Revisting an old favorite

[Gabe1]

90 North
Randall Jarrell

At home, in my flannel gown, like a bear to its floe,
I clambered to bed; up the globe's impossible sides
I sailed all night—till at last, with my black beard,
My furs and my dogs, I stood at the northern pole.

There in the childish night my companions lay frozen,
The stiff furs knocked at my starveling throat,
And I gave my great sigh: the flakes came huddling,
Were they really my end? In the darkness I turned to my rest.

—Here, the flag snaps in the glare and silence
Of the unbroken ice. I stand here,
The dogs bark, my beard is black, and I stare
At the North Pole . . .
And now what? Why, go back.

Turn as I please, my step is to the south.
The world—my world spins on this final point
Of cold and wretchedness: all lines, all winds
End in this whirlpool I at last discover.

And it is meaningless. In the child's bed
After the night's voyage, in that warm world
Where people work and suffer for the end
That crowns the pain—in that Cloud-Cuckoo-Land

I reached my North and it had meaning.
Here at the actual pole of my existence,
Where all that I have done is meaningless,
Where I die or live by accident alone—

Where, living or dying, I am still alone;
Here where North, the night, the berg of death
Crowd me out of the ignorant darkness,
I see at last that all the knowledge

I wrung from the darkness—that the darkness flung me—
Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing,
The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darkness
And we call it wisdom. It is pain.

[Urizen]

Seems unfair that this should go without comment.

As many times as I've seen this in anthologies, it's a bit strange that it finally has a real meaning for me. I'll be forty soon, and a great many of my ambitions have come to nothing; and it seems that even one's minor triumphs are complicated by the nagging realization that the elation will be short-lived: that every uphill climb must eventually start back downward.

Turn as I please, my step is to the south.

Of course, I could be reading the poem all wrong.

I wonder how that last strophe would fare in Merciless? I like it anyway.

Thanks for posting this poem, Gabriel.

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

This is strange. I just used "Cloud Cuckoo Land" in the word association thread, and it turns up here in this poem, waiting for me to read.

Synchronicity.

BrianIs:)AtYou

[tom swann]

Even though I am not middle aged - in fact I have my whole adult life in front of me in which I can achieve my ambitious goals (not that I will) - I was able to extract a very personal melancholy from this poem. But at the same time, I felt like it has insubstantiated abstractions and vague metaphors by the dozen. In that respect.... it made me think....

Back on the personal tack, it was effective and moving.
And the association of cardinal points (ie, North/South/East/West etc) with states of being reminded me very much of John Donne, although I suppose many poets have used such metaphors. But nevertheless, it did strike me as a metaphysical poem with some very poetically playful elements.

Thanks for the postage.

- tom
google: Randall Jarrell

[romac]

I’ve never seen this poem before. I think it’s terrific. It speaks to me of someone who has realised his dream and found its realisation completely lacking – there’s no longer any sense of a future, and the past has no meaning. The present is a cold, lonely place.

It reminds me of the book of Ecclesiastes – “Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them; I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward from all my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and again, all was vanity and a chasing after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.” (2: 10-11)

However, while the tone of Ecclesiastes is cool and detached, Jarrell seems involved up to his neck, desperate, and emotional. Given that, what impresses me most is that he handles the poem with such control, a control that gives the poem great emotional impact. I certainly felt moved and affected.

The final couple of lines are amazing. I know the last strophe is all abstract, but given what’s come before, I think it’s fully justified.

Coincidentally, after reading Jarrell’s poem, I turned to Miroslav Holub and found this, which speaks more about life than death I think. I’m still thinking through how what Jarrell is saying compares with Holub:

The Dead

After his third operation, his heart
riddled like an old fairground target,
he woke up on his bed
and said: Now I’ll be fine,
fit as a fiddle. And have you ever seen
horses coupling?

He died that night.

And another dragged on through eight insipid years
like a river weed in an acid stream,
as if pushing up his pallid
skewered face over the cemetery wall.

Until that face eventually vanished.

Both here and there the angel of death
quite simply stamped his hobnailed boot
on their medulla oblongata.

I know they died the same way.
But I don’t believe that they are
dead the same way.

Thanks for posting, Gabriel. A really fine piece.