Cook, Kevin

English

Digital Commons @ Butler University

60 MANUSCRIPTSCRITIQUE SONG OF K. BRUCE COOKKevin Cook"Spiritus est promptus;carno est infirma."Let us pause then, you and I,When the morning has leaped up into the skyInto tenth, eleventh places on the clock;Let us stay, within some halfway-fathomed lines,The twining, whining shrinesOf hopeless nights in helpless authors' shellsAnd dusted dreams marooned in private Hells:Lines we follow like bacterial lamentWith a clinical intentWhich lead us to a weekly essay question.So watch as thirty sagesRush away to fill five pages... In the room the children all succumbTo "Sailing to Byzantium."The too-cool air that filters in beneath the weathered doors,The yellow sun that cools its feet upon this hardwood floors,Mix essences in corners of the classroom,Chill chalk definitions, day-old chores,Let drift within themselves the words that float unspoken,Slide out the window, make a three-floor leap,And noting that it is an early April day,Abandon Jordan Hall, when talk is cheap.MANUSCRIPTS 61And indeed there will be daysFor the yellow cool that gilds the parking lot,Swirling in the quickly taken squares;There will be days, to strip the haze,To shed the masks that mask the feelings that you feel;There will be days to truly comprehend,And understand thewords of Eliot,That like a dividend will then descend;Days to know, yet disagree,And days for yet a hundred credit hours,And for a hundred seen-from-window flowers,. Before I take a yellow-cool degree.In the room the children all succumbTo "Sailing to Byzantium."And indeed must come the timeTo.wonder, "Prufrock's puzzle - must it be?Is it all his own fault? Is it me?Am I naive, to shun his corpse-esprit?"(They will say: "How ideals cling to him!")My unlined life, a double decade interim,My unreceded hair, and search for a synonym -(They will say: "What does he want? The seraphim?")Dol dareDisturb the wasteland man?At twenty years there's timeFor judgments that will later seem a crime.For I have known it all already, known it all:-Have known the objects, meanings and designs;I have painted all the world in black/white lines;I have known far more than others each new fall,Have handed out beliefs like valentines.Again should I presume?62 MANUSCRIPTSBut now I wonder (once I knew, knew it all)-Wonder ifperhapsthere's more than black and white.When this is contemplated, scrawling on a pad,When I am penned and writing on the wall,Maybe all things are mad;Guardian angels quickly take to night, andThe world's no anteroom.And now I think, having known it all, known it all-Is anything knowable? Do I know?(For in the real light, is more than black and whitel)Is it little bites of fearThat make me stall right here?Insects that crawl into my ear, and somehow stop my scrawlAnd can I faith exhume?And how can I presume?Shall I say, I have felt the dust of college hallsAnd read the chalk that stays upon the wallsOf empty rooms; and the fall of Gaul I can recall?.. I should have stayed among my high school classActing older than we were, en masse.But the poem, and the love song, are the issue,Penned bywor (l)dy hand,Bitter, grim, a hatred grandSplashed upon the page, and printed for the few.I shall, having read of his devices,Have the courage to rebuke his sacrifices.For though I've spoken rashly, spoken wrongly,Though I've felt my words (grown fully wrong) forced back intomy throat,I am a student-that keeps me afloat;MANUSCRIPTS 63I have seen the certain truth of knowledge wane,And have felt eternal Poets look at me, in pain,But now, again, I'll think.I have seen in his despair song, after all,Prufrock's failing is the problem of Man,He is afraid and unwilling to do what he can.Asking always: "Would it be worthwhile?"Completes the thought with just a futile smile.He has not the heart to face what might befall,Were he to break the mold,defy them all.To say: "I am John Proctor, prepared to die,Rather than to aid my own downfall!" -Then one, recalling stronger days,Might say: "That is a thing that I recall.Martyrdom, I recall ...And it would have all been worth it, after all,Itwould have been worth while,After empty, hated parties and despairing,After the bitter, after. the fearful, after the dark that followsall the weak-All this, a life so bleak-It's not impossible to die for what you feel. ....it would be as if a Samson, now, had brought the temple down onhim:Itwould have been worth whileIf only one, wondering how it was you grew so tall,And pondering your memory, should say:"He had the wherewithal;Perhaps it's Hope that's writing on the wall."No, we are not 'all martyrs, nor were meant to be;But we all need heroes, those daring to doWhat we fear, to battle a windmill or two,To reach a star, to reach, at least-again,For better lives, here, now, to begin,Though fearful and tearful an~dinsecure:64 MANUSCRIPTSSome men would follow, who had been hollow,And some, in time, unable to endure,Would fail.But some would win.Gloria (Glorious) ...In excelsis homo (man victorious).Shall I retreat from such a vision'! Too ambitious'!Their potential is what makes men more than fishes.I find Prufrock's love song too malicious.Any hope is nobler than no hope at all.Prufrock feels he cannot change his ways,But his paralysis is all our own.We must strive for more, or die, alone.We have lingered in the darkness, dying, small,Grown stagnant in our wasteful failure-cry.Man's only glory is the heart to try./

Critique Song of K. Bruce Cook

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Critique Song of K. Bruce Cook

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