The Poet and the Crowd

                                                  

Grammar Lesson

Дано мне тело — что мне делать с ним,

Таким единым и таким моим? 

                       –– Osip Mandelstam

Given a body ––what shall I do with it,

So unique and so much my own?

Poet’s questions, formulated rhymes,

Elicit answers promulgating signs:

Romantic semantics, existential conundrums,

Allegory, paradox, nothing hum-drum,

Universal symbols and symbolic extrapolations

Yielding self-symmetric, ego-syntonic implications.

That is to say, when a poet inquires

The answer, most likely

Will be something that inspires.

In a world compounded by

Dreams and romance,

Chants and chance:

Tantric transfigurations

Of tangled tropes

(Unwound in breath’s brief breach,

Rewound by natural speech)

Gift the singer with range,

The writer with reach.

The poet’s a genius tout court,

In short: this rhymester’s not

Your average rapper,

Nor does his poem

Resemble a rant:

A poem is not a

Rant, you see –

Or can’t you see? –

Not cant.

Whether rhymed by a rhythmic rapper –

A Jay Z so fine

Chanting Empire State of Mind –

Or by a dandy dapper –

A Byron, a Shelley, a Wilde –

Or by Future’s posthumous child:

An internal émigré deferring harm –

Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Mandelstam –

The poetry of genius leads,

Surpassing common deeds,

Boldly, exhibitionistically,

To euphoria’s high-five energy,

Or calmly, imperceptibly,

To Hints of Immortality:

На стекла вечности уже легло

Моё дыхание, моё тепло. 

My breath, my warmth, has settled already

On the windowpanes of eternity.

We too have bodies like the one

Given the poet:

Exceptional bodies

Of boundless potential –

Or so it seems

In youth, at the Olympics, and

In our dreams.

Whether we’re complacent

Or reverential,

Our bodies, our selves,

Substantial,

Consequential,

Need space to live,

More space to live well,

Need substance to thrive,

And sagas to tell.

We may not all be poets

But we know

What we are:

Unique

As a snowflake

That falls and dissolves

On a changeable day,

Requiting winter’s resolve.

Potent

As a Mandrake root,

Plant of ancient incantation ––

Homunculus likened to us

By anthropocentric imagination –

Its shape enticing, suggestive,

Its substance comprising

Hallucinogens:

Edible, digestive.

Varied

As a twist

Of DNA,

Our work-a-day

Lottery ticket,

Biology’s die-hard

Scratch card,

Ontology’s sticky wicket:

Random-seeming

Number game

Predicated on

Precision coding,

Intricately

Future-boding.

What then is our destiny?

To be the heroes of our saga,

Living an outsized life

Out loud?

Let us read the tea leaves,

Asking the question

The poet posed

As though

Of one on whom

Destiny rarely if ever

Imposed.

First Person Singular

Given a body ––what shall I do with it,

So unique and so much my own?

Ask the question in the

First person singular:

Your answer is likely

To be as regular,

As daylight––

As ordinary,

As it is

Crepuscular,

Visionary:

Along with the

Skates and dates,

Ducks and drakes,

Trikes and bikes,

Of daily life

You may conjure

Roles

Dramatic, quixotic,

Idiosyncratic or erotic,

For the

Single player

Upon Life’s

Worldwide stage

What roles?

Cowboy, of course,

On some new

Frontier,

Arctic explorer,

Buccaneer,

Self-made millionaire,

Powerful politician,

Gifted mathematician,

Impresario,

Lothario,

Flâneur,

Entrepreneur:

Pulled up by bootstraps,

Inventor, futuristic dreamer:

Firing every synapse,

Wall Street schemer

Plotting global collapse

And the world will forgive

Your pre-emptive strikes on

Poverty

Your greed – indeed,

If the shoes in your closet

Number over three hundred

Pair

We’ll know that in childhood

Your feet were often

Bare

Look around

At all you see

Panoptically in the 

Landscape of

Opportunity.           

First Person Plural

Given our bodies –– what shall we do with them?

Ask the question in the

First person plural:

Your change of pronoun

Reshapes

The landscape.

Your quantification

Introduces complication,

Metamorphoses

The roles you chose,

Embeds the monologue,

The soliloquy,

In the drama

Of history.

What happens when you multiply

By an exponential factor

Every drama’s vanguard actor,

His virtue and his fatal flaw:

Beowulf sealing Grendel’s maw;

Rearguard romance of Romeo

Askance behind mask domino;

Cyrano’s Lieder and Cyrano’s nose;

A Punk Rock Diva’s death throes;

Brutus bold, Caesar gory,

Cleopatra’s rare vainglory;

Dragon-slayers’ clerestory;

Henry V: bellicose Tory;

That martial glory:

That hero story,

Until

A nimbus circles the head of

Every living soul,

Bestowing the central role?

Math Lesson

Given our bodies ––– what shall we do with them?

Odyssey times a hundred?

Iliad times hundreds more?

Aeneid times a thousand?

King Arthur times thousands more?

Multiply

The quests and the journeys,

The grails and the tourneys,

And multiply the wars

One body, one hero,

One poet, one pilot

Navigating the starry frontier;

One pilgrim, one sinner,

One witch, one redeemer,

Signing to Heaven the All Clear;

One schemer, one peripatetic dreamer

Seeking El Dorado in a mining camp;

One user, one bruiser, one winner, one loser,

Down for the count, still hoping for champ.

One hundred bodies,

One thousand

One hundred hundred,

One hundred thousand,

More

Which means

A labor force,

Economy,

Polity,

Hierarchy;

Variety of destinies,

Lifestyles, fates;

Complex society

Living out its history

Early or late

A clash of needs, desires, drives –

Every man his own hero,

Striving to live,

Wanting not just a living,

But living out loud:

To live well and richly,

To outpace the crowd.

So let us give Age its dignity

And Youth its due.

Let us live well upon the good Earth,

And never thwart new life or birth.

               Given our bodies –

That’s a good start:

To breathe, to bend

To open our hearts.

And let us remember,

Whatever we do –

That scores and more,

Hundreds and thousands,

Millions and billions

On the one Earth,

Are doing it too.