My Beautiful Stalker
Have you ever been stalked by beauty? Have you ever had a magnificent work of art continuously revisit your life like a persistent recurrent dream? A symphony, a painting, a novel, a few lines of calculated prose…you know, that stuff that speaks more than the words which sometimes compose them…I have. There’s a poem by John Donne entitled “The Expiration.” I came across it one fateful undergrad day in the university library as I was vigorously searching to find that would-be rekindler of my love for Western poetry…a love that had swiftly faded since I started courting the likes of Rumi and Hafiz.
I opened it to The Expiration and remember being virtually paralyzed. I think I must have read it about 20 times before I shook my head and came to my befuddled senses. Of course, when you see a work of art that affects you like that you don’t just memorize it. You taste it, you swallow it, it flows in and out of you and in a real sense it becomes part of who you are. You know when you look at a painting and you can feel your brain stretching as that work of art, itself informed by that raw creative energy that intoxicates so many of us, changes your perception of how you view reality? I totally felt that. But the damn thing kept coming back to me.
I remember the first time it hit me was a few years later when I was on my pediatric oncology rotation and had a 9-year old patient, Jaime, with a hepatoma that you could see from across the room. I watched his mother watch Jaime suffer day in and day out as the cancer continued to eat him away. I had developed a really sweet relationship with him and his family and made it a habit to see them a few times every day. I walked in one of the last days and saw her give him a long and gentle kiss on the lips. One of the most tender/heartbreaking moments that I have ever witnessed…she was kissing him goodbye. I thought how can you say goodbye when you love so deeply?
The Expiration hit me like a ton of 17th Century Royal bricks.
The Expiration
So, so, break off this last lamenting kiss,
Which sucks two souls, and vapors both away,
Turn thou ghost that way, and let me turn this,
And let our selves benight our happiest day,
We ask none leave to love; nor will we owe
Any, so cheap a death, as saying, Go;
Go; and if that word have not quite kil’d thee,
Ease me with death, by bidding me go too.
Oh, if it have, let my word work on me,
And a just office on a murderer do.
Except it be too late, to kill me so,
Being double dead, going, and bidding, go.
-John Donne
Tags: Poetry
April 26th, 2009 at 5:36 am
I love how you write Todd and your description of how you feel when you’re so affected by art brought wonderful memories of our discussions about music when you were here. I’m so touched by the beauty of the story you mentioned. I cannot imagine a mother having to bear such pain… and your poem was simply breathless! Thanks for sharing.
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April 29th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
So your blog has had me searching for what poems have carried deep personal significance to me and I don’t think any one poem has stood as my stalker — one stanza, maybe from Rilke’s Duino Elegies,
Yes the Springs had need of you. Many a star
was waiting for you to perceive it. Many a wave
would rise in the past towards you; or else, perhaps
as you went by an open window, a violin
would be utterly giving itself. All this was commission.
But were you equal to it?
– oh I love the idea of commission. But a whole poem? Then it struck me that I have carried a poem as a talisman — before setting off from New Mexico my father printed out a copy of Cavafy’s Ithaka and tucked it into the dash of my Honda Odyssey (tricksy, my dad, right?)
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon-don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon-you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind-
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn’t have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
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