Poetry Lesson: Elegy for Jane

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“Lost
in the silent wilderness
Where the soul need not repress
Its music lest it should not find
An echo in another’s mind.”
(Shelley)


I knew enough at t seventeen
to laugh at the Beats,
quote Pound, prefer Wallace Stevens
but be in love with Auden
who loved his kind.

Oh send the coal-bearers
unwashed and washed
between sheets and torn promises,
real passion--wait for her pleasure,
and her stretched
foom washing to washing
(she whispered)
'Each month has its own colour'
butt I came to know
each month was Chivas Regal
and sweat-stained pillows.

Give way then to the braininess sage:
I nodded when Weinberg said,
"You see where this goes Wong?"
Striking my stanza with a sharp pencil--
‘"Her tendrils in Roethke’s poem
are wet from riding’’he hissed.
‘What does riding mean?
And she is a skitterypigeon
and he loved her
But he could not have her. '
(That was true, it was wonderful)

I could not choose any more,
write anymore
imagine any more.
Their sound was in me,--
the absurd Beats und die Intellektuellen
the peasants and dirty girls
and lisping swimmers
and hitchhikers: Hiding in me.

Hid in the wood he first of words
protected from the sun
No, lost on me their shadows.
Sometimes I knew:
a tree died leaving a space,
but more often
a sprig poked its green head
from under he leaves,
And muddy forest floor
stirred by sun and air--
virginity to virgin moither--
And I would close my eyes
and Remember Weinberg's
groping pencil ,
poised to kill a metaphor,
crushing its life under his Jewish boot

Except now
I could bark like a choir
and say No:
It does not go wrong,
does not crush their secret
or trail of f from comprhenisble speech
to a box full if broken images.

No, here is another Jane
Wwo does not die far from men and towns,
tendrils damp from blood frozen in death:

In her cold presence
we do not speak
or choose masters and practitioners--
Except of course the trees.
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Published on October 13, 2024 05:16
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Khartoum

R. Joseph Hoffmann
Khartoum is a site devoted to poetry, critical reviews, and the odd philosophical essay.

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