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Family Remembrances
Sep. 10th, 2013 12:59 amMy paternal grandfather died last Thursday. He was a good, quiet, and quietly learned man, with a library comprising masses of civil war books (most of which he'd read twice), literary novels (I was floored when I discovered Nabokov on the shelves--the 2 I haven't read, Lolita, and Ada). A few years ago he took me to dinner and told me of his love for Schopenhauer. He gave me his gorgeous copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam when I was 12, along with Le Morte d'Arthur. I'll never forget the cover of his ancient edition of The Hobbit. He took me on walks at Kennesaw Mountain, pointing out cannons and battlegrounds--though I'm sure my head was in abstractions.
This might not be unusual, but he was an airplane electronics technician, for the Naval Air Corps and then Lockheed. He never went to college.
What I didn't know was that he wrote poetry. And not, as I expect whenever I hear that anyone writes poetry, love poems or sex poems, but abstract poems. Here's one:
One Centre
(An impression of a Kandinsky painting of the same name.)
Yellow is the hope of the sun.
Red bleeds to hide the moon.
Between the two float both
Inner and outer,
There is no beginning.
The upward is the heart of the down.
The around is but a part of the middle.
Infinite circles total one;
Revolving in perpetual locks,
Here are the keepers of night.
Their keys remain unfound.
White is the silent ice;
Black the ashes of a pyre.
Together they dream of death.
While darkness penetrates the light,
Capturing a universe of colors,
And wags its tail;
Content but never satisfied;
The window will soak a sponge,
But the spade must dig in vain—
In search of a treasure
That lies on the surface.
Blue is the secret of love;
Vermillion the fire of passion.
These were yours, except for mine,
And still are the victims of life;
Chained by time and tortured by space.
Tragic souls:
Tossing on a bed of spikes,
Drowning in an ocean of brown,
Strangling alone in the ether;
Die! Never to breathe again.
This is the eternal end.
-Charles W. Phillips, 1951
I wrote abstract poems once. I felt isolated then. And I never knew.
This might not be unusual, but he was an airplane electronics technician, for the Naval Air Corps and then Lockheed. He never went to college.
What I didn't know was that he wrote poetry. And not, as I expect whenever I hear that anyone writes poetry, love poems or sex poems, but abstract poems. Here's one:
One Centre
(An impression of a Kandinsky painting of the same name.)
Yellow is the hope of the sun.
Red bleeds to hide the moon.
Between the two float both
Inner and outer,
There is no beginning.
The upward is the heart of the down.
The around is but a part of the middle.
Infinite circles total one;
Revolving in perpetual locks,
Here are the keepers of night.
Their keys remain unfound.
White is the silent ice;
Black the ashes of a pyre.
Together they dream of death.
While darkness penetrates the light,
Capturing a universe of colors,
And wags its tail;
Content but never satisfied;
The window will soak a sponge,
But the spade must dig in vain—
In search of a treasure
That lies on the surface.
Blue is the secret of love;
Vermillion the fire of passion.
These were yours, except for mine,
And still are the victims of life;
Chained by time and tortured by space.
Tragic souls:
Tossing on a bed of spikes,
Drowning in an ocean of brown,
Strangling alone in the ether;
Die! Never to breathe again.
This is the eternal end.
-Charles W. Phillips, 1951
I wrote abstract poems once. I felt isolated then. And I never knew.
