The quiet side appeals to me as well, much as I love
abrasive post-bop jazz improvisation ala Cecil Taylor or the raucous cacophony
of Charles Ives; there are those moods
when what I need from art—and art is something which is a need—is a short
harmonica solo, a small water color in a simple frame, or a lyric poem that
dwells comfortably, musically on it’s surface qualities. One loves grit, but
that doesn’t exclude finess. Mark Strand’s poem here won me over with it’s
surely played music.
My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer
by Mark Strand
1
When the moon appears
and a few wind-stricken barns stand
out
in the low-domed hills
and shine with a light
that is veiled and dust-filled
and that floats upon the fields,
my mother, with her hair in a bun,
her face in shadow, and the smoke
from her cigarette coiling close
to the faint yellow sheen of her
dress,
stands near the house
and watches the seepage of late
light
down through the sedges,
the last gray islands of cloud
taken from view, and the wind
ruffling the moon's ash-colored
coat
on the black bay.
2
Soon the house, with its shades
drawn closed, will send
small carpets of lampglow
into the haze and the bay
will begin its loud heaving
and the pines, frayed finials
climbing the hill, will seem to
graze
the dim cinders of heaven.
And my mother will stare into the
starlanes,
the endless tunnels of nothing,
and as she gazes,
under the hour's spell,
she will think how we yield each
night
to the soundless storms of decay
that tear at the folding flesh,
and she will not know
why she is here
or what she is prisoner of
if not the conditions of love that
brought her to this.
3
My mother will go indoors
and the fields, the bare stones
will drift in peace, small
creatures --
the mouse and the swift -- will
sleep
at opposite ends of the house.
Only the cricket will be up,
repeating its one shrill note
to the rotten boards of the porch,
to the rusted screens, to the air,
to the rimless dark,
to the sea that keeps to itself.
Why should my mother awake?
The earth is not yet a garden
about to be turned. The stars
are not yet bells that ring
at night for the lost.
Mark Strand is someone who often works overtime to make the
small things he chooses to write about into subjects that are poetically
overpowering. Though he wouldn't be guilty of some fever pitched overwriting
that makes the work of Nobel Prize Winner Derek Walcott seem like a riotous
thicket of over simile’d commonplaces--it has been said that the prize winner
has never met a qualifier he didn't fall in love with and promise a home
to--Strand has always seemed to fall just short of adding an item too many to
his verses.
He does have a leaner, more genuinely lyric movement than
does Walcott, whom I find more ornate than satisfying. Strand
, to his credit , doesn't obscure the emotion nor the place from which is
figurative language is inspired, arch as it occasionally reads. Walcott the
poet, the world traveller, the cultivated Other in the presence of an Imperial
Culture, reads like someone how is trying to have an experience. Strand convinces you that he has had one, indeed, but
that he over estimates the measure of words to their finessed narrative.
That said, I like this, in that Strand
trusts what his eyes sees, a series of things his mother was doing in a
wonderfully framed triptyche that might have been conveyed by Andrew Wyeth. It
is a little idealized--the lyric spirit is not interested in the precise
qualifier,but that adjective or verb , that rather, that both makes the image
more musical and reveals some commonly felt impression about the objects in the
frame--but Strand here has a relaxed
confidence that is very effective. Brush strokes, we could say, both
impressionistic and yet exact.
Soon the house, with its shades
drawn closed, will send
small carpets of lampglow
into the haze and the bay
will begin its loud heaving
and the pines, frayed finials
climbing the hill, will seem to
graze
the dim cinders of heaven.
And my mother will stare into the
starlanes,
the endless tunnels of nothing,
and as she gazes,
under the hour's spell,
she will think how we yield each
night
to the soundless storms of decay
that tear at the folding flesh,
and she will not know
why she is here
or what she is prisoner of
if not the conditions of love that
brought her to this.
This is the image of someone going about there daily chores
and fulfilling their obligations thinking they are out anyone else's view, or
better, the agenda of someone who hasn't interest in impressing any set of
prying eyes. The mother seems less a figure in solitude than she does to
contain solitude itself, comfortable and with intimate knowledge of the grain
of the wood the floor is made of, the smell of the changing weather, the
different pitches of silence and what the nuances of small sounds forecast for
that evening and the following day. Most of all, this is about watching the
world, the smallest world , both grow up, grow old, become frail and die,
finally, aware of the seamlessness of going about one's tasks and the
preparation for the end. This is a poem about preparation, I think; we, like
the Mother, come to a point in their life when the gravity of things are
finally felt through accumulated experience, as one's responsibilities have
been added too over the years, and one develops a sense that what one does
isn't so much about setting ourselves up for the rest of our lives, but rather
in preparing the ground for what comes next, who comes next.
Somewhere in the work , toil , the bothersome details we get
to rest and earn an extra couple of hours to keep our eyes close. The change
happens slowly, unperceived,but it does happen, and the planet is a constant
state of becoming, of change, and what changes too are the metaphors one would
use to determine their next indicated jobs.
Why should my mother awake?
The earth is not yet a garden
about to be turned. The stars
are not yet bells that ring
at night for the lost.
While Strand writes of his mother's preparing the day for the days that will follow,May Swenson finds comedy and tragedy lurking in the same set of skewed images with this poem. It has a fine elegance that nearly obscures the ominous tone that clouds the final lines, an effect that's artfully deferred.