She came down the murky night

[William]

She came down the murky night,
a less than beautiful Ophelia,
under the eyes of sleeping cattle on Lord’s Island.

At some point in that morning
She brushed away damp branches below
this house, grey willow lying fruitless in low water,
with a careless rolling of her arm,

a slow and lapping ecstasy.
The unconscious strokes of grace now gone,
her body recovering its distant awkwardness,
lorry drivers bullocked it ashore.

[lizzytysh]

Hi William ~

There are some aspects of the images here that I'm not understanding, but I have the feeling that this woman drowned. Except that "careless" gives the impression that she/her body had the power to do otherwise. Am I on the right track? I love its evocativeness, and am working on understanding what's happened. I've given it three readings and will give it more.


~ Lizzy

[William]

Lizzy,
Thank you.
"Careless" as in beyond care, beyond her control as, yes, she has drowned and this was how she looked as her body turned in the water near a weir.

[Alan Alda]

Hi William...I'm put off by the beginning of your piece where the person/body is being judged for her beauty or lack there of. Are you judging death's results? The woman? Is it just to work in a reference to the drowned "Ophelia"?

regards,
Laurie

[raugust7]

a really lovely, seasonal poem....
Laurie, i think if you read the poem, the meaning is quite clear
the first stanaza is wonderful, especially the second line

[Alan Alda]

a really lovely, seasonal poem....
Laurie, i think if you read the poem, the meaning is quite clear
the first stanaza is wonderful, especially the second line

Fascinating. What do you find "seasonal" about this piece? And why is the second line "especially wonderful" to you?

[raugust7]

well alan, forgive me, i have imbibed a fair amount of alcohol, so some coherence may be absent.
My interpretation of the poem, that the first stanza was addressed, not to the woman, but the murky night itself, struck me as a beautiful metaphor; i tought that the use of Ophelia- whom I associate with the famous picture of her in the river, covered with fallen leaves, continued the feeling of winter, that pervaded the poem ('pervaded,' is that a word- the confusion of drink!) It to me was a gorgeous use of a sentiment bestowed by winter, the fog, the drawing in of the nigths, to analyse an emotion of love.
I think it a very fine poem- hope this in some way clarifies my ideas!

[lizzytysh]

Hi William ~

Thanks for clarifying that for me.


~ Lizzy

[William]

Alan,
my intention is referring to the less than beautiful Ophelia was threefold -
to compare the woman, as raugust says, to the Burn Jones (I think) picture;
to suggest she was not a pre-Raphaelite beauty
and to show, however, that she had regained a lost beauty, poise and grace in death, something that was absent in her life and led her to this watery end.
I hope that clarifies a few things.
And thank you all for the comments.

[Alan Alda]

Thanks William. You confirmed my initial thoughts on why you said what you did...and it is still 'off-putting' to read something that judges a dead woman on a pivot of whether or not she was beautiful (pre-Raphaelite, or otherwise). The poem aggrandizes itself (through omnipotent judgement) at the expense of a dead person. Sorry. It just doesn't work for me on principal alone. I realize this could/may be 100% fictional. That is beside the point.
regards,
Laurie

[raugust7]

Laurie, I do not know whether or not you are familiar with Hamlet, but you certainly seem to be ignoring Ophelia's role in the play. The poem, seeks to resuce her from the idolatry of the painting, to 'restore' her lost beauty and poise, which she loses as she loses her grip on sanity. Similarly, death does not remove a person's beauty, nor does the poem linger over her deathly beauty from a salacious point of view. Also, Ophelia is fictional; this is not a dead person but a dead character (regardless of how magnificently depicted she may be) and certainly in English literature, a symbolic character now. I can think of several poets/musicians, who you might want to condemn for contemplating the beauty of a dead person- Len's Joan of Arc for one, let alone Catherine Tekakwitha, along with Orwell, Hemingway, Mailer, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Dylan and countless others.
On this point, the poem is clearly not glorifying the demise of Ophelia, literal or otherwise, it uses it as a poetical counterpoint. This is, after all poetry, not journalism. But then, your opinion is as valid as my own, and I just thought that I would provide it.

[Alan Alda]

Evoking a familiar fictional character to define what is in the poem a real-to-the-poem-dead body is perfectly reasonable. To leave that realtothepoem 'body' undefined other than whether or not the person was physically beautiful without concern for a life lost or character seems opportunistic. Sure we can gawk at the literary illusion and the famous portrait, and say: how clever to put this in a poem; but it stops there. Where is the person that inhabitated that body? Why is a literary allusion sufficient? I'm saying, I don't think it is. Clever for the sake of being clever is the result.

Enough already.
L

[raugust7]

fair enough, but your argument seems to ignore the author's explanation, along with the role of Ophelia herself

[William]

Alan,
I may have missed your point in my reply and I may not have elucidated mine, so another attempt.
The "less than beautiful" is meant to tie with the "bullocked" at the end - in the sense of a perceived lack of beauty if an observer (not simply the writer) were to judge in that way.
However the recovered grace of the dead woman is the antithesis of this perceived "less than beautiful" image.
However, I find your contention that a writer may not perceive his characters (male or female) to be less than beautiful astonishing. If you pursue that argument you remove from the writer the opportunity to be anything other than banal and, by extension, you remove the rights of the other characters to have opinions that any reader finds unacceptable. Ergo, you destroy fiction.
I also suspect that you are taking me to task for what you perceive (very wrongly) to be a male chauvinist attitude to women.
Have you ever seen a body that has been in the water for days? I have. It is neither pre-Raphaelite nor beautiful and the lorry drivers (or others) who bullock it ashore are doing just that - a service and an unpleasant one.
I hope that in someway explains my thoughts.
If it were a male body would you find it as objectionable?