Paul Blackburn and the Art of Remembrance

My friend-since-college Ron Caplan recently published a book on a Cape Breton obituary poet, Andrew Dunphy, called "A Stone for Andrew Dunphy." It isn't until the last chapter that the reader realizes the "Stone" is the book itself--a gravestone made of deep scholarship and reverent study of this man who wrote elegies on request for cape residents. Ron's book has been in and on my mind since finishing it over a month ago. I wondered if the tradition of narrative rhyme about which he writes so eloquently had continuance of some sort in my/our time. Something in me knew it did but that it wasn't a literal kind that sought to preserve a tradition in neo-classical mimicry. I had to perform my own ancestry.com search based on complex, zigzagging reading. Not surprisingly, I found the bequeathal was far more lateral, oblique and transformed in order to endure long transport and possibly harsh transplant in urbanized American soil. That poem, I believe, is Paul Blackburn's "The Selection of Heaven," written in 1963 for the poet's grandparents--Hannah, 87, and John Henry, 88, Blackburn (who died March 23rd and April 16th, 1963)--and who otherwise would have gone, as Dunphy's subjects would have, unremarked and unsung.

Here is Section 16 written for John Henry, from this masterpiece of modern American poetry. Blackburn has become a constant companion, his writing acting as a seeing-eye dog for the streets and straits of my country. God bless him. Ron and I had beers with Paul when he came to read at Temple University around 1967. Remember, dear friend. 

My love to all and my prayer for lives worthy of commentary like this. 

16.  w o r d s    :     should have been spoken at graveside

There are no true voices anymore, John 
Henry, you knucklehead, you hard-
headed, stiff-backed, tough-minded old man, your 
                            mouth is clenched tight for good 
                            it is a solid line

from under your sharpened nose around your pointed chin, above
                                                                                           that
the strong, kind, (remembered), and finally closed eyes, 
the dead tissues under the skull that were your brain 
softened finally with your      88        years

into a forgetfulness your children could 
relate to, could pity, could and did 
expiate themselves upon, so
                           accept their own lives

for what they had become or grown to, 
John, you knucklehead, you bonehead, in 
the old photographs you are more often
                           scowling, when the others
are smiling bravely into the bright sun.

                                                         You quarreled
with everyone you loved and were proud
when your children fought you back with brain and spirit 
and were hurt, of course you were hurt
                        by it, and loved them     .       You 
had made them irrevocably yours you would have said God's

and that's not true, and your mouth is closed for good
upon the air of this world, your hands     not
                        folded in eternity as that 
                        cliche-ridden, pompous, minister 
friend of yours who did you final service might 
have said had he the gift of words, but 
clenched, holding your heaven to you;
swollen farmer's hands that had been kinder than your mind was 
clenched in eternity the rock of your mind
that could not crack and open but
still clenched dissolved under the rain of years

the head still,
straight white hair still handsome     .       4 
generations gathered round a coffin yesterday to pay 
what truly was respect and sometimes love,     the 
different qualities of flesh
                                  from ruined to what
                         renews itself each day, and grows, John, 
stood there and did you honor     .     Rocks

wear away under the rain    .     Flesh is tough 
          the spirit
resilient     .     tougher than flesh   .    They
said you looked natural 
and in their mouths it 
was comforting cliché    .     The words 
were truer than they knew, you still looked 
                        stiff-backed, hard-headed, 
                        but the spirit gone, that blur,
a peace

E A R T H    T O     E A R T H

GOD,
be here at this graveside .
Not in the cut flowers the undertakers' men heaped up 
but in the new forsythia, red maple
                           buds, magnolia, be 
                           in the spring earth 
will heap this grave, grow new grass over it, 
golden green of willow starting fresh    .     be 
                           in the spring earth with John, 
your faithful servant,
where he will lie
next to Hannah as he did in life, her 
                           eternal lover     .      Lock them 
                           forever into this hillside
facing the Acushnet gulls settle on, 
         wheel over crying, hear them in the 
distance .

         Smoke rises
from between my forefinger
and middlefinger    .     Wind on this 
Cold spring hillside sweeps it off 
barely visible in the sunlight

the ashes
fall upon new grass .

A S H E S     TO     A S H E S

      John,
forgive the carpet of phoney grass
                           too dark for the season
the undertakers spread beneath your
coffin for this moment   .    We have 
seen you to this hillside, let it be 
enough    .     Forgive
the Reverend Doctor his recitation
of    2     Edgar Guest poems yesterday,   I
figured I could stand it if you could   .   The rain
of dirt and pebbles will be real enough . 
                            fresh clods set in
                            after you have settled    .     Rain 
                                               fructifies,
                                               but will wear away . 
                                                      ROCK
The committing ceremony had the 
dignity of its own
                         words, yesterday,
despite the use of flowers with their snapped-off heads 
instead of fistfuls of earth    .     EARTH  .
When the diggers end the job, let
the first 3 shovelsful of spring earth
be my shovelsful, let it be enough   .

D U S T    TO    D U S T

                                consigning    .     I
have not willed the occasion for these words 
which cry themselves like hunting gulls 
my mouth flapping open     .      GOD, 
welcome your servant John Henry
into whatever Paradise he thought existed, 
offer him
the best accomodation that you have for such a 
                                         lover of the mind     .     God 
                                         knows he has earned it,
                                  twice over  .
Let there be soft
                                  wind
where he is, let him hear gulls cry 
above the
bridge,
                                  and be home.