Larkinesques

Abstract

Larkinesques Robert Wrigley (bio) 1. on a figure in one of his poems We are urged to imagine the hearton its knees and know it is far-fetched,the figure, and know too that the artis often so stretchedand in the end not worth resisting.Nevertheless, the brain, insisting on what the brain always insists on,stews and stews in its own misery too.It is not "knees" but "heart" your resistancekeens in on with you.Heart with its relentless pump and pump,fist of gristle, bloody rag, thoughtless lump. 2. death has changed They're hardly ever seen anymore,funeral processions by car, sixor a dozen, or in the eventof the death of someone … importantor far too young, many, with lights clickedon in the middle of sun, clouds, or downpour. And it was thought a courteous thingto pull to the curb as they passed by,bound for a cemetery's dark gates.What has happened to them? All crematesand private memorials now? Whyhave they vanished, these headlit processionings? Death, in the decades since childhood,seems to have changed as much as life has.The procedures and offices of thenare gone. Just sign the guestbook online, [End Page 165] display the urn of ash by a vase.To pull to the curb does no one good. Or perhaps it's just embarrassment.The mortification of being,finally, not among the livingbut of the greater absence, not breathing,obliging others to be seeing,in cars going by, the bored, impatient kin. Always the spotless black or white hearseout front, a limo with spouse and kids,parents or siblings, following behind.And in the box the embalmed dead one,jostled among roses and gladiolas,leading the parade. What could be worse? 3. mirrors That way the places of childhoodshrink with time and distance, those treesthat towered then, now a lesser woodand ragged until merely trees, generic and unimpressive.But then, those individuals,odd or homely, alternativespecies almost, grown beautiful over the same passage of time,and we understand oddityor homeliness may too in timeturn another commodity: as the duckling became the swanand the vast canopy of shadeshrank to a small and dappled lawnthe sun, rain, and soil had made. Herein, the problem of mirrors:the sadness of self-conception—something that trees never come near—and blind, blinkered self-deception [End Page 166] grown more impossible yearly.Certain man, spectacular swanreduced from what was once comely,regarding himself, an aging man. 4. cartwheels stopped at a country church Odd that the door is locked, late on a Sundayafternoon. There's a small, well-kept graveyard;no parsonage though, no windowbox to saywhat the sermon was. Maybe no one heard.Perhaps it's desanctified, out of business,so to speak. The lawn's been mowed,the stone walkway swept (broomstrokes in the dust);it might be for sale and recently showed to some entrepreneurial preacheror a couple looking to remodeland make of it a country home,way out here. The nearest nowhere town's eleven miles.There's wavery and bubbled clear glassin the windows, not stained. And there's a datesomeone fingered into the old concrete steps:July 7, 1959, when I was eight and never dreamed of not living where I was,where I'd been born and thought I'd have to die.It's September now, and a few bees buzzaround a few flowers in the graveyard.The most recent burial, April 2007,almost a decade past. A woman, Belle,aged eighty-two and surely in heaven.I do not believe there are Belles in hell. But then I do not believe in either place,I confess, whatever belief might mean.I was on the way to somewhere elsewhen I pulled in, taking back roads again,and thought—or maybe I believed—that herewould be a peaceful place to stop and rest.As it is. Some birds still singing here and there;low, timbered hills, a backdrop to the west. [End Page 167] By the look...