford or Arthur, still straw-hatted,
approaches a canvas-topped touring car.
"Moma and Mrs. Graham at fish hatchery 1919"
Moma and Mrs. G. sit atop a graceful concrete 80
arch.
"Arthur on Dixie", likewise 1919,
rather ill at ease.
On the roof behind the barn, behind him,
can be made out this cryptic mark: 85
H.V.J.M.[?]
"Papa's Mill 1919", my grandfather most regal amid a wrack
of
cut lumber,
might as easily be the record
of some later demolition, and 90
His cotton sleeves are rolled
to but not past the elbow,
striped, with a white neckband
for the attachment of a collar.
Behind him stands a cone of sawdust some thirty feet in height. 95
(How that feels to tumble down,
or smells when it is wet)
II.
The mechanism: stamped black tin,
Leatherette over cardboard, bits of boxwood,
A lens 100
The shutter falls
Forever
Dividing that from this.
Now in high-ceiling bedrooms,
unoccupied, unvisited, 105
in the bottom drawers of veneered bureaus
in cool chemical darkness curl commemorative
montages of the country's World War dead,
just as I myself discovered
one other summer in an attic trunk, 110
and beneath that every boy's best treasure
of tarnished actual ammunition
real little bits of war
but also
the mechanism 115
itself.
The blued finish of firearms
is a process, controlled, derived from common
rust, but there
under so rare and uncommon a patina 120
that many years untouched
until I took it up
and turning, entranced, down the unpainted
stair,
to the hallway where I swear 125
I never heard the first shot.
The copper-jacketed slug recovered
from the bathroom's cardboard cylinder of
Morton's Salt
was undeformed 130
save for the faint bright marks of lands
and grooves
so hot, stilled energy,
it blistered my hand.
The gun lay on the dusty carpet. 135
Returning in utter awe I took it so carefully up
That the second shot, equally unintended,
notched the hardwood bannister and
brought
a strange bright smell of ancient
sap to life
in a beam of dusty sunlight. 140
Absolutely alone
in awareness of the mechanism.
Like the first time you put your mouth
on a woman.
III.
"Ice Gorge at Wheeling 145
1917"
Iron bridge in the distance,
Beyond it a city.
Hotels where pimps went about their business
on the sidewalks of a lost world. 150
But the foreground is in focus,
this corner of carpenter's Gothic,
these backyards running down to the freeze.
"Steamboat on Ohio River",
its smoke foul and dark, 155
its year unknown,
beyond it the far bank
overgrown with factories.
"Our Wytheville
House Sept. 1921" 160
They have moved down from Wheeling and my father wears his
city clothes. Main Street is unpaved and an electric streetlamp
is
slung high in the frame, centered above the tracked dust on
a
slack wire, suggesting the way it might pitch in a strong
wind,
the shadows that might throw. 165
The house is heavy, unattractive, sheathed
in stucco, not native
to the region. My grandfather, who sold supplies to contractors,
was prone to modern materials, which he used with
wholesaler's enthusiasm. In 1921 he replaced the section of
brick
sidewalk in front of his house with the broad smooth slab
of poured 170
concrete, signing this improvement with a flourish, "W.F.
Gibson 1921". He believed in concrete and plywood
particularly. Seventy years later his signature remains, the
slab
floating perfectly level and charmless between mossy stretches
of
sweet uneven brick that knew the iron shoes of Yankee horses.
175
"Mama Jan. 1922" has come out to sweep the concrete with a
broom. Her boots are fastened with buttons requiring a special
instrument.
Ice gorge again, the Ohio, 1917. The mechanism closes. A
torn clipping offers a 1957 DeSOTO FIREDOME, 4-door Sedan,
torqueflite radio, heater and power steering and brakes, new 180
w.s.w. premium tires. One owner. $1,595.
IV.
He made it to the age of torqueflite radio
but not much past that, and never in that town.
That was mine to know, Main Street lined
with Rocket Eighty-eights, 185
the dimestore floored with wooden planks
pies under plastic in the Soda Shop,
and the mystery untold, the other thing,
sensed in the creaking of a sign after midnight
when nobody else was there. 190
In the talc-fine dust beneath the platform of the
Norfolk & Western
lay indian-head pennies undisturbed
since the dawn of man.
In the banks and courthouse, a fossil time 195
prevailed, limestone centuries.
When I went up to Toronto
in the draft,
my Local Board was there on Main Street,
above a store that bought and sold pistols. 200
I'd once traded that man a derringer for a
Walther P-38.
The pistols were in the window
behind an amber roller-blind
like sunglasses. 205
I was seventeen or so but basically I guess
you just had to be a white boy.
I'd hike out to a shale pit and run
ten dollars worth of 9mm
through it, so worn you hardly 210
had to pull the trigger.
Bored, tried shooting
down into a distant stream but
one of them came back at me
off a round of river rock 215
clipping walnut twigs from a branch
two feet above my head.
So that I remembered the mechanism.
V.
In the all night bus station
they sold scrambled eggs to state troopers 220
the long skinny clasp-knives called fruit knives
which were pearl handled watermelon-slicers
and hillbilly novelties in brown varnished wood
which were made in Japan.
First I'd be sent there at night only 225
if Mom's carton of Camels ran out,
but gradually I came to value
the submarine light, the alien reek
of the long human haul, the strangers
straight down from Port Authority 230
headed for Nashville, Memphis, Miami.
Sometimes the Sheriff watched them get off
making sure they got back on.
When the colored restroom
was no longer required 235
they knocked open the cinderblock
and extended the magazine rack
to new dimensions,
a cool fluorescent cave of dreams
smelling faintly and forever of disinfectant, 240
perhaps as well of the travelled fears
of those dark uncounted others who,
moving as though contours of hot iron,
were made thus to dance
or not to dance 245
as the law saw fit.
There it was that I was marked out as a
writer,
having discovered in that alcove
copies of certain magazines
esoteric and precious, and, yes, 250
I knew then, knew utterly,
the deal done in my heart forever,
though how I knew not,
nor ever have.
Walking home 255
through all the streets unmoving
so quiet I could hear the timers of the traffic lights a block
away:
the mechanism.
Nobody else, just the silence
spreading out 260
to where the long trucks groaned
on the highway
their vast brute souls in want.
VI.
There must have been a true last time
I saw the station but I don't remember 265
I remember the stiff black horsehide coat
gift in Tucson of a kid named Natkin
I remember the cold
I remember the Army duffle
that was lost and the black man in Buffalo 270
trying to sell me a fine diamond ring,
and in the coffee shop in Washington
I'd eavesdropped on a man wearing a black tie
embroidered with red roses
that I have looked for ever since. 275
They must have asked me something
at the border
I was admitted
somehow
and behind me swung the stamped tin shutter 280
across the very sky
and I went free
to find myself
mazed in Victorian brick
amid sweet tea with milk 285
and smoke from a cigarette called a Black Cat
and every unknown brand of chocolate
and girls with blunt-cut bangs
not even Americans
looking down from high narrow windows 290
on the melting snow
of the city undreamed
and on the revealed grace
of the mechanism,
no round trip. 295
They tore down the bus station
there's chainlink there
no buses stop at all
and I'm walking through Chiyoda-ku
in a typhoon 300
the fine rain horizontal
umbrella everted in the storm's Pacific breath
tonight red lanterns are battered,
laughing,
in the mechanism. 305 |
|
