For the Tempus-Fugitives

by Christopher Norris

  To gain safe entrance to the other place,

  That tranquil “corner of some foreign field.” Here they

  Can act out their heroics in a space

  Reserved for poetasters who obey,

  Like him, the rule: let prosody outface

  All such threats to its sacrosanct domain

  As might come from a poetry that veers

  Rhyme-wise and metrically against the grain,

  As also from the moral shift of gears

  Whereby those two condemned the whole insane

  Scenario where escalating fears

  On both sides conjured up the very bane

  Both sides made war on. For indeed the spheres

  Where warmongers and lyric warblers dwell

  Are not so far apart as might be thought

  Since, after all, the stories both lots tell

  By popular request are of the sort

  That help conceal whatever glimpse of hell

  Might otherwise poke through and so cut short

  Those stirring tales with accents that rebel

  Against the martial beat. If they distort

  The victor’s view of things it’s by the kind

  Of dislocating jolt that shocks the old-

  School prosodists as much as those who find

  The devil’s hand in all that breaks the mould

  Of custom or explodes the lies that bind

  Bad poets to bad causes. These take hold

  Through formulas that line us up behind

  Their source in myths or meters tight-controlled

  By emanations of the Nietzschean Will-

  To-Power whose long dissimulated drive

  Adopts more subtly muted forms until

  It spawns those calls-to-slaughter that contrive

  To sound like elegies, or tales that thrill

  The warrior nerve yet whose narrators strive

  To couch them in such tones as might instil

  No craving more malign than to revive

  Time-honoured pieties. We may expect

  This age-old ruse itself to undergo

  Revivals on the principle that Brecht

  Spelled out with grim precision: that although

  They’d stood up, killed the bastard, and so checked

  One Hitler in his tracks, still they should know

  That all their hopes of progress might be wrecked

  The next time round. Brecht’s closing comments go

  More snappily: that even now “the bitch

  That bore him is in heat again,” so they’d

  Best not allow this latest hard-won switch

  Of fortunes to annul the gains they’d made

  By letting false assurances bewitch

  Their wiser minds. That’s roughly what’s conveyed

  By Owen’s off-key rhymes that queer the pitch

  For anyone whose aural nerves are frayed

  When poets heed Brecht’s lesson and refuse

  The Brookean way of melding perfect rhymes

  With classic verse-forms. It’s a mode that woos

  The unresisting reader and so primes

  The violence masked by all those strict taboos

  That bid state-chroniclers ignore state-crimes

  Or teach tame versifiers how to schmooze

  The regnant powers by any style that chimes

  With regnant tastes. Yet Brecht’s point still applies

  When free-verse zealots tout a final break

  With rhyme and meter since they’d otherwise

  (They think) be fobbing readers off with fake

  Emotions like the old-time poet guys

  Who wrote such stuff. In which case better take

  The creed on board full-strength and improvise,

  Like true verse-liberators, ways to make

  A virtue of relinquishing control

  And, above all, not adding to the pile

  Of well-formed verbal icons. So the sole

  Constraint you’ll need to have in mind—since style

  Comes down to what permits an easy stroll

  Through genial themes—is how best to beguile

  The passive reader who’s assigned a role

  With no allowance for such versatile

  Capacities as once required a keen

  And practised ear. Such were the skills that went

  Into that amicable strife between

  Speech-rhythms and how meter would accent

  The poet’s vocables had they not been

  Still part-immersed within the element

  Of ordinary speech that had them mean,

  Up to a point, what those words would have meant

  In plain-prose talk. Yet—some would say—beyond

  That point the poem enters realms unknown

  To all save some few readers who respond

  In ways that verbal acumen alone

  Could scarcely grasp. At least they won’t be conned,

  Those vers-libristes, by any jumped-up tone

  That strives to transcendentalize the bond

  Of sound and sense, so leaving sceptics prone

  To seek salvation in a cult of free-

  Form verse that yokes its star to the eclipse

  Of formal structure since its apogee

  Comes often when a martial fervour grips

  The poets and induces them to see

  No merit but in poetry that whips

  Up kindred sentiments. For them, the key

  To truth in verse is that which promptly tips

  The reader off that here we have a case

  Of skilled technique so splendidly at one

  With its high theme that every verbal grace

  Conspires to spin the yarn routinely spun

  By poets keen to show their public face

  To best advantage through a lengthy run

  Of formal features perfectly in place.

  Whence their late-comers’ stake in work begun

  In that primordial tryst of sound and sense

  Through which, as Benjamin obscurely said,

  Adam once had the genius to condense

  Kind-fixing essences in names that led

  Him, first and last among us, to dispense

  With l’arbitraire du signe and instead

  Bestow God’s signatures. Thus would commence

  The poets’ endless quest for what might wed

  Sound, sense and reference in a union blessed

  By the old Cratylist belief that signs

  Might once again reveal themselves possessed

  Of such Adamic power. When this combines

  With lyric feelings of the sort expressed

  In (let’s admit) the most effective lines

  From Brooke’s Grantchester poem—like the rest

  Of those whose martial character defines

  “War poetry” pre-Owen and Sassoon,

  And all too often since—the mixture’s apt

  To stir emotions through an opportune

  Deployment of the language-functions mapped

  By formalists as an almighty boon

  To poets and recruiting-sergeants wrapped

  In words like flags. That’s why the more rough-hewn

  Verse-forms and rhythms nowadays adapt

  So readily to what the ear perceives

  As beauty’s crying need to give the beast

  Its chance, or anyway be sure it leaves

  Some space where verse-disorder can at least

  Find elbow-room. That’s also why what “heaves

  The heart into the mouth”—what old Lear ceased

  To credit far too late—is that which weaves

  A story-line whose mob-appeal’s increased

  Ten-fold by those well-practised verse techniques

  Which prompt the disaffected to resist

  Their suasive force by all the Brechtian tweaks

  Of formal structure that contrive to twist
<
br />   The sense around and skew whatever seeks

  To reinforce the customary gist

  Of martial oratory with verse that speaks

  Only those noble lies that serve as grist

  To some warmonger’s mill. And yet, and yet,

  How should we hope to figure out what’s true

  In poetry, or even—just to let

  The Larkin qualifier have its due—

  Not wholly untrue, if the meter’s set

  At zero deviance from what will do

  In daily chatter? Then it’s a safe bet

  That, since such attributes are now taboo,

  All remnant rhymes or half-rhymes will be held

  Just chance events, or put down to some sad

  Since past-fixated practice, or expelled

  From poet-school as witnessing a bad

  Since rhyme-fixated ear. Though they rebelled,

  Those anti-prosodists, against what had

  By then such false allure as might have quelled

  Those poets’ songs at source or sent them mad

  Through formal servitude, still they’d have hit

  A truer key-note if they’d picked the route

  That led to Owen’s off-rhymes as the grit

  In his best pearls, or chosen to permute

  The rhyme-rules so as each time to commit

  A well-judged breach of concord and so suit

  Medium to message in an age unfit

  For ampler harmonies. Let’s not impute

  Some failure of poetic nerve or lapse

  Into false consciousness should poets opt

  To use verse-forms that, though they may set traps

  For less attentive readers, might have stopped

  Those readers, plus some poets—Brooke perhaps—

  From doing war-work elegantly propped

  By classic rhyme and meter. If this taps

  A formal drive we moderns should have swapped

  For manners less amenable, that’s not

  To play Cassandra to the greatest gift

  That rhyme and meter bring with them, like plot

  In fiction, one that promises to lift

  The curse of mythic claims to know the lot

  Back to year zero then down through each shift

  In Being’s tone. Rather, they help us spot

  The sorts of claim where Being is likelier miffed

  At such portentous talk but also those

  Where an off-rhyme or rhythmic twist athwart

  The metric pulse conveys to one who knows

  How poems work that this must be the sort

  Of verse, like Owen’s, to help diagnose

  What shock first cracked rhyme’s bell were we but taught

  Such hermeneutic tact as might disclose

  Where things went wrong. The lessons here, in short:

  Watch out when rhyme’s seduction starts to lead

  The mind on etymo-poetic tracks

  Since that’s where (vide Heidegger) there breed

  Monsters in plenty. Still we should relax

  The veto just so far as to concede

  How verse-forms might not merely fill the cracks

  In culture’s edifice but meet a need

  Unmet by any poetry that lacks

  A sense of rhyme’s beneficence or feel

  For meter’s gift to thought. Else it’s as if

  We took the Schoenberg line as a done deal,

  Made a fixed rule of his high-profile tiff

  With tonal harmony, and set our seal

  Of musical approval on no riff

  Or note-row that betrayed a flagging zeal

  For atonality. So there’s a whiff

  Of self-denying ordinance or sheer

  Perversity about the drive against

  Those formal features that, vers-libristes fear,

  Will leave the realm of poetry so fenced

  Around with props and outworks that to clear

  Them off’s the Sisyphean task commenced

  Each time from scratch by those at the frontier

  Where art has to negotiate its tensed

  Encounter with Apollo. Thus what tends

  To shield it from exposure to the “air

  Of a new planet” (Schoenberg) and so lends

  Fresh courage to the tribe of derrière-

  Gardistes is just what sundry later trends

  Of free verse helped to propagate since they’re

  Intent on smoothing out all that offends

  A cautious ear and mind whose only care

  Is not to interact in risky ways

  That might expose their partnership to some

  Full-scale dérèglement. It’s here rhyme plays

  Its duplex role through sound-effects that come

  Most often as the tribute music pays

  To speech in a well-tuned sensorium

  But sometimes, as in Owen, out-of-phase

  With any vibes remotely tuned to drum

  Up sentiments in that heroic vein

  That Plato said defined the only mode

  Of music fit to hear. The vocal grain

  Of rhyme, once brushed against, may then encode

  Resistance to the grand-heroic strain

  Of thought or feeling with a force that’s owed

  To its still pitching camp on rhyme’s terrain

  Now mined with off-rhymes ready to explode.

  By this stage, reader, you’ll be quick to catch

  Me out in having taken pains to rhyme

  Ear-charmingly, and making sure to match

  Speech-stress with metric pulse, while all the time

  Admonishing that poets not attach

  Such weight to mere effects of verbal chime

  Or fluent verse-technique. Let me dispatch

  That point with this tu quoque: think what I’m

  Essaying here, then think of what they did

  In verse, the Owens and Sassoons, to stave

  Off horrors such that pity might forbid

  Some Dante redivivus to engrave

  Their truth in words that opened wide the lid

  On sufferings worse than even God could crave,

  That stoker of infernos. It’s the quid

  Pro quo of verse-redemption that they save,

  Those poets, from co-option by the force

  Of habit, usage, rhythm, rhyme, or all

  Thought-regimens that coax us to endorse

  The way things are. These readily enthral

  Our morals, like our language, to some source

  Of wisdom or authority on call

  When needed since, with custom’s late divorce

  From conscience, every case is apt to fall

  Under some code or other. So it’s crass

  (Forgive me, reader) to suppose my verse

  Must risk a flat performative impasse

  Should it flunk Conrad’s dictum to “immerse

  In the destructive element,” amass

  The bitter truths accrued from Adam’s curse

  To Auden’s “history may say alas,”

  And through discordia concors then disburse

  Scant reparation. Hence the tribute paid

  By Owen’s ars poetica to both

  The savagery those clashing rhymes portrayed

  And the farewell to it (“My hands were loath

  And cold”). Most likely a denouement they’d

  Reject, the pacifists, since it’s the sloth

  Of sheer war-weariness that’s here displayed

  And not, as might be hoped, the heartfelt troth

  Of one who finds “kill or be killed” at last

  A deathwatch maxim that indeed pertains,

  Like Maxim guns, to a benighted past

  Or kingdom of the blind. That’s why the strains

  Show up in verse-forms not so much recast

  As wrenched to fit what little now remains

  Of their old dig
nity and so hold fast,

  Despite the language-ravaging campaigns

  Of neo-barbarism, to the chance

  That in such broken rhymes there might endure

  Something of Psyche’s strength to look askance

  At each new threat. What vanquishes the pure

  In heart, bloodline or diction may enhance

  That strength and help such hybrid types ensure

  Survival through the half-averted glance

  That joins with subtlest mindset to secure

  Just the apotropaic power required

  To ward off swarming horrors from the sleep

  Of reason. Better then it not get tired

  For lack of formal exercise to keep

  On the qui vive against those long-expired

  Verse-genres now retailing on the cheap,

  Yet also have its rhythmic nerve-ends fired

  And its imagination take a leap

  Not just when subject to the usual sorts

  Of poet-prompt but at the kinds that bare

  A nerve so raw that rhyme itself contorts

  Into strange couplings that may seem to share

  No more with old ideas of what comports

  With what than we’ve good warrant to compare

  Wars new and old. And so it self-aborts,

  Old rhyme, or else attempts to self-repair

  Only to self-transform into a stun-

  Grenade with pin drawn ready to be thrown

  Back in and finish any work undone

  In war’s long harrowing of the border-zone

  Where rhyme and reason merge. If, then, there’s none

  Of that discordant music in my own

  Traversal it’s because this mother’s son

  Wrote, thankfully, of things he’d never known.

  DAYS

  I tend to take the groundhog view of days,

  Those chronic revenants, but you,

  My darling, wake most mornings and, before

  I’ve time to phrase

  The self-fulfilling thought, undo

  Some catch that kept the door

  Shut tight against all hopes that might erase

  The groundhog loop. For it’s a new

  Day, as you now remind me, and what’s more