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Saturday 20 March 2010

Twenty-Something Couple


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File:Scholars mate animation.gif



We don't know any more about each other than that which we can see; we stand with a magnifying glass in the middle of the Milky Way. And what we see isn't real either; we know absolutely nothing, we are divided and alone, we stand outside, we are but impatient onlookers, and we know less still about our own selves.
-- Lars Saabye Christensen, The Half Brother



The exclusive business of the wooing
Scene's exploiting the awareness gap
That separates the lovers from each other
And both of them from us: We share with her
A sense of curious anticipation --
Wondering if he'll wake up to being fooled,
She lets her cool eyes, patrolling the cafe,
Signal things to him she doesn't quite mean --
As though in an intention field a child
Playing with chessmen went through the motions
Of taking a king -- Did you mean to mate him? --
Soon they'll be falling in one another's arms
Taking turns at gulling and being gulled,
Often gulling and gulled at the same time.




File:Immortal game animation.gif





The "Scholar's Mate": image by Karophyr, 2007
The "Immortal Game" (Anderssen-Kieritzky, 1851): image by Karophyr, 2007

9 comments:

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Tom,

Very nice, "Taking turns at gulling and being gulled,
Often gulling and gulled at the same time." And that chess board playing that game (!) Berkeley street scene yesterday resonates w/ Blake's London, as I thought when I read the London poem (and hadn't yet seen the Berkeley one. . . .

3.20

grey whiteness of fog against invisible
ridge, green shape of black pine branch
in foreground, wave sounding in channel

henceforth “representative”
form, called following

attention, but only so long
as picture, image flow

cloudless blue sky reflected in channel,
point on the horizon to the right of it

TC said...

Steve,

Many thanks.

I think I'll glue this to my forehead:


attention, but only so long
as picture, image flow

cloudless blue sky reflected


This poem, by the way, was observed "from life" (as 'twere), a while ago, in the days before internet cafes rendered even the ancient courtship rituals (Thomas Wyatt et al.) a minority activity... in cafes that is.

(It has been rewritten more than once since then, in attempt to "keep up", this latest version at the encouragement of dear friend and former student Justin Davis, who reported 1. buying a book and 2. liking the early version of this poem, in it -- two small miracles not to be passed over lightly.)

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Thanks Tom for this, esp. noting what you might glue to forehead (!) and this: "observed "from life" (as 'twere), a while ago, in the days before internet cafes rendered even the ancient courtship rituals (Thomas Wyatt et al.) a minority activity." (My own such rituals seem to be nil these days. . . .)

~otto~ said...

loved the gulled gulling ending and the waking up to being fooled

Another poet, a brother Doobie, once wrote:

But what a fool believes
he sees
No wise man has the power
to reason away
What seems to be
Is always better than nothing
And nothing at all keeps sending him...

J said...

Few are the dweebs who might take wing
by means of the Gambit of Kings.

Faire Doobius!

TC said...

THE MATH

Infinite game

finite number of moves

fools without number forever

Andrei said...

Very lovely poem, Tom. Made the chess board humanly atttractive and melancholic, and the scene of youth so sweet and difficult. Can we repost at corpse.org? Andrei

TC said...

Thanks, Andrei.

Sure, I'll pop it along to you.

J said...

in the days before internet cafes

in ways online chess preferable to the older cafe-style, TC. One, you don't have to be physically present in some urban beatnik cafe (overpriced espresso, bagels,loud cafe-jass, etc) et al to play a serious game with some unnamed, invisible Trotsky--and that eliminates other hazards, not the least of which might involve........yr opponent, Trotsky