Harry O`N eill

Little David

by Harry O`N eill

Tuesday 11th August 2015 3:40 pm

Little David...ran...screaming...into the hall.

Child, not-of all places-there!
Not, in that strangely oakened,
Glimmer-candled parlour,
Turned now so starkly
Unfamiliar.

Not with old grandad
- beloved, teasing gramps-
Stretched out so silenced,
So un-grandfatherly,
So unlike.

`All of us...even me?`

It was too cruel
To touch
So tender
And all-a-quiver
A flesh
So abruptly
Up against
So hard a fate.

For, just think, Wouldn`t we,
-We, the rhino-hided,
Self-anesthetised -
Were we to feel
(Feel actually in the flesh)
That soul-sickening,
Heart-blood siphoning
Fact.
Then wouldn`t we also,
Wouldn`t we all,
All of us

Run...just like little David...screaming...into the hall ?

◄

Paxos (cont) ►

Comments

Amit Arjun K

Wed 12th Aug 2015 17:41

Hello Again, Thanks for such detailed explanation.
I must confess the poem is beyond my understanding, and its complexities get me even more attracted to it now.

I'd failed to comprehend the intensity of the words and now that I have read your explanation, I find parts of it ( a shortcoming of my understanding).

It is still brilliant, and I will definitely give it couple of thorough readings now.

Thank you!

Harry O'Neill

Wed 12th Aug 2015 17:14

Amit,
Thanks for your comment. and for your question
which gives me a chance for a little self-reflection on
what I was trying to do with this.

It `came about` due to a family story of my grandson
who once, at a funeral, asked would he also die, and
when he was told `yes` promptly screamed and fled
the room. He was only a young child.

The core of the poem is about how intolerable such
`news` is to the innocently unprepared, and how the
rest of us adapt personal strategies for dealing with it.

The form of it is (I think) a result of me getting a bit
too involved with reading about reception theory,
and themic `strategies and repertoires` (which really
is just a way of anticipating what you and the reader
expectationally share.)

For instance: the exclamation mark in the first line is
a kind of shock that the child should have been given
such information in such a funereal place. The second
stanza an attempt to show the change that lifelessness
brings about to the eyes of a child.

The smaller - italicised - sentence is the pith of the the
child`s actual question...the point of it`s size, iatalic and
separation, is that it should be recognised(a la reception
style) to be so. (I played around with the idea of doing the
same thing by calling the poem David`s question)

The last two stanzas (by contrasting tender and calloused
flesh) attempt to make the reader feel the terrible reality
of the death sentence we are all under.

The (decent:)) into rhyme and updated repetition of Little
David`s action is to give the poem a `reminding` shape on
the page...and to imply that that is what we would all do
If we really felt what physical death is.

I apologise if all this seems a bit too `thought out`...but it
is - roughly - what went on in my head while doing it.

Thanks again for your interest.

Amit Arjun K

Tue 11th Aug 2015 18:39

Hello!

The beginning and perhaps the title suggested it would be a light hearted poem, but it turned out so full of depth and perspectives (that one can draw).

If I can ask of you this, what is the implication of the last stanza and the end?

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