Serenely by and her sloth-overture,
Its tempo set to last as long as she
Has staying-power to hold his steady gaze,
Endures for him just long enough to see
A gesture so ephemeral it stays
One moment on the vague periphery
Of consciousness, then fades to join the day’s
Long list of things too transient to be
Recorded as sufficiently in phase
With his chronometry to warrant more
Extended notice. Room here for a spot
Of channel-hopping, maybe, since the score
Of sloth-to-human contact-hours is not,
So far, such as to promise a rapport,
A mutual kinship or a shared soft spot
Between them, but much rather to implore
Our pity for the optimistic lot
Who think – perhaps because, once in a while,
They’ve frolicked with the dolphins – that we’re hard-
Wired to converse in rapt though wordless style
With any creature whom we catch off-guard
Enough and not inclined to run a mile
At our approach.
Yet maybe one trump card
Remained to our sloth-whispering cryptophile,
One that put them in touch because it barred
All access save to those who channel-hop,
Sit light to protocols, switch codes at will,
Prefer whenever possible to drop
In unannounced, and make a social skill
Of Hedy’s ruse for doing whistle-stop
Traversals of the spectrum up until
The moment when two parties get to swap
Call-signs and messages, then start the drill
For channel-switch again. This means the next
Exchange eventuates as if through sheer
Contingency and linkers-up aren’t hexed
By droppers-in who seek to overhear
What’s going on, or suddenly perplexed
When some fixed channel oddly fails to clear
And messages bounce back. Yet what so vexed
The guardians of order through their fear
Of such illicit cross-talk was what gave
Hedy her notion: why not dump the whole
Fixed-wavelength thing, make channel-choice a slave
To random channel-drift, grant chance its role,
And – since the one thing all code-breakers crave
Is a fixed range of options to patrol –
Devise a system programmed to behave
As if the rout of systems were its sole
Objective, or its aim to substitute
For protocols an idiom that would ring
True just the once.
This set-up might not suit
The regimented types, like those who cling
To text-book rules whenever they compute
A wavelength, or sloth-fanciers when they bring
To each encounter senses less acute
For having drunk too deeply at the spring
Of sloth ethology and so confine
Their bandwidths to the narrow range that’s set
By fixed ideas. These bid us draw a line
Between engaging in a tête-à-tête
With creatures, like the sloth, that we incline
To honor, even humor, since they let
Us fancy they’ll wake up and take a shine
To us their watchers, and the riskier bet
On long-range outcomes that requires we place
Less trust in known technologies or modes
Of messaging. Then we may find the space
For human-sloth communing soon explodes
With possibilities once we embrace
The thought that every system over-codes
For errors of the sort that, could we face
Them squarely, might yet prove the very roads
That got us round some awkward traffic-jam
Or whizzed our under-coded message past
The filter.
Think of an old radio ham
Who’s not got through to someone on his last
Few tries so now knob-twiddles (scan not scam)
And rediscovers something of that vast
Sensorium beyond the codes that cram
Our signals, whether radio mast-to-mast
Or sloth to human being, into band-
Widths so dense-packed that they can leave no room
For what may come of linkages unplanned
By any apparatchik set to groom
The airwaves. Yet we’ve had the means to hand,
Since Hedy’s big idea, for putting whom-
Soever wishes in a spectrum-scanned
Though one-to-one rapport that lets them zoom
Unerringly to that one channel whose
Slot-occupier (on a strict pro tem
Arrangement) gets to hear the latest news
Or else communicates some perfect gem
Of intimate exchange.
This means the screws
Of waveband rationing are off for them,
Those open-access messengers who choose
Her therapy for all the ills that stem
From species-bonds or channels preassigned
As if by some necessity beyond
The grasp of channel-hopping types. They find
It irksome that the only sort of bond
That counts for much is one with power to bind
In forced relation, rather than respond
In ways that might obey a law of kind
More likely to accommodate the fond
Hopes vested in a chance, however small,
That Hedy’s winning formula might hold
Across the board. Then there’d be room for all
Our criss-cross signal pathways to unfold
A full-range two-way spectrum where no call
Need go unanswered, nobody be told
Their call-sign’s unacknowledged, and no trawl
Through bristling airwaves tell us we’re controlled
By interests not our own. Else we might link
In common cause with those who, for the sake
Of shared humanity, refuse to think
Along the lines that our controllers take
To show our thoughts dependably in sync
With theirs.
If, then, the common cause we make
Is one that bids its devotees not blink
At these large claims, it’s just because the stake
We have in it goes wide as well as deep,
Extending from a dialogue des sourdes
(Or so I thought since you two seemed to keep,
Woman and sloth, the slightest of accords
Between you) to a discourse that could sweep
Aside the barriers commonsense affords
So as to hold us back from such a leap
And maybe point us gradually towards
The moral shift envisaged, then repressed
With every step-change in the techno-sphere
Since Gutenberg and Caxton.
There’s a test
Of this, you know, in all the ways that we’re
Now finding to get over having messed
Things up so often, ways that interfere
With any ‘natural course of things’ but wrest
Salvation from disaster when they steer
Us clear, by text or email, from the sort
Of trouble we’ve got into when the talk
Goes wrong. Then all our good intent seems caught
In some perverse compulsion we can’t chalk
Up to experience until we’re taught
At last, prosthetically, to walk the walk
On networks that won’t bring us up far short
Of home through natural tendency to fork
Off without warning into regions flagged
&n
bsp; ‘Danger ahead’. Thus broadband brings the means
To stop those words of ours from getting snagged
By all the speech-mishaps that conjure scenes
Of chaos come again.
So if it sagged,
Or seemed to, that mute converse of your genes
And his across the distance custom tagged
Uncrossable let’s rather switch routines,
Take Hedy’s lead, and tell ourselves instead
How fine, in truth, the line that separates
All selves and others, you and I, those bred
Up to conceive of human-only traits
As our pure essence and those firmly wed
To a bald naturalism that narrates
The tale from Darwin and takes it as read
That no such human essence correlates
With what’s beyond all serious doubt revealed
By our best knowledge. I derive from this,
Along with other lessons from her field
Of second choice, the thought that we shall miss
Our last, best chance of knowing what’s concealed
Within the maybe crossable abyss
Between divergent life-worlds if we wield
The sceptic’s ancient privilege and kiss
Goodbye to the idea of a domain
Where, even though – or just because – it’s shut,
As Blake and other mystics might maintain,
To our poor senses five, still there’s a glut
Of other information that our brain
(Let’s not resort to talk of soul or gut)
Has its own ways to process.
This makes plain
How finding sloth-talk nonsense tends to cut
Out fully nine tenths of what constitutes
Our world as habitable by the sorts
Of creature, like ourselves, whom it best suits
And, more than that, whom everything exhorts –
All creaturely and human attributes –
Not to give in when species-difference thwarts
Our overtures. Let’s grant that this refutes
The confident sloth-whisperer who purports
To shrink that distance to the point where it’s
A matter simply of their tuning in
To Sloth FM and tuning out the blitz
Of static or the message-scrambling din
That rules when Radio Anthropos transmits
Its all-subduing call for law of kin
To override whatever else befits
Us fellow-creatures, sloth or hominin,
For fellowship. No point pretending that’s
All it involves, some voluntary switch
Of world-views or of psychic habitats
That lets us jump the species-gap and ditch
Our basic forms of life like acrobats
Defying gravity.
Hence the odd glitch
Or even (if we heed their caveats)
Those large-scale miscommunications which
The linguists and ethnologists so prize
As giving them a splendid chance to rub
Our noses in the sense-abyss that lies,
So far as we can know, right at the nub
Of every human bid to fraternize
By verbal means. Small chance, then, for those sub-
(Or supra-)verbal efforts to surmise
How else one might construe the seeming snub
Delivered, say, despite your silent plea
For some small evidence that his world-scheme
Has room for you, by every sign that he,
The pendent sloth, has no desire to team
Up with that frantic creature he can see
Presuming to invade his tranquil dream
Of solitude and steal the magic key
To his benign yet border-sealed regime
Of letting-be.
Yet you believed, and I
Believe you, that some message got across
Between the two of you and might apply
To you and me (no doubt the hopeful gloss
I’ve had in mind all through) as we defy
The odds those sceptics place on any toss
Of dice by which we contact-hopers try
To beat the odds. Worth risking some small loss
Of face if there’s a chance we might, us two
Chance-coupled conspecifics, hitch a lift
On Hedy’s neat idea for making do
With all those crowded airwaves that so miffed
The channel-fixers trusting to get through
On their set frequency. Go with the drift,
It says, till there may come, out of the blue,
A long-awaited momentary shift
Of signal strength that shows it’s meant for you,
And you alone, without the need to sift
Or search for some authenticating clue
To source and sender. That’s the way he sniffed
You out, I guess, sloth-fashion while I drew
Fresh courage from reflecting how your swift
Response to that trans-species rendezvous
Might count my life-world well within its gift.
DYLANELLE: THE GROUCHO VIEW
People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within. (Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, On Grief and Grieving)
Instead of encountering a pool of reflective calm she found herself interviewing ‘one of the angriest, most difficult people I have ever met’ . . . . Kübler-Ross had entered the sixth and final stage of dyng: rage at God for NOT letting her die . . . . She could only rage against the ‘staying’ of the light. (Adam Mars-Jones, ‘Chop, Chop, Chop’, The London Review of Books, 21st January 2016, p. 8)
But, of course, the opposite is also true. (Groucho Marx)
Rage, rage against the staying of the light.
Let’s not deny it: Dylan loved his Dad,
But let’s admit that Groucho got it right.
The Groucho version: psych Dad up to fight
Death tooth and nail until things get too bad,
But then rage at the staying of the light.
His larger point: for every truth you cite
There’s one, flat contrary, that makes you add
A mental note that Groucho got it right.
Then going gentle into that good night
May seem a kindlier way than going mad
With rage against the staying of the light.
Let’s not blame Dr. Kübler-Ross, despite
The moribund suspecting they’ve been had.
Let’s just admit that Groucho got it right.
Still, her late temper-tantrums do invite
The thought that Thomas Junior was a tad
Too keen to urge the staying of the light.
Quite likely Dad just hoped to expedite
The final scene and yearned to tell his lad
How that wise jest of Groucho got it right.
Perhaps his one plea, ‘there on the sad height’,
Was: spare me this, your conjuring of sad
Refrains from that dread staying of the light.
For maybe those same rhymes that winged the flight
Of Dylan’s verse then spawned its myriad
Ways of repeating: Groucho got it right;
Rage, rage against the staying of the light.
AN ANCIENT QUARREL
There is an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry, of which there are many proofs, such as the saying of “the yelping hound howling at her lord,” or of one “mighty in the vain talk of fools.”…Notwithstanding this, let us assure our sweet friend and the sister arts of imitation that if she will only prove her title to exist in a well-ordered State we shall be delighted to receive her—we are very conscious of her charms; but we may not on that account betray the truth.
—Plato, The Republic, Book X
Reader, beware: this poem has designs
On you, your thinking, everything you take
As read when you proceed along the lines
Laid down by truth and logic. It can make
No sense at all if intellect confines
Its blessing to those texts that never shake
Thought’s empire in a way that undermines
Linguistic order merely for the sake
Of rhyme and meter. Metaphors condense
Some dubious proposition, while the sound
Is not so much “an echo to the sense”
As what permits verse-music to confound
All governance of reason or dispense
With logic till the fallacies abound,
Tropes multiply in error’s self-defence,
And so we finish up with Ezra Pound
Still ranting in his cage. Let’s not deny
The evidence: take Eliot, Pound and Yeats,
Plus poet Lawrence, then consider why
The life-and-times stuff always complicates
The issue at some crucial point whereby
Their ranking with the literary greats
Strikes us as somehow ethically awry
Unless indeed the poet’s mind creates,
As Eliot said, works that should bear no trace
Of the mere human being whose travails
Were their apparent theme. What if the case
Looks bad for those high modernists, yet fails
To generalise? Just take another base-
Line choice of poets and you’ll find the scales
May tip the other way if those you place
As counterweights are not (let’s say) all males
With sexual hang-ups, all completely sold
On fascist politics, or all crack-brained
Enough to need some mythic scheme to hold
Their art and life together. Yet what’s gained
By this defensive move, if truth be told,
Makes no great odds against the old, deep-grained
Mistrust that’s kept the boundaries patrolled
From Plato down and zealously contained
For the Tempus-Fugitives Page 12
