The Floor and the Ceiling -- William Jay Smith

Carrying on with our friendship and loss theme, here's a guest poem from
Sally Canzoneri

(Poem #1086) The Floor and the Ceiling Winter and summer, whatever the weather, The Floor and the Ceiling were happy together In a quaint little house on the outskirts of town With the Floor looking up and the Ceiling looking down. The Floor bought the Ceiling an ostrich-plumed hat, And they dined upon drippings of bacon fat, Diced artichoke hearts and cottage cheese And hundreds of other such delicacies. On a screen-in porch in early spring They would sit at the player piano and sing. When the Floor cried in French, "Ah, je vous adore!" The Ceiling replied, "You adorable Floor!" The years went by as the years they will, And each little thing was fine until One evening, enjoying their bacon fat, The Floor and the Ceiling had a terrible spat. The Ceiling, loftily looking down, Said, "You are the lowest Floor in this town!" The Floor, looking up with a frightening grin, Said, "Keep up your chatter, and you will cave in!" So they went off to bed: while the Floor settled down, The Ceiling packed up her gay wallflower gown; And tiptoeing out past the Chippendale chair And the gateleg table, down the stair, Took a coat from the hook and hat from the rack, And flew out the door -- farewell to the Floor! -- And flew out the door, and was seen no more, And flew out the door, and never came back! In a quaint little house on the outskirts of town, Now the shutters go bang, and the walls tumble down; And the roses in summer run wild through the room, But blooming for no one -- then why should they bloom? For what is a Floor now that brambles have grown Over window and woodwork and chimney of stone? For what is a Floor when a Floor stands alone? And what is a Ceiling when the Ceiling has flown? -- William Jay Smith

I like this poem for a lot of reasons, including the mix of whimsy and
seriousness.  I loved the poem as an adolescent, and find that children in
my classes also love it.  There is a lovely way that Smith gets you hooked
on what seems to be a whimsical story and then makes the point about the
carelessly broken friendship with such simple eloquence in the last stanzas.
The "flew out the door" stanza brings the poem to an emotional peak and
captures that almost euphoric "I don't need you! You'll see!" feeling that
people get in arguments.  Then the quiet last stanzas show the cost of that
anger.

Sally Canzoneri

Links:

  An excellent critical essay on Smith
    http://www.danagioia.net/essays/esmith.htm

  The current theme:
    [broken link] http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/collections/42.html

Death of a Friendship -- Harry Guest

Guest poem sent in by Simon Koppel

(Poem #1085) Death of a Friendship I mourn, now that your house contains such fractured shadows. This wine you’ve handed me tastes sour. I joke and you do not laugh. When you speak, assuming my approval, I stare into discoloured depths of my glass, longing to get away. Rain drives against your walls. The few shrubs you have planted shrink in the cold. Where there was amity, questions echo between us. Tufts of dark lilac branching from tall vases shed minute dry flowers like grief for a lost fragrance, leave on the smooth piano scattered omens neither of us can read. The past is empty of romance, its summers flecked with heartbreak and its negatives destroyed-. But weren’t there moments when the blue sea glittered, when the lithe curve of a diver forged another link between wave and cloud? I wonder, though, in fear were those young grinning faces always plague-marred, was the fun a lie, were dreams we’ve jettisoned mere husks about this dirt, dislike? One fiction may have replaced another for wherever I look with you I find, instead of light, a slyness. We could not name the truth. What used to brag lies in your cupboard under lock and key. You care no more for angels or the underdog, translating all the terms we used into intolerance. Your world now clusters round the emulation of the rich. I can’t feel glad about old times because I am afraid that what I see here I suspected then but shunned the knowing. The tarnish of this has rubbed off on me. The years we shared look counterfeit. If so, more than affection died today. What hurts perhaps the most is that in you as in a mirror shows not only what I could have been but what I was or am. -- Harry Guest

The last guest poem, 'Sometimes it Happens', prompts me to send in another
on the way that friendships can end. It's one of the most moving poems I've
ever come across - there's something heartbreaking about the desperation of
"But weren't there moments when the blue sea glittered...?" and the
realisation that perhaps, truthfully, there weren't. I'd like to hope that
in the end it doesn't always have to be like this.

Simon

Sometimes it Happens -- Brian Patten

Guest poem sent in by Nandini K. Moorthy

(Poem #1084) Sometimes it Happens And sometimes it happens that you are friends and then You are not friends, And friendship has passed. And whole days are lost and among them A fountain empties itself. And sometimes it happens that you are loved and then You are not loved, And love is past. And whole days are lost and among them A fountain empties itself into the grass. And sometimes you want to speak to her and then You do not want to speak, Then the opportunity has passed. Your dreams flare up, they suddenly vanish. And also it happens that there is nowhere to go and then There is somewhere to go, Then you have bypassed. And the years flare up and are gone, Quicker than a minute. So you have nothing. You wonder if these things matter and then As soon you begin to wonder if these things matter They cease to matter, And caring is past. And a fountain empties itself into the grass. -- Brian Patten

Its remarkable the way Patten has wrapped the philosophy of friendship and the
transitions that comes with it in this poem. There seems so much lightness and
rhythm in the flow of lines. So deceptively uncomplicated, yet strikingly
evocative. The capture of conflicting emotions seems plain and detached, yet
echoes the underlying  pain. The constant resonance of "A fountain empties
itself" probably marks the passage of time or feelings itself. The poem
evokes a feeling of vulnerability, a tinge of sadness and above all
uncertainty.
Patten at his best.

Nandini

Shakesperian Readings - 3 -- Phoebe Cary

(Poem #1083) Shakesperian Readings - 3 My father had a daughter got a man, As it might be, perhaps, were I good-looking, I should, your lordship. And what's her residence? A hut my lord, she never owned a house, But let her husband, like a graceless scamp, Spend all her little means, -- she thought she ought, -- And in a wretched chamber, on an alley, She worked like masons on a monument, Earning their bread. Was not this love indeed? -- Phoebe Cary

Note: A parody of Viola's speech in Twelfth Night, II.iv.107-15

  [Viola]  My father had a daughter lov'd a man
           As it might be perhaps, were I a woman,
           I should your lordship.
  [Orsino] And what's her history?
  [Viola]  A blank, my lord; she never told her love,
           But let concealment like a worm i' th' bud
           Feed on her damask cheek; she pin'd in thought,
           And with a green and yellow melancholy
           She sate like Patience on a monument,
           Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?

  (http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/caryph6.html#3.1n)

  Cary collected three separate parodies together under the title
  "Shakesperian [sic] Readings"; since they were entirely distinct otherwise
  I decided to run this one as a standalone poem.

Today's skilful little parody is a deceptively gentle commentary on the
difference between Romance and Reality. Cary cleaves very closely indeed to
the Shakespearean original, following the structure, development and even
the sound of Viola's lines, twisting them subtly but deftly. This is a true
parody (as opposed to a pastiche) insofar as it satirises the original at
the same time as it follows its form.

The poem's opening salvo, "as it might be, perhaps, were I good looking",
sets the tone admirably, contrasting at once the pragmatism of Cary's
narrator with Viola's deliberate dissemblings. The rest of the poem develops
the theme, contrasting the unglamorous but oft-encountered case of a poor
woman slaving to support a wastrel husband with the 'romantic' heroine
pining away for a love she will not name. Cary's heroine, we feel, cannot
afford the time for such self-inflicted griefs; her problems are far more
real and concrete. The main impact of the poem, though, lies in its final
line, the one that mirrors precisely Shakespeare's, and invites the reader
to ponder the same question - "Was this not love indeed?". And the
implication is, definitely, that they can't *both* be right.

martin

Links:

Another parody that follows the sound of the original closely is Bierce's
"Elegy" (Poem #400)

All three Shakesperian Readings:
  http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/caryph6.html

And a nascent Collection of parodies on Minstrels:
  [broken link] http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/collections/41.html

Under Which Lyre -- W H Auden

Guest poem submitted by Alan Kornheiser

(Poem #1082) Under Which Lyre A Reactionary Tract for the Times Ares at last has quit the field, The bloodstains on the bushes yield To seeping showers, And in their convalescent state The fractured towns associate With summer flowers. Encamped upon the college plain Raw veterans already train As freshman forces; Instructors with sarcastic tongue Shepherd the battle-weary young Through basic courses. Among bewildering appliances For mastering the arts and sciences They stroll or run, And nerves that steeled themselves to slaughter Are shot to pieces by the shorter Poems of Donne. Professors back from secret missions Resume their proper eruditions, Though some regret it; They liked their dictaphones a lot, T hey met some big wheels, and do not Let you forget it. But Zeus' inscrutable decree Permits the will-to-disagree To be pandemic, Ordains that vaudeville shall preach And every commencement speech Be a polemic. Let Ares doze, that other war Is instantly declared once more ’Twixt those who follow Precocious Hermes all the way And those who without qualms obey Pompous Apollo. Brutal like all Olympic games, Though fought with smiles and Christian names And less dramatic, This dialectic strife between The civil gods is just as mean, And more fanatic. What high immortals do in mirth Is life and death on Middle Earth; Their a-historic Antipathy forever gripes All ages and somatic types, The sophomoric Who face the future’s darkest hints With giggles or with prairie squints As stout as Cortez, And those who like myself turn pale As we approach with ragged sail The fattening forties. The sons of Hermes love to play And only do their best when they Are told they oughtn’t; Apollo’s children never shrink From boring jobs but have to think Their work important. Related by antithesis, A compromise between us is Impossible; Respect perhaps but friendship never: Falstaff the fool confronts forever The prig Prince Hal. If he would leave the self alone, Apollo’s welcome to the throne, Fasces and falcons; He loves to rule, has always done it; The earth would soon, did Hermes run it, Be like the Balkans. But jealous of our god of dreams, His common-sense in secret schemes To rule the heart; Unable to invent the lyre, Creates with simulated fire Official art. And when he occupies a college, Truth is replaced by Useful Knowledge; He pays particular Attention to Commercial Thought, Public Relations, Hygiene, Sport, In his curricula. Athletic, extrovert and crude, For him, to work in solitude Is the offence, The goal a populous Nirvana: His shield bears this device: Mens sana Qui mal y pense. Today his arms, we must confess, From Right to Left have met success, His banners wave From Yale to Princeton, and the news From Broadway to the Book Reviews Is very grave. His radio Homers all day long In over-Whitmanated song That does not scan, With adjectives laid end to end, Extol the doughnut and commend The Common Man. His, too, each homely lyric thing On sport or spousal love or spring Or dogs or dusters, Invented by some court-house bard For recitation by the yard In filibusters. To him ascend the prize orations And sets of fugal variations On some folk-ballad, While dietitians sacrifice A glass of prune-juice or a nice Marsh-mallow salad. Charged with his compound of sensational Sex plus some undenominational Religious matter, Enormous novels by co-eds Rain down on our defenceless heads Till our teeth chatter. In fake Hermetic uniforms Behind our battle-line, in swarms That keep alighting, His existentialists declare That they are in complete despair, Yet go on writing. No matter; He shall be defied; White Aphrodite is on our side: What though his threat To organize us grow more critical? Zeus willing, we, the unpolitical, Shall beat him yet. Lone scholars, sniping from the walls Of learned periodicals, Our facts defend, Our intellectual marines, Landing in little magazines Capture a trend. By night our student Underground At cocktail parties whisper round From ear to ear; Fat figures in the public eye Collapse next morning, ambushed by Some witty sneer. In our morale must lie our strength: So, that we may behold at length Routed Apollo’s Battalions melt away like fog, Keep well the Hermetic Decalogue, Which runs as follows:— Thou shalt not do as the dean pleases, Thou shalt not write thy doctor’s thesis On education, Thou shalt not worship projects nor Shalt thou or thine bow down before Administration. Thou shalt not answer questionnaires Or quizzes upon World-Affairs, Nor with compliance Take any test. Thou shalt not sit With statisticians nor commit A social science. Thou shalt not be on friendly terms With guys in advertising firms, Nor speak with such As read the Bible for its prose, Nor, above all, make love to those Who wash too much. Thou shalt not live within thy means Nor on plain water and raw greens. If thou must choose Between the chances, choose the odd; Read The New Yorker, trust in God; And take short views. -- W H Auden

 (Phi Beta Kappa Poem, Harvard, 1946)

Auden had an interesting war and an interesting peace. Ignoring the
obvious--- the GIs were back on campus after the war, of course, and the
contrast between who they were and where they'd been with what they had to
study must have tickeled Auden no end---let us not forget that Auden had
made the ultimate sacrifice to fight the Nazis...he'd gotten married, to
help a refugee out.  ("What else are buggers for?" he had asked.)

The poem is the lesser Auden, the entertaining Auden, with the perfectly
structured rhyme and rhythm scheme hiding wonderfully barbed lines. To read
it is to adore it, and copies of its final lines decorate graduate student
offices the breadth of the country. But read it again...the irony is deep.
The blood is yet fresh.  And do not the opening lines remind you of the
opening lines of Richard III?

-Alan

[Martin adds]

This also reminds me strongly of Auden's "The Fall of Rome" (Poem #494), both
in mood and in rhythm (Sunil Iyengar, who submitted the latter poem, seems to
agree - see his commentary).