As I Walked Out One Evening |
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by W. H. Auden
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As I walked out one evening, Walking down Bristol Street, The crowds upon the pavement Were fields of harvest wheat. And down by the brimming river I heard a lover sing Under an arch of the railway: 'Love has no ending.' 'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you Till China and Africa meet, And the river jumps over the mountain And the salmon sing in the street,
'I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.
'The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.'
But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.
'In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.
'In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.
'Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.
'O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.
'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.
'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.
'O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.
'O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.'
It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.
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Showing posts with label mortality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mortality. Show all posts
Thursday, November 15, 2012
In the burrows of the Nightmare
Friday, January 13, 2012
"I see dead people": Victorian post-mortem photography
There's a slightly macabre story about the great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, a man so dissipated he expired from chronic alcoholism in his late 30s. (His last words purportedly were, "I've had eighteen straight whiskeys. I think that's the record.") Lionized in America, he found the seductions of the White Horse pub a little too much for him and keeled over with a brain hemorrhage. His widow Caitlin recalls that when his body was being shipped back to Wales for burial, some of the deckhands noticed his coffin and sat down around it to play a spirited game of poker.
"How Dylan would have loved that!" she exclaimed.
Indeed.
The coffin in the picture above doesn't contain Dylan Thomas. More likely the photo depicts one of those Irish wakes where they like to prop up the body with a drink in its hand and carouse all night long. It does not really qualify as post-mortem photography except in the broadest sense: the subject is someone who is being memorialized in a permanent and significant way.
Before we look at any more of these, let's quote the Great and Powerful Wikipedia:
And it's true that on the surface of it, the images seem creepy and provoke a visceral response. We're not used to seeing dead people, except perhaps at open-casket funerals. Not used to seeing them arranged like furniture or braced so they could stand up beside their living kin.
But some sites devoted to this strange practice claim (correctly, I think) that post-mortem photography reflects a fascinating and very significant cultural shift in attitudes toward mortality. Death was much closer then, and less sanitized; people died in their beds, were washed and dressed and prepared for burial by loved ones. The camera was magic in those days, a way to paint an instant portrait, but not to be used lightly due to scarcity and cost (i.e. no one owned a camera then; you went to a portrait studio in your best clothing, stood very still, and didn't smile).
The babies are the saddest, of course. Victorian women must have gone through agony in their childbearing years, with primitive or non-existent obstetrics, high mortality rates and a complete absence of birth control. Almost everyone would lose an infant, more likely several. Were people more hardened to loss back then? I doubt it. They had to put their grief somewhere, just as we have to today.
They needed something to hold on to, a memento. Because there were no Kodak moments then, no digital cameras or cells or any of the gadgets with which we so casually snap a picture, there would be no record of Junior's first smile or first steps or first day of school.
The post-mortem photograph, the only existing image of a baby or a child or even an adult, would be cherished and preserved for generations (as witness the thousands of images I found on the internet). I can feel the melancholy behind this gesture, the aching grief in the attempt to make a dead infant appear "lifelike".
These waxen dolls are disturbing, but only if seen through our modern abhorrence of anything to do with death. We die in hospitals now, often alone. Life is prolonged past the point of any real meaning: we do it because we can, which has come to mean that we're supposed to, that there's no other choice. Death is the enemy, to be beaten back as long and fiercely as possible.
People "fight" cancer, "triumph" over it or "lose the battle". The medical community seems embarrassed by it all. Disease isn't supposed to happen, and if it does, it must be vanquished. I don't think the Victorians thought in terms of losing battles, or even winning. The majority of them were deeply Christian, which means they believed the dead were gathered up by the Almighty and transported to a better place for all eternity.
Spiritualism became tremendously popular in this era, along with the belief that the ghosts of loved ones sometimes appeared in photos. And they did, if the photographer knew what he was doing.
The Victorians knew that life and death were separated not by a doorway or a passageway but by a gossamer veil, something the merest breeze could draw aside. These eerie portraits of life-in-death convey a sense of dwelling in that mysterious other world even while still embodied on earth. It's a bizarre and even repugnant concept to us, but not to them.
I try to imagine it. It's hard to go there, to put myself there. I wonder what it would be like to touch a dead baby, to tenderly position it for a portrait under blazing lights, to hold its likeness close for years and years while other children came and went.
Their haunted eyes seem to stare at us through time, through space, even through the mists of death itself.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
The Ballad of Murphy G.
Inspired by a friend of mine, who enjoys writing doggerel, here's some catterel about an old friend who passed at the grand age of 17.
THE BALLAD OF MURPHY G.
I sing of Murphy, glad and proud
Whose meow could be so very loud.
Who loafed and purred in majesty
And honed his claws upon a tree.
When squirrels he saw, he meowed so strong
It sounded like a tiger’s song.
And dragonflies would hurry south
When Murphy caught them in his mouth.
White bib and mitties Murphy had,
And white tufts on his tootie-pads.
His weight in pounds we will not tell,
But as time passed, his tum-tum swelled.
His pads weren’t black, nor brown, nor green,
But the nicest pink you’ve ever seen.
His claws gave him the power and might
To thrash his pig both day and night.
He hated that black cat next door,
And in the yard they had a war.
Murphy chased him for three feet,
And black cat went home in defeat.
Up walls he ran when flashlights blinked,
And on his pants the fur was kinked.
He leaped on counters of great height
For doughnuts coated all in white.
But one sad day, the angels came,
And called our kitty by his name.
“Yes! I’ll come,” brave Murphy said,
“As long as I am amply fed.
I must have tuna every day,
And salmon in the month of May.”
”Good grief,” the God of Cats replied,
“I think the food I’d better hide.”
Yes, one sad day, the angels came
And home will never be the same.
The kitty box has disappeared.
The clean floors look and smell so weird.
And though his clumps we will not miss,
Nor puddles of disgusting piss,
Our Murph on furry wings will fly
To that Great Litter-box in the sky.
THE BALLAD OF MURPHY G.
I sing of Murphy, glad and proud
Whose meow could be so very loud.
Who loafed and purred in majesty
And honed his claws upon a tree.
When squirrels he saw, he meowed so strong
It sounded like a tiger’s song.
And dragonflies would hurry south
When Murphy caught them in his mouth.
White bib and mitties Murphy had,
And white tufts on his tootie-pads.
His weight in pounds we will not tell,
But as time passed, his tum-tum swelled.
His pads weren’t black, nor brown, nor green,
But the nicest pink you’ve ever seen.
His claws gave him the power and might
To thrash his pig both day and night.
He hated that black cat next door,
And in the yard they had a war.
Murphy chased him for three feet,
And black cat went home in defeat.
Up walls he ran when flashlights blinked,
And on his pants the fur was kinked.
He leaped on counters of great height
For doughnuts coated all in white.
But one sad day, the angels came,
And called our kitty by his name.
“Yes! I’ll come,” brave Murphy said,
“As long as I am amply fed.
I must have tuna every day,
And salmon in the month of May.”
”Good grief,” the God of Cats replied,
“I think the food I’d better hide.”
Yes, one sad day, the angels came
And home will never be the same.
The kitty box has disappeared.
The clean floors look and smell so weird.
And though his clumps we will not miss,
Nor puddles of disgusting piss,
Our Murph on furry wings will fly
To that Great Litter-box in the sky.
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