For the Tempus-Fugitives

by Christopher Norris

  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