POETS Day! Walter de la Mare

Walter de la Mare; Bertha Georgie Yeats (née Hyde-Lees); William Butler Yeats; unknown woman, by Lady Ottoline Morrell (died 1938) Photo by Lady Ottoline Morrell, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Welcome once again to POETS Day, that wonderous day where we do our best to usher in the weekend, Henry Ford’s greatest creation, a few hours ahead of schedule by embracing the ethos of the day: Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Disassemble, obfuscate, fudge the truth, and gleefully trespass the norms and delicate pieties that preserve our hopefully-durable civilization. Nearly all means are justified by the urge to prematurely escape the bonds of employment and settle in to a friendly neighborhood joint a few hours before even happy hour begins, lay comfortably in the grass at a local park, go for a swim, or God forbid, go for a light jog. It’s your weekend. Do with it as you will, but in homage to the mighty acronym may I suggest setting aside a moment for a little verse? It’s a particularly good way to pass time waiting on friends who may not run as roughshod over the delicate pieties and were not as successful as you were in engineering an early exit.

Last night I was reading an essay by C.S. Lewis called “On Stories.” The subject matter is pretty self-explanatory, but Lewis’ perspective is always welcome except for the part in the essay where he writes “An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only,” which I tend to do with most novels excepting all but the rarest standouts (so far at least.)

He touches quite a bit on separating story from action or excitement, noting that the fun of Jack and the Giant Killer doesn’t come from the hero avoiding danger. It comes from the hero avoiding “danger from Giants.” In other words, he makes the case that the story is not necessarily tied to the action. It reaches most impressive heights as a vehicle for imagination. A man burning to death because he fell asleep in bed with a lit cigarette in his hand is, while upsetting, more of a line item in a newspaper than an entry in an anthology. But, imagine a man trapped in a non-functioning spaceship trapped in the gravity well and hurtling towards a star burning millions of degrees hotter than a mattress lit by up by a Marlboro. Both men face the same danger. The man in the spaceship will die at the same temperature as the man in the bed no matter how many superfluous degrees the star is prepared to expend but imagination leads us to fear one, though infinitely less likely to happen to us personally, more than the other. Is it the added terror of being alone and far from help? The realization that a thin skin of metal is the only protection available?

I won’t dwell on the essay too much more other than to say Lewis celebrates the enjoyment of the supernatural by both adults and children, and singles out a few authors he finds laudable. Among them was Walter de la Mare, whom I’d never heard of. Lewis writes that he creates intriguing atmospheres that are open to readers’ imaginative exploration “partly by style and partly by never laying the cards on the table.”

I love finding a new (to me) poet. Below is Walter de la Mare’s most anthologized, which I take to mean most popular but what the hell do I know, poem, “The Listeners.” On the first reading I noted the mood but on subsequent readings it was the actions that took prominence, the mood having already settled in my head. These aren’t grand Indian Jones actions. They are small but purposeful. We have no idea what his relationship is to the Listeners. All we know is that they inhabit the empty spaces, and he has come to see them because he promised others that he would. The Traveller has a mission but as to whether this is the beginning or the end of his journey we can only ask our imaginations.

I need to mention that the Lewis essay wasn’t the only short piece I read last night that widened my knowledge of poets and their work. I also read a memoir/journal-style story by Todd Snider about doing blow with Jerry Jeff Walker. It had everything you could want in a music insider tale: nudity, cocaine and morphine abuse, friendships stretched to the limit, seedy bars, a big ole vomit scene, and enough mentions of songs I’ve never heard before to fill my playlist for a week. It also had a huge surprise, for me at least. You may already know. Author and poet Shel Silverstein, most noted for his works for children Where the Sidewalk Ends, The Giving Tree, and A Light in the Attic, also wrote the song “A Boy Named Sue” eventually made famous by Johnny Cash. I had no idea.

Anyway, here’s this week’s poem. I hope you enjoy the story.

The Listeners

Walter de la Mare (1873 – 1956)

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses

Of the forest’s ferny floor:

And a bird flew up out of the turret,

Above the Traveller’s head:

And he smote upon the door again a second time;

‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller;

No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,

Where he stood perplexed and still.

But only a host of phantom listeners

That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

To that voice from the world of men:

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,

That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

By the lonely Traveller’s call.

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

Their stillness answering his cry,

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

’Neath the starred and leafy sky;

For he suddenly smote on the door, even

Louder, and lifted his head:—

‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word,’ he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,

Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

From the one man left awake:

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,

When the plunging hoofs were gone.