like petals

          Now, finally, she’s home—
Midtown Manhattan, thirteenth floor. From
Her kitchen window she can almost glimpse
The autumn leaves of Central Park, falling
As windows, streetlights, advertisements light
The brazen interruptions of the street
And crosswalks. She could see it all—there where
A taxi driver whistled at her ass;
The bus stop where the teen-aged boy had told her
To smile; the woman with the Pomeranian
Who said she’d once had posture just like hers
And recommended her podiatrist.
“To think what shoes have done for my career!”
Adding, “Between us women.”
                                        Taking off
Her skin is never easy. She’s worked hard
To wear it tight at hip and thigh. First, over
Her head, then shoulders, breasts and belly; left
Then right, hitching her hips, until her skin
Lies at her feet. As any woman does
She keeps a shade of skin for each occasion
While wishing she could just be comfortable
In any skin at all. But next are muscles.
The rectus femoris of her legs and soleus,
The fanning terminus of each that binds sinew
To bone. She gently peels these from each other
And with a surgeon’s patience she unties
The tendons anchoring bone to bone. Each muscle
She peels away reminds her of an oyster—
They’re just as slippery and jelled between
The fingers, and somehow smell of brine
And seaweed. If she isn’t careful, sometimes
She’ll pinch them absentmindedly and bruise them.
Asked if she is sore she’ll answer, lying,
“I pulled a muscle exercising”. And always
There’s blood. Her lover claims he wouldn’t mind
But he has never seen her in this state.
She mostly keeps the blood from staining clothes
But when she’s taking off her muscles one
By one there’s always blood that soaks into
Stray garments or a bed sheet (the muscles
Themselves she spreads like garments). 
                    “You’re a bicep,”
She says, “and you’re a gluteus medius.”
Her favorite muscle is the gluteus maximus—
A great thick slab of blood and tissue—hers
And his alike (although she’s never seen him
Shed his skin). Her uterus is beautiful
And her favorite organ. She likes
To spread it out the way she sees it diagrammed
In writing and anatomy—the stalk
Of the vagina branching into ovaries—
The fimbriae like petals. She cherishes
Her heart, lays it on her pillow. (There
To dream, she likes to think). The hands are tricky—
The ulnar and the thread-like median nerves;
So many that you’d think a woman’s soul
Were at her fingers tips. She peels away
The brevis and opponens pollicis
And lastly plucks her tongue and eyes out. All
That’s left—her brain. She sometimes wonders whether
Those skulls with holes in them were womens’ skulls—
A way to free themselves from even that:
To pluck out brains and all.
          But drilling holes
In skulls, she thinks, is gruesome. She’s content
To peel off nerve and sinew. She stands
Before the mirror and admires herself
(And is, at last, herself). Her glistening bones
Are white. Tomorrow she will have to do
What she’s undone and cover up her lovely bones—
Restore the bloody garment strip by strip
And choose a flattering skin. She wouldn’t mind
To someday let her lover see her for
Herself (for who she really is) but then,
For now, enough to let him think he knows her.
She doesn’t want to scare him off. So many boys
Are squeamish.
          Still standing at the mirror she
Admires her pelvic bones. How could a baby,
She wonders, ever fit through those? She stretches.
You wouldn’t think a skeleton would stretch,
But now she feels light-hearted. She skips
Into the living room. Next to the couch
She’s stacked her favorite books. She doesn’t care
For horror. She’s in heaven reading fantasy
And science-fiction. If not these, she’ll read
Non-fiction—How to Simplify One’s Life:
Ten Easy Steps! She worries she owns too much.
Her life is cluttered by possessions. She
Could be a world traveler, raconteur,
An expat artist in Seville if only
She didn’t own so many shoes (the shoes,
The books, the plants, the litter box and cat).
If not for these she’d be by now a novelist,
Pianist, a Nobel winning Chemist
(If only she could lose a little weight).
Who’d ever think the xiphoid process
Could itch? She scratches with a chalky finger—
Scraping bone on bone.
                    She can’t help but worry.
What if she never finds a lover willing
To see her as she is?—accept her?—love her
Despite her flaws?
                    But if he’s willing, she’ll
Disrobe for him. She’ll show him how the body
Falls from bone like blood-soaked petals—and just
As beautifully; and if he lets her, she
Will strip him, layer by layer, to the bone
And snug his beating heart next to her own;
And then what’s more, she’ll trade a floating rib
For his and his for hers; and if they’re buried
Together (all their bones a jumble) this
Will be the explanation—that just like this
These two made love. These two were lovers after all
And soulmates.
          Such absurdity, she thinks,
Is better left to romance. Out of habit
She airily licks a bone-dry finger’s tip,
And parts the pages of her favorite book
(A little something, she admits, escapist);
But life can be so ordinary, hers
Especially. She’s almost grateful being
Alone; able, without explanation, to say, This
Is who I am.

          like petals | April 14 2023
          by me, Patrick Gillespie

• I wrote this poem yesterday, in one sitting. I was inspired by another poem that I misread—a particular line. I was so taken by the image of a woman taking off her skin that the poem more or less wrote itself. I’ll be adding it to my collection of noirish poems: witches, monsters, and the weird.

Quintet in C

	she brings
to me the frank contagion of
an afternoon; the moon’s delirium when
the sun, too soon, goes down. I pick the panicles
of grass that dart her dress—I love
her dress. I love it the color of her hips
and love the green odor of the summer’s cuttings
at her lips; and I forget myself,
I—the smelting of ore into the bone
and tissue of an hour—am made, for an hour,
more than what I am.
	she arrives
through slow intersections where
the riders come and go; she among them, opening
her umbrella into snow. she arrives.
I take her raincoat and umbrella
and where we sit before the window, the windows
outside our own show buildings from
the inside out; and here and there
the men and women like ourselves who gather
as we gather, who take wine
wineglass, cutting board and bread
before the window-lit climes of the city.
the streets thrum below us with their ebb
and flow. let’s drink to the waves, I say,
we can’t see but feel incessantly	
against the window’s glass; the tide
subsiding beneath the mass of steel and concrete
façades.
	don’t ask what savagery
or tenderness, what thousand lives
have brought her life and mine together. the sands
of Troy are clotted by the blood
of men, killing and killed for Helen’s beauty—
and love. 
	when she’s mine again
and the great ships set sail and the fire
and feast are done, the snow’s ashes descend
on the cars parked and departing. what ruins we leave
we never leave behind.

	the girl,
the girl with the many-colored braids
replies: love leaves no ruins. she, barefooted,
who dances in the scarab’s eye with enameled hair
and lips. she leaps over the leaping seas.
love leaves no monuments, she says, no cold
command or shattered torsos sinking, sinking
into the desert sands. 
		a cracked tin pail
locked in ice beneath the barn light catches
the snow and roundabout the bottom where
the tin is welded, rust has rusted through;
and were there anyone to pick it up
the bottom, where the raindrops drum, would fall
into the mud.
	the girl who dances, dances
in rusty pails and with the singing rails
of streetcars. some nights the river walks
among the signs and storefronts, and smears
the watery roads with lampposts; the evergreens
with its twisting gray ribbons. some nights walking
along the river bank, the waters move
in leaden contemplation, darkly indifferent
to what reflects. 
	the girl who dances, dances
among the shock of willows and her hair
is rapturous as the water-witch. love leaves
no ruins, she says. love builds no edifice
of glass or stone but beats the drum of flesh
and bone. 
	let go the finch’s cry, the cry
of root and mud; the stench of earthen growth
out of the ruinous sludge, and from the soil
the berries of the spindle tree, but
the berries—colored like the girl’s lips—
are poisonous to taste or kiss. do you see
the purple shadows drip and pool beneath
the yellow birch? 
	She’s dancing in an orange
and yellow skirt. she won’t answer where
she goes. The rain has turned to snow; the bus
pulls out into the afterglow of brakes
and headlights.  
	I’ve seen her out among
the cattails, dancing in a rusty pail,
but don’t believe me. I’ll lie for beauty,
I’ll burn the city to the ground; the sands
To sheets of glass. I’ll pull the towers down,
I’ll throw the pail into the trash—the rusted pail.
The snow has turned to ash.

	the sun’s still not gone down
and out the bedroom window is the laundry,
the wind billows in the sail of sleeves
and lifted backs as though the clothes and bed sheets
pulled the world after them into
the distant waters—the world’s dark waters
that edge a summer’s field with starlight. we are
ourselves our passion’s ruins. I say
To her, the downspout buckled, maybe
tomorrow I’ll replace it. I’ve waited
so long to mow that now the tall grass flounders under
the heady weight of seed.

    I stood outside the store,
    a scarecrow looking in.
    I saw her standing by the door
    reading novels in Berlin;
    but this is how it’s always been.

    I can’t remember why
    her lipstick tastes like tin.
    she liked to sing to Zoltan Kodály
    and wished I played the violin;
    but this is how it’s always been.

    I walked the Spree with her
    as the city inked her skin;
    I should remember where we were
    the day we parted over gin;
    but this is how it’s always been.

  as I
was saying to her
before the iron brawling
of a streetcar interrupted us,
the yellow streetcar following
preordained rails through cobblestone streets;
  as I
was saying: let us be naked side 
by side. there’s nothing better or as truthful. 
let us lie together and let us lie. there’s nothing otherwise
to make sense of. 
don’t try. 
					don’t try. 


	Patrick Gillespie | March 17th 2021
	Quintet in C

Ode to Kim Addonizio

          someday
you’ll sit across from me saying
similes explain the human 
condition—we can never be ourselves
but only like ourselves (though some of us
ascend to metaphor). 
          at first I won’t
know what the hell you’re talking about
(and maybe never). what does it even mean  
to be like ourselves if we’re not already 
ourselves? but I’ll agree because
even if the meaning isn’t self-
evident, profundity is implied; and you 
will likely remind me of girlfriends 
I used to drive cross-country with (their 
bare legs lifted, their feet out the passenger side 
window V’d like the winged heels of a Greek
Goddess, ankles crossed on the rear view mirror)— 
when all I could think about
was the intoxication of a girl’s bare feet 
in an 80 mph air stream; and you might say: 
that’s the way it is to be a barefooted 
girl—always that 80 mph wind licking your feet
until the tank runs out of gas
until the sun runs down the sky, until she finds
herself landed barefoot on the sun-cracked
asphalt of a seedy, run down 
motel where the parking shines with glass
ground to glitter after God knows how many bottles
and demands. 
          but afterward in bed,
I know, it won’t be me she remembers
but the 80 mph hour wind like fingers
at her ankles that, if they could have, would
have parted her thighs and you 
have no idea or, knowing you, you do,
what an 80 mph wind can do to the imagination
(or a hippy sundress); but anyway, we didn’t even
get that far because she’d say something like,
‘we can only ever be like ourselves
never ourselves,’ or she’d say,
‘all men ever want to do is fuck me’
and Christ, I’d want to say, is that so much
to ask? and before the end of the road trip she’d
be hitchhiking to LA and
I’d be broken down in Wichita.
maybe you’re wishing you were in LA too?
I have that effect on chicks like you.
and by the way I expect
you’re the type who reads the rhymes
in a toilet stall. goddamn those people 
know how to write—artists and poets all.
and know damned well who their audience is
and where to find them. 
          I wouldn’t be surprised 
if you came back from that temple
of runes and oghams reciting
what omen was given you to give the masses:
 
          women drinking booze
          talk of dicks and new tattoos

and that has me asking if there shouldn’t be
a comparative lit course in men’s and women’s
toilet stalls; and anyway what happened 
to you and rhyming? is nobody singing you the blues?
do you really think if Keats had to choose 
between you and Fanny Brawne,
you’d stand a chance if she recited lines 
about crumbling cathedrals and dandelions?—
in corseted iambic pentameter 
with a bouquet of rhymes? you poor 
deluded poet. have you even read your own poetry?—
lately?
          there’s more anatomy
than tits and ass that sag, though maybe yours 
were archetypal? i don’t know
but honestly, does the world really need 
more self-pitying poets eulogizing the loss
of their fearful symmetry?
we’ll soon enough all fit inside a Grecian urn—
but I feel your pain. 
          did I tell you about the time I met 
Hayden Carruth in Bennington, Vermont?
there may have been me, his publisher, 
students and admirers, but there was mostly
the red-haired woman in the sleeve-wrap leopard print 
top and black leather mini-skirt 
and I can tell you there was no talking poetry 
that night or at that table with Hayden Carruth. 
Carruth is your poet. Keats 
never knew how to treat women, but Hayden? 
I tell you, go for the man with the yellow McCulloch 
chainsaw.
          but who hasn’t woken
to some new piece of poetry wondering 
what in the hell happened 
the night before? who said what and what 
was spoken and never mind the hangover—what’s
the fucking title? I’ve been there—
a fifth of rum, midnight, some piece grinding
moves on the dance floor, moves
I’ve never seen before until, the next morning,
I’m wondering what-the-hell future I ever saw in it.
must have been the drink because I can’t
begin to explain whatever goddamn 
Picasso of indiscretion I woke to—words tossed
like underwear across the exaltation
of the page. spontaneity. sure. call it that. the kind 
you used to find at a 90s rage; 
but as I was saying: isn’t anybody, these days,  
singing you the blues? 

          women drinking booze
          talk of dicks and new tattoos

stuck in my head now 
for Christ’s sake, but haven’t any
of those poets promised, at midnight,
to walk you sly along the railroad track?—
just smooth as Scratch himself?
          ‘don’t you know,
‘sweet girl,’ he’d say, ‘the kinds of rhymes your hips
could make with mine?’ 
          take me down your boulevard
of saints and swindles, where the old men leer
and the young men sing beatus vir;
where the women preen with looks as flammable
as gasoline. let’s you and me find out
the lanes and alleyways that rub against
the skin, where neon advertises sin
and preachers lick the air sweet with the carnal
and serpentine locution of the streets;
we’ll find a sidewalk curb or sway backed porch steps—
we’ll sit among the bottle caps and cups
the foil, paper wrappers, and cigarette butts
and talk about the raff we leave behind:
the drafts and stanzas; maybe here and there
a poetry worth the reading? but why guess?
go a few stone steps into the cellar
and there the mystic Madam Coriander,
who owns the laundromat around the corner,
will tell us how the roots of the raspberries finger
the sockets of a skull—

          Mary, where the thorns are many,
          where the autumn’s black leaves eddy
          do you hear the children skipping
          while your bloodless bones are slipping?
          Mary, Mary, dead and buried,
          buried beneath the red raspberries.

                    one for the money, 
                    two to elope,
                    three for the noose 
                    in the jump rope’s rope.
                    four for the crime
                    beware of four!
                    four’s for the rhyme:
                    Mary’s no more.

          Mary, Mary, in the brambles
          where the barren winter ambles
          do you hear the children’s laughter
          singing of the ever after?
          Mary, Mary, dead and buried,
          buried beneath the red raspberries. 


          —the thorns, the brambles,
the twisted vine are growing from my skull,
and children pick the berries—I see it all.
I hear them mocking the divine, their laughter,
and Madam Coriander asking if
I understand. do you? my mouth is filled
with sand and weeds are sprouting from my eyes.
I can’t decide. but do you know the spikes
of bulrush where the river dimly swims?
down by the salt-fingered pilings? I’ve been meaning
to describe the way the yellow lights
oil the river’s slippery back, the wharf,
the detritus of the clouds before they’re swept
at midnight out to sea. there’s a place
the moon goes up mechanically. behind it
the turning plate of stars goes round and round
the blinking lights. there’s not a night I’d trade
for this but I digress. the filigree
of roots, the brazen nettles, the skull beneath
the winterberry—was it winterberry?
I’m guessing you would answer: whiskey. whiskey
works just as well. you could almost mistake
the sky— let’s put it this way: let’s say
we stuck our feet out of the world’s side window,
the ocean rolling underneath. we’ll tell them
we crossed our ankles on the far horizon
and dipped our toes into the moon, we stirred up
comets and let the streaming Milky Way
wash clean our feet. (don’t ask me who the hell
is driving.)
          but we’ve been here before,
barefooted in the parking lot. don’t ask
the exit number. if I’m first arriving,
I’ll have the front desk bring your room a bottle
of Vanni Fucci (if that isn’t wine
it should be) vintage 1954—
I wonder if you like my metaphor?
but then I’m thinking back again to driving
with my girlfriend’s heels on the rear-view mirror, and 
she asks me—’don’t you understand?
we’re never ourselves but only
like ourselves: the skull, the briars, the raspberries, 
winterberries or whatever—
what Madam Coriander meant
was: in the end—but you should change the poem
to winterberries. you never
eat a winterberry raw—they’re poisonous.’
          but raspberries bleed, I say.
and by this I mean: if I hear you caterwauling 
at the trash bins in the middle of the night, I’ll always
put out a saucer-full of gin
          for you.


          Ode to Kim Addonizio
          writ by me
          January 3rd 2023

• I wrote this over the last couple days reading Now We’re Getting Somewhere. Small references to What Is This Thing Called Love also appear. There’s a footnote to my jump rope poem I almost added:

         1. this might be a little darker
             than your average Dorothy Parker.

North of Autumn | Into the Woods

This is a longer narrative poem I wrote specifically for my novel. I also mentioned a while back that I wanted to write a poem in the spirit of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. You could almost call this poem a Mid-Autumn Night’s Dream. I was tempted to call it that. The verse form is Blank Verse and, in some choice moments, I made use of internal rhyme. I’ve included an audio. I misread the verse in a couple places, but it takes a good eleven minutes to read, so I didn’t feel too perfectionist about it. I also wasn’t sure if I should capitalize the names of plants. I couldn’t be bothered to research so I did. As far as I know, you won’t find poetry written like this by anybody anywhere else in the world. Enjoy!

Into the Woods


I’m told they finally closed the bridge. 
            They say
It’s for the season. I don’t mind it closed.
Autumn is the time of year a tree
Will make her apron from the leaves she scatters;
And neat and tidy as a pin she’ll strew
The self-same skirt with fruits and nuts. The shame
Is when her labor’s swept into a ditch
Her summer lost to all the traffic’s coming
And going. 
      Were the brook to drown the bridge
As she’s been threatening to for forty years
I’d be as pleased to see it gone. And sure
I’d have to go by Hodge’s into town.
Old Hodge! Such stories as he liked to tell!
He’s since long gone but I remember how
My mother scolded him from time to time.
She’d ask him. ‘Stealing berries from your neighbor?
No fields of your own?’
                        ‘Too shaded,’ he’d say.
And then she’d answer, ‘Cut down all those Hemlocks!
And why not plant your berries there?
                        ‘I’d never!’
He’d answer with a wink my ways. ‘Someday
They’ll up and go all by themselves. You’ll see.’
And I being just a little girl saw how
They could and straightaway that night I dreamt
Of Hemlocks. 
            Just past midnight came a gust
That shook the windowpanes. I sat upright
Or dreamt I did. When one’s so young life’s anyhow
A half-remembered dream.
            I looked straight out
The window where I saw the further ridge
And Hodge’s Hemlocks quaking top to bottom.
I slipped from bed and tip-toed to the sill
And leaned with nose and elbows. There was not
The slightest breeze and yet the Hemlocks teetered
And tottered down the ridge the way we used to
Before electric came—when all we had
Was balancing a candle in one hand
And the other out before us all the same.
They slipped into the hollow; not just Hemlock,
But birch and Sugar Maple followed.
They swayed into my dooryard just as though
They’d been there all along. Next there was a tapping
As of a bony finger at the window
As might a neighbor come by casually
To say ‘Hello’. And what with all their reeling
And almost almost falling down, there were everywhere
Acorns, pine cones, twigs and whirligigs
And apples that swung like rusty bells whose tongues
Had since gone dry and shriveled. 
                                          What was I?
Six? Seven? I thought nothing more than straight
Undo the latch and open up the window.
I meant to let them in and in they came—
The sprung and rickety articulation,
The lean, long-fingered limbs. They combed and lifted
My hair, and poked and plucked and pinched my nightgown
(And by my nightgown picked me up). I held
My blanket sailing round me as I spun
From limb to limb. Their plaint timbers groaned
And popped as though the ocean rolled beneath them.
Their roots like prying thumbs dismantled obstacles:
They sent the stones from stone walls tumbling down
And knocked the stooks out of their rows and columns.
Sure as I stand and talk to you today
I still can feel the ribbing tips of sticks
Like fingertips, the sticking scent of pine,
The papery slough of the birch and wild vine
Against the skin. They took me from the dooryard
Into the wooded valley where the brook
Runs leisurely; where oftentimes I’d look
For Marigold and Summersweet. You might say
The child taking home the buds of May—
The firstlings of the season—was no different
Than were the woods returned to take the child
Straight from her house into the wild. By rights
It’s just the same. 
                   They set me barefoot
On the leaf and needle covered floor.
I turned a little circle as I pulled
My blanket into something like a hood
(As if to hide). The scent of petrichore
Was in the air. I peeked; they gawked at me.
They stood like giants stooping low as if
To better see the girl they’d snatched away
(Tiny as I was). And then it seemed
That they’d decided. First to do was take
My blanket. You would hardly think a Thornapple
Could be so delicate and yet it was.
And then the others took to prodding me
Until I’d lifted up my arms and stretched them straight
To either side. They circled me like tailors,
I in their fitting room.
                  You’ll want to know
Just what the forest wanted. To tell the truth,
I know as little now as then. The best
I ever do is simply tell the story—
How if there were a spider’s web between
The aspen’s limbs, a birch would twirl it away:
She’d wind a yarn to weave into my braids
With Fleabane’s petals at my shoulder blades;
How when the Willow brought the cattail’s leaf
The Popple made me wristlets and a sash;
And as I waited came the Cherry Tree
To daub my lips with Hobble Bush (Witch-Hobble
Its hereabouts called). To think that they would stain
A girl’s lips with that!
                  You might have thought
The late September’s wind had riled them—splayed
A hundred limbs into a thousand fingers
Grasping at their leaves before they fell,
But this was no haphazard storm or season
For soon as they had daubed my lips and cheeks
They made me sandals for my feet—tied with cords
Of knotted grass—and lastly wove a crown
Of honeysuckle vine and the silk of Thistledown.
A train of dragonflies attended me
With ruby wings and emerald eyes—they circled 
As if I were the Fearie Queen and they 
My courtiers. Then the forest made no sound
Apart from here and there the leaf, the stick or fruit
That fell or struck the ground.
                        I’ve since been told
That old marble, the moon, went tumbling down;
Hodge’s jenny jumped the neighbor’s fence
And quarreled with the goose. The wind went nibbling
At every door and window so bedeviling
The weather vane that wakened ghosts ran riot
Knowing neither which way to heaven nor which
To hell. Their cold and bristling exhalations 
Struck all they touched with frost, and passing by
Turned raincoats inside out. Shutters banged
And barn doors howled on swung and worried hinges;
Roof shingles clamored for a hold. The owl
Swallowed the mouse—the whiskers first and then
The whip of tail. Its yellow eyes surveyed
The farm yard’s squalor as the cat went dripping
Like licorice through the split and missing teeth
Of hemlock planks. That was the night to close
The bulkhead lest the cellar’s belly fill
With leaves and rain. Some thought the dish and spoon
Might finally run away and others, with
The mortise cracking in the attic, thought
The house elves, who steal from our kitchens,
Tapped back in place the oaken pegs worked loose
By the wind and weather. They’re the elves who snatch
A tea-leaf from the cupboard, so little
That you or I would never notice, steeped
Where dewdrops gather on the rosebud’s lip—
So slight a cup!—a hummingbird in turn
Might rob the petal if they’re quick enough.
I’ve seen it done. But none went out that night
Who needn’t go. There was only just
Myself, a wide-eyed girl, who danced with Dogwood,
Larch and Sugar Maple. I was passed
From each to each with little pirouettes.
They lightly held my hand above my head;
And while I spun I lifted up the hem
Of my pajamas just the way a Lady
Might hold the corner of her gown while dancing.
It airily tumbled as I hopped and skipped.
My heels made spirals, my toes made ringlets, round 
And round I went. How grown and ladylike
I felt! I nodded graciously and bowed
And curtsied. They kept their rugged rhythm.
They thumped their hollow trunks and clapped their sticks
And with their sticks made melodies.
                              The forest,
Had there been anyone to wander by, 
Would have seemed to them to bend and sway
According to the weather. A gale
Of leaves and then another just before
The lightning crackled in the understory
And stood my hair on end. The dancing faltered.
I lifted my pajamas to my knees
And scurried to my blanket. Here and there
A raindrop stamped the earth with a flowering splash
Of dust and water. Then, as if decided
To pay no mind, a Honey-locust nudged me
To dance some more. But just like that the lightning
Struck like a thistle’s lash across the sky 
And turned the bowl of water upside down.
The rain fell down in sheets.
                              'No!’ I cried.
‘No! Take me home!’ The forest pricked and pinched me.
‘Let me go!’ I cried.
                              I tried to hide.
I pulled my blanket tightly round my shoulders
And would have run away but stumbled—
The rolling acorns bruised my heels and needles
Poked between my toes. ‘I want to go—!“
But then stopped short of crying ‘—home!’. An Oak tree
Appeared, its hollow like a yawning mouth,
The vines of wild grape among its roots 
As though the old Oak trailed an ancient beard. 
The woods made way until the great tree stood giant-like
Above me. I held my blanket to my eyes
When with the thumb and finger of its branches
It picked me up by my pajamas (pinched
Between my shoulder blades). I kicked and flailed
Above its gaping hollow when straightaway
It dropped me. Down I fell into the maw
And down into the endless dark, falling and falling—
Myself a piece of autumn.
                        I closed my eyes
At first; but feeling only weightlessness
I slowly opened them again. I saw 
The tiniest light that seemed both far away
And close enough to touch. All else forgotten,
I reached. I almost touched before a moth
Took flight. It fluttered round me, through my fingers,
Flew away and back again before
I’d cupped my hands. And just as moths will do
It zigzagged fitfully until it landed.
How beautiful it was! The moth shown through
And through with light. Another fluttered round me
And then another. If I fell or floated
I couldn’t say. I turned and tumbled slowly
And held my hands out as the moths glittered, faery-like,
Between my fingers and then dragonflies
And even leaves, all lighted like the moths,
Joined me. I was like a little planet
And they the stars accompanying me through darkness—
The endless night.
                  And then I cried aloud!
I landed on my bed! The comforter
And pillows burst. The air above was filled 
With feathers just as if the moths, the dragonflies
And leaves had all along been angels. They’d scattered,
As suddenly perplexed as I was. 
                 Little
By little I began to hear again
The household sounds of open windows.
The pop and stutter of their hinges. The storm
Had passed me by. I watched the ghostly curtains
That neither came nor went. They moved in moonlight
And moonlight glittered on the floor. I went
Barefooted where the rainfall pooled and drew
A chair behind me. 
                  Still not tall enough,
I stood on tip-toes once again to reach
The window latch. A trailing gusts of rain
Confused the glass. I thought I saw the Hemlocks,
If only through the momentary blur.
I thought they bobbed and sunk into the earth
Once more. 
      Needles were between my toes
And there were acorns in my bed. I picked
A cocklebur out of my sheets and here
And there were petals slipping from my hair.


By me, Patrick Gillespie | July 11th 2022

Blackbirds

‘Don’t make him go.’
                ‘I’m not.’
                                ‘He’s only just now
Come in to play.’
                ‘He’d rather be outside, ’
Said the boy’s father. ‘Let him go outside.
He’s old enough to want to help.’
                                ‘Then next year,’
Said the boy’s mother. ‘Let him set the table
That’s more a help than outside splitting wood.’
‘Let Mary,’ said the father.
                                ‘Mary? Set
The table? Let her help with splitting wood!'
The mother countered. ‘After all, she’s older.
Why can’t your daughter?’
                                ‘She hasn’t asked me, has she?’
‘And does she need to?’
                 ‘Jack did.’
                                ‘Why not ask her?’
‘For God’s sake, let them both go,’ said their father.
‘They’re old enough.’
                Just then the boy walked in
Still in boots and a hooded jacket—somehow
Nonetheless guessing at the argument.
His glance raced from father to mother. ‘Can I?’
He asked.
                His mother paused. She’d carried in
The plates and silverware and had begun
To set them.
                ‘If you’re asking me, then no,’
She said. ‘You’re father thinks you’re old enough;
I don’t.’
                ‘I’m old enough,’ argued the boy.
‘Then go straight to Grandpa if you want to help
And do exactly what he tells you. No hospitals
Today. No little boys who’ve chopped their hands off.’
‘Then I’ll tell Mary,’ said the father.
                                                The boy
Ran out the door but never having seen
His father run to do a chore, stopped, walked,
Assumed an air of purpose. Snow was falling
And had already fallen, not in gales
But in that way November snowfalls shroud
The yellowed grass and drape the Queen Anne’s lace
Anew with shawls. The maple in the dooryard,
Its leaves let down, let down no shadows, evening
Descending overall but for the dooryard
And lighted house behind the boy. The path
To where the wood was split went first before
The shed-roofed bays then out behind the barn where
The log length wood was piled. 
                                The closest bay
Stored their discarded toys. Among them were
A tricycle, its rims half buried in
The dirt floor’s ruin and the runner sleds
That just a year ago already would have
Skated November’s early snow—the lettering
Faded and flaking from their slatted backs.
The boy might yet have pulled them out but for
A baby gate that sometime during the summer
Was forced into the only narrow entry
(As if to bar a child’s going in
Or toys from coming out again). The snow
Curled over the metal lip of roof
Above the shed-bay’s open mouth and faded
Into a ghostly exhalation.
                                Drawing
His hood tight as he walked, the boy half stumbled—
A knee to snow. The middle bay was where
His brother stored his car on blocks. The right
Front block had sunk into the dirt so that
The grill’s off-kilter grin would chase the boy
In nightmares. The car still needed work—
And every day less likely to be done.
The doors, fenders and hood were primed
With spray paint (underneath the priming gray
The paint’s original red) but here and there
The rust was rusting through. But mostly when
His brother visited the car he’d take
A girl along. The boy would want to follow
But every time he’d asked them what they planned
His brother laughed. ‘We’re going out to play
A little hide & seek,’ he’d say. ‘You’re not
Invited.’ Then the boy, being troubled by
What kind of hide & seek there was to play
Inside a car, made plans some night to follow
And spy; and meant to soon. Sometimes they’d stay
For just a little while and sometimes late
Into the night. Returning then they’d kiss
And laugh as though in seeking they had found
A thousand hiding places. 
                                Another gust
Of snow. The shrunken spines of black-eyed Susans—
Their desiccated eyes were motionless
And blind to what remained of autumn’s twilight 
Or the boy passing by.
                                The furthest bay
Was where his father kept the tractor—lights
Lifted like attentive ears, hood tarped
And cutter bar drawn up. Some days in summer
The boy’s father might leave the tractor out
Midfield, dusted with chaff. The boy might climb
Into the seat as though he could ignite
The tractor’s heart and bring the gulping lungs
To life again. The metal’s heavy odor
Of grease and oil clung to his clothes like
The scissored grasses. He hardly knew the work
Of tractors other than they worked the fields;
And where he would have traveled had it rumbled
To life meant less to him than understanding
What force of architecture moved the steel,
What housed explosions turned the giant wheels
Imprinting the earth. ‘The cruel machine,’ 
His mother’d say, ‘That cuts the summer’s bloom—
Too much to call it hate—but let the field
For once run riot. We don't use the hay,
And have no livestock. Let it go uncut
Or cut it late and let the wildflowers route
The grasses.’ ‘It’s for love of the place I mow it,’
His father’d answer. ‘When has autumn ever spared
A meadow? And there are other reasons
Besides.’ If afterward he’d never give them
He’d nonetheless bring back a mason jar
So clumsily full of flowers they’d sometimes topple
Over the kitchen table just as if
A scythe had lain them down again.
                                The boy hewed
Close by the barn where jimsonweed had grown.
He stepped over burst thorn-apples—their rictus
Of seed and snow; and passing by he snagged
The others in his mittens—thorny bulbs
Still topping branches; tendrils spiraling upwards
As if they were a final parting breath—
The smoke of humid summer days turned brittle
And motionless.
                Any other day
He’d have taken the shortcut through the barn,
A storehouse of forgotten generations
Who owned the property a hundred years
And more before the boy’s own family.
Sometimes he’d spend the hours picking through
The slow haphazard regolith of mice
And straw to find a broken tool half buried:
Old bottles, cut nails, rusted pliers, saw-blades
And hammers missing handles; these he’d stockpile
In crates he made himself—half a dozen
He’d cobbled out of scavenged lumber ridden
With nail holes. The boy had found foundations
Grown through with ironwood—remains of buildings
A farmer might take lumber from. He’d wonder
What ghosts still searched the leaf-strewn cellar holes
Looking for the long forgotten button 
That once had rolled between the rough-sawn floorboards—
Themselves long since dissolved; and then he’d flee
The ironwood thicket. If there’d ever been
More than the lumber worth saving then either
That too was lost or in the barn—the lumber,
The tools, the parts (their use gone out of memory),
And the machinery still following
The beasts that drew them, wooden ligaments
Consumed, their frames corroded and collapsing
Into the sediment. And yet the boy
Will mend their failing joints, imagines them—
Painted and metal polished—renewed
Behind a tractor’s thumping pulse. If not
A tractor then he’d clear the cobwebbed arteries
From the barn and there stable either ox
Or horse; he’d load the hayloft with fresh hay
And breathe the fumes of life into the farmyard
Or so, at least, the boy imagined doing
And more.
                He followed round the barn’s far corner,
The muddy yard where log-length firewood
Was piled—the time of year the yard
Rolled seamlessly into the neighboring fields,
Their hollow ribs no taller than the yard’s
Own trampled grasses. Distantly, the ridge
Of field that overlooked the barn and farmhouse
Grew light with snow and darkened with the shadow
Of early winter.
                The boy had often
Come out this far and been distracted by
The sloping fields, wondering at the world
Beyond the world he saw. He dreamt an ocean
Lay just beyond the distant ridge, and beds
Of incandescent sands and whirlpools
Of liquid vertebrae. He dreamt of whales
Who glimmered with the giant eyes of angels;
And waters trembling over them like outspread wings.
Their contemplation wakened him; he feared
The dark that sank his bed into their mystery;
The turmoil of their wake. And though some nights,
In a half-forgotten sleep, he rode
The ocean’s slippery back from shore to shore,
He’d waken to horizons nothing more
Than his own room, the bed, the sheets wound round him, 
A cluttered floor.
                The path veered left between
The logs and barn. The boy tugged at his hood
As wind once more drew down a shroud of snow,
Thrown from the metal roof. He dug his hands
Into his jacket, hunched, and kept his eyes
Half shut until the gust rose over top
The roof again as though the barn itself
Breathed forth the ghostly apparition, vanishing
As fleetingly as it appeared. 
                                The boy
Stopped. The steel of the splitting maul
Gleamed in the icy mud; just by the maul
A split wedge wedged in the wood. The boy’s grandfather
Lay on his side, eyes open, the splitting maul’s handle
Loosely in his hand. The old man’s scarf
Rose up, half lifted by a sudden gust,
Then fell again. The boy stepped backwards, stumbled,
Stepped back again. A little further on
The cattails in the farmyard’s pond had blown—
And silence where the redwing blackbirds shrilled
Before they’d flown. He gave a startled cry.
His sister lightly cupped his shoulder,
Then she stepped past him kneeling by their grandfather.
She turned him gently to his back. She leaned
As if unsure; then being sure, she closed
His eyes. She gazed at him and neither she
Nor the boy moved.
                'Okay,' she finally said.
She stood, went to the boy, and took his hand.
'Come on,' she said. And then said nothing more.


Blackbirds

By me, 
Patrick Gillespie | March 27, 2021

Bicycles

 Just as the Cosmos is remarkable
 In its homogeneity, so life
 Surprises not in its variety,
 But similarities—a living world
 May neither be too close nor orbiting
 Too distant from its sun, must be rocky,
 Have water and a molten core’s enveloping
 Magnetosphere. Consider living worlds
 Like organisms, each convergently
 Evolving oxygen, a temperate climate
 And life. 
               And just as they're alike in their
 Constituent elements, the life arising
 Evolves alike—prokaryotic and
 Eukaryotic over billions of years
 Divided into plants and animals.
 The laws of evolution are not altered
 By time, locale or species. Anywhere
 There’s life there’s more that’s recognizable
 Than alien, more that universally
 Applies not just to life’s emergence but
 Also to sentience, intelligence
 And civilization, for in every world,
 Where though the sun is unfamiliar,
 Where night is visited by stranger tides
 And constellations, where though the byways
 And thoroughfares traverse implausible fields
 Under alien skies, you still will find
 The bicycle.
                    There are an infinite number
 Among as many worlds. The universe
 Is everywhere replete with life, some worlds
 Awash in microscopic biomes
 While others teem with wilderness; but where
 Intelligence and sentience evolve
 So does the necessary wheel and means 
 To turn the wheel: the chain, gears, frame and sprocket
 Both different and alike in their design—
 Blueprints of the physiology
 And minds inventing them. In any world
 Where there’s a child’s bicycle, there’s elsewhere
 In any quarter of the universe
 Another likewise trimmed with streamers, spangles
 And balanced on a kickstand.
                    Were it possible
 To bridge the light years with a bicycle
 By pedaling or by a sail affixed
 To catch the winds of other Milky Ways;
 Or to visit on a summer’s day
 An undiscovered world; to gaze at nightfall
 At nebulae; and were there, anchored
 To every handlebar, a telescope
 To navigate the air (and wine and blankets
 In every basket); then bicycles
 Would populate the intervening skies,
 Would coast like comets through the scattered stars
 And glitter in the light.
                    If on an evening
 You find a square of earth to unfold
 Your blanket and to gaze at constellations,
 You’ll see a thousand thousand worlds with life
 And yet see none. In every world you’ll see
 A thousand thousand bicycles and yet
 Not one. You’ll peer into another’s eyes,
 A billion intermittent years gone by,
 Whose gaze meets yours if only for an instant,
 Yet never know. 
                   Ride your bicycle
 The little while you can—and wait no more;
 Though a bicycle won’t ferry you
 Across the pathless oceans of the Cosmos,
 This poem has never only been about 
 The bicycle—but our imagination.
 The Universe is full of bicyclists
 Who dream of navigating, just like you,
 The same intractable distances,
 To view, if for a day, another moon,
 Another sun—and you. So little
 Are our allotted days, so impossible—
 The grandeur, the sublimity, the Universe;
 Let your imagination be the bicycle
 And what before had been beyond your reach
 Will be the passage of an afternoon.
 Will be the nebulae that fade like leaves
 Among worlds moving darkly and unseen;
 Will be the radiant whirlwinds birthing stars
 And stars new worlds. There will be life and bicycles
 And for a little while—yours. 

Bicycles by Me, Patrick Gillespie | February 14th 2021

Die Erlkönigin | Voiced by Harriet Whitbread

An actress’s reading of Die Erlkönigin is always something I’ve wished for. Then, just over a month ago Harriet Whitbread, the head of Voice & Learning Support at the Fourth Monkey Actor Training Company, emailed to ask if I’d enjoy her own reading of the poem.

I confess that when I read this poem publicly, I sometimes can’t make it to the end. Goethe’s original poem, Erlkönig, was and is profoundly meaningful to me in a way that I could only translate by writing Die Erlkönigin. Ms. Whitbread shared that she also had trouble reading to the end and that is, in a sense, as much as I ask from the poem.

Please enjoy Whitbread’s beautiful performance.

Harriet Whitbread is Head of Voice & Learning Support at the Fourth Monkey Actor Training Company located at the The Monkey House, 97-101 Seven Sisters Road, London, N7 7QP. You can visit the Fourth Monkey website here.

Ithaca

• The following was inspired by Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey. Specifically, read the closing paragraph in my previous post: Emily Wilson’s Odyssey. I did a few things differently with this poem. I roughed it out first, something I rarely do; then the blank verse revision. I’ve also been reading Shakespeare’s late plays, the romances, especially with a mind to his late style; and in combination with a book by Russ McDonald called Shakespeare’s Late Style. Historically, Shakespeare’s later verse has been considered problematic and was, by later poets like Pope, revised if not excised. Not to me. The syntactic “incoherence” of Shakespeare’s late verse is unmatchably beautiful. So, by writing the following, I wanted to learn from it. I combined the epithets found in Homer with the syntactic addition, divagation, delay, elision and suspension typical of Shakespeare’s late style. I know this isn’t any way to write in the 21st century, but me and my poetry have gone our own way.

•

•

Odysseus, wily navigator, you
Who have endured a thousand harborless sorrows,
I too have suffered.
••••••••••••I, being sent to launder
Your mistress’s apparel in the river
Or often, by myself, to bring from orchards
A desired olive, fig or grape, was also
Betrayed by those you’ve slain—made by them
A slave to slaves—my vessel desecrated
My lading mired and diminished, sorted
With weeds and brackish waters—yet for that
Condemned.
••••••••••••Odysseus, ingenious King—
Tell him, your minstrel with the wine stained fingers
Who sings of wayward tides, of witches, Gods
And far-flung isles, that I was also lost
Longing for home who had no home to search for;
And tell your songster in your rage you snared
My sisters by one rope between a pillar
And dome; and that we were together lifted,
Each beside the other, nooses round
Our necks until our feet no longer touched
The earth—the knots tight as a luthier’s string.
Tell your songster, though he sings of you
To tell of the twelve girls who were like
Thrushes that spread their wings to fly at last
But could not. Though struggling, we only breathed
To take another dying breath—our agony
Your pleasure.
••••••••••••Tell him: ‘Sing of girls, of slaves
To slaves, who twitched a little while but not
For long; whose rags were left behind, bone broken
And creaking in the winds of Ithaca.”
Tell him that we waited to be lain
Among the corpses we ourselves had carried
From the blood-soaked hall.
••••••••••••So long as sings your minstrel,
Odysseus, so long will fly from us
The last syllable of our breath: that far
From Ithaca, cries of murder, bloodshed
And vengeance—where the grass at evening shivers
In sea-spray and the noiseless spider sifts
The wind—was seen a startled thrush that cried out,
Took flight above the drumming waters, even
Above the dissolution of the air,
Into the spreading fingers of the Milky Way.

•

•

•

•

Ithaca
March 12th 2018 by me, Patrick Gillespie

 

Skeletons

• I wrote this over the week-end, and not altogether for Halloween. I’m not sure whether to call this done or a rough draft. I’ve taken some liberties with the meter and experimented with internal rhyme.

My skeleton and I go out for walks,
Although he mostly likes it in the closet.
I’ll hear him tap, tap, tapping
His skull for some conundrum; there are many.
It’s no small thing for any skeleton
To think. His skull’s a ruined house, its clasps
And door-locks long since gone.
························He teeters, grasps —
Ideas are fretful winds. They blow into
And through his vacant stare, emptily tumble;
Then out the way they came. He stands perplexed,
A sharp forefinger’s bone upraised, his jaw
Aslant — he’d almost had it.
························So it goes
It’s times like these that we go out. I keep
Our walks discreet though every now and then
We’ll meet a passerby (my skeleton
And theirs will pay no mind). We pass a cape,
A woodpile covered by a sheet of tin,
And laundry—skirts and sheets. They billow ghostlike
Above the ruined dooryard.
························He walks
With fingers laced behind his spine; looks
A little this way and a little that.
The dust recoils between his toes and smolders
At his heels. There’s nowhere he’ll stop
Unless it’s where there used to be a house,
Midfield, where now there’s just foundation stone.
He’ll gaze with longing and he’ll heave
And here and there a leaf snagged in his ribs
(And bones withal) will tumble down. They’ll scrape
And skitter through and in between until
He stands in them.
··················He lingers. He’d share
A secret he kept in life; that now,
In death, keeps him. I never asked and yet
One day he pointed where the house had been
With such a trembling grief
He might have been as likely reaching to touch
Another’s unseen fingertip.
························A gust
Took from the cellarhole a crackling smoke
Of leaves.·The sheets of the house nearby
Were chased into the field’s conflagration
Of nettle, thorn and thistle. Too late
They fled but couldn’t flee. The sudden gust
Confounded them — the mother and her child!
I saw them both. How like a mother’s hand,
And like the daughter’s where the small sheet clung
If only by a clothespin to the larger;
As if they’d change what was already done,
As if this time they’d reach his outstretched sorrow;
Undo, a hundred years gone by, the crows
That rise like startled ashes from the ruins—
Their screams dispersed into the neighboring hemlock
And birch.
······His lowering finger curls beneath
Their rake of knuckles. The sheets lay motionless
Under a settling soot of leaves and wildflowers charred
By frost.
······He never afterward did more
Than linger. I’ll not swear that what I saw
Was true, but then I can’t be sure that I
Won’t too, for guilt, regret, or for some sorrow
Dwell in your home.
······You’ll know me, if I’m there—
My bones, a few remains, shelved in a poem;
Willing, if just for company, to share
Your walk and should you need me to — your pain.

 

Skeletons
November 3 2014 • by me, Patrick Gillespie

This living hand, now warm and capable

To give myself something to do while the temperatures dip to the teens below zero (Fahrenheit), I thought I might try to understand what it is about this little poem that makes it so famous. If Keats can turn a poem, a little eight line fragment, into a masterpiece, maybe you can too. Here’s the poem, in case you’ve never read it:

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood,
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calm’d. See, here it is —
I hold it towards you.

~ the Poems of John Keats, edited by Jack Stillinger (the hardcover) p. 503

Some History and Diversionary Thoughts

Now, curiously, the first thing I notice is that there’s a typo and, as it turns out, the typo is Keats’s. The verb tense in line 5 is incorrect. “Thou would” should read “Thou would’st”. I’m hardly the first to notice this, but it suggests a couple possibilities: that Keats wrote this hastily and/or that the use, by then, of archaic thee/thou still wasn’t second nature. I lean more toward the first explanation, since Keats had already written most of his poetry using this poetic convention.

Keats took some heat for his use of archaic diction. When Wordsworth was writing the following:

“There will also be found in these volumes little of what is usually called poetic diction”.

Keats (?) was writing:

Edit: A reader asked if I could cite a source for this passage. I thought I had gotten it from my Riverside copy of Keats’s Poems and Letters, but can’t find it there (I normally cite most everything I can). Having searched the kindle edition of the Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends and not having found it, I’m going to err on the side caution. Unless another reader can provide a source, I’m thinking this quote is spurious. My apologies.

“As one’s environment is bound to mould one’s behaviour so is one’s writing likely to be influenced by what one reads. By this premise, to my mind, words such as “thou” and “thine”, though archaic in nature, would always justify their usage at least in poetic forms so long as the works of Shakespeare and those of the great poets of old remain relevant to the present and the succeeding ages. Therefore, if archaic words pervade my verse it is not out of a hope that taking recourse to such-like seeming affectations by themselves would lift my muse to sublime heights of the past; but, conversely, I poetise them mainly for reasons of effectual rhyming and in recognition of the fact that these discarded words had kept company with the best in literature. Furthermore, I feel secure in the knowledge that Spencer and Chaucer amongst many other of their ilk infused their inimitable writings with usage of archaic words; and therefore, I feel, by using any such words I am by no means committing any grave transgression which contemporary writing may find it difficult to digest.”

The conventional usage of poetic archaisms like thee and thou was still an acceptable one in Keats’ day (according to then prevalent aesthetics — and unlike now). Nevertheless, the first stirrings of a more “modern” poetic language were already to be found in some of his contemporaries.

The Cambridge Companion to Keats offers Keats poem this way:

This living hand, now wa[r]m and capable
Of ea[r]nest grasping, would, if it were cold
and in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
············································heat
That thou would wish thine own dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
and thou be conscience-calm’d — see here it is
I hold it towards you — [Facsimile edition, 258 from p. 116 of The Cambridge Companion]

I’ve looked but haven’t been able to google an image of the orginal MS. If someone else has any luck, comment or send me a link. See the link provided in the comment section below.

According to Stillinger, the poem was “written probably toward the end of 1819” and were “drafted or copied on the outside recto of a folded sheet on which, after turning it over and around, Keats drafted stanzas 45-51 of The Jealousies; they thus appear upside down…”

So, my own supposition, based on the misspellings and mistakes, is that this was not copied but was a quick draft. Keats apparently, and to judge by his writing of Otho the Great, could quickly and fluidly write competent verse (which by Keats’s standards is far and above the best verse of lesser talents). My hunch is that the lines occurred to him because of another prepossessing thought and quickly jotted them down to prevent them being lost. The idea, tone and imagery must have appealed to him as much as to us. He didn’t have a larger poem in which to place these lines and might have written something later. Perhaps Keats had been turning over these lines in response to another prompt. I’ve always felt that he had Fanny Brawne in mind, and I don’t have a clue as to why I think so. Maybe I read it somewhere, but I don’t think so. Did Keats write the lines in premonition of his own death by Tubercolosis? There’s a fascinating article here. Of concern to us is the following paragraph:

“On 3 February 1820, he traveled from town, sitting on the outside of the coach to save money, and, perhaps foolishly, he had left off his coat. He got off the coach at the top of Pond Street and stumbled into Wentworth Place at about 11:00 P.M. Brown did not like the look of him, thought that he might have been drinking, for he looked ill, and advised him to go to bed immediately. Brown went to Keats’s room with a glass of spirits, and, as he was getting into bed, Keats coughed and a small spot of blood appeared on the sheet. Brown heard him say, “That is blood from my mouth, bring me the candle Brown, let me see this blood.” And then, looking up at Brown, he said, “I know the colour of that blood; it is arterial blood. I cannot be deceived in that colour. That drop of blood is my death warrant. I must die.” And, indeed, how accurate he was in diagnosis and prognosis, for he died in Rome just over a year later.”

This tells us that Keats wrote This Living Hand before he knew that he had Tuberculosis (and was going to die from it). That said, he apparently had been suffering bouts of ill health, including sore throats, during 1819. Having been trained as a physician, and living in a time and place where Tuberculosis was rampant and had killed his brother, it’s hardly a stretch to assert that he must have dreaded and feared the disease and was mordantly alert to its symptoms. It’s possible that these lines were written in response to that constant dread.

Interestingly, at around the same time, or possibly a little earlier in 1819, Keats was revising Hyperion, and wrote these lines:

Since every man whose soul is not a clod
Hath visions, and would speak, if he had lov’d
And been well nurtured in his mother tongue,
Whether the dream now purposed to rehearse
Be poet’s or fanatic’s will be known
When this warm scribe my hand is in the grave (I.13-18 The Fall of Hyperion)

The final line bears more than a striking resemblance to “This Living hand…” Is there a connection? If chronologies are correct, then Keats wrote the line in Hyperion before writing “This Living hand…” Death was ever present. When thinking of his own art, he seemed to embody his craft and career in the metaphor of his hand, “this warm scribe”. The ‘I’ of the poem is a poet and I don’t think it’s far-fetched to imagine that Keats was largely projecting himself into the identity of the narrator.

• In 1818, in a letter to his brother, Keats was to write: “Warm is the nerve of a welcoming hand…”

All this is a round-about leading to a conjecture. Some have suggested that Keats might have been jotting down ideas for a proposed verse drama (with his friend Brown) but if this were true then one would expect to find more ideas and jottings. I doubt he was directing the fragment to Fanny Brawne who was, after all, his fiancé. If only because of Hyperion, and the chronological proximity of the line in Hyperion to the fragment This Living Hand. I ‘d argue that the poem is a reference to himself or more specifically, his art — the phrase “This living hand”, being a reference to his skill as poet. The poem, as I interpret it, is consciously or subconsciously a very personal cry of anger and terror. The you of the poem, addressed as thou, can be interpreted as you, me, fate, God, present and future readers, etc. His poetic art, embodied in his hand — his warm scribe — he holds out toward us and toward God. He writes, this is what you/we have to lose if my life is taken so soon. One could argue that Keats wouldn’t refer to God as wishing his heart “dry of blood”, but if understood metaphorically, then the threat is a way of communicating the magnitude of the injustice (rather than as anything literal).

It’s fair to counter that Keats didn’t write poems this way. Like Mozart, he always seemed to draw a veil between himself and his art. But this poetic fragment is unusual.

The Meter

First, the meter is blank-verse and so regular that I’ll forgo a full-blown scansion:

This liv|ing hand,| now warm| and ca|pable
Of earn|est gras|ping, would,| if it| were cold
And in |the i|cy si|lence of |the tomb,
So haunt |thy days |and chill| thy drea|ming nights
That thou |would wish| thine own |heart dry |of blood,
So in |my veins| red life |might stream| again,
And thou |be con|science-calm’d.| See, here |it is —
I hold |it towards |you.

Or the last line may alternately be read:

I hold| it to|wards you.

All of the feet are Iambic Pentamter. In other words, there are no variant feet. I bolded wish and own to show how the meter emphasizes the content of them. The last line is the most interesting though, and changes everything. Depending on what Keats wrote next, the words towards could have been either disyllabic or monosyllabic. For clues, we would have to see how Keats used the word elsewhere. Here are some examples (from An Electronic Concordance of Keats’ Poetry):

One, loveliest, holding her white hand

to|ward

Sleep and Poetry, Line 366

Might turn their steps

to|wards

the sober ring

Endymion: A Poetic Romance, Book I, Line 356

And then,

to|wards

me, like a very maid,

Endymion: A Poetic Romance, Book I, Line 634

Over the pathless waves

to|wards

him bows.

Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil, Line 96

Of the garden-terrace,

towards or to|wards ?

him they bent

Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil, Line 179

To spur three leagues

to|wards

the Apennine;

Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil, Line 186

A Cabinet, opening

to|wards

a Terrace.

Otho the Great, Act V, SCENE IV, Setting

And

|towards|

her stept: she, like a moon in wane,

So saw he panting light, and

|towards|

it went

Endymion: A Poetic Romance, Book II, Line 383

Walk’d

|towards|

the temple grove with this lament:

Endymion: A Poetic Romance, Book IV, Line 926

To judge by these examples (and for the purposes of meter) Keats generally pronounced towards as having two syllables, pronounced to-wards. The last three examples show him opportunistically treating the towards as monosyllabic. What he never does (at least in his poetry) is to treat towards as a two syllable trochaic word, in other words — to|wards you. This would be perfectly acceptable, but based on precedence, he was probably treating towards monosyllabically:

towards| you

This puts the emphasis on towards rather than you. Too bad we don’t know. It would be interesting if he had intended on putting the emphasis on you. This would considerably change the emphasis of the poem, suggesting a much more personal addressee. It would also be the first  time, to my knowledge, that he treated towards as a trochaic word. Such are the subtleties of meter.

What’s also interesting is that he drops the archaic thou. For instance, he could have written:

I hold it towards thee.

Why drop the older address? Is it another sign of haste/hasty composition? — or does it possibly indicate a change of address and a more personal one? — encouraging us, in that case, to read the meter as emphasizing you.

One might be tempted to suggest that the use of thee and thou was a more formal address, but in some contexts it could also be more affectionate. Attempts have been made to discern if thou was normally one or the other but, at least based on studies of Shakespeare and Elizabethan usage, no hard and fast conclusion could be drawn. It all seems to boil down to context, which itself isn’t always reliable. How did Keats use it? That’s also hard to discern because his use, by this time, was a convention. He was imitating its use in poets like Shakespeare, Milton and his contemporaries, and probably was equally free with its connotations. Personally, in This Living Hand, I’m tempted to read the initial use as formal, and the final line, when he holds out his hand, as intentionally more personal. This means I’m also more inclined to put the metrical emphasis on you, (based on this shift of address), but this reading admittedly demands that we read Keats a little differently here than in any of his other preceding poems.

What’s the precedence? I notice that Keats will sometimes mix addresses, using Your when, by rights, he should use Thy. For instance, in King Stephen, Act I, sc. iv, Maud addresses Glouster as thou:

Not for the poor sake
Of regal pomp and a vainglorious hour,
As thou with wary speech…

But then a moment later she will say:

Your pardon, brother,
I would no more of that…

Rather than, more correctly, “Thy pardon, brother”. So, Keats didn’t always keep his forms of address straight, and it’s possible that these decisions were deliberate. Perhaps Maud’s change of address reflects a moment of affectionate politeness when asking for her brother’s “pardon”. This would suggest that Keats treats you and your as a more affectionate form of address and is suggestive when considering This living hand.

On the other hand, Keats makes a complete mess of pronouns in Ode on Melancholy:

NO, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kist
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globèd peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes…

Why? Your is the possessive form of Ye, but in this case I don’t think Keats intended the plural possessive pronoun of Ye when writing Your.  I would have to say it’s one of two possibilities and I lean toward the latter. The first is sheer sloppiness. Yes, I know he was a genius, but there’s no better way to put it. Keats was using a poetic convention and slipped up because the archaic address just wasn’t something he used in everyday speech.  The latter explanation is that he was more interested in sounds than correct grammar (the sound of your as opposed to thy). He was known to be very cognizant of the musicality of his lines. I lean toward the latter, but that’s speculation.

• Interestingly,  an original sketch of the poem included these lines:

Though you should build a bark of dead men’s bones,
And rear a phantom gibbet for a mast,
Stitch creeds together for a sail, with groans
To fill it out, bloodstained and aghast;
Although your rudder be a Dragon’s tail,
Long sever’d, yet still hard with agony,
Your cordage large uprootings from the skull
Of bald Medusa; certes you would fail
To find the Melancholy, whether she
Dreameth in any isle of Lethe dull.

As you can see, the form of address is the modern you. What this suggests is that Keats originally used the more modern form then, in the process of finalizing the poem, switched to the archaic thou, but only did so haphazardly or half heartedly (the original sketches of the poem apparently haven’t survived). At any rate, Keats appears never to have been fully satisfied with the Ode, and so it’s possible that the published version (despite being published) is really more of an abandoned sketch — let go because he was fed up with it. It’s known that unlike other poems, Keats continued to edit the fair copy of Ode to Melancholy, settling on the first stanza’s ‘drowsily’ after trying ‘heavily’ and ‘sleepily’.  He changed ‘Then feed thy sorrow on a morning rose / Or on the rainbow of the dashing waves’ to ‘Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose, / Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave’.  By comparison, Keats does not, for example, confuse pronouns in Ode on a Grecian Urn.

What I can’t example (though I haven’t searched exhaustively) is a similar switch between thou and you within the space of a few lines or a single poem. So, in the case of This living hand, the whole matter remains open to conjecture. It also may shed some light on his use of would rather than wouldst. Possibly, his thinking was already two lines ahead when, knowing that he would switch to you, he absent-mindedly wrote would.

All these are questions that, to my knowledge, haven’t been dealt with by other critics or readers, but it does, I think, offer different ways of reading the poem.

What Does it Do?

What makes this poem work? Why do these eight lines stick with us the way ten thousand poems since, just as brief (and some book length) don’t? The answer is in the combination of its simple, concrete imagery and in the way Keats skillfully binds the whole around the central idea of blood as life force.

It works like this (red is life/blood and blue is cold/death):

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,

In the first six lines, Keats contrasts opposites:

living <> tomb
warm <> cold
earnest grasping <> icy silence

He doesn’t just contrast living with the word dead, he evokes death by reference to the tomb — a concrete image rather than the abstraction of death. And characteristic of Keats is the physical sensuousness of his imagery. From a prior post on imagery, the following:

“Psychologists have identified seven kinds of mental images: visual (sight, then brightness, clarity, color, and motion), auditory (hearing), olfactory (smell), gustatory (taste) tactile (touch, then temperature, texture), organic (awareness of heartbeat, pulse, breathing, digestion), and kinesthetic (awareness of muscle tension and movement).”

Temperature|tactile “warm” “cold” “icy silence”
Motion|Kinesthetic “earnest grasping”
Auditory “icy silence”

Icy silence is a synaesthetic image, my favorite kind, and one that especially suited Keats’ genius – giving a tactile sensation to silence. So, just as the hand feels it’s warmth, so too will it feel the icy silence of the tomb, but be incapable of earnest grasping, incapable of escape. What is especially powerful (and horrific) about this imagery is the subtle implication that there will still be consciousness in death — the consciousness and awareness of the tomb’s icy silence, but the inability to escape, the body having lost its warmth and ability to extricate itself.

So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood,
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calm’d. See, here it is —
I hold it towards you.

Once again, Keats hammers home the horror of the contrasting opposites.

dry of blood <> red life/stream
haunt/dreaming nights <> conscience-calmed

As if speaking from the tomb, he continues to evoke the breath of the tomb through words like haunt, chill and dreaming nights, as if describing the horror of the “living death” within the icy walls of a tomb — its endless “dreaming night” — suggesting that the addressee will be cursed by the same living death (even while still alive). The addressee — he or she — will wish themselves “dry of blood”. However, the astute reader will point out that being “dry of blood”, in the context of this poem, hardly allows one to escape the horror of an icy tomb and the consciousness of being dead (and icily unable to move from the tomb). But Keats suggests there’s a greater horror. What could be worse that a living death? — a tormented conscience. (Right, I know that the rest of you wouldn’t chose door number two, but this is the Romantic era and a guilty conscience was, I suppose, considered a fate worse than death.)

In terms of his use of imagery, Keats’ associative powers are the most like Shakespeare’s of any poet since Shakespeare — it’s little wonder that he’s considered, by most, our second greatest poet. After having written dry of blood, Keats’ imagination, in realizing opposites, quickly makes the association to a stream and streaming, the opposite of dry. The near-synaesthetic “red life” powerfully compresses color, blood, vitality and life into two short words. Compare this to the following concerning the Medieval French poet Villon:

Poetic shorthand was one of Villon’s strengths. Where contemporaries were sincere but long-winded he was sincere but succinct, stripping a thought to its essence. A typical example of this was how contemporaries expressed the idea of laughing through ones tears. Charles, Duke of Orleans, wrote:

Je ris des yeulx, et mon coeur place
I laugh with eyes and my heart cries

Alain Chartier wrote:

le pleure ens, et me ry par dehors
crying within, and laughing outside

Jean Molinet wrote:

Ma bouche rie at mon povre cueur pleure
My mouth laughs and my poor heart cries

Villon wrote:

je rie en pleursI laugh in tears.

[danse Macabre: Francois Villon: Poetry & Murder in Medieval France p. 93-94]

In truth, I think that all great poets share that capacity for brilliant elision. “Red life” is worthy of Villon and Shakespeare. The phrase “so that red life might stream” gives to red life a kinesthetic energy, makes it concrete through the descriptive and living stream. Shelley, by contrast, might have been more apt to leave it as an abstraction.

• Related to this is the following anecdote concerning the poet George Gordon Lord Byron who wrote that he didn’t understand Keats’  highly compressed metaphor from an An Ode to a Nightingale: “a beaker full of the warm south”. Byron, wrote Keats’ friend and supporter Leigh Hunt, was “not accustomed to these poetical concentrations.”

The fragment finishes as it began. In the first lines Keats suggestively uses the phrase “capable of earnest grasping”, then closes with “I hold it towards you”. Consciously or subconsciously, the reader will already have the image of “earnest grasping” in place, and will apply that image to the later image of Keats holding his hand towards the addressee.

The dramatic air of the poem hinges on its being, up to the last line, a single sentence. It unfolds its subjunctive proposition relentlessly, accusingly, baiting and defying the reader to escape before the final and thou be conscience-calm’d. It is a small tour de force of dramatic utterance and its no wonder some critics have speculated that the poem was intended for the stage — for a later play.

In The Cambridge Companion to Keats, the editor Susan J. Wolfson (when she’s not veering dangerously close to academese) nicely sums up this baiting of the reader:

“…the poem effectively works “for ever”: the poet ‘s hand has to be reanimated by the reader, revived as living and capable of writing “This living hand…,” and fated, in the sequence described, to write istelf back into the silence of the grave, thence to emerge again. The verse breaks off, suspended in mid-line, its last “heated” word, you, asking the reader to surrender to the writer in a charged economy of antagonisms — of friendship turned to haunting.” [p. 116]

Wolfson also suggests that it’s not clear, at the end, which hand the speaker is holding out — the “living hand”, or the cold and icy hand.

“The parting shot, “see here it is/I hold it towards you,” issues an invitation, but to what? Does it refer to a warm living hand or a cold dead one? The reader has to imagine the present as past, the sensation of earnest grasping as the chilling grip of a nightmare, the actual as spectral, and the spectral as actual.” [Ibid]

That all sounds compellingly Poe-ish, but I’m not buying it. Such confusion, in my view, requires, at worst, a willful misreading. Frankly, I think Wolfson has gone a bit overboard. At the outset the speaker makes it clear that his hand is now “warm and capable of earnest grasping”. The poem gives the reader no reason to think — in the course of the poem — that he has died, that his hand has turned cold and icy, and that he now reaches towards the addressee from the tomb. That’s just over-eager analysis. “It” is the earnest grasping of his hand. The speaker starts by saying that his hand is capable of earnest grasping, and closes saying “See, here it is –” In other words, his hand is capable of it and, at the close of the poem, does it. This isn’t as exciting as Wolfson’s phantasmagoria, but it’s what’s supported by the text.

“This Grave
contains all that was Mortal
of a
Young English Poet
Whoon his Death Bed
in the Bitterness of his Heart
at the Malicious Power of his Enemies
Desired
these Words to be engraven on his Tomb Stone
Here lies One
Whose Name was writ in Water.”

It’s said that Keats only wanted the final words to appear on his tombstone: Here lies one whose name was writ in Water”. Joseph Severn and Charles Brown, Keats’ close friends, felt that Keats had been badly mistreated by the critics of the day and somewhat implicated them in Keats’ early death. Later, it’s said, both men regretted adding their words to the tombstone.

That said, it’s hardly unreasonable to conjecture that Keats was very unhappy at his critical reception and discussed the matter with both his friends — hence their angry and grief-stricken decision to add the commentary to Keats’ tombstone. Was Keats’ poem related to the sentiments expressed on his tombstone? Was there some truth in their description? — “the bitterness of his heart”? It’s hard to imagine that Severn and Brown entirely fabricated the sentiment expressed on the tombstone. I’m inclined to believe that, at the time, they thought they were — to some degree — expressing the sentiments of their lost friend. They were striking out at the conscience of Keats’ critics; and it’s entirely possible that Keats, in his poem, was striking out (as I described at the outset of the post) at the conscience of all those who denigrated his art or, as he might have symbolized it, his warm and capable hand.

The Imagery

An example to all poets. If you want your poetry to really grip the reader, communicate through all your senses, not just your sense of sight. These days, whole books of poetry are published (by experienced poets who should know better) in which the only sense every utilized is the visual sense. Keats’ poetry, above all, is famed for its physical sensuousness.

Visual (sight, then brightness, clarity, color, and motion)
Auditory (hearing), olfactory (smell)
Gustatory (taste)
Tactile (touch, then temperature, texture)
Organic (awareness of heartbeat, pulse, breathing, digestion)
Kinesthetic (awareness of muscle tension and movement).

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood,
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calm’d. See, here it is —
I hold it towards you.

And that’s that. That’s all I can think to write at the moment.