My mind got to ramblin’, like a wild geese
From the west
Devil Got My Woman, Skip James
Napping with a book on his lap,
Mr Honk dreamed of the shirorekha
over the Diabelli Variations, played
as if Delta blues had been invented
on the Danube—even pure sour grapes
couldn’t bring anyone past the cognitive
dissonance—only to find upon waking
a suitable name for his only invention:
Kalidīpāsana.
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Although a treasure trove of words,
Mr Honk only ever said a few
on any one occasion, as if preparing
for a quiet life in a discreet garret
or in a but and ben on the cliffs
were as important as avoiding the perceived
embarrassment of mentioning toasts
in Towcester.
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Too late to invent Modigliani
or write the Les Berceaux,
Mr Honk settled for vignettes
on the inherent insettleabilititude
of a whim: Isn’t that what
the intentionally blank pages
are for?
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As a nocturnal breed,
Mr Honk never fully adapted
to his condition, but even he knew
that the parchment nomads,
like hidden pilcrows,
favour serene moonbaths
under the waned crescent
once all the trinkets of the day
finally run their course
and even the turntable
can’t outshout the chorus
of aspiring seagulls.
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Undecided
between the Metamorphoses,
the Pentateuch, and the Puranas,
Mr Honk pondered the reason
for his existence.
But whether it was divine
indifference, human boredom,
or generative model
hallucinations, he knew
he was nothing but
a by-product.
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I’ve never considered Shirley MacLaine a great actress—decent, yes, but calling her great would be a stretch. Even in my favourite of her films, The Apartment, the real tour de force is Jack Lemmon. To be frank, if it weren’t for that tomboyish, girl-next-door charm, I might not have noticed her at all.
Audrey Hepburn, on the other hand, occasionally approached greatness, so I always looked forward to her films. You can imagine my excitement, then, at the prospect of seeing them together—especially in a picture highly rated on IMDb (7.8 out of 10, while The Apartment sits at 8.3).
What a disappointment The Children’s Hour turned out to be. It had all the ingredients for a powerful film: a controversial theme (for the time), a talented cast, a prized source play by Lillian Hellman, and a skilled director in William Wyler. Yet the result feels strangely inert.
The script tiptoes around its subject matter, and in striving to be tasteful and ‘serious’, it ends up emotionally muffled. Even Hepburn, with her quiet dignity, couldn’t save it. As for MacLaine—her bleached appearance and school-play emotionalism were the final straw. The film has neither aesthetic weight nor psychological depth, and I genuinely can’t understand what it’s praised for.
Someone once called it a ‘prestige picture’—a film that feels important rather than actually being important, the kind that gets praised for tackling difficult subjects while failing to do so with any real conviction or insight—and I couldn’t agree more.
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With the linden tree within reach,
if it weren’t for the glass,
Mr Honk appreciated the humility
of sitting by the window,
where he could read in peace,
stretched out on a folding garden chair—
a rather unusual piece of furniture
for a living room—
and even the sun rays, here and there
breaking through the branches,
were not too intrusive,
but he would never have admitted
that he was actually looking forward
to the arrival of July, so that he could fill
the marginalia with linden blossoms
and bumblebees buzzing amongst
the words.
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When destiny is the most you can bear,
personal extinction is not a threat;
it’s an escape route from the horror of choice,
yet just saying that makes it sound trivial,
like a barking dog’s obligations: a scheduled comfort
or love amongst the travellers.
But you don’t have to be upset to be kind,
even if nature does make fun of us
and it feels ridiculous to be hunted
by literary characters we killed—
as if we didn’t care, except we do—
instead of letting them run their course.
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I can’t remember if I ever wanted to say something in particular, if my words had any intended purpose, at least not since the very beginning, when the first verse coincided with the end of puberty and was meant to impress a girl. It did not. I wonder what she’d say now—not that it would matter, and her face has been lost to the mists of time anyway. Perhaps that’s what always drew me to what Socrates said about poets in the ‘Apology’. At least, after more than three decades, my writing—although not a perpetuum mobile—is as close to self-perpetuating as one gets.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
hidden pilcrow 