Richard Grantham

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Original text in yellow, anagram in pink.

An acrostic poem by Lewis Carroll.

A boat, beneath a sunny sky
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July --

Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear
Pleased a simple tale to hear --

Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die:
Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream --
Lingering in the golden gleam --
Life, what is it but a dream?

In nineteen ninety-seven I had a most striking dream:

I stood near the stairs leading to the nineteen seventy-eight Grantham dwelling, witnessing myself as a child aged two. The air was still, tepid June sunlight shone on my cheek - just as I recall - and near us dear Mama was gardening the lawn and keeping an eye on my sleeping infant brother... overall, a gorgeous tableau.

I neared my earlier self - vulnerable, shy as always, yellow hair, slightly pudgy - and half bent over, meeting his eye level. He remained silent, and he regarded me uneasily at length. Finally, he asked:

 

 

 

"Richard... do you remember me?"

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Shakespeare's twelfth sonnet.

When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls all silvered o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves,
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
   And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
   Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

The twelfth sonnet which Shakespeare devised is undoubtedly amongst the darkest in the series. At first the poem evokes a sequence of vivid and rather severe sketches of mutability, decay and demise which was clearly intended to shock his callow patron into remembering that all men, however handsome and virile they might be, must surely some day be hanged on the gibbet of Time. But the news is not all bad, because he then advises that the single means of escape is to hurry between satin sheets and shag each other into the furniture for weeks on end. And who the hell are we to disagree with The Bard?

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Plath's depiction of a suicide, anagrammed into a depiction of Plath's suicide.

SUICIDE OFF EGG ROCK

Behind him the hotdogs split and drizzled
On the public grills, and the ochreous salt flats,
Gas tanks, factory stacks - that landscape
Of imperfections his bowels were part of -
Rippled and pulsed in the glassy updraught.
Sun struck the water like a damnation.
No pit of shadow to crawl into,
And his blood beating the old tattoo
I am, I am, I am. Children
Were squealing where combers broke and the spindrift
Raveled wind-ripped from the crest of the wave.
A mongrel working his legs to a gallop
Hustled a gull flock to flap off the sandspit.

He smoldered, as if stone-deaf, blindfold,
His body beached with the sea's garbage,
A machine to breathe and beat forever.
Flies filing in through a dead skate's eyehole
Buzzed and assailed the vaulted brainchamber.
The words in his book wormed off the pages.
Everything glittered like blank paper.

Everything shrank in the sun's corrosive
Ray but Egg Rock on the blue wastage.
He heard when he walked into the water

The forgetful surf creaming on those ledges.

SUICIDE IN FITZROY ROAD

Seldom had she known a morn that freezing,
Not here in London. Still before the crack of dawn she rose,
Haggard, ravaged afresh from within, walking to the kitchen
To perform a last rite. Plates of oven-baked cookies,
Glasses of milk, off down the passage
To the children's bedroom as they slept - a loving look,
A last supper. Gravely she shut her babies' door,
Plugging the gaps with towels and tape - the housekeeper
Shall find them safe. Traipsing back to the cruel stove,
She moved a knob and, face cloth-swaddled,
Finally knelt before that sacrificial altar.

Her crippled mind swirled furiously. The fighting without
Had sharpened the fighting within, toward that brink
After the wretched break-up. Swamped now
By anguish and fatigue, the fuddled soul finally summoned
The ghost of resolve: there would be no more begging.

The acrid gas curling back about her,
Her agitated brain grappled with dreams, pondered echoes,
Babbled itself into dizziness, and at last

Acquiesced to blessed release.

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Updated: May 10, 2016


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