Three (quality) poems for people who never read poetry

In an interview with John Collison shortly before he died, Charlie Munger (of Berkshire Hathaway fame) made a sharp observation about “modern” architecture — specifically the joyful, ugly, and dysfunctional kind.

Munger said the source of the problem was that many elite architects today are obsessed with impressing other architects, rather than serving the people who actually use each space. (He cited a dorm-building at MIT that he claims made students seasick because of its needlessly slanted walls. Munger himself famously spent some of his free-time funding and designing college dorms, much to the chagrin of the quote-unquote “experts.’)

Whatever you think of Munger’s architectural instincts (he calls it “the Queen of the arts” and places it, alongside music, above everything else), the phenomenon he describes is one that exists across the board. I think it’s especially true in painting and poetry. Hence, the average museum visitor who thinks their child is as good as Rothko, and the dwindling number of adults who read poetry at all — let alone keep up with the “modern” poetry scene.

There’s no single totalizing theory that can explain why this is. (Though the CIA is partly to blame, having promoted abstract expression as a cultural counterpunch to Soviet realism.) But once an art form becomes sufficiently niche, this trend tends to propel itself: the fewer people reading poems means that the only people who do are other poets, hence the incentive to constantly “out-do” one another in stylistic innovations, which only further diminishes the pool of likely readers. (Eventually, all that’s left is a swamp of narcissists spread across America’s campuses, trapped in interchangeable English departments, backstabbing one another for meagre grants and limited placement in ‘literary’ magazines that nobody reads — but I digress).

Most “great” poets from the back half of the 20th century are essentially unreadable to even your well-meaning college grads. (I love John Ashbery, but doubt I could get even my friends who read books to make it more than a few stanzas into The System.)

With that in mind, I thought it’d be fun to circulate some poems that I think are both genius but also a pleasure to read.

These are simply three that came to mind — poems that have stuck me through the years, which I consider to be further testament to their reader-friendly quality. They are all nuanced, philosophical, and evocative works that wrestle with some of life’s fundamental (i.e. unanswerable) questions. Enjoy.

Now Summer is goneAnd might never have been.In the sunshine it’s warm,But there has to be more.

It all came to pass,All fell into my handsLike a five-petalled leaf,But there has to be more.

Nothing evil was lost,Nothing good was in vain,All ablaze with clear lightBut there has to be more.

Life gathered me upSafe under it’s wing,My luck always held,But there has to be more.

Not a leaf was burned upNot a twig ever snappedClean as glass is the dayBut there has to be more.

Arseny Tarkovsky was a Russian poet and translator and (famously) the father of Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky, who featured his father’s poetry throughout his films. (This poem is recited in Stalker with a slightly different translation).

“But there has to be more” is such a simple encapsulation of a certain kind of human sadness, both existential and mundane. The answer to the question “Why religion?” is always, in my mind, no matter the religion, some variation of “[because] there has to be more.”

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babiesare not starving someplace, they are starvingsomewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would notbe made so fine. The Bengal tiger would notbe fashioned so miraculously well. The poor womenat the fountain are laughing together betweenthe suffering they have known and the awfulnessin their future, smiling and laughing while somebodyin the village is very sick. There is laughterevery day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,we lessen the importance of their deprivation.We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must havethe stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthlessfurnace of this world. To make injustice the onlymeasure of our attention is to praise the Devil.If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.We must admit there will be music despite everything.We stand at the prow again of a small shipanchored late at night in the tiny portlooking over to the sleeping island: the waterfrontis three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboatcomes slowly out and then goes back is truly worthall the years of sorrow that are to come.

A poem that defends “delight” (and unclassifiable joys, like the “faint sound of oars in the silence”) no matter the state of the world. I wish more young people today would take seriously the idea that “To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.” Meanwhile, “We must admit there will be music despite everything” is a line that comes to mind whenever I lose myself in the headlines of the day.

Note: This poem is slightly longer (but you can do it!). It’s told from the perspective of Ulysses, aka Odysseus (Ulysses is a Latin variant), the hero of Homer’s Odyssey, who took ten years to sail home from the Trojan War. Here he is, after a decade of war followed by a decade of travel, struggling to re-acclimate and settle down now that he’s home.

It little profits that an idle king,By this still hearth, among these barren crags,Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and doleUnequal laws unto a savage race,That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.I cannot rest from travel; I will drinkLife to the lees.  All times I have enjoy'dGreatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with thoseThat loved me, and alone; on shore, and whenThro' scudding drifts the rainy HyadesVext the dim sea.  I am become a name;For always roaming with a hungry heartMuch have I seen and known,— cities of menAnd manners, climates, councils, governments,Myself not least, but honor'd of them all,—And drunk delight of battle with my peers,Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.I am a part of all that I have met;Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fadesFor ever and for ever when I move.How dull it is to pause, to make an end,To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!As tho' to breathe were life!  Life piled on lifeWere all too little, and of one to meLittle remains; but every hour is savedFrom that eternal silence, something more,A bringer of new things; and vile it wereFor some three suns to store and hoard myself,And this gray spirit yearning in desireTo follow knowledge like a sinking star,Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfillThis labour, by slow prudence to make mildA rugged people, and thro' soft degreesSubdue them to the useful and the good.Most blameless is he, centred in the sphereOf common duties, decent not to failIn offices of tenderness, and payMeet adoration to my household gods,When I am gone.  He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;There gloom the dark, broad seas.  My mariners,Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me,—That ever with a frolic welcome tookThe thunder and the sunshine, and opposedFree hearts, free foreheads,— you and I are old;Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.Death closes all; but something ere the end,Some work of noble note, may yet be done,Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deepMoans round with many voices.  Come, my friends.'T is not too late to seek a newer world.Push off, and sitting well in order smiteThe sounding furrows; for my purpose holdsTo sail beyond the sunset, and the bathsOf all the western stars, until I die.It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'We are not now that strength which in old daysMoved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,—One equal temper of heroic hearts,Made weak by time and fate, but strong in willTo strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Few of us “mete and dole / Unequal laws unto a savage race” as leaders who feel alienated from their subjects. And maybe we don’t all have the urge to get (back) to sea. But I dare anyone not to find inspiration in those last six lines. Whether it is inspiration to travel, or to start some long-postponed creative project, or to find joy in life after some unwanted tragedy — whatever the case, “Tho’ much is taken, much [always] abides.”

So long as we live, it’s never too late to “seek a newer world.”