A Poem

[Bethlehemtown]

I'd written this little poem on my 65th birthday, taking the hint of an image from both John Updike and R. L. Stevenson. Of course, as the rime is so pedestrian and the rhythm limps along like a three-legged mule, I take full blame for the whole of it.


The Clotheshorse Unseated,
My Birthday, 2006


Here so quick at sixty-five,
But glad to know I'm still alive.
Having taken more than ever given,
And never for any of it striven.

Sitting here and looking back,
Remembering what I tried to pack
For my little unessential trip
In the hold of my unsteady ship,

I thought I had the clothes I'd need
For any clime and any deed
For which I'd see myself embark
On almost any little lark.

Today I find, to my dismay,
Those things I'd packed just yesterday,
Thinking them prerequisite,
No longer even seem to fit.

I guess it's all as it must be,
Others have found it much like me,
That when our ships have crossed the bar,
After we've gasped our last au revoir,

We'll sail along the River Stix,
And leave behind the blows and licks,
To find, as we hear Charon's call,
We really need no clothes at all.

"Home is the hunter, home from the hill, / And the sailor home from the sea."
And home the sartorialist, closet forlorn, his wardrobe on E-Bay just short of free.


-- G. Bruce Boyer

[storeynicholas]

We come into life in the nude and, but for the care of our executors, go out of it the same way. You are right to remind us of this!
NJS.

[alden]

Bruce,

Thank you.

There is a lot of good stuff, as in wisdom, in that charming poem.

Maybe your lines will alert some readers to their transience and get them focusing on everyday, away from clothing, and to just being spontaneous and smart.

Did we all grow up with RL Stevenson? I can hear my mother reading it to this day.

Cheers

Michael Alden

[Costi]

Mr. Boyer,

Your "little poem" is only as little as it is grand. It should be an opportunity for some reflection that we often overlook in our rush to fill our closets.

Today I find, to my dismay,
Those things I'd packed just yesterday,
Thinking them prerequisite,
No longer even seem to fit.

One thing to be said about elegance and style is that you're never "there". Not because one's ideals are impossible. Not because our desires are too hard to fulfill. But, like the horizon, the ideal recedes from us as we approach it. We change.
We no longer like what we once liked. We no longer enjoy a certain kind of style. Our interest in things material and spiritual shifts and changes. We see things we hadn't seen before, even when we were looking right at them.
And so the accomplishment of the dresser is in never being accomplished or perfect. As you write, only Charon's boat puts an end to it (or Saint Peter ). It is this continuous process of transformation that we should be enjoying, and if we keep filling our closets it shouldn't be because we can't have enough of the same kind of clothes, but because we grow and we change and we leave some things behind (perhaps having grown too fond of them to let go) while looking forward to new discoveries and experiments. Every new garment should indeed be "new" rather than just another iteration of the same as before. Taste, of course, is our best companion and compass in this lifelong voyage. Style is immutable in its principles, but it is only natural for the way we embody it every day to change and evolve. This way we will never get bored of timeless elegance.

[storeynicholas]

Costi - I always like Dorothy Parker's dictum: "And when you get there, you find that there's no there there!". However, I think that some earthly enjoyments can make the ultimate grade (and just about meet expectations): for example, certain meals and wine; some tobacco; those we love - but it is seldom clothes - or coffee.
NJS

[Costi]

There is another way of looking at this: we should, in fact, feel accomplished with every step we take; so this is not a life of permanent insatisfaction with what we have achieved - on the contrary.
On the other hand, it is an unhappy situation when our ideals are behind us rather than ahead of us. But this is not what it should feel like:

Frustration keeps us in a loop, always running after the same carrot that we can never reach. True evolution, instead, means that each accomplished step should create a new ideal, a new goal, a new target.
Several hours after a good meal (that may remain memorable) we are hungry again. But we won't obsessively repeat our last meal, even if it was excellent.