Poem 318

Polymers are made of hooked-together monomers … which got me thinking about the human strings we’re all part of, the glue being love … how that’s reflected in the comical conga line of people stuck to the golden goose in the Grimm’s tale … which in turn suggested Death leading the characters at the end of Bergman’s plague fable The Seventh Seal … then Chekhov’s desperate unrequited Masha in mourning for my life dragged along by her love for Konstantin who’s in love with Nina who’s in love with Trigorin … and finally our outrageous projection onto lemmings (who are apparently solitary and generally intolerant of one another) of them rushing blindly and co-dependently off a precipice into the sea when in fact it’s us who, emotionally linked together, pull and are pulled onwards out of control and can only be freed/returned to individual status by death …

… so the poem itself is a polymer …

( I particularly like the double-meaning of chains, Death as an over-jolly scoutmaster and the romp through the plague struck countryside of love … )

Chains

Like polymers we love in chains
in long lines like the stupid peasants
in the story about the goose
now transmuted to Death
                                                    in the lead
hood and scythe and prancing
like an over-jolly scoutmaster

Masha in The Seagull
is not so funny
tucking in the deathbed
black skirts rustling
suffering like she'll never stop
it never stops this romp
through the plague struck countryside
of love

                where are we going?

to the cliff where the lemmings don't
and we do
the rocks the sea
relying finally
on the breakers breaking
to unclip me