knock knock…

Who’s there? I say.

I say it like it’s a joke.

The door opens. It’s someone I vaguely recognize as one of the students in my class who hang out with the annoying and rowdy and arrogant group in the rugby club and the territorial army.

My own group of friends is made up of the people who the rugby club etc group call arty, who put on plays at the student theatre about the holocaust and gay people and nuclear missile silos and write short fiction and poems and publish these a couple of times a year in little pamphlets and who go to films with subtitles at the art gallery on Wednesday nights where the group this person who’s at the door of my room hangs out with wouldn’t be seen dead.

We drink at very different pubs.

Though we’re often in the same rooms our paths almost never cross.

Hello, I say.

Yeah, hi, she says. It’s Sand, isn’t it?

She comes in and sits on my bed.

Eh, come in, I say.

I already did, she says and looks at me like I’ve said something really confusing.

I laugh.

Silence.

Want a coffee? I say.

No thanks. I just need your help with something, she says.

With what? I say.

I’m in your class, she says. I’m Martina Inglis.

Yeah I know, I say.

I’m in the other practical criticism seminar from you, she says. I’m supposed to be doing the poetry presentation paper this week for my seminar. I know you’re doing the same paper, I mean the same poem, for your seminar.

Are you okay? I say.

She seems close to tears.

No, she says.

She tells me she wants me to give the paper I’ll be writing about the poem we’ve been set to her so she can read it at the seminar she’s meant to be writing this paper for too.

Yeah, that’ll be right, I say.

You will? she says.

No. I was being ironic. Why would I do that? I say.

Last night, she says, I couldn’t sleep. I thought I might go and jump off the Farr bridge. Then I wouldn’t have to do any of this.

Uh huh, I say. But regardless of your impending nervous breakdown.

If I give what I write to you and then I read out that same paper at my seminar, which takes place the day after your seminar, they’ll think I copied it off you.

I keep thinking I’ll throw myself out of the window of my room, she says. I keep imagining myself falling through the air.

You live on the ground floor, I say.

It’s still got quite a drop, she says.

I laugh. She laughs too, though this makes her look even more likely to burst into tears.

I hate poetry, she says.

Then why are you doing an English degree? I say.

She shrugs.

I thought it’d be easy, she says.

It’s as easy as you make it, I say.

It’s not. And it’s pointless, she says.

This poem’s not even a big deal, I say. It’s an e.e. cummings poem.

You can easily write something about e.e. cummings. Anyone can say pretty much anything they like about e.e. cummings and it’ll probably be a bit true.

I can’t! she says. I’ve read it fifty times and I have no idea, not the fucking first fucking inkling, what it’s fucking meant to fucking fucking mean.

She starts crying.

I find the duplicate the poem’s on, bright purple from the copier, in among the stuff all over the floor. I come and sit next to her on the bed.

Okay, I say. Move fucking up. Here we fucking go.

Don’t make fun of me, she says.

I’d never make fun of someone I don’t know, I say.

I put the piece of paper with the poem on it down on the bed between us.

to start, to hesitate;to stop

(kneeling in doubt:while all

skies fall)and then to slowly trust

T upon H,and smile

could anything be pleasanter

(some big dark little day

which seems a lifetime at the least)

except to add an A?

henceforth he feels his pride involved

(this i who’s also you)

and nothing less than excellent

E will exactly do

next(our great problem nearly solved)

we dare adorn the whole

with a distinct grandiloquent

deep D;while all skies fall

at last perfection, now and here

–but look:not sunlight?yes!

and(plunging rapturously up)

we spill our masterpiece

See? she says. Nothing about it means anything. I hate it.

Don’t be hating a poem, I say. Waste of a strong emotion. Just look at the words. They’ll tell you what they mean. Because that’s what words do.

What? she says.

They mean, I say.

Yeah but what I mean is, why does he have to make it look so strange with all the spacing stuff he does? she says. It’s like he’s showing off.

Nothing wrong with showing off, I say.

Now, there I actually agree with you, she says. Though thousands wouldn’t.

And it only looks strange because we expect spaces round punctuation, I say, and we expect punctuation and syntax to do very expected things. But why do we? Why do we have conventions at all?

Because how would we live properly without –, she says.

No, I don’t need an answer to the question, I say.

Oh, she says.

I’m just highlighting one of the questions the poem’s speaker’s asking, I say.

The poem’s speaker, she says. You mean the poet. Or is there another person meant to be speaking too? God. I don’t understand anything.

I mean the person who’s there inside your head when you read the poem, when the human thing you can hear through its strangeness, and the meanings you do recognize, even through the fog of the strangeness, all hit your eye and your mind, I say.

What? she says.

She looks at me, desperate, teary.

And here, I say. The poem, here it says i who’s also you. So it’s also about you, this poem.

Me? she says.

Whoever the me is who’s reading it, I say. Me as well.

I just don’t get it, from the start onwards, she says. What does it even mean, the first line? About starting and then hesitating and then stopping?

It means pretty much what you’ve just been telling me yourself, I say.

That something about it, on the page, has made you look again, have to hesitate, even stop.

That’s true, she says. That’s true. But why kneeling in doubt? And all the stuff about skies falling?

Well you’re the one talking about jumping off a bridge and out a window. Because you’re so worried that you don’t understand something.

It’s quite like your own sky has fallen in, I say.

Her eyes widen.

Oh, she says.

She wipes her nose.

But what about the kneeling? she says. Who’s kneeling in doubt?

Why?

Well, I say, something’s definitely happening about doubt in the poem, and about collapse, and possibly about powers that are sky-high, I mean higher than human, powers that might require a person to pray, maybe. And it also suggests there’s maybe a way to stop kneeling in doubt, maybe a way to be surer. At least that’s the inference.

Inference, she says.

Look at what’s beyond all the skies falling stuff, I say.

I point at the end of the third line.

Slowly trust, she says.

Doubt, followed by trust, I say.

Is that why the doubt and the sky falling are in brackets? she says.

I don’t know. Could well be, I say.

And why is it in brackets in one part of the poem and not in brackets when it gets said again later near the end? she says.

Brackets mean containment, I say. Something set apart, extra, maybe not necessary. The poet must want the sky falling first to be contained and then to be let loose, be something that becomes more salient as the poem goes on.

What’s salient mean? she says.

It means salient, I say.

She laughs.

Good.

But what’s that slowly trusting thing about? she says.

Hmm, I say. Something about giving over control? Something happening in the poem being a learning process in itself?

And yeah, okay, but what if what we’re meant to be trusting is just, like, a list of random letters like the ones in the poem? she says. Where’s the trust or the learning in that?

Yes, I say. But. All written words. Everything we make meaning with when we use written language. It’s all just random letters, no?

Her eyes go wide.

Yes! she says.

I look at the poem again on the page. It does deal in what looks like a random fall of letters. They fall loosely through the poem all the way to the second last verse.

Maybe the poem wants us to trust meaninglessness, or something that doesn’t mean anything, she says.

Yep. Possibly. But it’s also asking us to trust the fall, if not of the sky, of the letters T and H, and then A, E and D, I say.

A and E, I know what that is, she says.

That’s where you’d have been right now if you’d jumped off that bridge, I say.

Yeah, and D’s what I’m going to get for this paper, she says. Thaed.

Thaed. It’s not even a word.

Unless, I say. Anagram. Sort of. Spell it sort of backwards.

Oh! she says. It’s – death! is it? – it’s death!

I smile. She smiles back, a broad, open-mouthed amazement of a smile.

How did you even see that? she says.

I didn’t, till now, I say. Till I looked at it with you. And you’re smiling at death now. Look how powerful a poem is.

Wow, she says. It’s brilliant. But death in reverse. What does it mean?

Are we supposed to be, like, trusting death? she says.

I suppose, I say. But not death per se. Death reversed, like you say. A death that’s different from the usual death.

Look at you, she says, like that busker outside Marks and Spencer and all the meanings of things showering down round you like loose change.

The fall of meaning, I say. The fall of understanding. And here, look at the end. Where it says that there’s even a perfection possible in what we make of our own coming apart, well, that word perfection can mean a kind of end, or death in itself. But with this dissolution there’s also, look, this surprise. Sunlight.

She shakes her head.

And then the word yes, I say. With its exclamation mark.

All this positivity. In death? she says.

In death backwards, I say. Death in reverse, to quote you.

Thaed, she says. He’s playing a game with us.

A game with big stakes, I say.

I write H T A E D down on the paper next to the poem.

And I reckon he gives us the T and the H the right way round at the start to help with the game, I say. Otherwise the eye might be tempted to make the word into hated instead of the word death.

Yeah. Like I hate this poem, she says.

Do you still hate it? I say.

But she doesn’t hear me; she’s holding the paper with the poem on it and turning it round in her hands.

He’s saying death’s a game, she says. Which it really isn’t.

Or saying there’s a way to be playful even in times of really terrible doubt? I say.

Ah, she says. I like that.

Even when the day is dark and the sky is falling and things and words and everything they mean are falling to pieces all around you.

Falling to pieces, she says. Way to be playful.

She reaches across and takes a pen off my desk and writes on the back of her hand.

PLAYFUL DOUBT PIECES

And at the end of this process, look, I say.

I point to the last bit of the poem.

Sun, she says. Up.

Dawn. That whole process of falling isn’t a fall after all, it’s a, a, I don’t know, a rising up. An ascension.

Yes, she says. Like, is this a really religious poem? You could make the case for that reading, yes, I reckon, I say.

Could I? she says.

She looks pleased.

Thanks, I say. I’d never have seen these thoughts in it unless we’d had this conversation.

She stands up.

They told me you’d be whizz-kid clever, she says.

They who? I say.

They also warned me not to come and ask you in case you made a pass at me, she says.

No worries. I only sleep with people I find attractive and who find me attractive back, I say.

But you’re really good at this stuff, she says. It’s actually almost cool.

Even though it’s so uncool.

Thanks again, I say.

I hate to say it, but we’re quite good together, she says.

I wouldn’t go that far, I say.

I feel so much better now, she says. How is that even possible?

The thinking game, I say. There’s always a payoff one way or another.

So, she says. Now that we’re friends. When you write it all down. Can I have a copy?

Nope, I say.

No? she says. Even though you said you’d never have seen those things in it unless you’d been talking to me?

Write down what you remember when you get back to your room, I say. Make up the rest. I guarantee our papers will be completely different.

And we’ve only skated the surface of that poem.

A poem, like an icerink, she says. You write poems and things, don’t you? You could write me a poem like an icerink.

Why would I do that? I say.

Did you know I’m quite a good figure skater? she says. I’ve medals for it.

Nope, I say.

You must be psychic, she says.

I look down at my watch on my wrist so that she’ll know I want her to go.

You’ll be fine, I say. Anyone could choose a single phrase of this poem and write fifteen different papers about it.

At that she forgets her figure-skater self and looks cowed again, looks away.

I won’t remember anything we said, she says. I won’t be able to make it up.

Be playful, I say. You seem quite playful to me.

Do I? she says. Really?

Yes, I say. Now. Go away.

Be playful be playful be playful, she says to herself.

And don’t jump off the bridge, this week anyway, I say. Only jump off it after you’ve asked someone else to help you with a paper for something else.

One day I’ll help you with something, she says.

Sure you will, I say.

Don’t tell anyone I was here, she says.

Your secret’s safe with me, I say. So long as you don’t tell anyone what everybody says about me behind my back.

Deal, she says.

Bye, I say.

Bye, she says.

She closes the door behind her.