April 4 - Forced March

Try this: Finish the poem and reflect on it a bit before reading the bio. Then read the bio and see how your understanding changes. Is it enhanced? Tainted?

Forced March

The man who, having collapsed,       rises, takes steps, is insane:

he’ll move an ankle, a knee,       an arrant mass of pain,

and take to the road again       as if wings were to lift him high;

in vain the ditch will call him:       he simply dare not stay;

and should you ask, why not?     perhaps he’ll turn and answer:

his wife is waiting back home,     and a death, one beautiful, wiser.

But see, the wretch is a fool,       for over the homes, that world,

long since nothing but singed       winds have been known to whirl;

his housewall lies supine;       your plum tree, broken clear,

and all the nights back home       horripilate with fear.

Oh, if I could believe       that I haven’t merely borne

what is worthwhile, in my heart;       that there is, to return, a home;

tell me it’s all still there:       the cool verandah, bees

of peaceful silence, buzzing,       while the plum jam cooled;

where over sleepy gardens       summer-end peace sunbathed,

and among bow and foliage       fruits were swaying naked;

and, blonde, my Fanni waited       before the redwood fence,

with morning slowly tracing       its shadowed reticence....

But all that could still be—       tonight the moon is round!

Don’t go past me, my friend—       shout! And I’ll come around!

Been thinking a bit more about the contextualization problem of posting these poems. On the one hand, I worry about detracting from the work itself by bogging it down with “facts.” For example, if I said a poet were right handed, then posted a poem in which the speaker eats a taco with his or her left hand, you might end up focusing on that fact rather than the obvious symbolism for the taco (tacos always mean the economy, duh).

Of course, I can go the art gallery approach. Am I the only one who is always bothered by the fact that most museums and such only provide you with a little white card saying the title, year of creation and the materials used? As a non-painter, I always feel a bit cheated by lack of information. Maybe that’s how they make their headphone tour money.

I ain't examining nuthin', I'm just waiting for a spot to open up on the damn bench.

J.R.R. Tolkien detested the idea that an artist’s life would be required to understand an artist’s work. This has apparently made getting tourism to his old home a bit tough on the local city council. In fact, if you think of the Lord of the Rings universe nowadays, you’re probably imagining somewhere in New Zealand. But shouldn’t a work of art be able to stand alone? We do plenty fine with lots of works created simply by Anonymous.

The most-best solution I can figure is to stay flexible. Sometimes shit needs a little ‘splaining before you toss a reader into the deep end. Other times, a bit of drowning is what’s required.

Remember to move closer to the water before letting go. Ulysses is tough enough without broken legs.

Today’s poem is “Forced March” by Miklós Radnóti (translated by Emery George). I’ll give you some biographical info on him and the poem afterwards. You will, of course, have noted that the poem is way back at the top. The first sentence of this paragraph is the first mention of the poet himself. Anyway, instead of writing a bio myself, Carolyn Forché has done a much better job than I ever could, so I’ll use hers. Also, I should note, the poem as I found it is from her fantastic anthology, Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness, which I highly recommend, and from which this bio also is taken (I’m sure I’ll be taking more out of there before the month is over).

Miklós Radnóti (1909-1944)

Radnóti, orphaned by age eleven, enrolled at the University of Szeged in 1930, the year his first book of poetry appeared. For his second book, Radnóti was tried for “effrontery to public modesty and incitement to rebellion,” and found guilty, whereupon his books were confiscated. He was called to forced military labor intermittently from 1940 until his death. In 1944 he was sent to Yugoslavia to construct a railway, but was force-marched with three thousand other men back to Hungary because of the advancing Red Army. In early November 1944, Radnóti and twenty other survivors of this march were put in the hands of Hungarian noncommissioned officers, who, unable to place their charges at a local hospital, shot them. Radnóti’s body was exhumed from a mass grave in 1946. His widow, going through his pockets, discovered a notebook full of poems, which included “Forced March,” “Letter to My Wife,” “Picture Postcards,” and “Seventh Eclogue.”