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SATURDAY
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Edward & Rod: The Brother's McKuen.
Photographed by Diane Kopperman, May 2002 at BB King's New York City
A Thought for Today
We’d salvage much and save on doctor
bills, if we paused to read instructions.
SOMETH'NG
for SATURDAY
Just a little something before I head off for a weekend of work in the
studio on The RCA Years boxed set. It’s coming along well.
Today’s poems are Morning Collection as it was published in its original
version in the British edition of The Sea Around Me; I rewrote it for the
American edition that came out a year later. I wish I hadn’t. Passing Over
is from Intervals.
Passing Over
Finally clear of the treacherous air
he meets archangel face to face
demanding the peace he did not find
in life,
something hinted at
as life was moving for him.
He knows serenity is not
the only state of grace
and yet it is the only place
where shadows do not haunt
but compliment.
No more darkness, incandescence
his only wish.
Put me to use by letting me sleep.
Give my speech to someone else.
Someone down there needing help.
Cloud be my protectress
now that the wind has stripped me bare.
I need only a little air.
Greeting those who went before him
he hands out leis of beatitudes,
is mindful of old enemies
coming on as friends.
So this is the way it happens –
all things rectified, all ends tied up.
If only he had known the truth
deep in his darkest nights –
that life was only a passing over
into life
instead of a silent prayer on airplanes,
the awful crawl toward religion,
life not life except in fleeting.
-from “Intervals,” 1986
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(posted 09/28/2002).
ROD McKUEN APPEARANCES
ROD McKUEN
CONCERTS
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Jack Anderson o
Robert Beatty o
Amy Carter o
Divine o
Sean Garrison o
Jean Genet o
Omar Gooding o
Lloyd Haynes o
Jennifer Holliday o
Evander Holyfield o
John LeCarre o
John Lithgow o
Tony LoBianco o
Walter Mathews o
Peter Max o
Lewis Mumford o
George Nader o
Troy Parker o
Robert Reed o
Jeannie C. Riley o
Johnny Stompanato |
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Years pass by within a single hour for those who feel uncared for.
Rain’s a good excuse for everything.
I have no quarrel with your lovers, only
admiration for their taste.
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MORNING COLLECTION |
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In the
half-light
we saw the swimmers
coming from the darkness
carrying the boy’s body low,
as though its weight
was bending all of them
into the same submission.
As though the boy
was pulling them down now
the way the sea had pulled him
to herself.
He was of course
just one more lover
of the gray-blue water.
A muscled boy who swam
a few yards farther out
each day.
But so young.
I wonder what he said
as he went down
that final time,
here I am or let me go?
I know the sea eats up
the men who love her most,
the way a killer queen
must finally one day
reject the troops
who fought for her on battlefields
and fought with her in bedrooms.
I am not afraid.
I’d go down gladly in a whirlpool
if I had ridden all day
on a friendly wave.
But one so young
colorless, not even gasping,
too dead for even lonely.
A conscience cannot even wonder
why.
For the sea
it was a little murder
done with might and yet no malice.
But with a poor repayment
for a man whose only crime
was to love the wild blue water
that in a single swallow
tore and took him.
The sea gives up the living
as it does the recent dead,
at will it casts off what it will.
The ocean has a lesson
for our own lives
and those we take responsibility
toward.
Push forward she keeps saying
till your life is bare upon the shore
until you’re naked to yourself
and God.
Yet the Christian and the Godless
are often washed together
and broken on the rocks.
To wade the water is to learn.
You’ll gain a guideline,
a watermark just like the sea
that tells you how far you can travel
and still come home in certainty
and safety.
Morning people
tracking down the shore
retrieve the best
and see the very worst
the sea sheds on the beach.
Hold on to me
and I’ll become your enemy,
let me go and I’m your friend.
The ocean says that every day
a thousand and a thousand times.
And every evening,
her words having pounded
in our heads all day,
we repeat them
to each other
as our own.
So it is
that we confuse her speech
her language spoken
wave to wave
and tide incoming
with those sentences
complex and simple
we spit out
as dialogue invented.
The sea invents,
we rearrange.
The sea takes out a patent,
we infringe.
The sea holds copyright
to all the most important works,
speaking tongues that even time
won’t modify or use.
To those of us who’ve listened
the sea’s the only teacher
teaching, and without a copybook.
Often she demands a bitter prize,
a head to batter on the rocks
limbs to wash upon the shore
and though we wonder why,
it is the only question
that she leaves unanswered.
- from the British edition of "The Sea
Around Me," 1976 |
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