Wednesday, December 3, 2008

A Poem on the Nature of the Individual

Borrowed Robes

I dressed myself first in my mother’s gowns.
and then put on the full armor of my father.
Then I am garmented by the schools I went to
and by the country where I was born.
My brothers lent me their shirts; my cousins
a skivvy or two. And then there were ancestors
traced to the akemennos, but good Norwegian
farmers, and blacksmiths, and teachers now.

Great grandfather gave me the capes of his
wanderlust, and the six sons and one daughter
that he brought here. My country, my state,
the places that bear our name, costumed me.
The language I speak and that one behind the one
we spoke, dressed me in vestments of many colors.

As good sons since Telemachus, I did not admire
all my father’s uniforms, nor my mothers gowns.
I used school, and criticized the university
I attended. I did not always get along with
my brothers, and my ancestors, those sturdy
Vikings I knew from books were distant beyond
memory. With community I do not commune.

They say we are nothing but the robes we wear;
that there are no great selves or souls beneath.
We are layered in clothing, no supporting center,
nothing within.The language that clothe my tongue,
and in the poetry of the unwords of feeling,
sense outside words, gives me distance even there,
though poet-power can alter the raiment it wears.
I separate myself from all those gowns that scholars
say really house nothing. Irony is distance.

Is it no more than nakedness? If I don’t exist,
who is that nude genius who sees his clothing
as the mere externals they are? In the wilderness
am I not unaccomodated man? And was not
that unclothed wretch a clown? Clowns have
their distance, else they could not make us
laugh uncomfortably. Comedy is the ironist’s
speech. Who is the ironist, who is the clown
who keeps motley at a distance, that
chilly presence beyond concept and cloth?
So why would you dress me in borrowed robes?

World, take back your rags. The clown
crowns him. The King is King, naked or not.