Monday, April 15, 2013

The cruelest month: toujours gai


Okay, I’ve given you some high-flown stuff for National Poetry Month. Looking back on it, a lot of it has dealt with heavy-duty subjects. Tennyson and Thomas, on reaching the end of one’s life; Arnold, on the loss of joy, love, light, certitude, peace and  help for pain; Yeats, on the shattering of pretty much the same.

It’s time for a bit of a break, for an entirely different perspective on things. Like from a vers libre poet reincarnated as a cockroach, writing on an old newsroom manual typewriter. Which he does as described thus by his “literary agent”, Don Marquis:

”He would climb painfully upon the framework of the machine and cast himself with all his force upon a key, head downward, and his weight and the impact of the blow were just sufficient to operate the machine, one slow letter after another. He could not work the capital letters, and he had a great deal of difficulty operating the mechanism that shifts the paper so that a fresh line may be started. We never saw a cockroach work so hard or perspire so freely in all our lives before. After about an hour of this frightfully difficult literary labor he fell to the floor exhausted, and we saw him creep feebly into a nest of the poems which are always there in profusion.”

Now, when I started in the newsroom at the Pasadena Star News, we used those old manual typewriters, which is why—to this day—I smack the hell out of any keyboard I use, because you had to apply a lot of force to the keys to get the letters to strike the page. So give it up for archy, who loves an alley cat named mehitabel (a female feline who gives new meaning to the phrase, “she’s been around”) so much that every night he pours his heart (and pulps his head) out to her glory.

(I must have been in high school when I first came across archy and mehitabel. But what I remember is mentioning the poems to my mother, who had known them from when they’d been syndicated in the newspapers she read as a young woman. At the time I’m sure I thought it more bizarre that Mom had read poems than that a cockroach would write them.)

Do not be deceived by his present appearance, however; archy is definitely tackling the Big Things—transmigration, descent into hell, beer. There are plenty of allusions splattered through the poems; I had to look up Gambrinus.) You have to set yourself down one evening in a darkened room, with just one lamp on (with maybe a glass of whisky), and take up with archy and mehitabel.

archy’s writing style—no caps, no punctuation—has been revived in today’s texting/IMing world. The difference is, he knows what he’s doing, and he's making a point in the process.

Anyhow, by way of introduction, I give you “the song of mehitabel”:

this is the song of mehitabel
of mehitabel the alley cat
as i wrote you before boss
mehitabel is a believer
in the pythagorean
theory of the transmigration
of the soul and she claims
that formerly her spirit
was incarnated in the body
of cleopatra
that was a long time ago
and one must not be
surprised if mehitabel
has forgotten some of her
more regal manners

i have had my ups and downs
but wotthehell wotthehell
yesterday sceptres and crowns
fried oysters and velvet gowns
and today i herd with bums
but wotthehell wotthehell
i wake the world from sleep
as i caper and sing and leap
when i sing my wild free tune
wotthehell wotthehell
under the blear eyed moon
i am pelted with cast off shoon
but wotthehell wotthehell

do you think that i would change
my present freedom to range
for a castle or moated grange
wotthehell wotthehell
cage me and i d go frantic
my life is so romantic
capricious and corybantic
and i m toujours gai toujours gai

i know that i am bound
for a journey down the sound
in the midst of a refuse mound
but wotthehell wotthehell
oh i should worry and fret
death and i will coquette
there s a dance in the old dame yet
toujours gai toujours gai

i once was an innocent kit
wotthehell wotthehell
with a ribbon my neck to fit
and bells tied onto it
o wotthehell wotthehell
but a maltese cat came by
with a come hither look in his eye
and a song that soared to the sky
and wotthehell wotthehell
and i followed adown the street
the pad of his rhythmical feet
o permit me again to repeat
wotthehell wotthehell

my youth i shall never forget
but there s nothing i really regret
wotthehell wotthehell
there s a dance in the old dame yet
toujours gai toujours gai

the things that i had not ought to
i do because i ve gotto
wotthehell wotthehell
and i end with my favorite motto
toujours gai toujours gai

boss sometimes i think
that our friend mehitabel
is a trifle too gay

You can find more of a sampling here.

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