flashback post Empathy and the New Year by James Schuyler

Monday, December 25, 2017

That After-Christmas Let Down



Empathy and New Year



A notion like that of empathy inspires
great distrust in us, because it connotes
a further dose of irrationalism and
mysticism.
Lévi-Strauss
Whitman took the cars all the way from Camden and when he got here or rather there, said, “Quit quoting," and took the next back, through the Jersey meadows which were that then. Butwhat if it is all, "Maya, illusion?" Idoubt it, though. Men are not so inventive. Orfew are. Not knowinga name for something proves nothing. Right now it isn't raining, snowing, sleeting, slushing, yet it isdoing something. As a matter of factit is raining snow. Snowfrom cold cloudsthat melts as it strikes.To look out a window is to sense wet feet. Now to infusethe garage with a subjective state and can't make it seem toeven if it is a little like What the Dentist Sawa dark gullet with gleams and red. "You come to me at midnight" and say, "I can smell that afterChristmas letdown coming like a hound." And clarify, "I can smell itjust like a hound does." So it came. It's a shame expectations areso often to be counted on.
New Year is nearly here and who, knowing himself, would endanger his desires resolving them in a formula? After a while even a wish flashing by as a thought provokes a knock on wood so often a little dish-like place worn in this desk just holds a lucky stone inherited from an unlucky man. Nineteen-sixty- eight: what a lovely name to give a year. Even better than the dogs': Wert ("…bird thou never…") and Woofy. Personally I am going to call
the New Year, Mutt. Flattering it will get you nowhere.
II
Awake at four and heard a snowplow not rumble— a huge beast at its chow and wondered is it 1968 or 1969? for a bit. 1968 had such a familiar sound. Got coffee and started reading Darwin: so modest, so innocent, so pleased at the surprise that he should grow up to be him. How grand to begin a new year with a new writer you really love. A snow shovel scrapes: it's twelve hours later and the sun that came so late is almost gone: a few pink minutes and yet the days get longer. Coming from the movies last night snow had fallen in almost still air and lay on all, so all twigs were emboldened to make big disclosures. It felt warm, warm that is for cold the way it does when snow falls without wind. "A snow picture," you said, under the clung-to elms, "worth painting." I said, "The weather operator said, `Turning tomorrow to bitter cold.' " "Then the wind will veer round to the north and blow all of it down." Maybe I thought it will get cold some other way. You as usual were right. It did and has. Night and snow and the threads of life for once seen as they are, in ropes like roots.



p.3 in The Crystal Lithium; p.51 in Selected Poems, p. 77 in Collected Poem