Running on poetry: Revisiting a Bohemian life

Illustration: R. Rajesh

I know a man who has no issues with no labels. He doesn’t need to rest assured in brackets and cosy compartments, safe in the knowledge that the relationship he is in has a name. He calls it a ‘high tolerance to ambiguity’. I admire that attitude but find it extremely difficult to accept. Perhaps I haven’t gone past the childhood need to know the exact friendship quotient with each person. But relationships of any kind — friendly or romantic — create a space in our hearts and heads.

For instance, we love talking about old friends and how long we have been friends. My oldest friend and I have been in each other’s lives for close to 30 years. I am sure we all have stories like this. Sometimes things don’t work out — another sad truth of interactions with others. If you’re lucky, you discuss it, make sense of it and try to move on. But sometimes, it’s not possible. “Their relationship consisted in discussing if it existed.” These words of Thom Gunn (August 29, 1929-Arpil 25, 2004) make sense on so many levels.

His poetry is philosophical; a reflection of a thinking observing mind. In another place he says, “

At worse, one is in motion; and at best/Reaching no absolute, in which to rest/One is always nearer by not keeping still. ” The goal isn’t clear or near but, by constantly moving, the end appears to be in sight.

This poet was familiar with the vicissitudes of fame and poetry. Both are fickle at times and, while Thom Gunn wrote exceptional poetry, he also had to deal with criticism of his later work. His work shone brilliantly in post-war poetry but he switched to writing about personal concerns — substance abuse and his own homosexuality, among others. Perhaps speaking of one’s own preoccupations in one’s own poetry is a no-no. I wouldn’t know. But it took a new collection of poetry with the same themes for him to regain respect. The same themes and respect this time? How, you ask? He connected it to a common theme — a disease that had taken his friends and loved ones. Interesting how our perspective changes.

In his most renowned poem, ‘The Man with Night Sweats’, Gunn speaks of a man with this condition. He connects it to his understanding of who he is as a man. Night sweats are a symptom of AIDS and the poem takes its title from there. “ I grew as I explored/The body I could trust/Even while I adored/The risk that made robust/A world of wonders in/Each challenge to the skin. ” The poem ends: “ As if hands were enough/To hold an avalanche off. ” The night sweats are sexual too. It seems like the poet is looking back on his life as a young virile man, seeking adventure, and now sees a body grappling with illness. Hands can’t hold back an avalanche any more than the poet can prevent the disease from taking over. But now there is awareness.

In ‘Street Song’, Gunn describes the drug trip. “

My grass is not oregano./Some of it grew in Mexico./You cannot guess the weed I hold/Clara Green, Acapulco Gold/Panama Red, you name it man/Best on the street since I began. ” His methedrine is his “

double-sun ” and, “

will give you two lives in your one. ” The lumps of hash, “

burn so sweet, they smoke so smooth/They make you sharper while you soothe. ” It’s an interesting apposition of the straight-jacketed rhyme style and uninhibited subject matter.

The poet’s observations shine in other poems too. In ‘The Butcher’s Son’, the butcher receives word that his son is missing at war. The butcher finds, “ No bottom to his sadness/Nowhere for it to stop. ” Later, the poet sees the returned son. He’s in uniform and the butcher, his father, isn’t there. The son is happy, “ beaming a life charged now/Doubly because restored. ” The poet recalls the son’s smile, his lips containing “ his father’s/ like a light within the light/That he turned everywhere. ” The butcher in his anxiety, the son in his triumph. And that shared, iridescent smile.

Srividya is a poet. Read her work at www.rumwrapt.blogspot.in