Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, INTRODUCTION, by HUMBERT WOLFE


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

INTRODUCTION, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: They tell me, children, / you have some / fugitive elysium
Last Line: Forgotten.
Subject(s): Elysium (mythology)


I

THEY tell me, children,
you have some
fugitive Elysium

where, while your baffled
elders pass
through what to them is
common grass,

you walk in fields,
where never fell
or snow or rain, through
asphodel.

It may be so. I pray
it is.
But I at least remember this,

that I myself, when
I was seven,
instead of wandering
in heaven,

insisted most
whole-heartedly
on being nothing else
than me,

and liked the daisy
most, because
it went on being
what it was.

And therefore if to
me the sun
is just a means
of waking one,

and if to starshine
I prefer
the polish on a
banister,

and if I play my
private game
of being constantly
the same

(which is the circumstance
that wrings
my heart in ordinary
things),

don't think that
I am trying to
write, as though I
were one of you,

or writing (which is
even worse)
what I suppose a
child prefers.

I have no views. I only
know
that fifty thousand
years ago

the things I write of
were not new.
That's why I like them. But
will you?

II

NOR, children, would
I have you think
I rub my spectacles,
and blink,

or murmur whimsically
abject
apologies, when
you're the subject

of conversation.
No! I've found
that children, taking
them all round,

are not the least
bit better than
their parents. And
indeed I can

remember some, that
I would gladly
have smothered, when they
slammed doors madly,

or when they shouted
down the stairs,
or badgered me
with their affairs,

or went on asking
me the time,
or got their beastly
dogs to climb

upon my knee, and shed
their coat
all over me, and what
I wrote.

While others simply
are the plan
to which life draws
a gentleman.

For, with the infant,
as the grown-up,
the truth, if we're prepared
to own up,

is that it takes all
sorts to be
a schoolroom, or a
nursery,

though possibly there's
nothing quite
so ineradicably
right

as children who
enchant the air
(like Ann) by
merely being there.

I warn you, therefore,
if you look
for adulation
in this book,

or for an attitude
of dim
belief that you are
seraphim,

or for a poet who is
handing
out sweet, indulgent
understanding,

you will not find it.
All you'll find
is something I have had
in mind

since I was six. And
if it's rotten,
it only shows that I've
forgotten.





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