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Nov. 4th, 2007 01:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionIn View of the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, James Wright
It is idle to say
The wind will blow your fingers all away
And scatter small blue knucklebones upon
The ground from hell to breakfast and beyond.
You will sit listening till I am gone
To seed among the pear trees. For my voice
Sprinkles a few light petals on this pond,
And you nod sagely, saying I am wise.
Your fingers toss their white cocoons and rise
Lightly and lightly brush against my face:
Alive still, in this violated place,
Idle as any deed that Cestius did,
Vanished beneath his perfect pyramid.
Almost seems like he's addressing a Keats/Shelley hybrid: Shelley told the wind to scatter his thoughts to seed something better. Keats said his name would be dispersed by water. Shelley's friend, quoting Shakespeare, said Shelley was changed into something else under a sea.
But I assume it is Keats he means: Keats was wrong and is still there, will be sitting there when Wright is gone to seed, whose voice left only petals in water (spelling his name at first?), rather than seeds in earth like the ones his body will nourish. Keats tells him he is wise--why? About Keats' name and work living on? But everyone knows that. About knowing that he, Wright, will disappear?
New Keats, out of his pale body, brushes Wright's face with his fingers: he is a presence Wright feels intimately--one with compassion for him (a trust Keats would have had some? another need?). Wright is alive, and idle (surely it is Wright and not Keats that is idle? or is idle some Whitmanian compliment? surely not that?) as Cestius. Does he damn with faint praise his own art by associating it with the pyramid? Perfect, but (ouch) pointless?
Weird how many ambiguities you need to straighten out with this one--though it seems to me you can. As though he really was convinced he shouldn't be read, that there was really no point. Who else directly addressed the graves? Shelley Keats', of course; Wilde; I'm convinced Dickinson without having seen them. I think I've read a number of others for Keats, popular, popular kid that he is.
Cats, statue. I found a feather by his stone, but pigeon I think.
It is idle to say
The wind will blow your fingers all away
And scatter small blue knucklebones upon
The ground from hell to breakfast and beyond.
You will sit listening till I am gone
To seed among the pear trees. For my voice
Sprinkles a few light petals on this pond,
And you nod sagely, saying I am wise.
Your fingers toss their white cocoons and rise
Lightly and lightly brush against my face:
Alive still, in this violated place,
Idle as any deed that Cestius did,
Vanished beneath his perfect pyramid.
Almost seems like he's addressing a Keats/Shelley hybrid: Shelley told the wind to scatter his thoughts to seed something better. Keats said his name would be dispersed by water. Shelley's friend, quoting Shakespeare, said Shelley was changed into something else under a sea.
But I assume it is Keats he means: Keats was wrong and is still there, will be sitting there when Wright is gone to seed, whose voice left only petals in water (spelling his name at first?), rather than seeds in earth like the ones his body will nourish. Keats tells him he is wise--why? About Keats' name and work living on? But everyone knows that. About knowing that he, Wright, will disappear?
New Keats, out of his pale body, brushes Wright's face with his fingers: he is a presence Wright feels intimately--one with compassion for him (a trust Keats would have had some? another need?). Wright is alive, and idle (surely it is Wright and not Keats that is idle? or is idle some Whitmanian compliment? surely not that?) as Cestius. Does he damn with faint praise his own art by associating it with the pyramid? Perfect, but (ouch) pointless?
Weird how many ambiguities you need to straighten out with this one--though it seems to me you can. As though he really was convinced he shouldn't be read, that there was really no point. Who else directly addressed the graves? Shelley Keats', of course; Wilde; I'm convinced Dickinson without having seen them. I think I've read a number of others for Keats, popular, popular kid that he is.
Cats, statue. I found a feather by his stone, but pigeon I think.
