Talking to the Sun

Poets (artists of any stripe) owe a great deal to those who came before them. Perhaps none of them should imagine too much that they choose a path in the wood that's never been trod before, only untrod by themselves. This week features three poets/lyricists/wordsmiths: Frank O'Hara, and Billy Bragg. 

Here's Frank O'Hara, paying tribute to the 20's-era Russian poet, Vladimir Mayakovsky:

A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island

The Sun woke me this morning loud
and clear, saying "Hey! I've been
trying to wake you up for fifteen
minutes. Don't be so rude, you are
only the second poet I've ever chosen
to speak to personally

so why
aren't you more attentive? If I could
burn you through the window I would
to wake you up. I can't hang around
here all day."

"Sorry, Sun, I stayed
up late last night talking to Hal."

"When I woke up Mayakovsky he was
a lot more prompt" the Sun said
petulantly. "Most people are up
already waiting to see if I'm going
to put in an appearance."

I tried
to apologize "I missed you yesterday."
"That's better" he said. "I didn't
know you'd come out." "You may be
wondering why I've come so close?"
"Yes" I said beginning to feel hot
wondering if maybe he wasn't burning me
anyway.

"Frankly I wanted to tell you
I like your poetry. I see a lot
on my rounds and you're okay. You may
not be the greatest thing on earth, but
you're different. Now, I've heard some
say you're crazy, they being excessively
calm themselves to my mind, and other
crazy poets think that you're a boring
reactionary. Not me.

Just keep on
like I do and pay no attention. You'll
find that people always will complain
about the atmosphere, either too hot
or too cold too bright or too dark, days
too short or too long.

If you don't appear
at all one day they think you're lazy
or dead. Just keep right on, I like it.

And don't worry about your lineage
poetic or natural. The Sun shines on
the jungle, you know, on the tundra
the sea, the ghetto. Wherever you were
I knew it and saw you moving. I was waiting
for you to get to work.

And now that you
are making your own days, so to speak,
even if no one reads you but me
you won't be depressed. Not
everyone can look up, even at me. It
hurts their eyes."
"Oh Sun, I'm so grateful to you!"

"Thanks and remember I'm watching. It's
easier for me to speak to you out
here. I don't have to slide down
between buildings to get your ear.

I know you love Manhattan, but
you ought to look up more often.

And
always embrace things, people earth
sky stars, as I do, freely and with
the appropriate sense of space. That
is your inclination, known in the heavens
and you should follow it to hell, if
necessary, which I doubt.

Maybe we'll
speak again in Africa, of which I too
am specially fond. Go back to sleep now
Frank, and I may leave a tiny poem
in that brain of yours as my farewell."

"Sun, don't go!" I was awake
at last. "No, go I must, they're calling
me."
"Who are they?"

Rising he said "Some
day you'll know. They're calling to you
too." Darkly he rose, and then I slept.
 
 
Eight years after he wrote this farewell poem--which was never published during his too-brief lifetime--O'Hara was killed when a dune buggy on Fire Island struck him. Brad Gooch, who wrote a biography of O'Hara titled City Poet, mentions Kenneth Koch's reaction when Koch found the poem among O'Hara's papers:
 
Reading through the stack of poems later in his apartment on West Fourth Street, Koch came across for the first time "A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island," a poem that was to become a favorite anthology piece, which O'Hara hadn't shown to anyone while he was alive. A variation on Mayakovsky's "An Extraordinary Adventure Which Befell Vladimir Mayakovsky in a Summer Cottage," the poem had been written by O'Hara on July 10, 1958, when he was visiting Hal Fondren at his rented house at Fire Island Pines, not far from the spot where he would be hit almost exactly eight years later. The poem consists of a conversation between the Sun, who wakes O'Hara and complains petulantly, "When I woke up Mayakovsky he was / a lot more prompt," and the apologetic poet's comment, "Sorry, Sun, I stayed / up late last night talking to Hal."


"I almost fell off my chair," remembers Koch. "It was Frank talking about his own death." In the following months, Koch often read the poem at poetry readings to audiences who were invariably moved by its almost too neatly prophetic parting stanza:

"Sun, don't go!" I was awake
at last. "No, go I must, they're calling
me."

"Who are they?"
Rising he said "Some
day you'll know. They're calling to you
too." Darkly he rose, and then I slept.

From City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O’Hara. Copyright © 1993 by Brad Gooch.
 
About Vladimir Mayakovsky's poetry: The best way to read his poetry is ALOUD, imagining it with Whitman's "barbaric yawp." About the man: That's about the extent of commonality between those Whitman and the Russian: Whitman, the ultimate poet of syncretistic democracy, and Mayakovsky, the committed Bolshevik. Mayakovsky, ultimately let down by the results of the Revolution and Stalinist rule, died even younger than O'Hara, committing suicide in 1930 at age 36. But the following poem, unlike O'Hara's, isn't a farewell poem: it's much too ebullient for that.
 
AN EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURE WHICH HAPPENED TO ME, VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY, ONE SUMMER IN THE COUNTRY

(Pushkino, Mount Akula, Rumyantsev Cottage, 20 miles down the Yaroslav Railway)

A hundred suns the sunset fired,
into July summer shunted,
it was so hot,
even heat perspired--
it happened in the country.
The little hamlet known as Pushkino,
Akula's Mount
made hunchbacked.
Below, the village
seemed pushed-in so --
its crooked roof-crusts cracked.
And beyond that village
yawned a hole,
into that hole- and not just maybe -
the sun for certain always rolled,
slowly, surely, daily.
At morn
to flood the world
again
the sun rose up-
and ruddied it.
Day after day
it happened this way,
till I got
fed up with it.
And one day I let out such a shout,
that everything grew pale,
point-blank at the sun I yelled:
"Get out!
Enough of loafing there in hell!"
To the sun I yelled:
"You lazy mummer!
in the clouds cushioning,
while here - knowing neither winter nor summer,
I sit, just posters brushing!"
I yelled to the sun:
"Hey, wait there!
Listen, golden brightbrow,
instead of vainly
setting in the air,
have tea with me
right now!"
What have I done!
For ruin I'm heading!
To me,
of his own goodwill,
the sun himself,
ray-strides outspreading,
is marching over the hill.
Not wanting to show him I'm afraid-
back I retreat, guardedly.
Now his eyes lighten the garden shade.
He's actually in the garden now.
Through windows,
doors,
crannies he spread;
in flooded a sunny mass,
having burst in
he drew his breath,
and spoke in a deep bass.
"I've withheld my fires you see
the first time since creation began.
You've invited me?
So lay out the tea,
and, poet, lay on the jam!"
Tears from my poor eyes were streaming-
the heat really made me scary,
all the same-
I got the samovar steaming:
"Of course,
sit down, comrade luminary!"
What possessed me to shout at him like a fool,
inwardly myself I cursed, -
and sat confused
on the corner of a stool,
frightened it might be worse!
But a radiance strange
streamed from the sun, -
and my tact
no longer taxing,
I sit and chat with the luminated one,
gradually relaxing.
About this,
and about that I chatted,
worn out with ROSTA publicity,
but the sun:
"Alright,
don't get so rattled,
see things with greater simplicity!
You think it's easy
for me
to shine so?
- If so, come and have a test! -
But once you go -
why have a go
go - and shine your damnedest!"
We gossiped like that till darkness appeared,
till the night before, that is.
For how could there be any darkness here?
And now
like chums we chatted.
And soon,
in open friendship bonded,
to slap him on the back I dared.
And likewise the sun
warmly responded:
"Why, comrade, we're a pair!
Come, poet,
let us dawn
and sing
away the drabness of the universe.
As the sun, myself I'll fling,
and you - yourself,
in verse."
And shadows' walls,
and jails of night
fell to its double-barreled shot.
Battering barrage of poetry and light -
shine out, no matter what!
And when the sun gets tired,
and night
wants to rest
its sleepy-headed,
why suddenly -
I shine with all my might -
and once more day is trumpeted.
Shine all the time,
for ever shine.
the last days' depths to plumb,
to shine - !
spite every hell combined!
So runs my slogan -
and the sun's!
 
Onward ho to Billy Bragg, the Brit alt-rock musician who has been entertaining/agitating fans for about three decades now. Consider me one of those who is alternately entertained and agitated. The first album I picked up of his was Talking With the Taxman About Poetry, the title of which is taken from a Mayakovsky poem by the same title.
 

 
So let's have a look at that poem (Bragg included a translation in the liner notes of his album; this isn't his trans.). Like O'Hara, he says we ought not get too wrapped with the trivialities of our present--O'Hara talking all night long, sleeping in and forgetting to gree the sun), and hints at being remembered long after his death:
 
Our duty is
To roar
Like brass-throated sirens
In philistine fog
And in stormy weather...
Come, you smug dweller in the present era,
Buy your rail ticket
To Eternity
Here.
Calculate
The impact of verse
And distribute
All that I earn
Over three hundred years.