Surface Tension and Other Poems

Contents

INTRODUCTION

SURFACE TENSION

First Movement: The Darkening Sea

Vibrations

Was That a House?

A Distant Grey

Thy Golden Hair

Meeting the Slow River

Coercion

Silence and Laughter

Inevitability

Impassivity

Verity

Sea-Time

Irresistibility

Journeying

Equality

Impossibilities

Introductory Ethics

Moonlight

Downer #1

Noon at Sea

Downer #2

Harbour-Sea

Downer #3

Maytime

Literature

Physics

Duettino

Sunrise

Downer #4

Images

Advanced Ethics

Winter Evening

Introspection

Second Movement: The Foundling Earth

Growth

The Mind-Body Problem

On Scottish Hills

Verbal Graphs

Years

Of Course

Rocks

A Quiet Day

A Quiet Night

Forge

Night’s Enclosures

Immoderations

Lightning

Testing, Testing

Nocturnal Grace

Night, Patterned

A Forest-Glade

Glance-Thought

Dawn or Twilight?

Mindsets

Dawn-Mist

Your Charms

Boat Ride

Fears

Devotions

Conflict

Seasonal Norms

If, While You Sleep

Earth is Now Foundation

My Fault

Fusion

Many Days and Far Ahead

Sunset on Ice

What’s in a Name?

Third Movement: Air and Sky

Abstraction

An Ancient Summer

Ice

Cloudland

Carnival

Luna #1

Memories

The Laden Lake

Unaccompanied

Spirituals

Arabiana

Things That Are Thine

Battalions

Laurentiana

Italiana

Elucidatings

Sleep

A, M, N

Solarities #1

Acropolis

Adonis

Rainclouds

Y

Aeolia

Systematics

Erato

Caryatid

Bird-flocks

Custodianship

Iron

Calorifics

Ploughshares

Water

Solarities #2

Fire

Moments

Reminiscences

Lifeline

Snow

Auroras

A Castle

Apollo

Honorifics

Luna #2

Our Limitations

Valiances

Orientale

Springtime

Star-Loss

Bouquets

Retracement

Miscellaneous Poems

I   

Skull

Brain Chain

Ages #1

Ages #2

Shadow

Living

Chance

Personifications

Hast Thou …

II

Parting

Over and Out

Heartache

Shores

The Sentimental

The Naïve

Rushing

Portrait

Independence

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

The Brides of Death

III

Van Gogh

Van Gogh’s Crows

Foreboding

O Latin Dead

Eros

To Sleep

Old Age and The Muse

Repetition Compulsion

INTRODUCTION

In physics, the term surface tension refers to an aggregated layer of molecules at the surface of a liquid, a layer strong enough to support the weight of certain very light objects, including insects that can skitter across the surface of a pond.

But here, in this book of poetry, the words surface and tension are used as metaphors when talking about human psychology. What a person shows on the surface—what he or she displays to others—may be radically different from what that person privately thinks. And the word tension has been taken up by the medical profession to refer to those internal feelings of conflict and irresolution aroused in almost anybody confronted with an emotional dilemma. Those experiencing tension ask themselves questions as difficult and wide-ranging as Should I look for another job?, Do I really want to continue in this relationship?, How do I lose weight?, and Must I go through the hassle of giving up smoking (or drinking or gambling or whatever)?

By combining these metaphorical uses of the individual terms, we can arrive at a metaphorical use of surface tension that applies to psychological conflicts. Persons who are thinking about giving up smoking or drinking or gambling might not necessarily reveal, by the behaviour they present to the outside world, that they actually are thinking about giving them up. Indeed, they might openly and deliberately, for visitors to see, puff away over a nice glass of ouzo and Kahlua while watching a horse-race on TV. Superficially—that is, surface-wise—they are doing everything they can to hide their good intentions from other people.

The gulf between one’s surface behaviour and one’s innermost thinking processes has been the stuff of drama and novels for as long as literature has existed. In Surface Tension, I have tried to exaggerate the separation between deeds and thoughts in one particular corner of human endeavour (heterosexual romance), in one particular place (the Western industrial world), at one particular time (the five decades leading up to 2008). The result is something between a narrative and a series of snapshots of individual psychological states.

In music, the term song cycle refers to a sequence of separate snapshot songs united by a common narrative (for example, unrequited romantic longings). Surface Tension is divided into three such cycles, here called movements (by analogy with the movements of many symphonies and sonatas). Each movement has its own particular purpose and format.

The first movement, entitled The Darkening Sea, consists of alternating monologues and short dialogues, the latter reflecting the conflicts that can arise between a man and a woman when they differ with respect to what each wants from their relationship. The second movement, entitled The Foundling Earth, consists of alternating monologues and short lyrical poems, the latter concerning the needs felt by both genders somehow to integrate their own intellectual lives with their own emotional lives. The third movement, entitled Air and Sky, has monologues alternating with pairs of short poems, the latter illustrating the lift that can be given to the tone and form of a poet’s lyrics when he finds a new relationship that is unusually easy-going.

In Surface Tension, the monologues in each movement are focused on one particular aspect of Nature (the sea, the earth, and air and sky respectively). Throughout each monologue there is a covert message to the effect that humans evolved in lockstep with the workings of Nature’s laws.

Surface Tension is followed by Miscellaneous Poems, a set of twenty-eight short stand-alone poems (originally written at various times). Like Surface Tension, the collection is divided into three sets, but each set is denoted by a Roman numeral rather than by a title. Set I is concerned with the natural world and overtly incorporates evolution. Set II is concerned with romance, including some of its more unhappy aspects. Set III is concerned with some of the vicissitudes than can come with being an artist.

I wish to express my appreciation to Sylvia Hains, Christine Hains, Rachel Breau and Esther Murray for all their help and patience during the course of preparing the manuscript for publication. I also wish to thank the professional editors at iUniverse who were so helpful with their advice in the readying for publication of my earlier volume Confusion Matrix And Other Poems and of this, my second volume of verse.

I should like to dedicate Surface Tension and Other Poems to the memory of Mrs. Erna Feinberg, who introduced me to poetry when I was aged somewhere around ten or twelve. She gave me a present consisting of Palgrave’s Golden Treasury of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language (Oxford University Press, 1941 edition, reprinted in 1947). I want to apologize publicly to her for my surface expression of displeasure when I unwrapped her gift; when I actually started reading it, I was, well, converted to the belief that, in fact, I might like poetry after all, but, of course, would not necessarily need to indicate to other people that I did.

SURFACE TENSION

First Movement: The Darkening Sea

Vibrations

Too often, a landscape can be pulled from the vibrations

Of the