Two people with one pulse

I don't know what it is about love poems, and love songs, but somehow they're always a lot better if they don't mention the word 'love'. It's a word which means both too much and too little, especially in the English language, where it can be used to adequately sum up feelings towards things like chocolate, football, or the latest television show. The word 'love' doesn't convey a whole lot in itself, and poems which can most accurately portray the actual feelings of being in love are a lot more beautiful and realistic.

Like this poem

Time was away and somewhere else,

There were two glasses and two chairs

And two people with the one pulse

(Somebody stopped the moving stairs)

Time was away and somewhere else.

And they were neither up nor down;

The stream's music did not stop

Flowing through heather, limpid brown,

Although they sat in a coffee shop

And they were neither up nor down.

The bell was silent in the air

Holding its inverted poise -

Between the clang and clang a flower,

A brazen calyx of no noise:

The bell was silent in the air.

The camels crossed the miles of sand

That stretched around the cups and plates;

The desert was their own, they planned

To portion out the stars and dates:

The camels crossed the miles of sand.

Time was away and somewhere else.

The waiter did not come, the clock

Forgot them and the radio waltz

Came out like water from a rock:

Time was away and somewhere else.

Her fingers flicked away the ash

That bloomed again in tropic trees:

Not caring if the markets crash

When they had forests such as these,

Her fingers flicked away the ash.

God or whatever means the Good

Be praised that time can stop like this,

That what the heart has understood

Can verify in the body's peace

God or whatever means the Good.

Time was away and she was here

And life no longer what it was,

The bell was silent in the air

And all the room one glow because

Time was away and she was here.

"Meeting point" by Louis MacNeice, is probably my favourite love poem (my favourite love song is 'walk the line' by Johnny Cash). There's something about this poem that seems to perfectly capture the feeling of sitting with someone special, someone whose life means as much to you as your own. The feeling that the rest of time has stopped, and that the two of you, for one instance, are locked in a little bubble of one-ness. In the poem, the moving stairs have stopped, the radio sounds are slowing and dimming and the bell has hovered, silently. But that time, the time between the 'clangs' is more beautiful and special than the real noise, in the same way that the time between the times that the lovers are currently in is more special than the surrounding real world.

It's a bit of a surreal poem as well, there are camels and deserts and forests. They aren't seeing the world how it is - of course not, they're in love! There world is a fantastical, magical place, more meaningful if less realistic.

The second-to-last stanza always makes me start sniffling a little. "God or whatever means the Good" is such a good reflection of the way love can feel. It might be God, it might be some other mystical spiritual thing, it might just be two people and the way they feel but there is something other involved in this. Something in love that passes beyond the explanation of science. Sure you can explain why people feel loving feelings, you can point to the various chemicals released by the brain, you can explain how the partnership between two people to bring up a child is evolutionarily important for human survival, but you can't really explain why it feels like that. Or why there's just a connection that happens, with some people and not others. What makes time stop and a coffee shop radio slow to a trickle of water.

I think as well, either consciously or unconsciously it kind of brings up another time that lovers feel. A time when time has stopped, when the world is fantastical, and when there only is one pulse, one heartbeat, and two people feeling one thing at the exact same moment and that feeling is a pure white flash of beautiful empty thought.

It's wonderfully written as well, the repetition of the first and last lines creates a surreal lilting flow. Five lines to a stanza stops the two-four rhythm taking over:

da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM

and THEY were NEI-ther UP nor DOWN

By adding the extra fifth line in there it creates a pause after every stanza, a little space of time to stop the rhythm running away with you. Try reading it without the last line of each stanza and you can see the effect, everything just runs into itself and it creates a running on rhythm that spoils the mood.

The rhythms, the imagery, and the worlds all generate the feelings and emotions inside you that the author is trying to convey. It's the sort of poem which makes me feel both very excited at the power that poetry can possess and the things it can achieve, and at the same time a little miserable because I'm pretty sure I'll never be able to write poetry that amazing myself. A friend of mine put forward that poetry is the purest form of writing, and I think I'm starting to agree with him. Unlike novels, or short stories, poetry aims to use as few words as possible to create true human feelings and emotions. To go from thoughts in a head, to words on a page, to emotions in a mind.

My Favourite Poem

Fern Hill, by Dylan Thomas. It is possible to read the rest of this post without clicking the link and reading the poem but a) it will be harder to follow and b) you will miss what may be one of the most amazing poetical experiences ever.

"Fern Hill" is one of those poems (and there are many) that deals with the loss of childhood and more importantly the loss of the world that you live in whilst a child. A world of half-reality, half-stories, where everything is new and bright and wonderful and you are immortal. Many poems have been written about this theme, but for some reason Fern Hill is something more, something amazing. I can't read it without tearing up a little. It's the lilting style, the rhythm is sings with, and the words, the beautiful half-meaningless worlds, that just transport you back to childhood. When you read it you feel like a kid again, running around in breathless excitement with the words tumbling out of you, still not fully understood. Everything is held together by images, it's a poem that paints pictures in your mind as much as it makes words sing in your head.

I think the thing that particularly stands out with it for me is the colours. I love colours. They each have a meaning and a theme and a hundred ways of interpreting. Different cultures and languages use them in different ways, they are something personal, and dictate such a large and sometimes under-appreciated part of how you view the world. And the colours in Fern Hill paint everything in childish sweeps of poster-paint primary colours. The world is green and golden, the wind is bright sky-blue, even the fire is "green as grass". You can almost see the colours on the page, making it shine, making it meaningful. There's a trail of symbolism you can trace right through them as well:

green--grass--fresh--new--rebirth--spring--youth

green--innocent--naive--young--unknowing

green--envy--sickness--sadness

So many words, so many thoughts and images and feelings, all from one colour! The feelings of youth and excitement, along with the naivety and innocence, all tinged with the regretful sadness of loss.

The thing I love most about this poem is that there are so many ways to pull it apart. Colours are (for me) the most exciting aspect, but there are so many themes to grab and tease out you could spend all day writing about it. There's a biblical thread, a very strong one, running through beginning to end. There's also an animal thread, a sound thread, a taste and smell thread, and at least four different ways of viewing Time. But unlike other poems (Keats is a good example here!), this one is special as it doesn't change it's meaning depending on my mood. It has a feeling of solidness, of certainty, every time I read it I know exactly what I'm going to get (mostly the sniffles), I just don't know what new facet I'm going to see.

I'll probably come back to this poem in the future, possibly comparing it with others. But I would definitely recommend reading it. It's six small stanzas, and it shines like a jewel.

That Quote From Keats

Scientists like to use suitably antiquated literature quotes in their work, because it makes them seem intelligent, and fully rounded people rather than just sad little scientists who spend all their time wrapped up in one organism or pathway. Speaking as a sad little scientist myself (whose knowledge of anything other than Streptomyces is currently a little hazy) I approve. The more literature quotes there are in the world the better and who knows, some people might be encourage to go and read the original poem or text, and experience the true awesome beauty of it.

The problem is, of course, when quotes get used out of context, or with twisted meanings. The one quote that gets pushed into service very frequently with science-writing, and is almost always hideously misued, is That Keats Quote:

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know

The usual meaning the writer is trying to convey with this quote is, "Look at this thing. This thing is beautiful. It must be true!" or occasionally, "Look at how this true thing is beautiful. Poets and scientists both have the same view of how the world is!" Occasionally it's just shortened down to just the first line, or the first few words "Beauty is truth, truth beauty"

Which takes the quote completely out of context and, what's even worse, completely destroys the beautiful subtlety of it. In fact it completely destroys the entire point of the quote in the first place, which is to question the connections between truth, beauty, reality and desire.

The poem the quote is taken from is "Ode on a Grecian urn" which is slightly too long to be reproduced in full, but can be found here and is highly recommended, along with most of Keats. As the title suggests, it's a poem about a Greek pot, more specifically the patterns and pictures around the pot. Examining the frozen scenes (which show a man playing the pipes under a tree, two lovers about to kiss, and a procession of villagers with a calf for sacrifice) allows Keats to return to one of his favourite themes; which is more preferable, a passion that is everlasting but will never reach fulfillment? Or the experience of true and complete fulfillness which must then pass away into decay and death. Basically the Keatsien version of "is it better to have loved and lost or never loved at all?"

The urn represents agelessness, the unchanging and fixed scenes. The lover's cannot kiss and the piper cannot go home, but will be "for ever piping songs, for ever new". In the second and third stanza (paragraph) Keats seems rather wistfully jealous of this state of affairs. The lover's might not be able to reach fulfilment, but they've been locked in their embrace for several hundred times his lifetime. In the forth stanza however, he briefly touches on the downside of changelessness, namely that everything remains unchanged. The villagers will be in continuous procession, but likewise their village will always be empty, for the rest of eternity.

The final stanza, brings it all together, but it ends it with a big question, not an answer. Keats has no more answers than we do as to whether the timeless yet unfulfilled nature of the Grecian urn is preferable or not. All this of course, leads up to the final quote:

Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!	45
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

The final quote! Which isn't even said by Keats. It isn't even what the poet thinks, it's a final summery of the point of view of life from the Grecian urn. Keats is still teased out of thought, but he takes some comfort in the fact that the urn will always be there. No matter how crazy or insane life gets, the world of the Grecian urn will always be beautiful, and always be truthful. Not the real world, the real world is changeable, ugly and false, that is why the urn remains a source of comfort. Preferable or not, the "Cold pastoral" of the Grecian urn will by its very nature embody the truth, beauty and permanence that the rest of the world does not.

If those last two lines are a comment about anything, it's the nature of art, rather than the nature of reality. Art, or at the very least things that are pleasant to look at because they make you forget the uglyness of reality (Keats = proto-emo), should be things for which beauty and truth are equal. A piece of work which is both true and beautiful. The definition of truth at this point is another matter entirely, in the case of the Grecian urn my view is that 'true' means 'revealing some deep truth about the world' in this case the struggle between permanence and fulfilment.

Either way, it's certainly not "Keats on the nature of reality". Which is how it's so often used.