A Ritual to Read Each Other
William Stafford
If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.
And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.
And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.
For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
This is one of my favorite poems. I find it's concepts beautiful, fascinating, and potent. It is incredibly smart and telling about how and why humans communicate with each others. It captures so well the feeling of soft urgency and real social importance of using language with others; exposing the shared nature of the human experience.
Near the end my mind draws a correlation between the act of making language and scientific inquiry. The darkness is deep and the dark will always be bigger than our tools and theories but our conscious involvement in them are vital as our existence.
I also think this poem harbors something important in particular for Americans who so often shy away from forging new or deeper contacts with other people. This has I'm sure a lot to do with the general xenophobia that is ingrained in our culture. When he talks about "the pattern of others that may prevail" I hear that stories of hate and ostracism and unknowing risk being our own stories if we don't talk to each other. If we don't acknowledge the wrongnesses of our past interactions we lose each other in the dark.
In this poem I find a deep deep reasoning for why I write and why I feel so compelled to encourage others to write or at least to work consciously on how they share and express themselves with others.
I haven't read this poem in years. To me it speaks of the importance of clarity and lucidity in writing. Amidst all the pleasure and sense of accomplishment it gives us (at times) we mustn't forget that the purpose of writing is communication. We could fool each other - as Stafford says - and for that reason it's important - imperative - for us to be truthful. Stafford was accused of being a "simple" poet for pursuing this ideal. He knew exactly what he was doing.
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year, Wendy.