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Post and Poem for
Richard Lopez
NB The poem is not really connected to the film or the book, which I haven't read, but somehow I was able to write this soon after watching it.
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| Mist on Maungarei |
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| Pictures of a 1938 Nash at a local Autoelecticians |
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| Tui in a street near me. |
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| My grandson Blake |
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| Blake, Dionne and Mark |
[After seeing the movie 'The Age of Innocence' (originally a book by Edith Wharton)]
The Innocent
Age
They had encountered some
Extraordinary curves that day,
That day of the light bulb.
They saw the garden,
Filled with silence,
And the carefully planted,
Beautifully orchestrated
Silver trays. It was
An innocent age: the pistons of night
Hammering in the ice-breaking ships:
The men with hats,
And the elegant elegance;
The roses arriving, the white gloves,
The notes, the invisible servants.
They didn’t speak -
It was like Nothing
Made eloquent all that whirring,
The delicate necks,
The pecks,
The graceful gracenotes,
The impeccable suicides,
The transoms - and all the
Dreadfully right things.
The englishness of it all!
But there were other things in the mirror -
And time was time,
Blood blood,
Marvelously manicured, marvelous,
That age with its eye,
Huge as a house, and watching.
He washed his hands in eyeballs.
The next day
They filtered the sounds,
And spoke in miniature whispers,
Motor cars began purring
Until it was my birthday,
And I shuddered out of the love cave:
It was a great coming,
And everywhere, out of chaos,
Out of time,
And out of the tunnel of night -
The thundering engines of sentience:
Writhing and beating in the beating light.
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| Brett Lewis was a Film Critic and then a book dealer. His was perhaps not an "impeccable suicide" but he checked out in 2009 |
Photos of Maungarei (Mt. Wellington) on a misty day a few years ago.
These innocent pictures aren't really connected to the poem but maybe add some interest.
5 comments:
Good stuff, old chap. Richard 116.
The line 'He washed his hands in eyeballs" is not a direct quote but refers to Jules LaForgue's satirical writings, and in particular his satire of 'Hamlet'.
'englishness' is deliberately in lower case. But why? Not for satirical reasons. More for reasons of "language twisting".
thank you for the poem and the pictures, richard. lovely stuff.
i've not seen THE AGE OF INNOCENCE. is that the one directed by scorsese?
twising language is what i think every writer attempts to do. my own 'english' is lower case. as a friend wrote about his own 'english' [this is not an exact quote because i'm fatigued right now an my mind is foggy], 'i lovingly mangle it.'
think that says it in a nutshell.
Yes. Thanks. I added the images to make it interesting.
I'm not sure I would write like that now. I agree re the language twisting. At the time it seemed a good response to the film. I don't know who did it. I'll look as I recall when I went. It was a friend of mine who knew much more about films than I do.
Yes. It was Scorcese. One of his less "machismo" films.
Did anyone notice the sly "innocent pictures'?!!
Cant resist things like that...
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