#75, November 14, 2005

R.C.J.H. – In Memoriam

I was reminded that I had written this poem after attending a presentation by Anthony Appiah recently. I went up to meet him after the talk and mentioned that we had been at the same school in England in our youth, that my first term had been his last, along with other pleasantries. It was a short but interesting conversation -- at least for me. He had quite a reputation when I arrived at the school, not only for being an intellectual, who during that first time would gain acceptance to Cambridge (I believe to do medicine, before he turned to his study of Philosophy), but also as one of the leaders of the attempt in 1969 or 1970 to unionize the student body (high school students!) and for an attempt to initiate a student strike. The strike was broken, another victim of the post 1968 backlash against populist endeavors (or possibly as a result of its own incongruity), and he was allowed to return to the school only if he promised not to have any connection with any union drive. I don't remember much more about it or about him, except that I do remember him in a play performing a stunning soliloquy and that that semester the school showed both "The Graduate" and "If" -- two movies that would hardly have contribued to dampening down protest among the students. What was more intriguing, though, I thought, was his generally benign attitude towards the school now. While I was a mere student athlete and so very much tied to the whole school spirit, and he was the exact opposite, endeavoring to contest fundamental assumptions of the school, he passed through the experience and looked back on it with some pleasure, while I felt considerable resentment for many years. He even attended an old boy/girl gatherings in Boston, something that I have been unable to bring myself to do. These thoughts actually tie in with some of my feelings about ethics that he said that evening, but I am not sure that I can articulate these in a way that will do me credit and him justice, so I will not. However, I thought I would include this poem in this blog as it does have a historical sensibility, and it does provide a reading of the English public school in the 1970s that (whether or not I entirely agree with it now -- the colonizers loathsome project, etc.) perhaps still has some validity in this post-colonial moment. The person discussed also influenced a considerable number of the students from the school, and they might or might not recognize him in the poem.

You sit before me now

as though you are not dead,

but are animated by specters of the past

and by shades from a distant present.

It is that same room

where time was captured and then discarded,

where, through the sounds of Vivaldi and Mozart,

emanating from the rickety turntable,

and the beauty of those figures

standing in the poppy field,

framed above the mantelpiece,

we were to find a stage beyond time.

Time would be our tool –

a gauge, but no slave-master;

you were the aged fool,

I, another youthful disaster

– “such at least is the story.”

You would smile

– I remember that smile,

reassuring and speaking all the pleasantries,

yet saying so much more,

reasserting the value of life.

There is life within all the struggles,

you would say

life to be sought and shared,

life to be recognized and recounted,

life to give,

and life just to receive.

What a timeless vision you had perceived

– was this not indeed the case?

I desire to ask you but one question –

perhaps it could not be uttered

before you gasped your last breath,

while I was still acting upon your stage –

was your dream to be found in this world,

when this world could not be found in your dream?

Maybe I have forgotten your dream,

it has been many years, you know.

No, I remember the beauty of your dream:

you once said we would transcend our materialism

we would no longer judge ourselves

by the clothes we wore

or the car we drove;

but could we pack all our belongings into one car,

going mobile

in a land of immovable property

and intractable poverty?

You believed so fervently

in the power of creativity

to overcome the evil of the misbegotten,

but we were sitting with the misbegotten –

dining with the future broker,

playing games with the inheritors

of the colonizers loathsome project –

laughing with the whip in our hands

– or was it the knife?

Were you not stifled to the point of despair

by that puritanical acceptance of lies

allowed to prevail

within those misnamed schools

(“public” for those of private means,

“independent” for those who conform) –

frustrating originality,

offering a wet-dream

for the horrors of reality?

I never saw that life-sapping growth,

that disease of modernity,

as it pulled you down,

fighting and striving,

aching and dying,

into a terrifying abyss.

I was scared to appear at the shrine

to pay homage to a shade-like warrior –

perhaps I feared the obligation,

the commitment to something itself suffocating;

or maybe it was the fear

that your eyes would bear a lifeless gleam,

signifying to me, that your dream

was to be nailed down

inside your coffin –

but I imagined your death

and I cried.

I remember the beauty of your dream.