Ian McEwan
‘Father lost lost’ began in October 2011. My father’s health deteriorated sharply. I’d been writing a lot of repetitive structures, such as the poems in The Stammering Man (Templar 2010), so a snippet from Claudius’ speech of phoney consolation in Hamlet Act 1, scene ii seemed an interesting title. The first section of the poem spilled out whole, in free-ish verse. However, I’d been thinking about prose poetry and redrafted without line breaks. When I returned to the electronic draft a week later, I’d been too lazy to remove the auto capitalisation of initial words from the old lines: I’d also started work on the section about heart arrhythmia. The syncopated capitals complicate the flow, make it uncomfortable, as well as (sort of) raising the metaphysical status of some words. They also make the poem interesting to perform! These pieces became the models for a sequence, which partly resolves that initial rawness. Some sections were entered in the Cinnamon Press Poetry Collection
Competition and the poem will appear in Intermittent beings due from Cinnamon in the autumn. Late in drafting I wanted to bring the text closer together, so the other Hamlet snippets moved from section titles to become splinters inside the text. Finally, it would be remiss not to mention Valérie Rouzeau’s book length sequence Pas Revoir and Susan Wicks’ translation Cold Spring in Winter (Arc, 2009). I read the book in 2009 and deliberately have not read it again, but certainly some of the feel of the language is related to it, as is the subject matter.
Father Lost Lost
1.
and here bent forward at the Wind insensible in this world as through Glass he
Hauls, become mere hauling
and it’s another Poem of Dead Dads or dads not dead but blown against their
Absence like stock metaphor that drip Drip drips – the family Photo and how the
Mower rusted stiff over its Butterfly of oil distils a sepia tincture in the garage –
a concrete Stain and the paint does never cover
and the Volume on the Telly stuck at full on Daytime jokes/disasters all as
squashy as the Sofas like that Cowboy torture where they cut the Lids away and
soon enough he cannot see – now must this Wind still wear upon the Ears
and Macula, that Spot original and growing as the Bubbles break and tear and
blow the surfaces away to What was never always there Degenerate in this world
every loss leads into never finished Constant Present, new tense he taps into
forward: always ahead
his small Tent far out upon the Ice – and this Wind
2.
which is the stick you Stuck with stuck the wrong stick in the Stick-stand or
standing at a standstill, Too Short she says, the stick girl and it’s underStandable
but here you stick and Make a stand
which is the penitent, the Christmas film, Bent as that man slipped Under blades
and Bend you to remain, tapping Forward ticking forward, tipping forward One
stick at a time against This breath this gale insensible, reflected on the glass as all
the lost ark of your head Bent and the ground
which is become a Punctuation, pause, the tap of Stick the stuck of breath the
stiffened arc of Back turned like a mark invented to pretend pretend that each
Half finished thing is
which is to bow the bowe the Bark of bowow time is pulling taut the tendon
shortens Ticking as the span pulls In a sinking or a tension fit to launch
sticks Lately after us Which is more Useable than bones
3.
where is each second Kicking him with Offbeats vicious in The heart insists Insists
it Can in peevish opposition tense against the Dark the Bed the push placed wrong
where there’s No righting the lopsiding Mop of pillows Dad cranes forward from
His His Bed the frame the life he won’t lie back on Forward the wrong accent in
this clinic clinical clinic, the cardiac that Kicks him and the can All down
where there is a Mop to push, a mop that clangs against the Can, a day job and a
night job but no second Dark not really and the shock is Bars across a window in
the pastel care and there is no is Not escape where the Mop Mop moping of the
heart goes Forward
where our lopsided Clocks are strewn and Tock Tock Tock not ticking proper but
it’s the beat you stick with and where God is but a better Ear than us had better
be a better Ear
and blowing comes Stravinsky where his Stethoscope
4.
as the survivor Bound to paths to lists the ark of Clocks that wind and Wind that
ticks the clicking in the paper house Insists the ear insists the post and Taps that
drip and paint and stain insists on still these Hills
as the Survivor bound to concrete As in forms to fill And files to find to fix in
mind the game the objects, sticks and Paints, Insists on pillows mowers, spots
stuck on Petals, hills, to correspondence by the Clocks and ticks to bills and with
the hills inside the Glass
as the Survivor bound to logic, stuck held or pretended that A scope A variable
hope A bound A limp A lope blown Lopsided forward into logic Bent and tapping
towards trope
as the survivor Bound to find The form to haul the line to Form the plot To fix
the Drip to Stick The Paper butterflies all in
and only to survive
5.
and Who behind the glass all dripping Supercooled, bent and hauled, that bows
and bowes the present Past the penitence of hills and who
and who Takes it to tick and tock and Drip and drop that cardiac Caress, the
flapping tent of chest, that heart unfortified and Butterflied from routine beauty
morning Duty in your nature in the Dark and who
and who for What we know Why should We retrograde in going Back to school
among the beds and sofas you Must Know your father any the most vulgar thing
to sense whose Common theme is: flourish, exeunt all but, who
and who upon this Spot lopsided broken Butterfly along the row, the Daddy
cabbages of hope, it shows a will the Stick and net contraption the Wind tears and
wears and where we stop and Mop and Hoe and Hoo
who Still hath cried a Fault against the Dead and who
6.
one is the Echo of the street at four, the Bell and after as kids drift, small growlers
into Evening polyester blue, and finished, stopped, the wind is like the Bell at four
o’clock you find it when it is never finished in the Ear
one is the Petal turned lopsided, bent on the carpet, geranium, the fade making
the picture just as any three points plot a curve and where His hills line up all
afternoon or we pretend the hills
one is or two just One or Two the breaking little flakes their metal Butterflies and
each one different the same, pepper the green, Mop into stone, become and
unbecome in Dark
one is the bird that starts it now, no sleep for That one optimist deluded in the
Dark that just One day from solstice must be and is at least one thing to Sing for,
optimist
and Early better than One second Late