Whatever truth these two people embody--
and again, I stress that it is the truth
that I most respect in any that I have found in human beings
so far--
they also have something else, which I respect but cannot
share, an unawareness of their importance.
They're in some way symbolic beings.
And part of their importance to me
is that they don't quite know how important they
are, what they stand for, what they're
doing what they are custodians of nor it seems are they aware.
But who are I or who was anyone to say
are they aware of the actual facts of their ordeal,
of the conditions in which one is
expected to undergo one's life?
And this to this extent I can share it like all of us
must but mostly we are unaware of the stages of the ordeal--
we are born, we grow up, we mature,
we love, we reproduce, we fight, we die,
always dying is the end of the experiment.
And we must put this knowledge away from us,
postpone it if we are to live in a way which is not
intolerable except for certain moments
when the process in which we are involved presents itself to us
directly exactly as what it is and we surprise ourselves
as what we are.
And this kind of sacramental moment
has led me on many occasions to be more aware of what
is going on and to, of course, write poems
about reality as cost in these nodal points.
And I'm going to read a few short poems of this kind.
The first is called "Chrysalides."
It concerns that curious moment-- it
was my first, as I remember my first personal contact
with the opponent, the process, the ordeal, whatever
one wishes to call us.
At a point after finishing high school
or the equivalent of high school as it was in Ireland--
secondary-- one has finished basic education,
one hasn't quite begun to live, one
hasn't begun to earn one's keep, one is not quite grown up
but is no longer a child.
It is a curious intermediate pause
in life characterized by a sort of lavishness hesitancy.
And in the image of the title of the poem "Chrysalides"
it is I see it as the final stage of the growth
of the personality.
We are in the chrysalis stage at this point
just before the chrysalis breaks open to reveal the final state
of the personality.
"Our last free summer we mooned about at odd hours
pedaling slowly through country towns,
stopping to eat chocolate and fruit, tracing of the galleries
on the map.
At night we watched in the barn to the lurch
of melodious music, the crunching boots of countrymen
huge and weightless as their shadows
twirling and leaping over the yellow concrete.
Sleeping too little or too much we awoke at noon
and were received with womanly mockery
into the kitchen like calves poking our faces
in with enormous hunger.
Daily we strapped our saddle bags
and went to experience a tolerance we shall never
know again.
Confusing for the last time for example,
the lysate and the familiar.
Our instinct blurred with change, a strange wakefulness
sapped our energies and dulled our slow beating
hearts to the extremes of feeling insensitive or light
to the unique succession of our youthful midnight
when by a window ablaze softly with the virgin moon,
dry scones, and jugs of milk awaited us in the dark.
Or to lasting horror, a wedding slight of ants spawning
to its death, a mute perspiration
glistening like drops of copper agonized in our path."