Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?

My youngest sister got a tattoo. She used a quote from an Emily Dickinson poem the says "It's all I have to bring today, this and my heart besides" along with a small heart and a clover. You can't go wrong with Emily Dickson, she says. She likes that poem because she puts her heart into everything she does. So her tattoo represents how she sees herself, and how others know her to be.

This got me thinking about what poem I might use if I decided to get a tattoo. My favorite Emily Dickinson poem starts out "It was not death, for I stood up" and that's not exactly what I would want to put on my shoulder blade.

I love Emily Dickinson, but my favorite poem may be "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot. My mother read that poem to us kids when I was about 12 years old, and I've loved it ever since. The poem starts with "Let us go then, you and I" and this is a phrase that my husband and I have used repeatedly to each other since our first date. At the start of that date, one of us said "Let us go then" and the other responded "You and I" and I was hooked. Here was guy who actually read poetry! Awesome. We still say that to each other when we are leaving the house. So I could have that tattooed on my body, or better yet my husband and I could each have half of the phrase immortalized on our flesh.

But, there is another line from Prufrock that I like even better. If you've never read the poem, I need to explain. Prufrock is going to make a visit to someone, and his intentions are to speak out, probably to a young woman, maybe make some kind of declaration. He wants to change his life, but he's afraid he will be misunderstood. He's afraid people will laugh at him. I get the feeling his life is not necessarily happy, but it's comfortable. He wants to change things, but he's frightened. He says "Do I dare disturb the universe?" Later comes one of the saddest lines in poetry - "And would it have been worth it after all?" and you know that Prufrock has chickened out. His moment has passed. He's not going to speak. He's going to get old and be alone because he didn't dare disturb the universe.

So the line I would get on a tattoo is "disturb the universe" - a statement, not a question. It doesn't necessarily represent who I am, but who I want to be. I want to be a person who is not afraid to take a chance. I want to be willing to disturb the universe.

Will I get a tattoo? Maybe some day. So far, I'm still afraid.

By Emily Dickinson

It's all I have to bring today--
This, and my heart beside--
This, and my heart, and all the fields--
And all the meadows wide--
Be sure you count -- should I forget
Some one the sum could tell--
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell.


From "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"


And indeed there will be time
To wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and, ‘Do I dare?’
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: ‘How his hair is growing thin!’]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: ‘But how his arms and legs are thin!’]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

Don't Ever Wink at Me Again

To me the most telling moment of the Vice Presidential debate came when Biden talked about being a single parent after his wife and daughter died in a car accident that also severely injured his two young sons. I've twice ridden in an ambulance with a child of mine, so when Biden choked up, I started to choke up, too.

How did Palin react? She didn't. No murmur of sympathy, no kind look, not even a respectful moment of silence. She launched pertly right into her favorite talking point: "...and John McCain is a maverick..."

So, a poem for Biden, and for those who care.

Rispetti: On the Death of a Child

I thought I heard a knock on the door,
And I jumped up as if you were here again,
Speaking to me, as you so often did,
In a coaxing tone; “Daddy, may I come in?”

When at eventide I walked along the steep seashore
I felt your small hand quite warm in mine.

And where the tide had rolled up stones,
I said aloud; “Look out that you don’t fall!”

Paul Heyes

Work

I found a part of this poem in the Washington Post Book World a couple of weeks ago.

Both of my children will some day be rain salesmen. It is probably too late for me.

by John Engman

WORK

I wanted to be a rain salesman,
because rain makes the flowers grow,
but because of certain diversions and exhaustions,
certain limitations and refusals and runnings low,
because of chills and pressures, shaky prisms, big blows,
and apes climbing down from banana trees, and dinosaurs
weeping openly by glacial shores, and sunlight warming
the backsides of Adam and Eve in Eden ...
I am paid
to make the screen of my computer glow, radioactive
leakage bearing the song of the smart money muse:
this little bleep went to market, this little clunk has none.

The woman who works the cubicle beside me has pretty knees
and smells of wild blossoms, but I am paid to work
my fingers up and down the keys, an almost sexy rhythm,
king of the chimpanzees picking fleas from his beloved.
I wanted to be a rain salesman , but that's a memory
I keep returning to my childhood for minor repairs:
the green sky cracking, then rain, and after,
those flowers growing faster than I can name them,
those flowers that fix me and make me stare.

I wanted to be a rain salesman,
carrying my satchel full of rain from door to door,
selling thunder, selling the way air feels after a downpour,
but there were no openings in the rain department,
and so they left me dying behind this desk—adding bleeps,
subtracting clunks—and I would give a bowl of wild blossoms,
some rain, and two shakes of my fist at the sky to be living.
Above my desk, lounging in a bed of brushstrokes flowers,
a woman beckons from my cheap Modigliani print, and I know
by the way she gazes that she sees something beautiful
in me. She has green eyes. I am paid to ignore her.

I Learned the Truth at Seventeen

Hillary Clinton is an enormously intelligent and hard-working woman. She is a very capable Senator. She is knowledgeable about foreign policy and economics. She ran a good, hard campaign and lost fairly against an opponent whose time had come.

And now comes John McCain, who chooses an inexperienced, right-wing-extremist, former-beauty-queen female as his running mate so that he can attract Hillary supporters. He really doesn't get it, does he?

So, for all the women who, like me, learned the truth at seventeen that women will always be judged first by their looks, and second by their qualifications:

ARTIST: Janis Ian
TITLE: At Seventeen

I learned the truth at seventeen
That love was meant for beauty queens
And high school girls with clear skinned smiles
Who married young and then retired
The valentines I never knew
The Friday night charades of youth
Were spent on one more beautiful
At seventeen I learned the truth

And those of us with ravaged faces
Lacking in the social graces
Desperately remained at home
Inventing lovers on the phone
Who called to say, "come dance with me"
And murmur vague obscenities
It isn't all it seems at seventeen

A brown eyed girl in hand-me-downs
Whose name I never could pronounce said
Pity, please, the ones who serve
They only get what they deserve
The rich-relationed home-town queen
Marries into what she needs
With a guarantee of company and haven for the elderly

Remember those who win the game
Lose the love they sought to gain
In debentures of quality
And dubious integrity
Their small town eyes will gape at you in
Dull surprise when payment due
Exceeds accounts received at seventeen

To those of us who knew the pain
Of valentines that never came
And those whose names were never called
When choosing sides for basketball
It was long ago and far away
The world was younger than today
And dreams were all they gave for free
To ugly duckling girls like me

We all play the game and when we dare
To cheat ourselves at solitaire
Inventing lovers on the phone
Repenting other lives unknown
That call and say, "come dance with me"
And murmur vague obscenities
At ugly girls like me, at seventeen

I'm Sorry

When I made a tricky turn out of the Home Depot parking lot this morning, I pulled in front of a speeding minivan. She honked at me, of course, to inform me of her displeasure at having to slow down. I honked back and waved to let her know I was sorry, but somehow I think she may have misinterpreted what I was trying to say.

Why don't we have a quick and easy hand signal to say "I'm sorry"? We have a signal to say "Go screw yourself, you're an idiot anyhow", why not a signal to say "I'm sorry that my actions inconvenienced you, but I didn't mean to be hurtful and I won't do it again"? It might stop some road rage.

Dogs hide their tail between their legs and rub their heads on the ground when they are sorry. This keeps the rest of the pack from tearing them apart.

If cats have a signal to say they're sorry, I've never seen it.


Here is a poem by Stevie Smith about forgiveness, which doesn't have a lot to do with driving sins, but I like it.

Forgive me, forgive me

Forgive me forgive me my heart is my own
And not to be given for any man’s frown
Yet would I not keep it for ever alone.

Forgive me forgive me I thought that I loved
My fancy betrayed me my heart was unmoved
My fancy too often has carelessly roved.

Forgive me forgive me for here where I stand
There is no friend beside me no lover at hand
No footstep by mine in my desert of sand.

Stevie Smith