Oh Shenandoah–a poem, a musing

 

 

 

 

Literary Musings

After a lively Salon on Eliot’s “The Wasteland” in London recently, one of the participants, who also offers creative writing seminars, sent me the following poem from a writer she has worked with. David Boyle’s poem had strong echoes with both Eliot’s “Prufrock” and “Wasteland”; the struggle to reach above the banality of the everyday—to hold one’s love in a large enough realm that honors its immensity. This struggle to be in our lives and yet not to be swallowed by the daily deluge feels very strong to me…the deep work in literature that we engage through the Salons reminds me to stop in the moment of a savory meal, the gorgeousness of a run through mud with a wild Spaniel, spontaneous shared laughter and just be there. Simply the capacity to love emanates devotion on the level of the sacred reflecting back and forth between the lover and the loved:

And yet


What I feel is simple and seismic


 

This is not something to be learned once. This is daily practice and reach for the best of this sharp and wild practice of life. Language continues in its myriad and endless forms to try to contain these struggles; what is endlessly beautiful to me is how the artist (writer, painter, musician) particularizes the struggle to live authentically and love fully—and how it is not the achievement but the continuity of this endeavor that fires us into life.

 

Oh Shenandoah

By David Boyle

www.david-boyle.co.uk

Oh, Shenandoah, I love your daughter.

And though I felt comfortable,

loving even, with so many others,

I find I can no longer continue
my life as an actuary and clerk

in a middle-sized firm of city insurance brokers

without her devotion,

love, passion, desire, thrill, excitement,

hand across the table on a cold winter evening,

unwashed face across the pillow in the morning.

I love your daughter
and the earth turned on its axis when I did so,

and whole seasons have shifted around the globe,

the ocean has swallowed up New York, Sydney, Tokyo,

and caused a run on the pound,

the British Chancellor has resigned

and the stars have altered their paths.

And I can’t wake without thinking of her,

can’t buy a ticket at the station without thinking of her,

can’t dream without thinking of her.

I am a small man, barely average height;

my prospects are unexciting to say the least

I readily admit
that a small Lambeth council tax payer has little to offer
to the daughter of one of the greatest rivers on earth,

that you and she will course your ways without me.

And yet

what I feel is simple and seismic

about the way she throws her head back at my feeble jokes

about the way she tentatively strokes my hand

about her pink woollen socks and strange taste in wallpaper,

may lift me up beyond the banality of commuting.

And I will shrivel and die without her.

So give me this chance

Restore the earth

Let the ants work again,

the bees sting, the cows smile, the beer taste,

and sunlight dapple and the valleys hum

And restore me too.

Let me, for one moment,

roar down the earth inexorably towards the sea.

Give me your strength

And let me win

And let me never forget it.

 

August 1994