'I’m Less Inclined to Carp'

My nephew and I have long, spontaneous telephone conversations that begin with the usual drab pleasantries: “How are you doing?” “Fine. You?” An hour later we’re saying goodbye, but not before Abe tells me he's smitten by P.G. Wodehouse. These talks usually take place Sunday mornings. That’s when I used to call his father, my brother, before his death last August. Those conversations tended to hover around the past. We completed, corrected and denied each other’s memories. 

With Abe, much of our talk is still about the past. On Sunday, we agreed that Ken influenced our musical tastes – Cole Porter songs, the Mills Brothers, Debussy, Ry Cooder. He played clarinet from age seven and at one time owned nearly ten-thousand record albums. A composer he loved when we were young whom I found tedious was Brahms. Only with age have I revised my taste. Dick Davis describes a similar reevaluation of the past and acceptance of the present. “Brahms” is among the new poems included in Love in Another Language; Collected Poems and Selected Translations (Carcanet, 2017):

 

“Young Brahms played piano in a brothel parlour:

He watched the beery patrons go upstairs

And said, “Non olet,” pocketing his thaler,

But something nasty caught him unawares.

He never made it with a girl it seems;

His love was Clara Schumann, who had far

Too much to cope with to indulge his dreams—

Mad Robert flared out like a shooting star.

 

“I couldn’t take to Brahms when I was young—

Too sentimental, learnèd, ponderous,

I thought. Now that I find I live among

Such damning adjectives myself, I’m less

Inclined to carp, and if the cap fits wear it;

Let’s hear your heartache, Brahms; yes, I can bear it.”

 

[Pecunia non olet is a Latin phrase meaning “money does not stink.” Its origin is interesting.]

 

Ken was my junior by two and a half years but in some ways he was the more advanced brother, especially when we were kids. As an adult he was a difficult guy, contrary and quick to judge and take offense, but Abe and I are working to prize what was best in him. Here’s another Davis poem, “Old”:

 

“When I was young I wondered

How men zig-zagged and blundered

In the bile and rage

That enervates old age.

 

“What nags now at my mind

Is how they keep so kind,

Given the blows they bear,

And justified despair.”