The man in the bowler hat, by A.S.J. Tessimond
July 23rd, 2007, 9:21 pm
This poem is silently terrifying. The Lit babies are doing this as part of a Literature Festival this Saturday; I helped them dissect and prac-crit it last week. It’s utterly disturbing and gut-wrenchingly sad.
The last stanza is especially arrow-through-the-heart.
I am the unnoticed, the unnoticeable man:
The man who sat on your right in the morning train:
The man who looked through like a windowpane:
The man who was the colour of the carriage,
the colour of the mounting
Morning pipe smoke.
I am the man too busy with a living to live,
Too hurried and worried to see and smell and touch:
The man who is patient too long and obeys too much
And wishes too softly and seldom.I am the man they call the nation’s backbone,
Who am boneless - playable catgut, pliable clay:
The Man they label Little lest one day
I dare to grow.I am the rails on which the moment passes,
The megaphone for many words and voices:
I am the graph diagram,
Composite face.I am the led, the easily-fed,
The tool, the not-quite-fool,
The would-be-safe-and-sound,
The uncomplaining, bound,
The dust fine-ground,
Stone-for-a-statue waveworn pebble-round.
sonic said,
July 25th, 2007, 9:35 pm
“Who am boneless ” … grammatically wrong, no? poetic licence?
jadeite said,
July 25th, 2007, 11:15 pm
‘Who am boneless’ – it is a really terrifically crafted phrase. That Tessimond selects the ‘am’ form of ‘be’ here (and not ‘is’), creates the astonishing impression of this man’s entire Being is formed of ‘bonelessness’. When we read it, it sounds unsophisticated, primitive; almost as if early man was wearing bowler hats inside his caves, but despite its grammatical clumsiness it does its job, which of course is what the man in the bowler hat is there to do.
Using “am” shows how the man is taking complete ownership of being ‘boneless’ - he is what they call ‘the nation’s backbone’, yet ironically and despairingly, by supporting the nation he proves to be ‘boneless’ and unresisting.
Josiie said,
April 6th, 2008, 11:43 pm
it sounds as though the man did not even exist.or maybe he is just an image being created.this poem is sad