ABC03 – Poems for exile
Post #3 of my homebrew April blogging challenge. Words: approximately 3,100.
I once lost simultaneously a sense of competence, a place within a community, and a loved companion. That period of time remains my lived experience closest to exile. Without much external support, I found solace in some poems. I share them here along with some reflections because they continue to shape my way of being in the world.
“No Leaders, Please” by Charles Bukowski
invent yourself and then reinvent yourself,
don’t swim in the same slough.
invent yourself and then reinvent yourself
and
stay out of the clutches of mediocrity.invent yourself and then reinvent yourself,
change your tone and shape so often that they can
never
categorize you.reinvigorate yourself and
accept what is
but only on the terms that you have invented
and reinvented.be self-taught.
and reinvent your life because you must;
it is your life and
its history
and the present
belong only to
you.
It wasn’t just the poem’s content that struck me on first reading, but also its title. Prior to exile, I had role models and mentors who influenced my rather malleable personality and goals: I took cues from those I looked up to. Once exiled, however, those bonds were severed. I walked away from even those who reached out because I felt I had to, for once, determine my own trajectory. This process of self-generation was terrifying, because what if I got it wrong? In the absence of guides (leaders), can a person feel confident in their choices?
Bukowski’s poem offers encouragement. It doesn’t just call one to invent a sense of self, but to constantly reinvent it along the way. Even the terms of engagement with life (addressed in the third stanza) are open to renegotation. The single declaration, “be self-taught” reminds one that this whole process is meant to be an educational experience: one defines their own curriculum—a series of courses—to pursue.
The act of (re)invention isn’t framed as an option. One “must” at some point or another come to terms that their life is their own. The past and present (and implicitly the future) are in one’s possession. For the logical alternative is a life based on the terms set out by others.
In this poem I found a mode of reconciliation. I could, at once, keep the impressions and lessons imparted onto me by my past role models and mentors and proceed on the path, unknown as it was, now laid before me. I frame these figures as role models and mentors because they significantly shaped my development as an adult. How could I fully abandon that? While the errors I made that led to my exile are my responsibility, any good conduct that I do carry out is owed in part to them. Up until this recognition of dual-truths, the knowledge I lacked was evident in my belief that I had to follow in their footsteps. To which the mythologist Joseph Campbell cautioned: “If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.”
Thus, Bukowski’s poem helped me to stop wallowing in self-pity (or at least any longer than what was necessary) and to work on myself—on my terms.
“The God Abandons Antony” by C. P. Cavafy
When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who proved worthy of this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen—your final delectation—to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.
The poem is addressed to the reader as if they were Mark Antony, during the siege of Alexandria by Octavian. This event concluded the rivalry between two political figureheads in the final days of the Roman Republic: Octavian would go on to become the first Roman Emperor as Augustus, while Mark Antony would meet his end in this city—an end surrounded by a peculiar aura of fate, as if the god Dionysus, who protected Mark Antony, was leaving him.
That’s how I felt on some days: abandoned by fate, fortune, or whatever higher power there is. In those moments it was the easiest thing to fall into self-pity and victimhood. One can look up at the sky and ask “why me?” all day long when there are no answers pending.
This poem returned me to reality. It asked me to receive my circumstances with dignity worthy of my past successes. Why blame luck? Why dwell on what should have, could have, or would have been? Why enter a state of self-delusion in an attempt to escape difficulty? One can stand with courage even in the face of inevitability.
Dignity—“as is right for you who proved worthy of this kind of city”—suggests that one’s fall is proportional to the heights previously attained. The greater the attainment, the greater the degree of courage one must have had. Thus, Cavafy eschews displays of cowardice and instead urges Antony to take pleasure in the fall, to delight in the fact that one had so much to lose, and to say goodbye to that which was leaving—to what one was losing.
The poem did not provide direction on what path to walk next (unlike Antony, I had the advantage of still being alive), but it offered the greatest consolation as I bid farewell to truncated paths.
“Ithaka” by C. P. Cavafy
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
If “The God Abandons Antony” is Cavafy’s prescription for how one can accept their past, his “Ithaka” is the directive on how one can embrace their future. The poem is a wonderful iteration of the journey-as-more-important-than-the-destination cliché, but with more nuance.
The first line assigns the reader the role of Odysseus, the central figure of the Odyssey by Homer. This protagonist spent a decade fighting in the Trojan war and another decade afterwards making his voyage back to his home and family in Ithaca. Trials and setbacks delay what might have been a steady trip home—making Cafavy’s first call to “hope your road is a long one” sound counterproductive.
He quickly clarifies: his wish for long roads is not an invitation to danger, but rather to adventure and discovery. For although short journeys can imply the avoidance of threats, the central claim in the first stanza is that threats are conjurations of the mind and soul anyways. Enthusiasm for facing the unknown and preventing the soul from straining under uncertainty is a way to fend off threats.
One can detect the essence of Stoicism here. It is not the trials or setbacks that deter us, but instead our interpretation of them that causes us to feel deterred. So it is possible to have a long journey and not once “encounter” opposition—if one chooses to see it that way.
With this clarified courage, one can appreciate Cafavy’s second call to hope for a long road. For now there are experiences to enjoy: new sights and scents, interactions with different people, acquisition of valued possessions, and the expansion of one’s worldview. In this light, why wouldn’t one want a long journey?
The trick is in having the confidence that you will reach your destination, as if the root of that word—destiny—was truly at play. In this way, the outcome provides pleasure before it is reached. In this way, the end result is the starting point. In this way, attaining the end means deriving no more value from it.
Such paradoxes can be resolved by recognizing that any intended journey, or any striving in general, begins as an act of self-transformation—an act to create a difference between yesterday’s version and tomorrow’s version of oneself. The journey is the process of transformation itself.
This poem helped me to confront the then-unknown future with some amount of optimism. Presently, I can express how I feel by quoting the author Douglas Adams: “I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”
Of course, the final line of the poem is suggestive: the plurality of “Ithakas” is the poet’s final invitation to take up such journeys, over and over again. Just as Bukowski calls for perpetual (re)invention, so too, does Cavafy call for ongoing odysseys. Indeed: the first poet’s process of self-renegotiation and the second poet’s notion of adventure are the same.
“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
The oldest of the poems herein, I first read “Ozymandias” in an undergraduate English course, but it was not until my period of exile that I experienced the poem’s meaning. It speaks to oblivion: however proud one is of their works, such works will one day erode and disappear. Impermanence can erase kingdoms. What is the likelihood that what one does will defy time’s charge?
This idea can segue into thoughts and bouts of nihilism, but (to quote the previous poems) only if “you bring them along inside your soul” or “your soul sets them up in front of you.” For we have already established that the loss is in measure to the gain, and “as is right for you who proved worthy of this kind of city,” one can choose to experience the impermanence of life with dignity.
Thus this poem functioned, for me, as a gateway to Stoicism and Buddhism. For both philosophies focus on the acceptance of transcience, and on foregoing attachments and desires and ego that all seek a state of finishedness. A static state of living might be safe and secure, but all the poems that resonated with me speak to the merits of reveling in change.
Or, in less philosophical terms, this poem inspired me to cease attaching my sense of self-worth to my identity, and in turn those two from what I do. When those three notions of self—self-esteem, self-concept, and self-conduct—are viewed as separate, the confusion that blurs the distinction between what is within one’s control and capacity, and what is not, is reduced. This is not to say that the notions are meant to be separated all the time (or, at least I do not see why that has to be the case), but even temporary dissociation can clarify one’s present road.
So while I lost a sense of competence (self-esteem) and my place within a community (self-concept) due to mistakes on my part (self-conduct), the alternative may have been living a life pursuing grandeur without the recognition of how cosmically insignificant anything I do really is. While that recognition would have aroused fear in me prior to my exile, nowadays I find it to be a source of tranquility.
“The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
While the above four poems offered solace during a confusing time in my life, there is a final poem I would feel remiss in omitting. On first read, there isn’t much about the poem to recommend it to someone going through isolation. Allow me to explain.
First, from Shelley’s “Ozymandias” we have the half-sunken, shattered visage lying on the sands, with its “wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command.” It has, in my mind, a parallel with the sphinx described in Yeats’ desert: “A shape with lion body and the head of a man, / A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun.” This isn’t the proper place to conduct self-psychoanalysis, but it is amusing that mighty figures situated in a barren land (dare I invite the comparison with “The Waste Land” by T. S. Eliot?) should appeal to me when in exile.
Whereas the fallen Ozymandias is in decay in Shelley’s poem, the sphinx in “The Second Coming” is coming to life, “its hour come round at last”: a portent of dark times to come? The similar yet oppositional imagery across the poems was, at the very least, intriguing to ponder.
Second, the feelings I had in the midst of confusion are encapsulated within the first stanza. The “gyres” (which, implied by Yeats' other writings, are metonymous with history) are spinning out of control. Followers (falcons) are deaf to their guides (falconers)—which I interpret to mean a disconnect in proper spirtual guidance. Things are in a state of collapse, and chaos reigns over order. Violence (represented by the blood-dimmed tides) expands like waves, washing over innocence. Finally, the social hierarchy is reversed: the best fall into a state of apathy, and the baser individuals within society are in command.
The poem, published slightly over a century ago, has an apocalyptic appeal that intensifies during times of strife (e.g., the election of Donald Trump back in 2016, or the presently ongoing coronavirus pandemic and the social discord it has instigated). Yet strife need not be societal for the poem to have its sway: in times of disorder in one’s personal life, the first stanza can also apply on a smaller, but nonetheless impactful, scale.
Third and finally, the poem concludes with a question and (as I read it) a promise: in the midst of chaos, a dark figure awakens. How could it not? If what is good (the best of us) lack conviction, and what is bad (the worst of us) gain ground, then a reversion to primality is in order. Said another way: if and when an individual feels slighted by the world, and no means are in place to facilitate justice, then the natural reaction is a desire for vengeance. That desire, in my mind, is manifested by the dark beast rising.
In this reading, the poem is cathartic as all hell. Yet it is reading it in tandem with the other four that one finds the resolve to stand up to the dark beast—to overcome the desire for retribution. The dark beast, eager to be born, is in all of us. Its birth can be circumvented by: an intentional act of invention (rather than destruction); a dignified courage (not cowardice) in confronting the world’s realities; an enthusiastic disposition that prevents seeing setbacks as threatening (instead of viewing them as giants and gods); and an acceptance of impermanence (lest the ego be the dark beast’s throne).
That is what all these poems mean to me, at any rate.