Creeper

With what stoic delicacy does
Virginia creeper let go:
the feeblest tug brings down
a sheaf of leaves kite-high,
as if to say, To live is good
but not to live—to be pulled down
with scarce a ripping sound,
still flourishing, still
stretching toward the sun—
is good also, all photosynthesis
abandoned, quite quits. Next spring
the hairy rootlets left unpulled
snake out a leafy afterlife
up that same smooth-barked oak.

Fine Point (12/22/08)

Why go to Sunday school, though surlily,
and not believe a bit of what was taught?
The desert shepherds in their scratchy robes
undoubtedly existed, and Israel's defeats—
the Temple in its sacredness destroyed
by Babylon and Rome. Yet Jews kept faith
and passed the prayers, the crabbed rites,
from table to table as Christians mocked.

We mocked, but took. The timbrel creed of praise
gives spirit to the daily; blood tinges lips.
The tongue reposes in papyrus pleas,
saying, Surely—magnificent, that "surely"—
goodness and mercy shall follow me all
the days of my life, my life, forever.

I am surmising that the second of these, martin, was written while he contemplated his own return to dirt.

I am initially put off by the ungainliness of the word surlily, until I realize that it is set against the later surely. Then it becomes intriguing.

As a Roman Catholic growing up, I have full appreciation of those first two lines. Words to that effect echoed through my nearly empty mind for many of my later childhood years.

As a survivor of a frequently fatal disease, I can also empathize with the later words, particularly with that word, surely.

Even we who are agnostic wish that we could believe, if we have any sense about ourselves and our reality The prospect of dying, I imagine, would be at least a tad bit easier if one had some certainty about what was to come..

Thank you for these contributions, martin.

Take care,

Joe

I'm glad you found the two Updike poems interesting, and liked them as well. A truly brilliant book by Updike is titled "Gertrude and Claudius." In a way, this is his "Hamlet piece," just as Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," was. When I taught "Hamlet" at Bronx Science, I had them read R&G first. They loved it. There's part where Claudius asks one of the guys "Is Hamlet crazy?" (in effect) and I passed the question to the class. One fellow, a gymnast, pointed his foot to the ceiling, and said "No, he's stark raving sane." I never had a bad class.