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| "Someday we'll look back on all this, laugh nervously and change the subject" (anon) |
The Joker
after
all
the passing of years
the
witness
now
states
and the listener
now hears
the gaps
and the other odd s
paces
when memory fades
to recall
the heron-thin men
and the chosen
thin men
of
the hardest of times
when it didn't go well
(and again the next time
it will not
for who are the victims
when silence is truth
a shattering of glass
and a thud
and a thud
as now it's recalled)
,
small shards of hope -
clearly gone
small shards of hope -
clearly gone
no work
for clear heads
or clean hands.
. . . . just ongoing bluff
an historical lack of honest round tables
an
historical
stack
historical
stack
of
tabus
tabus
?who's laughing now
a Joker
a Joker
is named:
and it's
Hubris
I don't really get this at all. However I like Robert Crumb and I know about the night of the crystal glass. A old woman cheered when she saw the shopkeeper's window smashed and she was struck down and killed by a shard of glass. I liked that bit.
ReplyDeleteIt explores the nature Hubris which Dominic Rivron brought up in a reply to one of the recent posts the the 75th anniversary of 1938 and which word is included the title of Ian Kershaw's masterful work 'Hitler 1889 - 1936 Hubris' . Hubris along with soft reporting is the Joker we must deal with and it may be because we are unable to face the plain truth about ourselves that we are at our root and base just insane monsters and so we constantly do horrible things to each other and to our planet.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the explanation. I would never have got there. Insane monsters patting ourselves on the back.
ReplyDeleteI was watching the film Francis Bacon where he's interviewed by Melvyn Bragg on UBU Film (last link on my A-Z Links) last night and I was struck by the number of things he said about his paintings that I thought applied to poetry too. About how for instance the paintings turn in on themselves and why they are as they are and I think this poem is an example because when we're going to write about Crystal Night as it is generally called it's not enough just to write about it but the text itself must be broken up into fragments, some large and some small, and the Hubris of the whole business gloriously written but underneath the broken shards of poetry. Somebody said there can be no poetry after Auschwitz but I disagree vehemently and I take the opposite view that not only can there be poetry but that there must be poetry.
ReplyDeleteTheodore Adorno "After Auschwitz to write a poem is barbaric" page 22 of my BA dissertation on Joseph Beuys. (I never thought I would be remembering this and then it suddenly came back to me when I read your comment).
ReplyDeleteYes, and Kurt Vonnegut said of writing as you say of poetry.
Entering 'Vonnegut' in the blog search box will bring up 3 posts, not Vonnegut but you can say in the spirit of Vonnegut.
ReplyDelete