A Poor Player’s Tale
Original Poem (Dowson, 1890)
They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate;
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses,
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.
And some lines from Macbeth:
Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing
Sunday morning, the first day of September 2019. Moisture reflects light on the surfaces of foliage and pavement, overcast gray clouds and the cool air indicate a coming end of summer. I saved these lines of poetry because when I read them some months ago it seemed as if I were addressed by an oracle.
What does one do, to what direction does one proceed after reading these words?
Life is brief. The longevity that I felt when I was 18, when I was 30, was illusion. No matter how many years, life is of short duration. I am 70 now, and I love many of the objects and activities that I loved as a teenager. However a failing constitution does not permit the remembered intensity of participation, or of enjoyment.
So? Do I resign myself to a grim rear-guard retreat, fighting all the while knowing that the war is already lost; a pity-party, that dark nihilistic funk, that is contagious to everyone around me? They have their own burdens.
The old Buddhist question comes to mind: Where were you before you were born? The question conveys a lightning flash of insight: there was a time before I was born. As far as I know nature and humankind functioned without my help. There will come a time when I have departed, like pushing the reset button.
Compassion is called for. Patience and kindness toward myself then toward all those around me who are on their journey, day by day.
Yesterday while pruning some bushes I saw a young rabbit not far distant in the yard. Last night around 10 o’clock through an open window I heard several high pitched animal cries, similar to the cry of a house cat. I’ve heard that sound before. It sounded like the cry of a terrified rabbit.
Ernest Dowson lived in London, worked at his parents’ dry-docking business, and was a member of the Rhymers’ Club with W.B. Yeats and Arthur Symons. Dowson’s poems trace the sorrow of unrequited love and are the source of the phrases “gone with the wind” and “days of wine and roses.” He also supplied the earliest written mention in English of soccer. Both of Dowson’s parents committed suicide, and Dowson, who rarely had a fixed home, died at the age of 32.
— thanks to poetryfoundtion.org for the Dowson background info
2 thoughts on “A Poor Player’s Tale”
Might I add two pieces that I believe are apropos of today’s subject matter.
The opening of a Dylan Thomas poem:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And one from my own archives:
Crossroads
The young man speeds along
the black-topped, yellow-striped road
as if racing against his soul.
Only when the wind rips at
the smooth skin of his unlined faced
can he straddle the line,
gaze into the distance
and glimpse the thrill of mortality.
With foot slammed on the pedal,
his heart pounds, unrestrained,
as he shoves his middle finger
into the face of death and screams,
“Catch me if you can.”
The old man drives along,
cautiously through pot-holed streets,
fearful that time itself might break.
He grips the wheel
pinning it to the dashboard,
checks his rearview mirror,
aware of the cloaked specter,
who will, in time, claim him.
The old man does not hurry.
Life has sped past in a blur
and he knows what is waiting.
No need to rush.
His destination can wait.
I’ve straddled the line a few times, and I am sure you have as well. I don’t do that anymore, as there is a time of everything and that time has past. Does the wisdom of age, the know-how gained from trial and error, offset the attrition of a degrading physical being? So far for me it has not. In years past, when I never gave a thought to the performance of my body, — I was too distracted to realize just how fortunate I was.