Dream Song 14
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) "Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no
Inner Resources." I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as Achilles,
who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into the mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.
Commentary
There are many things to love about this poem– here are a few. The wonderful turn of “we ourselves flash and yearn”. The great pun at the end. The way the poem aspire to both irony and kindness, without ever choosing sides. How daring to say “life, friends, is boring”, to make it stick, to be a poet, for crying out loud, and still make it stick. And yet to undercut itself with “as bad as Achilles” knowing only someone who loves literature could be so shocked not to find rewards in it– and so we know that there is some deeper underlying tragedy, perhaps as fully formed as the Illiad, yet otherwise unspoken.
— Howard Weinberg
Show 2 commentsHide comments
From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
Anna Marie Bohmann · 22 November 2003
I, too, have concluded I have no Inner Resources. I now resort instead to Outer Resources, in the form of Berryman (who oddly enough, does not bore me…)
Rebekah Claire Doroszenko · 15 December 2004
What a refreshing change from the usual ‘life is wonderful, I am wonderful’ idealism that passes for Inner Honesty. I defy anyone not to feel they have Inner Resources of an empty Saturday afternoon. That part is simple enough. If you can then make beauty of boredom, my son, you are great.