Ku
/ Work
on What Has Been Spoiled
… Setting
right what has been spoiled by the father. Danger. No blame rests
upon
the
departed father. He receives in his thoughts the deceased father.
It hurts
when you know thoughts of the father are in the son
like a repertoire of non-events.
Thinking
how the father spoiled the son, the sons
of broken
marriages, my own.
Not
'spoilt', something lost, indefinably, gone missing
when he was
spoil between them.
Demanding
too much of him, bringing home a second
mother in
place of the first?
Work I have
done wrong? He moves in a film of slow
postures,
the strange mime
which
adolescents make when practising annulment.
And keeping
for themselves
enough to
make of the self some stern amazement.
Sons are
everywhere spoiling
their
fathers’ art and craft! No blame. Hormones hit
like a room
of conscientious
kick-boxers.
The brute beauty of vocabulary reduced
to
monogrunts and every ing
now sounded
un
like feints, and blocks, and side-steps
language
taken on the forearms.
Years
later, I watch him from the airport as he leaves,
know I love
him, know he knows it,
but finds
it wrong in public, forcing off my arm. To
whom would
I pray?
It is my
father who has rowed across my body’s
nine-tenths
water, to my son,
in spoiling
for the simple life, of his before him, the bones
of my
father lie satisfied and said
as thoughts
in the son, a setting right after the break
like breath
free now of the words
like a hull
brought in over water, the river, the rowing,
his breath
a repertoire of oar strokes
between the
banks of birth and death. Echoes on the surface.
When
thoughts of the son are in the father.
We had a
Melbourne launch for Notes For The Translators and I was very taken
indeed
by Philip
Salom's reading of the above poem. And by some strange oversight,
some
infinitely
mischievous work of the printer's devil, his notes to possible
translators had
been left
out. So now please find the intended notes below. It is times for
them to be
attached to
their poem again.
To invest in a copy of this fascinating book please email KitKelen@gmail.com
Notes:
In
the mid 90s I wrote a sequence of poems prompted by the Commentaries
of the I Ching. In this case, I wrote in response to Ku, the 18th
hexagram.
Above the poem, as epigraph, I have quoted those selections from the
commentary that struck me most closely — in this case having an
uncanny relevance to the estrangement from my son in the years
following my divorce from his mother. I felt distress and guilt over
my son’s changed behaviour and personality, and I could not explain
how unlike himself he had become. My son had been loving and
extroverted as a child and now he was withdrawn, monosyllabic and
sometimes angry; but the divorce coincided with his adolescence and
therefore it was difficult to know whether it was the separation, or
adolescence itself, that had changed his personality. He was uneasy
living with me and then my new partner and eventually moved back with
his mother (even though it was she who had initiated the divorce).
Still, I felt it was my ‘fault’, that the trauma had ‘spoiled’
him in some way, spoiled as in damage to his psychological state.
Then I began to realise that he was far more like my father; they had
more in common than I had with either. My father was modest,
reserved, even withdrawn, and though he was rarely angry, he was
markedly uneasy with his or other peoples’ emotions.
Themes:
The above themes run throughout the poem as the main continuity of
behaviour, feeling, estrangement and sense of ‘spoiling’ . This
puns on spoils as in spoils of war, ironic in this case, as the
spoils may themselves be broken, damaged. Another pun on spoil as in
spoiling for a fight, expressing wildly, etc.
The
nullity, annulment, non-events in feelings, communications, bonds,
the sense of things gone, lost, missing, or kept back rather than
shown or expressed. The Yin? And if so, then spoiling for a fight is
the Yang. Ironic couple.
Adolescence,
anger, change (this is the I Ching, after all!), uncertainty, The
martial element: fighting feelings, restrained or controlled
violence, kicking out at, fighting
back, Kung Fu which the boy was learning, also related to Chinese
culture.
Repertoire
as in learned acts, and behaviours, but also actions, fighting or
resisting or defending. Blocks. and
later in the poem, the un
sounds come as the cruder phonetic/aural/vocalised version of ing
verb endings, so fighting would become fightun and how these sounds
are like grunts or fighting noises, or blocks (of both emotional and
kung fu kind).
The
‘River’, rowing across, Charon, the boatman, the Styx or the
waters leading to an afterlife, or the waters between birth and
death, parallels here in the metaphor of the body (which is mainly
water literally, and the wide water of parentage) and the genes of
the deceased father (my father) crossing my body to be expressed
(which is ironic, too, as a less expressive form) in the body of a
son (not my body but my son’s, ie: the grandson).
And
the circular sense of the form in the poem which seems to ends as it
began except with the reversal of knowledge (gained?) in the phrase —
thoughts of the son are in the father.
This
distancing device of the poem and the I Ching makes the poem poised
above the personal and the impersonal, which is what I wanted from
the poem and is in keeping with my ongoing critique of the too-easy
lyric poem.
Two
line stanzas could
signify: the father and son form, the shorelines of before and after,
life and death. The mime of action without words, behaviour without
response.
Line Notes on Thoughts of the Father
by Philip Salom
It hurts when you
know: here the poem (firstly) addresses the poet, but then also
addresses the reader, to consider the observation that follows.
thoughts of the father are in the son
like a repertoire
of non-events. The son thinks of the father,
but in this is a paradox, the acquired acts, behaviours, skills of
repertoire – are non-events, ie: seem empty, null, denied perhaps.
Thinking how the
father spoiled the son... Refers to father
and son of the I Ching epigraph and the formal, distanced sense of
definite article and then the change through broken marriages as
situation to finally the personal: my own.
Spoil, spoiled as in my notes,
plus missing referring to lost and departed, and the bond
spoiled...but the son is not spoilt (as in indulged,
over-rewarded, etc)
Demanding too much of him, bringing
home a second
mother in place of the first?
After a broken marriage, the father brings home another partner, a
'second mother' who could be perceived as 'replacing' the first.
Work I have
done wrong? He moves in a film of slow
postures, the strange mime
which adolescents make when
practising annulment. Here enters the father as lyric subject,
and the son denies him by movements, like the above repertoire, but
this time movement of adolescent-style (universal!) indifference to a
parent through body language.
And keeping for themselves
enough to make of the self some
stern amazement.
Sons are everywhere spoiling
their fathers’ art and craft! No
blame. This keeping back allows the naive and surprised
engagement with world and self, but gives nothing much back to
others. Natural (many sons do this to fathers (ironic repeat of
spoiling) and not blame-worthy (and this no-blame directs to
son and to father).
Hormones hit
like a room of conscientious
kick-boxers. The brute beauty of
vocabulary reduced
to monogrunts and every ing
now sounded un like feints, and
blocks, and side-steps
language taken on the forearms.
Here the movements take the specific form of resistance and violence,
of martial arts, (also note the echo of art and craft, but
against...) which is a metaphor of what the son is deliberately doing
and also learning (perhaps). And a fairly likely echo or association
here of martial arts with Chinese culture. Turning ing endings of
English words into un - the grunt, the out-breath of hitting,
sounding uncouth, as he extends his resistance even to language.
Years later, I watch him from the
airport as he leaves,
know I love him, know he knows it,
but finds it wrong in public,
forcing off my arm. To
whom would I pray? The major
time-shift, the retrospection and assumption of an easing of the
above tensions, denials, etc, but not the denial of love shown, still
fended off but not fought off... It is now reserve about
emotions, and even language. And note the rhetorical question
following as an echo of Confucius: When you give offense to heaven,
to whom can you pray?
It is my father who has rowed across
my body’s
nine-tenths water, to my son,
in spoiling for the simple life, of
his before him The sudden realisation that the reserve, simple
rather than complex life, etc, of my son is very like that of my
father, as if the DNA of my father has moved/rowed across my body
(which is a body of water: biologically, symbolically,
mythically - and metaphysically?) to my son.
of my father lie satisfied and said
as thoughts in my son, a setting
right after the break,
like breath free now of the words,
and this knowledge satisfies my father (who is deceased though the
poem doesn't say this) and the grandson, a homecoming of tendencies,
which make sense, perhaps set right the break (not of bones but
bonds) and is breath now, more elemental than complicated words...
like a hull brought in over water,
the river, the rowing,
his breath a repertoire of oar
strokes
between the banks of birth and death
And this is where the feeling, the knowledge, the breath is
going, across the elemental water, and again a repertoire of
behaviour, of being, in the gap or river of life between birth and
death.
Echoes on the surface.
When thoughts of the son are in the
father. The echoes are all these insights and overlaps, and
recurrences, and of course the repeats in the actual poem of lines
and words, such as repertoire, spoil, art and craft, rowing, water...
and here too is the final, major, reconciling reversal of the first
line - thoughts of the father are in the son which now
becomes thoughts of the son are in the father. Where, of
course, they have been all the time!
