Thomas Hardy's Afterwards

Afterwards

When the present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,

  And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,

Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,

  "He was a man who used to notice such things."?

If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid's soundless blink,

  The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight

Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think,

  "To him this must have been a familiar sight."

If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm,

  When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,

One may say, "He strove that such innocent creatures would come to no harm,

  But he could do little for them, and now he is gone."

If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door,

  Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees,

Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,

  "He was one who had an eye for such mysteries."?

And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom,

  And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings,

Till they rise again, as they were a new bell's boom,

  "He hears it not now, but used to notice such things."?

-Thomas Hardy

'Afterwards' comes from Thomas Hardy's volume of poetry Moments of Vision of 1917, when he was 77. The poem was later read at a memorial service after his death ten years later.

It's possible I've read it before, but I don't really remember. It shows up here now because I recently finished Nicholas Jenkins' biography of W. H. Auden's early years in England, The Island. 'Afterwards' was a favorite poem of the teen-aged Auden; he apparently liked it because it emphasized observation of the natural world, hedgehogs travelling furtively over the lawn, dew-fall hawks landing on wind-warped thorns. Though I suspect the general melancholy of the poem appealed to Auden, teenage boy poet, just as much.

(In fact, according to Jenkins, Auden was also reading Thomas Hardy's The Dynasts at the time, Hardy's unperformably long verse drama about the Napoleonic wars. Soldiers and mopery. Maybe Auden was a perfectly normal teenage boy after all?)

Jenkins' book came out in 2024 and definitely got some buzz, (Edward Mendelson: "a Copernican revolution in Auden studies.") I thought it was good, but not necessarily as amazing as that. His father was as important in Auden's life as his mother; given the usual clichés about gay men, this may be a necessary corrective, but since I wasn't all that up on Auden studies anyway... Still if you're interested in Auden, you might very well like it. I learned things.

Hardy's poem is my current memorization project, and, as I'm finding it difficult, I was hoping that typing it in would help. It hasn't seemed to yet. It's got rhyme, it's got meter--those usually help in memorizing. And it's clever about seasons and times of day--that feels like it should help, too. Why is it so difficult? Is it the recondite vocabulary? 'Dewfall', 'outrollings'? Or is it too much holiday season distraction?

European Reading Challenge Wrapup 2024

 

 

Another ERC wrapped. I signed up for the Jet Setter level of five books, and once again surpassed that. Here's the final list:

1.) Stephen Budiansky/Journey to the Edge of Reason  (Austria)

2.) Goethe/Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (Germany)

3.) Konstantin Stanislavski/My Life in Art (Russia)

4.) Virginia Woolf/The Waves (U.K.)

5.) Carlo Levi/Christ Stopped at Eboli (Italy)

6.) Serhiy Zhadan/The Orphanage (Ukraine)

7.) Ana Blandiana/The Architecture of Waves (Romania)

8.) Josef Skvoreçky/The End of Lieutenant Boruvka (Czech Republic)

9.) James Baldwin/Giovanni's Room (France)

10.) Kurban Said/Ali and Nino (Azerbaijan)

11.) Sholem Aleichem/Wandering Stars (Moldova)

12.) J. G. Farrell/Troubles (Ireland)

13.) Kurban Said/The Girl from the Golden Horn (Bosnia)

14.) Tom Reiss/The Orientalist (Turkey)

15.) Henrik Ibsen/Rosmerholm (Norway)

The best countries this year for me were Azerbaijan and Ireland, with Ali and Nino in particular being a real surprise and delight. Troubles was a reread, so I knew the fun I was letting myself in for with that one. This is the first year since I've been doing this challenge (that's since 2018) that there's not a new country on the list, which is a little disappointing, especially since I've got a book set in Slovenia on my reading stack. 

Thanks again to Gilion for hosting! The signup for the new year is here.

Eve L. Ewing's 1919 (#poem)

or does it explode

July 27 was hot, 96 degrees, or fourteen points above normal. It was the culmination of a series of days with high temperatures around 95 degrees, which meant that nerves were strained. (11)

man it was so hot

how hot was it

it was so hot

you could cook an egg

on that big forehead of yours

 

you a lie

 

man i tell you it was so hot

 

how hot

 

it was so hot

i dropped a tomato in the lake

and made campbell's soup

nuh uh

it was so hot

the sun tried to get in the swimming pool

and everybody else had to get out

boy that's hot

who you tellin

that day was so hot

how hot

it was so hot

our dreams laid out on the sidewalk

and said 'never mind, we good'

-Eve L. Ewing

On July 27th, 1919, a race riot broke out in Chicago. The beaches of the south side were de facto segregated, and a seventeen-year-old Black boy strayed too close what was thought of as a White beach. He may have been struck by a stone--stones were thrown--or he may have been afraid to come into the White beach when his strength ran out, but in any case he drowned. The police, on the scene, took no action, and a riot started that engulfed the city. Twenty-three Black people were killed and fifteen White people in addition to numerous injuries and enormous property damage.

In the aftermath, a committee was appointed by the governor of Illinois to investigate; it consisted of six White people and six Black people. They produced a report: The Negro in Chicago, a Study on Race Relations and a Race Riot, that came out in 1922. The report sounds (by the standards of the time) balanced enough; the epigraph to the poem above comes from that report.

Eve L. Ewing is a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, as well as a poet. (She also writes for Marvel Comics!) In the course of her academic research, she was reading the report and was inspired to write this short book of poems in reaction. The title of this poem of course alludes to Langston Hughes' Harlem, sometimes known as A Dream Deferred. ("What happens to a dream deferred?/.../or does it explode?"--in this case it exploded.)

As a Chicagoan, I knew the basic outlines of the story but not as many details as I now know after finishing the book, which also includes a historical overview. I did not know for instance that Mayor Daley (the first Mayor Daley, Richard J.) was likely a rioter, though he refused to talk about it and it was never definitely proven. This is shocking...though also not. He would have been seventeen at the time of the riot.

 

Anyway, a fascinating short volume and one I'm glad my library was able to supply.