CLASS POETRY
One of the highlights of our 45th Reunion was a reading in 201 Harkness Hall – the site of Cleanth Brooks’ lecture course in modern American poetry – of poems by three classmates, Ben Scotch, David Slavitt. and Nikki Barranger. Brooks would have flipped with joy at this use of his old classroom.
THREE BY NIKKI – by Garic K. Barranger
Though Nikki has practiced law in Covington, Louisiana, for most of his professional life, he has been active as an actor and a writer and a poet from his days as an undergraduate to the present. As a lawyer, he has helped many authors, including his neighbor Walker Percy; now that he has retired from the law, he is happily and enthusiastically devoting full time to what we all know is his first love.
To hear Nikki read the following poem, you will need to have RealPlayer 8 installed on your computer. Click on the RealPlayer icon to download a free copy. Then, click on the start button on the left, and follow the reading in the text.
REUNION 2001 Dear God was I ever so young?
MORTAL SINS Thanks to Louisiana Literature, first publisher of The Incandescent Man
which also appears in the anthology From a Bend In The River (Runnagate
Press) ONE BY BEN – by Benson David Scotch
Was I ever so cherub of cheek?
Dear God, I ask, was my step ever sprung
With the spring of the sophomore leap?
Was I ever so careless of loving?
Did I dance in the morning wood"
I can barely remember the moving
But I’d dance it again if I could.
And there they are standing at rest
The children of rose dusty face
Whose eyes are the brightest and best
Whose hair is a golden grace.
They dance in a puddle of sun
They dance in the round and round
They dance to the music of fun
That only the young can sound.
And I am a merry old man
To smile at the tickle of pain
Who watches the sun-puddle dance –
The rose dusty, long round, dusty rose dance –
And longs to dance again.
and how in Aunt Elaina's youth
the legislatures had not made the use of same
an illegality. And Aunt Elaina, two martinis down
before her dinner, vulnerable to questions
and ruminating on a vagrant lemon rind
when asked directly if she'd whiffed of snow
in those so more permissive days spoke bluntly
saying that she hadn't
but, as if ashamed
went on to tender us another truth.
"We never knew about it then," she said,
"but we were warned by all our mothers not to
smoke
at all; but if we must then we should buy our own
tobacco and not to depend upon our dates for cigs.
That's what we called them then. We called them cigs.
Our mothers were afraid of marijuana don't you know.
So that was why they told us `bring yer own'.
They were afraid that smoking dope would drive us mad
with lust.
I never even smoked in those days
but because of Mama's fears
I always kept a ready pack to hand.
"They told us not to drink then too
but no one listened much to that advice.
And even Mamas didn't go so far
as buying flasks for all the girls against
the chance we'd lapse and break the Holy Volstead
Act and get some local that would drive us blind.
Precaution after all is said and done is always
governed
by economy and so I early learned a love of gin
supplied by others. Could I have a bit more ice?
She let us take our chances with our vision
because she wouldn't pony up the price.
The evening in this story I was still in college
but I must have been precocious
because my date had got his own apartment in the
quarter.
I don't remember how we came to be there
but we were.
After a party and the Comus Ball?
And there we were.
And I had had some gin.
And then I had some more
and suddenly it came to me
that I should smoke those cigs.
I can't remember what the young man said
or even what his name was now.
But I remember how I lit and puffed and blew
Sir Walter Raleigh haze around his living room."
"But we were asking you about cocaine," I
said.
"Shut up and get your Aunt another gin," she
said.
"I never tried it and I never will.
But I am telling you a better story.
So listen up because it is about
my debut into sin.
Well I was saying I was blowing smoke and telling lies
I haven't any doubt to this young man
who had his own apartment
and whose name I can't dig up,
but I do know there was this divine
bathtub because about that time I slipped off shoes.
He was shocked. I can remember that
And that was when I told him how I hoped
he didn't mind if I just went and had this bath.
It was disgraceful.
And he tried to act sophisticated
and amused but I could tell
that he was shocked some more.
But I got up and shed my stockings one by peeling one
and left a trail of clothes around the room
and through the study and the bedroom to the bath
and I was mother naked by the time
I'd turned the taps on full.
I settled in and must have splashed an hour
and a half because when I went looking
for a towel he was asleep still dressed.
His shoes were even laced.
I had to wake him up to take me home
and never ever did find all my clothes."
"And that was all?" we asked.
"Why yes, of course it was. What else did you
expect?"
said Aunt Elaina dreamy but indignant.
"But you told us it was your debut into sin,"
we said.
"Well, so I did. And so it was." said Aunt Elaina, cranky.
"But wasn't there perhaps some hanky-panky?"
"No more than what I'm telling you there was.
That was the most disgraceful thing I ever did."
And we were startled to a new humility
and saved
our breath from arguing
to tell our grand children
the story of her lowest depth:
about the night that Aunt Elaina
drank,
and smoked,
and bathed.
THREE PRAYERS AT BEDTIME
Come down you lovely angels
and stand beside my bed
and one at either side of me
and one at foot and head
and sing me past the darkness
and comfort me from dread.
And be thou at the morning
the comfort of the day
to wander from the shadows
to brave the weary way –
to entertain the heavens’ host
in capering and play.
Before the Wheel
Great Master Potter
of the shaking hand:
Remember in your love
that we are your imperfect vessels
and give us the wisdom
in our shelf life squat
balancing in gravity
to know at every moment,
who, pray is the potter?
And who the pot.
FOR ARMADILLOS BY THE BERM
Great spirit of the spinning world
who made the night a shadow
and the day so bright.
Make clear our eyes
that they may not be dazzled after dark
and give us nimble feet to flee
the headlights of eternity
nor yet be flattened
by the pitchy jet
which we all carry
heavy at the heart.
© THE YALE POEMS G.K. Barranger June 6, 2001, all rights reserved.
Ben – long-time chief-of-staff at the Vermont Supreme Court who a year ago moved to the post of Executive Director of the Vermont American Civil Liberties Union – bravely answered last winter’s call for class poets with this affectionate sonnet, with footnotes added:
A SONNET FOR ’56, AT OUR 45TH|
Misplaced: My passport to this time, this place Here we remnants of another Yale, Politic, cautious, meticulous – and male Peer out and wonder at this softer space. Is there only the fight to recover what Has been? Our lives on loan? Our stories told In ever smaller voices? Yield our hold, We vow: Amici usque ad . . . (forgot!) So recreate, release – there is no loss. We pass along our stories gleefully, Or with some pause. The very best to be Has been. Yet will forever be. Sweet close. The splendor of our class, the glory of Our hour. How high the moon? How great the love. |
 |
Notes on the lines:
The first point to note is that putting notes at the end of a sonnet is a dead giveaway that the poet is right out of the ‘Fifties. Later Yalies learned to leave well enough alone. Quasi-apology noted, a small bit of provenance. "Politic, cautious, [and] meticulous" was Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock, assuring us that he was not Prince Hamlet, who surely never wore the bottoms of his trousers rolled.
Line 5 is lifted from the Four Quartets, East Coker; V, line 15. The full reference is pretty 45th-ish stuff:
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
As for:
Amici, usque ad aras, Deep graven on each heart,
Shall be found, unwav'ring true, When we from life shall part.
check out the Yale Song Book for the universal fraternity song.
" . . . The very best to be / has been" is a twist from Robert Browning’s Rabbi Ben Ezra:
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in his hand
Who saith, "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!"
"The splendor of our class" is an egregious, but not irrelevant, take on Wordsworth’s lines from Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood – consoling his, and our redeeming dotage:
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
Finally, who could forget the Les Paul & Mary Ford ditty from our day:
Somewhere there's music How faint the tune –
Somewhere there's heaven How high the moon!
– Ben
TWO BY DAVID – by David R. Slavitt
| David – elected Class Poet in 1956 and plying that art professionally ever since, along with several other arts such as novel-writing and translating Greek and Latin verse – is now the author of over 70 books. Anyone who doesn’t believe me can check them out in a special exhibit at the Bienecke Library. David has recently moved from Philadelphia to Cambridge, where he plans to keep up his annual output of one and a half books a year (70 books divided by 45 years = 1.5555555555 per annum). Of the several poems he read at the Reunion, David selected these two for Comment ’56 |  |
INVOCATION
We are gathered here today in the presence of God and
this company
to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure
domestic tranquility, and provide for the common defense of the people, by the
people, and for the people,
and we here do solemnly swear
to preserve and protect the Constitution of the United
States of America
and the republic for which it stands,
forsaking all others, and deriving its just powers from
the consent
of the huddled masses yearning to be free,
whose broad stripes and bright stars are indivisible,
and with liberty and justice for all.
It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to
the proposition
that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, and
that among these are the mountains, and the prairies
and the oceans, white with foam at the twilight's last gleaming.
Do not send, therefore, to ask for whom the bell tolls;
ask, rather, what you can do for your country
to support this declaration with a firm reliance
on the
protection of Divine Providence.
We mutually pledge to each other
our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
Let no man put asunder what God has joined together
to make his countenance to shine upon you
and give you peace. Amen.
[Note: "Invocation" is from PS3569.L3,
copyright 1998, and published by Louisiana State University Press.]
MOSES
If Moses could not enter, which of us can presume?
His offense was striking the rock. But where does it say
that to strike a rock is forbidden? And what harm did he do
to the rock, which, anyway, gave the precious water?
His defect, I fear, was more grave--an excess of goodness
that common sense would suggest is where we should look
in such a man, against whom, it is said, "the angels
banded together."
Because he had brought from heaven
the mighty mainstay, the Torah. His act did not
diminish heaven so much as elevate earth-
but still, from then on, the separation was less.
No ravening birds swarmed to tear at his liver
on a mountainside in the frozen north. Such stories,
too vivid, too violent, are not for us. But Jokhebed
cried aloud and looked in the valley of Moab
for the burial place, but it was nowhere to be seen.
She could not weep at his tomb, could not recite
the proper prayers, and her heart was sore, and in heaven
he knew, and cried aloud, "Jokhebed, my mother!"
loud and bitter, as if he were not in heaven,
as if there, too, he had not been permitted entrance.
[Note: "Moses" is from FALLING FROM SILENCE, copyright 2001, and published by Louisiana State University Press.]
