Thalia: Muse of Comedy
for Janey McCafferty
The stage constructed so a spotlight
would pinpoint the solitary mouth: lips
and teeth splayed in an opening stitched
in seamless black fabric that made a wall
before Billie Whitelaw, hidden from sight
and bound in harness to bear the hour-long
cyclone of words. Beckett's monologue
cost her dearly in spasms and cramps,
myriad bruises, even blistered hands
from gripping the rack. Yet she'd laugh
to talk of Not I, how the maestro writhed
at infelicities in delivery, if a pause went awry
as the voice let elide semi-colon or dash
or mistook one for another, god forbid.
I thought of you as I heard her speak,
though I've heard your voice less than
ten times. Pen pal, foreign correspondent
across years and miles, flight
of fancy gives you the mouth and mind
of the unseen actress behind that screen.
Known and adored by handwritten scores,
a hundred airborne letters that might
just as well have gone astray as kites
let swirl and glide at the outer stretch
of twine sometimes vanish
into nothing but invisible sky. In the mail
your frequent letter arrived with bright
stamps and blurred postmark, as though
funneled by miraculous chute or carried
quick by clever Hermes, if not Cupid. Here,
see the box of epistles from a decade,
a comedy of correspondences we did
and did not share in person, the hilarity
of mishaps and breakthroughs, days and nights
recorded in scribbled running account
one Scorpio to another, alter egos elusive
as a child's imagined elf. But, wait: could two
confidantes so faithful as doppelgängers
survive the climax of meeting face to face,
or would both mirrors shatter at the sight,
collision of each parallel universe
with its ineluctable match, its mate?
No more likely, at the instant
of greeting, we'd split with glee in spite
of exaltation, our solemnity as slight
as a streak of ink on unlined foolscap.
In truth, I'm not sure we could tolerate
the surprise: side by side, with spouse and child.
If I'd never learned that antique habit, to write
down my thoughts and dreads and secret pursuits
then seal them up in an envelope to fly by hook
or crook through slots and chambers, down
conveyor belts and ramps, up elevators
and into mailbags, I'd never have known
this spring of indispensable laughter, an ally
inside me, friend fashioned of light.
would pinpoint the solitary mouth: lips
and teeth splayed in an opening stitched
in seamless black fabric that made a wall
before Billie Whitelaw, hidden from sight
and bound in harness to bear the hour-long
cyclone of words. Beckett's monologue
cost her dearly in spasms and cramps,
myriad bruises, even blistered hands
from gripping the rack. Yet she'd laugh
to talk of Not I, how the maestro writhed
at infelicities in delivery, if a pause went awry
as the voice let elide semi-colon or dash
or mistook one for another, god forbid.
I thought of you as I heard her speak,
though I've heard your voice less than
ten times. Pen pal, foreign correspondent
across years and miles, flight
of fancy gives you the mouth and mind
of the unseen actress behind that screen.
Known and adored by handwritten scores,
a hundred airborne letters that might
just as well have gone astray as kites
let swirl and glide at the outer stretch
of twine sometimes vanish
into nothing but invisible sky. In the mail
your frequent letter arrived with bright
stamps and blurred postmark, as though
funneled by miraculous chute or carried
quick by clever Hermes, if not Cupid. Here,
see the box of epistles from a decade,
a comedy of correspondences we did
and did not share in person, the hilarity
of mishaps and breakthroughs, days and nights
recorded in scribbled running account
one Scorpio to another, alter egos elusive
as a child's imagined elf. But, wait: could two
confidantes so faithful as doppelgängers
survive the climax of meeting face to face,
or would both mirrors shatter at the sight,
collision of each parallel universe
with its ineluctable match, its mate?
No more likely, at the instant
of greeting, we'd split with glee in spite
of exaltation, our solemnity as slight
as a streak of ink on unlined foolscap.
In truth, I'm not sure we could tolerate
the surprise: side by side, with spouse and child.
If I'd never learned that antique habit, to write
down my thoughts and dreads and secret pursuits
then seal them up in an envelope to fly by hook
or crook through slots and chambers, down
conveyor belts and ramps, up elevators
and into mailbags, I'd never have known
this spring of indispensable laughter, an ally
inside me, friend fashioned of light.
This poem appears in a cycle of poems utilizing the names and imagery of the muses from Greek mythology, published in Jim Schley's chapbook One Another (available from Chapiteau Press) |
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