`Live, Live!'

Grandparents, I suppose. They were seated thigh-to-thigh at a picnic table in the park -- prosperous, well-groomed, tense -- holding a newborn of indeterminate sex. They cupped the child like a Ming vase, away from their bodies. I sat on a nearby bench, watching two shows – seniors and baby to the left, my kids falling off playground apparatus to the right. The old couple seemed to be staging an allegory of obscure significance – Consternations of Age? – when the man abruptly shifted the baby to his partner and stood, revealing a dark patch on the front of his pressed khakis. Louder than you world expect of a mature fellow who looked like a banker, he said, “Shit!” and stomped off to the men’s room.

Out of feigned politeness I returned to my book. When was the last time a poem made you laugh out loud? I was reading A Trick of Sunlight by Dick Davis, a poet born in England and now professor of Persian at Ohio State University. Joshua Mehigan introduced me to Davis’ work several years ago. This collection, from 2006, hovers around the ineffable subject of happiness, and as a result it’s peppered with grim humor. Included is “Small Talk,” a cycle of 12 poems, none longer than six lines, some as brief as two. The title of the third, “Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to,” is familiar:

“Of course, to recognize
This quote, and more, its truth
Means your myopic youth
Was spent quite otherwise.”

Bull’s eye! right down to “myopic.” Lambert Strether’s exhortation to “little Bilham” in Gloriani’s garden is a peak in human evolution, and I’ve spent two-thirds of a lifetime contemplating it. Here’s Strether’s complete outburst:

“`Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have you had? I'm too old—too old at any rate for what I see. What one loses one loses; make no mistake about that. Still, we have the illusion of freedom; therefore don't, like me to-day, be without the memory of that illusion. I was either, at the right time, too stupid or too intelligent to have it, and now I'm a case of reaction against the mistake. Do what you like so long as you don't make it. For it was a mistake. Live, live!’”

Once I deemed Strether pathetic – a dried-up husk. Now I see him as a hero – like his creator – of human consciousness. And he’s not too old. Davis’ joke is a good one – and superbly ambiguous.

I closed the book when my 8-year-old showed me where he had sat on a fresh patch of bird shit. He’s fastidious and was almost in tears. I told him to go the men’s room and clean it up while I watch his little brother fall off the apparatus again. He disappeared inside and I returned to Davis. When I looked up minutes later, there was Michael at the drinking fountain, shooting water on his khakis. Beside him was his brother, doing the same. Both were soaked and laughing in a way Lambert Strether never laughed.