A Poem To Chew On

On Having Read Ishion Hutchinson’s “The Old Professor’s Book”

                 [The New Yorker, September 17, 2018, p. 37]

I suppose I come to this as

Another winnowed out professor, well aware

Of his abuses but never quite ready to

Accept those aspired truths, which remain stilled

In those scarred minds incised by his espousals.

For no matter how we strugglers at

The wheel of the art may boast of “how

To align poetry with truth” we know, from

The certainty of our travail, the inevitable

Chagrin awaiting our efforts, the reader’s frown.

The struggle, honestly, is whether to be, rather

Than only to know—the dynamo creating “the

Voltage of self-alienating poetry,” in fact, the discovery

Behind the voice of the self-alienating mea culpa in Browning’s

Narrator’s tale of the grammarian, the funeral, not the burial.

And so, this challenging poem, worthy as well, brings

Us back to that grammarian’s funeral—that is ours,

Imminent and effectual—for our death matters only

So far as we are certain that our life had significance, had

The truth of living, not only knowing, but also weeping, perhaps, for all.