an orifice by any other name

[Terrance]

Paul Mackin wrote:
> 
> I stand before the window and I pare
> My fingernails and vaguely am aware
> Of certain flinching likeness: the thumb,
> Our grocer's son; the index, lean and glum
> College astronomer Starover Blue;
> The middle fellow, a tall priest I knew;
> The feminine fourth finger, an old flirt;
> And little pinky clinging to her skirt.
> And I make mouths as I snip off the thin
> Strips of what Aunt Maud used to call "scarf-skin."
> 
> lines 185-94

Canto Two
lines 167-193

There was a time in my demented youth
When somehow I suspected that the truth
About survival after death was known
To every human being: I alone
Knew nothing, and a great conspiracy 
Of books and people hid the truth from me.

There was a day when I began to doubt
Man's sanity: How could he live without
Knowing for sure what dawn, what death, what doom
Awaited consciousness beyond the tomb? 

And finally there was the sleepless night
When I decided to explore and fight
The foul. the inadmissible abyss, 
Devoting all my twisted life to this
One task. Today I am sixty-one. Waxwings
Are berry-pecking. A cicada sings. 

The scissors I am holding are
A dazzling synthesis of sun and star. 



Now, as soon as I read stanza one I think of Wordsworth's 
Ode Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood. 

"There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream..." 



PF Commentary addresses the great political conspiracy at length, but
not, as far as I can tell,  the "great conspiracy" mentioned at line
171. 

The "great conspiracy" (171) is none other than experience/knowledge of
life/death. 

This stanza also evoked a recent discussion here about Nothing. 
Most recent discussions here have been much ado about nothing and much
less to do with nothing or any other topic worth much ado but I'm
referring to the discussion of existential and christian nothingness. 

Also, is the poet punning? He knew nothing (ignorance / knowledge of
existential waste)? 

An allusion to Eliot's waste land? 

I was neither living nor dead
and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Od' und leer das Meer.

[ Waste and empty the sea] 

Eliot ends this passage of romantic love with romantic desolation
(Kenner 101). In Wagner's opera, Tristan is dying, waiting for Isolde
his beloved, but the lookout can only utter these dismal words (Southam
109). The desperate words of Tristan's lookout evoke feelings of loss
and desolation so poignant it seems fit that they are in another
language. In Eliot's poem, the words serve as expression of regret for a
choice not made in the Hyacinth garden. "The framing lines from Wagner
set the Hyacinth garden scene in a context first of innocent love and
then of love lost and doomed" (Gish 52). Bibliography Kenner, Hugh. T.S.
Eliot Southam, B.C. A students guide to the Selected poems of T.S. Eliot
Gish, Nancy K. The waste land: a poem of memory and desire contributed
by Andrea Fischer, Nov 23, 1998 12:21 AM


He knew nothing [waste]? 
Or was he ignorant? 

He only suspected that others knew what he did not. 

Who is not ignorant of life after death? 

Who is it that when haunted by questions from the other side does not
question the sanity of man? The absurdity of man? 


Slothrop?   Hamlet? Adam? Orpheus? Tiresias?

A conspiracy that caused Adam to count the fruit of the tree and number
them. 

2 and 2 make four (Orwell, 1984)  because Adam was a slow learner of the
lessons about the paradoxical nature of God and the Fall (Nabokov,
AL&CS).  

The destination between experience/knowledge is both traditional and
traditionally controversial.