R.L. Barth has sent a new epigram, “Baffled,” not overtly related to the Vietnam War:
“I see these
hands on the deck railing, but
Whose are
they? Have they any meaning? What?”
Some readers
will understand. The familiar can become strange with age. That’s not always a bad
thing. It’s one way the mind renews the world, keeping it interesting. As another Kentucky poet besides Bob puts it: “The mind that is not baffled is not employed.” Perhaps
bafflement can be passive or active, accepted or resisted. I like the OED’s definition of baffled: “confounded, discomfited, checked or foiled.” That makes
it sound like a fight.
In his
biography of Philip Larkin, James Booth refers to “The Old Fools,” completed in
1973 when the poet was not yet fifty years old, as “his great Ode to Senility,”
at once grim, harsh and funny: “An air of baffled absence, trying to be there /
Yet being here.”
1 comment:
An interesting coincidence that the Vietnam War comes up in your post on the same day as the announcement of William Calley's death. As your readers doubtless know, he was convicted for his part in the My Lai massacre. It was after this became publicly known, that returning Vietnam War veterans began being referred to as "baby killers".
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