Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

James Merrill's poem "Komboli (The Greek 'Worry-Beads')" is a deeply symbolic and meditative piece that uses the imagery of Greek worry-beads, or "komboloi", to explore themes of memory, passage of time, and the intertwining of past and present. The "komboloi", traditionally used for relaxation or contemplation, become in Merrill’s hands a tool for introspection, each bead a moment or memory that the speaker revisits, turning over in their mind like the beads on a string.

The poem begins with the beads being "go[ne] in," suggesting the start of a ritualistic or contemplative process. The setting is immediately rich with sensory detail: "Carnation underfoot, tea splashing stars / Onto this mottled slab." This evokes an environment both mundane and celestial, where the everyday action of drinking tea becomes a cosmic act, blending the terrestrial with the divine. The mention of "amber coherences" and the "Unmatched string of the habitué" suggests that these beads, though physically ordinary, carry a coherence of memories and experiences that are deeply personal, perhaps worn smooth by repetition and reflection.

Merrill plays with time throughout the poem, as the beads evoke different phases of life. The phrase "Told and retold, rubbed lucid, quick with scenes" suggests that each bead is a repository of memories, polished by the act of recollection. The poem shifts into a more vivid, narrative space with "That face fire-slitted fur, whip fury, slate iced over!"—a fragment of a memory or a scene, full of intensity and emotion. This image is followed by "Click. An early life," where the sound of the beads clicking marks a transition to another moment in time, another memory.

The poem continues to weave through these memories, with the "warrior's / Came late, enchanted brief." This suggests that the warrior's life was short but filled with a kind of magic or intensity, captured in the image of a "gem on brow / And far-eyed peregrine on wrist." The warrior is depicted in a "profile brushed so fine / You felt no single stroke until the last of plenty," indicating that the fullness of his life or character is only understood in retrospect, once the culmination of his experiences is realized.

Merrill then shifts to a more intimate, perhaps domestic, memory: "All that while, the bed had flowed, divided, / Deepened and sung in sparkling attacks / None but whose woman brought her warm specific, / Her tongue unspeakable." Here, the bed becomes a symbol of the flow of life and intimacy, deepening over time and filled with moments of joy or conflict. The woman’s presence is vital, her "warm specific" suggesting a unique, irreplaceable quality, yet her "tongue unspeakable" implies that there are aspects of her or their relationship that remain beyond expression.

The poem’s shifting scenes continue with the line "Click. Taxis / Yoked together floors below were making / Summer hell." The clicking of the beads now leads to a more chaotic, urban memory, where the noise of taxis and the heat of summer intrude on the speaker’s contemplation. Yet, even within this chaos, there is beauty and intensity: "Yet from her pupil streamed / Radii such as gall the ferry's shadow," a striking image of light and shadow, vision and obstruction.

Merrill’s language grows more abstract as he delves deeper into the metaphysical: "Plunging like my pen past shoals of shilly-shally / Into fathomless gentian. Or into / Some thinnest 'shade' of blue." The pen here represents the act of writing, of attempting to capture and make sense of these memories, which are as deep and unfathomable as the color gentian—a deep blue associated with mystery and the unknown.

The poem’s final images are stark and haunting: "No sound. No issue. The wheel / Founders in red rainwater, soul inchdeep in pain, / Charred spokesman of reflections grimly / Sanguine with siftings from the great / Cracked hour-glass." The wheel, a symbol of life’s cyclical nature, is now "founders," stuck in the red rainwater—a powerful image of stagnation and suffering. The hourglass, cracked and leaking, signifies the inexorable passage of time, now out of control, spilling its contents irretrievably.

The final "Click" brings a sense of finality, as the speaker questions whether "second wind [will] come even to the runners / Out of time?" The beads, once a tool for contemplation, now represent the end of something—a life, a memory, a journey. The marble counter against which they click serves as a cold, hard surface, a reminder of the material world and its inescapable reality.

"Done," the poem concludes, suggesting that the act of reflection has reached its end, leaving the speaker with a complex, layered understanding of time, memory, and identity. Merrill's use of the "komboloi" as both a physical object and a metaphor for the mind’s process of revisiting and making sense of the past is masterful, capturing the ways in which we carry our histories with us, each moment a bead on the string of our lives, clicked through in contemplation until the final bead is turned.

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