Kevin Cawley<\/p>\n
Convention recognizes only three
\ndimensions, namely depth and width and height,
\nwith time from time to time admitted last.
\nSimultaneous qualities don’t count:
\ncolor, smell, reflection, weight, and sound
\nall eliminated by the solid
\nplane of adolescent mathematics.
\nA painter might appreciate the shades
\nof silver in an image-bearing ball:
\nthey still don’t change the meaning of a sphere.
\nBy definition three-dimensional,
\nineffably abstracted, it excludes
\nuncountable characteristics of the plainest
\nbounce of matter from the over-mind.
\nBut has convention anything to do
\nwith casual reality? A face
\nuncovered by the nicotine of years
\nroughly convoluted as a brain
\nreveals a core of character that no
\nideal reduction ever apprehends.
\nYet all the so-called qualities of matter
\ndissolve in quantity once analyzed,
\nadditional dimensions of the real
\nappreciated as a curve of light,
\na wavy shape of magnetism, air’s
\nconcavity or convexity, the count
\nof particles, each a measurable amount.
\nI’m babbling again: forgive me. But
\nit happens when you give up teaching, tire;
\nretiring from your podium you find
\na choir of footnotes caroling in your loft.
\nAsh Wednesday. Lent. Mortality remembered.
\nMany reminders lately that I’m dying:
\na stitch in my back, a spasm in my calf
\npitched me over headfirst on the floor,
\na thought-provoking way of waking up.
\nIt caught me dreaming, brought me right around,
\nblackened my eye and almost broke my cheek.
\nPractical as ever, Doctor Mudd
\ntested me to death when I went in:
\ncholesterol now double what she wants.
\nThe secular and the sacred have agreed
\nto vex me with a regimen of fasting–
\nalthough the secular makes more severe
\ndevotions mandatory while the sacred
\nalmost apologetic only says
\nthat no one grows without a little pruning.
\nCut out bacon, sausage, pork chops, cheese,
\nbutter, fried potatoes, chicken skin.
\nDoctor’s orders: live on fish oil, oat bran,
\nmilk without the cream and margarine
\nmade only with unsaturated fat.
\nAnd don’t forget to exercise. Rely
\non science and survive. Until you die.
\nScience has little to do with daily life.
\nA mind made skeptical by observation
\ntakes as much on faith as any other,
\nwakes up and expects to feel a floor
\nsupportive underfoot, goes back to bed
\nignoring doubt, surrendering disorder.
\nBy rationing its rationality
\nit hedges bets with being, plays the field.
\nOne foible may emasculate its point
\nand fables turn out real. If only faith
\nin atheism could remove these doubts
\nhow faithfully we’d follow it! We swear
\nby God regardless, never all in vain,
\na bodily secretion of the soul.
\nProfanity intensified may bring
\nthe mannikin that mouths it back to life:
\na dummy’s blood swelling its clotted pump
\nto crumble the crust that hardened on its heart.
\nMy tape recorder can’t take in the pauses.
\nI keep on stopping and the tape stops too
\nand when I turn it back and listen to it
\nmy many silences have disappeared
\nand one great incoherent dissertation
\nruns along, a voice from the asylum,
\nuntil it suddenly says nothing more
\nand still the tape continues, silence widens,
\na man who talked and talked until he died.
\nTalking with a tape recorder helps.
\nThe mockery it makes of self esteem
\nundermines complacency. The voice:
\nI wonder when I listen to the tape
\nwhere it could have come from, blurry drawl
\nof carefully articulated notions
\nnothing like the notes I had in mind.
\nAnother me might almost have composed them,
\na senile me, a drivel that meanders.
\nI mean to plot my memoirs but I find
\nthe habits of a lecturer take over
\ngrab the lectern from the storyteller.
\nAppropriate for such an age of critics
\ndoping out the universal text
\nwith gnostic deconstruction. For a Christian
\npossibilities remain. A story
\ntells no disembodied secrets. If they
\nkill it with a cute interpretation
\nit rises from the deadly to invite
\nthe wise to stick their fingers in its wounds.
\nBut now I find it hard to tell a story.
\nHow can I hold back the commentary
\nclamoring to have the microphone?
\nDamn philosophy has no respect
\nfor anything particular: it wants
\nthe benefit of theory to restrain
\nthe pleasure in a memory, the pain.
\nAn odd grape makes the cluster. Motley members
\nbrought together constitute the bunch.
\nBy living the changeable vine produces fruit
\nand even the most peculiar fruit contributes.
\nA dove came down to offer me a motto:
\nbeloved sons may sometimes prove displeasing.
\nApprove or disapprove, but love each other —
\nuva uvam videndo varia fit.
\nI found a job. Too tired to retire
\nI sounded out the college archivist,
\nagreed to put my weariness to work.
\nI read the mail of dead men now, dead women,
\nsummarize their messages on cards
\nmumbling commentary if I find
\nan item to incorporate — imagine
\nwriting something, maybe not my memoirs,
\nmaybe a book of letters from the dead.
\nI play the tape to hear the incoherence,
\npatchwork comforter of correspondence
\npassionate and businesslike and wise.
\nI’m sleeping better lately: no more planning.
\nI keep my hope well focused on the present.
\nAnd so to bed embodying the words
\nGive no thought for tomorrow. Up and early
\noff to work among the lucid dead.
\nThey offer me their presents from the past.
\nI list their mortal thoughts and make them last.
\nToo sick to seek a remedy, too weak
\nto walk around the corner to the store,
\nI rock myself to waking as I watch
\nthe cock-eyed clock propped up against my wall.
\nPupal humans, caterpillar kids
\nstupid with a stupor they outgrow
\nonly by dying, spin the silk of worms,
\ncones of mucous, excretory coffins.
\nCoughing as I ruminate, my cud
\na coffee-flavored benefit of phlegm,
\ncatarrh my instrument, I love to practice
\nborrowed lyrics in a minor mode.
\nWe often sing about what moths we’ll make
\nwith lofty verses fit for butterflies —
\nmonarchs ultimately, we imagine.
\nDon we now our dubious apparel.
\nAn absent otherwise, a missing if,
\nwould trap us in our worminess. We’d rather
\nbank on immaturity. God knows
\nwe think like children bent on adolescence.
\nAlmost Easter. In the resurrection
\nfollowing the precedent of nature
\nwe hope to grow from ugliness to beauty,
\nto grope our way from awkwardness to grace
\nwith parables to make our future present.
\nWe bury one another as we bleed
\ninternally to sprout the mustard seed.
\nWhat gorgeous gloom! By morning I felt better,
\nrecorded what I’d written hoping tape
\nmight help elucidate my hieroglyphics.
\nSeldom bothers me to babble now.
\nI’ve lost my old self-consciousness. Who cares
\nwhat awesomely irrelevant remarks
\nI make to make the microphone kick on?
\nTake as many pictures as you like
\nbut don’t expect a forthright man to smile.
\nI won’t say cheese unless I’m really hungry.
\nA man boxed up and sharp as Christmas cheddar —
\nno candied fruit: instead a candid curdle.
\nTintypes have the attitude I like.
\nWhat grin can make it through a long exposure?
\nAn honesty implicit in repose
\nconjures a communion with the dead,
\nfaces that keep the character of pain
\nlaced into the fabric of their features.
\nLove them in their suffering. The land
\nthey gave their lives to gives us livelihood
\ntoday. Their pickle-faced composure has
\na flavor to it, preservation dill.
\nNo salesmanship — the power of negative thinking.
\nFrailty I recognize becomes
\nthe truest element of my reflection.
\nThe beauty of it lies in its being so.
\nWill I disguise it? Not on your tintype. No.
\nI’m losing things. My elderly umbrella,
\nnews that comes on earlier at night,
\nthe pen I use to pay my bills, the other
\npen I use to write infrequent letters.
\nThe time has changed. It’s raining. I could write
\na sonnet on a checkstub on the rain
\nif only I could find my missing checkbook.
\nWould honesty compel me to explain
\nthe unexpected episode of snow
\nthat lasted till an hour after noon?
\nIt passed as quickly as it came, and now
\nwith weather in the fifties and a sky
\nanother story typical of April
\nmy recollection of the ashen flakes
\ndark against the lighter dark of vapor
\nwould mark me as a bleak philosopher,
\na sick one maybe, always talking death.
\nTo live as one already dead: a motto
\ngiven Jesuits by Benedictines —
\nnot a bad one either. Saint Jerome,
\ndepicted often with a human skull,
\nmemento mori, would have understood.
\nDonne the Anglican slept in his coffin,
\na nightly unmistakable reminder.
\nThe plight of every failure: it will pass.
\nAll flesh grows up and withers like the grass.
\n“The dusk of life descends on me already.”
\nMichaelangelo begins a sonnet.
\nIvan Mestrovic in time continues:
\n“Nevertheless I never give up hope.”
\nRelief, a paradoxical technique,
\nthe chief progenitor of sonnets, cuts
\naway support to figure out a form
\nthat makes a personality emerge.
\nI remember — petrified in background —
\ncrying about the damage of erosion;
\nmeanwhile those chiselers the elements
\nweaned me from the rockiness around me.
\n“We whose bones you crush will dance to praise you.”
\nWoes have ways of crumbling into joys.
\nRe leaf, a memo. Here we go again.
\nA brief exchange of radiance and rain
\nand out they come. The underground of winter
\nrouts its forces: everywhere flamboyance
\novercomes the uniforms, the greys.
\nMy graveyard’s blooming dandelion wisecracks.
\nTerritory once preoccupied
\nwith beer to souse the Germans now returns
\nto vintage bottles hidden in its cellars,
\nwine to satisfy a multitude.
\nThe bread I bake this morning has a flavor
\nheady beyond the physics of its fact.
\nIt takes me in. I catch it in the act.
\nYesterday my ceiling sprang a leak.
\nBest we can do, my landlord told me, Monday.
\nSpaghetti boiler under the bathroom fan
\nis letting only a little bit escape.
\nThe water in the kitchen seems to come
\nanother way, between the walls and out
\nunder the cupboards under the steel sink.
\nTill Monday I’ll have towels on my floor
\nto minimize the damage to the tile.
\nBut in the end I’ll only have the smell
\nin memory of a fleeting tribulation,
\ntemporary metaphor, good grief.
\nHumility? She wondered what it meant.
\nAbility to receive and not resent.
\nAs pride prevented me from letting her
\nchide me for not demanding something more,
\nit stopped me also from accepting help
\nwith mopping up the water on my floor.
\nSome fifty years ago she left me there
\nshifting leakage, shifting for myself.
\nToday another leak has brought her back
\nto say her bit again and disappear,
\na cameo performance in the minor
\ndrama of my undramatic past.
\nWould anybody stay until the end?
\nAnd when the audience has gone away
\nwhy should the last remaining actor stay?
\nEven odds I make it through the year.
\nGiven a guarantee of death, I’m gambling
\nonly on the accident of when.
\nMeanwhile keep on going to the dentist.
\nOddly enough, I haven’t lost my teeth.
\nSad to think what happens in the grave,
\nhair grown out unfashionably long.
\nScary to think of fingernails flowing.
\nNo more six-month checkups, no more flossing,
\nand so as plaque takes over gingivitis
\nplagues the gums and tooth decay sets in.
\nVague assailants, acid germs attack
\nthe long-preserved virginity of molars.
\nWrong! The plaque subsides; the teeth survive.
\nEnamel triumphs, practically intact.
\nBut am I suffering a loss of bone?
\nMy periodontist tells me that I am,
\na very significant loss. And in the grave
\nwill I experience a loss of bone
\nand find at last the fact it signifies?
\nOr will no I remain to say I see?
\nSilly to wonder, odd to guess the odds —
\nno comfort in the wager of Pascal
\nwho gambled life against the everlasting,
\nbliss to win and possible extinction,
\na loss he’d never suffer having lost
\nthe talent he would need to pay the cost.
\nFirecracker corpses in the grass:
\nwire and bits of paper, last remains
\nof energetic noises half the night,
\nmental pleasure, physical explosion.
\nFeeble really by comparison
\nwith deeper thunder, ordinary thunder —
\nthe lonely clap of human independence,
\nour own idea of a wise reply.
\nGive me a storm instead, the natural noise
\nof live electrons joining grace to ground,
\na bridge of rage reminding me of heaven,
\nrage a passage in the myth of rain.
\nAnd let it pass like any other passion,
\nlet me walk among the aftermath,
\nenjoy peace as it passes understanding
\ngoing in the opposite direction.
\nWishes granted: I can see the cloud mass
\nflashing in the distance, hear the thunder
\ngrowing louder as the gloom approaches.
\nMotion of a primitive emotion.
\nWhat to call it? Have we any words
\nto mutter in a maelstrom, any patter
\nadequate when the elements crack wise?
\nA bad dude God, a mother not to mess with.
\nFear of the Lord, a gift of the Holy Spirit:
\nqueer expressions, but they say it best.
\nPass over me. Don’t put me to the test.
\nAn ideal day for tea, the weather damp
\nand mild enough to make it seem like autumn,
\nmemories of raking fallen leaves,
\ntumbling in their crumble as a child,
\nburning them the year it started snowing,
\nthe turning of the black flakes back to earth
\nto join the white ones in their slow descent.
\nMeaning — something — never could say what.
\nPrecious little progress understanding.
\nWished-for wisdom never: intuitions
\ntaken in a while and entertained,
\ntoken hospitality apostles
\ncome to count on, offered nothing better.
\nSometimes understanding visits briefly,
\na reticent guest and anxious to move on
\nto better company in solitude.
\nI talk too much. I have to learn discretion.
\nI sulk when something pricks me and my sulking
\nfills my skull with language, heated air
\nswelling my head. I rise to the occasion,
\na purple-pink balloon above the landscape,
\na personals ad made colorful with grief.
\nWounded male considered unattractive
\nbound for death seeks female understanding,
\nobject: friendship first, then possible
\nadoption as a parent or a child,
\ndomesticated passion in the wild.
\nA misery that company might love,
\nsome physically appealing form of pain,
\na scar to hint of unhealed memories
\nand far far better things one might have done:
\nor possibly a handicap, a limp,
\na hospital stay, traction, a plaster cast,
\nanything minor likely to arouse
\nthe kindness of a too infrequent friend.
\nA gruesome ailment makes a visitor
\ntoo dutiful, too anxious to crack jokes:
\nbetter extremities than in extremis
\nto suit oneself with sympathy. Tonight
\nmy lower back is aching, but I know
\nof no one likely to take note of it.
\nThe phone: a woman selling photographs.
\nPhotographs for whom? A wall-size portrait,
\nseveral wallet-size for distribution.
\nNever mind. My life-long friends have died
\nand in religious moments I imagine
\nreunions made in heaven, marriages
\nof minds made true at last by purgatory,
\nsinus pain and sin both burned away,
\na Catholic fantasy. At other times
\nthe mathematics that I might have learned
\nengages my attention for awhile,
\npages of symbols, their inhuman sense
\nan art for art’s sake, virtue’s recompense.
\nI typically take in the colored leaves
\nwith hypocritical enthusiasm
\ndressing hate in jewelry of approval
\npessimistic mock-complicity.
\nToday, however, walking by myself
\nI play a less ingratiating role,
\na villain of soliloquy unable
\nto still the voice of selfishness inside.
\nMe. Why me? Why me? A silly question
\nseeing unexceptionable death
\nsurrounds me with an obvious Why not?
\nGrounded in a land of grounded leaves
\nI feel the most affinity with failure
\nthe real irrelevance of brilliant color.
\nInevitably grinding underfoot
\nthe severed organs of ecology,
\nmaking ash from ashes, dusting dust,
\nI take the death of everything in stride.
\nObjective nature, never at a loss
\nrespecting any individual,
\nfells each according to its need. Collective
\nbalance keeps a body in its place
\nuntil the logic of the system calls
\nfor killing. In a ring around the roses
\na wedding party’s waiting for the camera,
\nred tuxedos, burnt sienna gowns,
\nashes, ashes. And we all fall down.
\nCreek means local. One may look impressive,
\nthick as Missouri, rapid as Niagara,
\nand yet extend no longer than the county,
\nfit inside a detail of the map.
\nForeigners won’t know it: aliens
\nhave more important facts to memorize,
\nwaters bearing wider implications,
\narteries of traffic, world wonders.
\nA native won’t consider it amazing:
\nher mate for life, a biblical conjunction,
\nfamiliar love of someone never famous
\ndiligently following his course.
\nMost of us have little lives and die.
\nNo one loves us down the centuries
\nas scholars love Augustine, Plato, Shakespeare,
\nwhile the biblical remember Ruth
\ndevoted to Naomi, Miriam
\ngoing to see Elizabeth her cousin.
\nLimitations never really matter —
\nsimple people have their place, their purpose,
\ntheir sureness as they hope for resurrection,
\nsecurity that has no room for fame.
\nMiriam: remember me in childhood,
\nhow seriously I asked you for your help.
\nI meant it. Help me mean it now. Again.
\nAnd at the hour of my death. Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kevin Cawley Convention recognizes only three dimensions, namely depth and width and height, with time from time to time admitted last. Simultaneous qualities don’t count: color, smell, reflection, weight, and sound all eliminated by the solid plane of adolescent mathematics. A painter might appreciate the shades of silver in an image-bearing ball: they still don’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5084,"featured_media":0,"parent":41,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-98","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5084"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/98\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/98\/revisions\/100"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/41"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/wcawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}