Deep Structure Comedy: The Poems, Canto One

Deep Structure Comedy: the Poems -

Canto One

by Kevin Jon Johnson

 Text Copyright © 2018

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

 

Prologue

Sometimes the implication sits away from the constant gaze and sometimes accidents accrue in the forfeit of pleasure; here the cause is not always kind to the effect, and the effect is not always true to the cause. Between wish, and the consummation of wish lays external will, and the vagaries of human perception; the ‘what is’ of this equation is always debatable, and when we supply answers to our whys, lies accrete as firmly as truths in the constellation of belief. This holds as true for self-knowledge, as it does for an understanding of others: we should find room for forgiveness.

The majority of these poems have been previously published in the Icelandic Canadian magazine; the Icelandic Connection magazine; Lögberg-Heimskringla newspaper, or in my published autobiographic novel of the same name, Deep Structure Comedy – 2004 by PublishAmerica.

Proem: Fear and Trembling

A father of Faith once took his trembling son,

urgently upon command of God,

in filial devotion against filial succession

as somber sacrifice upon Mount Moriah;

so sinful Abraham raised the binding knife,

concerted in his saddest piety,

but from the trial God permitted Grace:

the father and the son returned rejoicing;

the almost ended family would have sons.

Much later Michael Kierkegaard cursed God

from high upon a hill on Jutland heath,

and sinned in primal ways with kindred blood

before the binding vows of bride and groom;

the first and last of seven children lived.

The youngest son, Søren, was sacrificed

within a well of deep and caustic thought,

but early, lacking faith, he lost his love –

a sacrifice to keep her from their fate,

but from the trial God permitted Grace:

the son in won posterity rejoices.

So God would sacrifice another son to Fear:

a father’s son, of little sin, possessed,

made deep on insane heaths,

but strengthened in tenacious faith –

like Sæmund with his book upon the seal.

The games of Satan permeate the test,

but true as Job, his virtue turned to love;

the Adversary lost the wager laid,

as he has lost in instances before.

And from the trial God permitted Grace,

the Adversary’s foe is paid with love:

muliebrity enrobed in Light and lace –

a not too common comedy resolved.

A Valentine

The past is never finished for us now,

And all the shadows, eaves and sunshine were and are

A constant friend or misery to us who know

Both passions passibly: the better is well known

And is like you: a gracefulness that’s softened by demure,

And colour that is grafted to a view, that without beauty

Would seem as bleak as barrows on a vitiated moor.

So Angel, never should you think that by your passing you

Divested me, and left me worse, untended by some good,

To dress my poverty in disrespect, to keep me from

The ravages of night. You pass in surest concord with a verb:

That gives a sentence meaning and recourse to some construction

Higher than itself; so by your being, you improve a noun;

Or many such, and me of many one.

Helgi*

Faith is efficacious,

And talent cannot grow without a sun,

But once there was a time

When sorrow took a father’s legacy,

And tears could not enforce a solitude.

Some knew a hell that others only dream:

Where pleasure rots at foot of agony;

And hope lays blet with sorrow.

But hell is lesser hell by father’s faith

That even pain may terminate in joy,

And pleasure breathe instead of misery.

A sufferer may only need one friend:

A father’s faith, to make success of doom. 

*Helgi is the name of my father. 

Niobid

Her green eye glanced across the flowered field,

And she spread her bright pink skirt upon a mound;

Her lithe fingers drew a feckless auburn curl

Away from her sparsely freckled face,

And a smile stole, almost imperceptibly,

Across her blood red lips, as she lay her book

In the deep chartreuse grass;

She had no fear for winter: it would come.

Inspired by some deep, unfounded joy

She broke the silence of the sunny day

With lusty, raucous laughter,

And closed her eyes in seeming embassy

To sleep. A flock of brown pelicans flew

Languidly in arcs and circles above

The distant lake, and now a warm wind

Swept the lank willows and stout oaks.

Her firm young breasts heaved to heaven

With her breath, and pellucid beads of sweat

Burgeoned on her tanning skin:

How many passions she would play and waste

Against the target of her enviable beauty

In the lust and yearning of wanton youth

She thought upon with joy.

Her hope was not inviolate, and a black

Arrow pierced her breast, and then

Her tender heart; her pulse quickened and like

A frightened fawn, she scrambled through

The thick and tangled grass, before death

Descended on her fragile life, unripe

And unsatisfied:

Niobe’s boast was dead.

Valentine

Is this a sequel, or a pristine script

Brought to bargain friendship on this day

Again, and certainly no surer text

To posit as a sinecure for love?

I have already erred in saying this;

For love may lose its merit and may seem

A driving word, whose motive is iniquitous

And thin; for this you doubt. My praise

And dull effusion have been lost,

And discipline is shoveled out with dust:

My heat exhausted, and energies extinct

As perfect candour mitigates with sin.

Forget the blemish and corruption of

Our love, and coalesce you vision with

The greater values tested in our age:

Of faith, compassion, less sensual concern,

And make me still a conscript to your good,

A neuter noun with nothing to convey,

But passion for a verb which is reserved.

The truth of this lays somewhere in between;

As perfect love for us could never be.

Intercession

*division: the word ‘division’ used here is Latin for sex.

I come to you for some division dear,

As separates the thesis from the rest;

To use the sonnet so to commandeer

A metaphor complacent with this test

Which is to make a harmony from that

Which is divided, willing and extant.

Together then, we make a better match,

Than constituted in ourselves, we can;

For it is still impossible, we think,

In antithesis or concinnity,

To forge in solitude a better link,

Than we together can in amity.

So teach me better than division can,

A woman’s value to a cogent man.

Deceit

Desire subtly insinuates, in no descant with evil,

Speaking love, to find a home for poverty

In a warm rhythm, and concinnity of form

Which draws with such efficacy my need,

As water from a well, whose table shall

Not lower for a drought, or yet your arm

Grow weary in a task that brings us pleasure now,

And later, for posterity we hope, a child.

I have eaten the crumbs of abstinence

Where greatest pleasure could be endorsed

In full, as recompense for strangled venery:

The offers made, I have disdained the use

In loyalty to some incarnate you

Where I can find a constant remedy

In self completion in a love with you

That offers pleasure for a threnody.

The Fall of a Sparrow

Change what you can change, the rest

Learn to forget. The world is vast, most foreign to

Our love; its sufferings will pass without our tears,

For only closest sorrows are endeared.

A harmless sparrow in the coming Fall

Departed quickly from its love and life:

A gentle thing, not gently indisposed;

For most, its death would not engender strife;

It earned no tears, their tears already sold

At immolations of more kindred souls,

Yet, little sparrow, taken in your flight

From liberty in time to timeless death

Your suppleness distorted in your plight,

And feathers moulted with your dying breath:

My sadness can extend even to you

Whose Providence is small to human things.

You were beloved of some, unknown to most,

Accounted almost nothing but for this:

A testament to your small, awkward death

Which passed so quickly, counter to my wish.

Your song is past, your children may well starve:

A tragedy so small in one so large.

A Vow

My suffering reigns like a tyrant still,

Who will not vanquish his resistless strife,

And if he ever extricates my will,

Then I will never know you as my wife.

The dust and fury welter in a pool,

And still the sun looms hazy in the sky;

But to each fallen, there will come renewal,

And nothing comes to those who will not try.

The future is not ours to try and tell,

And yet my need will have a promised end:

For I will buy the things that you will sell,

And borrow what in penury you lend.

Our suffering shall end, and this is how:

When you forsake virginity and vow.

A Sonnet for a Lady

Each conflict should a resolution find,

And tragedy to comedy renew,

And beauty find the company of kind

So pleasure could in harmony accrue.

To what should I your excellence compare

Which in my vapid art still stands aloof?

And if I ever demonstrate despair,

Then I shall only garner your reproof.

And yet I think you constitute a state

Of perfect candour married with restraint,

Which time could not devalue or degrade,

Or I in metred lines could hope to paint.

Your beauty brings a sum that I would add,

To my intention, which is nothing bad.

Reproduction

When we should both decline into our age

What prospect would prove dearer to us both,

That in those days that death should near us keep

Some issue of ours still our image kept?

And us, by them, could our remembrance find,

And they by theirs on Earth perpetual,

For we are not so soon to go extinct.

If God could see some justice for us both,

And from our love, which is an infant still,

A child, or two, or maybe more could come.

So, from the warm adventure that I find,

We could both reconstitute our kind.

Opulence

In my pain, I still survey your worth,

And put a value in your constancy,

Less fleeting than the minutes that I pass,

And richer than a jungle or a church.

Be true to me, and we together shall

All vestige of this modesty destroy,

When sorrow takes the ivy from her hair,

And pleasure parts the linen on our bed.

My sick complaints and legacy of woe

Will vanish like a spectre to its grave

When I can practice on your gracious form

The love that to an issue may renew;

Or lacking that, at least afford us joy,

As faith in faith we coalesce as one

And turn all barren terms into the earth.

My love for you may be considered dear,

More dear than wealth, and burdened less by fear.

A Restitution

Do not consider all your pains lie spent

Upon a hope who misconstrues your gifts,

And puts his scepter into other clefts

While you from your satiety are kept.

You look upon the calendar and sigh

That I from you some distance must require

And long for restitution on the day

When love can give your diligence a pause,

And feed the eye of inquiry with threads

That you shall weave into a tapestry

To document the pleasures in your stead.

You were made for love, and you shall find

That I upon your patience will prove kind.

A Fresh Lament

My talent now has hastened to lament

And sings of dirges not transfigurement.

The dark and sullen passages of fear

Where sick Despair inveighs against his fate,

And cherished hopes in execration waste

Is all the scenery my mind pursues:

A wizened hag in desolation weeps,

And all the blossoms scramble in the breeze;

Frustration sits in sombre rectitude

Recounting all her miseries and pains.

And Service sits, a barren, wasted thing

That cannot sell or barter what he is.

To such as me, my pleasure can be few,

But then I hope, and that is still for you.

No Kingdom Then

Your ears have not consumed a dozen words,

But my untimid testament in verse

To stubborn or to stolid must be heard

And maidens, such as Semele, must burn.

You think to your deceit I am a thrall:

A beggar seeking residence for will

Within the warm investment of your hall

Which has not half the space to foot the bill.

I stipulate no price, for you are bought

And still my sceptre shall not find your rule,

Which many with much interest have sought

To satisfy their state, when I seemed cruel.

Forget the kingdom then that I espouse

And seek to grow your crop without a plough.

Chimera

You’ll say my numbers are all rank and mean,

And not a mirror to my better Muse,

But that condition, dear, is due to truth

Who has not granted words to limit you.

Perfection is a word that I would use

But it’s abstract, and you, in part, concrete.

As Plato knew, this poet must complain

That you, an avatar, must compromise a truth,

And yet I think that Plato erred in this

For you I love beyond an abstract form,

As imperfect and mortal as you are

And capable of errors because flesh –

These flaws endear you better than their want

For from perfection I have long since fallen.

You are perfection put in mortal mould –

A fairer beauty I cannot behold.