April 29, 2008: bon bon il est un pays, Samuel Beckett

bon bon il est un pays
Samuel Beckett

all right all right there’s a land
where forgetting where forgetting weighs
gently upon worlds unnamed
there the head we shush it the head is mute
and one knows no but one knows nothing
the song of dead mouths dies
on the shore it has made its voyage
there is nothing to mourn

my loneliness I know it oh well I know it badly
I have the time is what I tell myself I have time
but what time famished bone the time of the dog
of a sky incessantly paling my grain of sky
of the climbing ray ocellate trembling
of microns of years of darkness

you want me to go from A to B I cannot
I cannot come out I’m in a traceless land
yes yes it’s a fine thing you’ve got there a mighty fine thing
what is that ask me no more questions
spiral dust of instants what is this the same
the calm the love the hate the calm the calm

Translated by Philip Nikolayev


[Beckett is obviously known for being a playwright, not a poet, and his poetry is often dismissed, but I really like the way this uses repetition and backtracking to create something that feels layered and complicated and immediate.  Critic Peter Collier called it “a kind of stammering romanticism”.

I also like its feeling of frustration, how there’s not enough time for him to explore the country of the mind if he’s always having to interact with the real world, comment on other people’s art.  (This was written in response to a request for a poem to hang alongside a friend’s painting.) And then all that tumult evens out and ends in stillness, a little like The Waste Land.]

A year ago today: Root root root for the home team, Bob Hicok
Two years ago: Fever 103°, Sylvia Plath
Three years ago: King Lear Considers What He’s Wrought, Melissa Kirschh