The humor, or rather the irony, of my
presence in the Coffee Shop--
And there is some, believe me, the analysis
Is made to force back the tears from my eyes--
Well, this consists in the fact that I, at
The counter appearing to dally for an hour,
Am alone in the conception of such an hour
Being an hour of work. I mean I’m
furiously busy.
The basic awkwardness I feel in my behavior
I think consists of this fact that actually
I’m engaged in important . . . research!
When you are watching everything, and all
At once, well you sink--you rise, into the
Center of a large confusion.
And if in
The Coffee Shop only held together, itself,
By the simplest sort of continuities,
this is happening to you, well
That makes you quite susceptible to the
Wellsprings of thought! And though it
Gives you faith in the daily life and
common run of humanity,
Like as a premise of observation, you
Still become too susceptible to
truth,
Should it arrive on the wings of any
Already held anticipation.
I was always
Trying to add to my store of knowledge on
The nature of reality, and I had
Determined that Coffee Shops were real, I
Was always in them, and hard at work,
like they were the storm-center
Of countless battles in the weather and street.
Simple anonymous transactions held for me
The suspense of a hoped-for, a planned-for
Confirmation of basic, unavoidable, and
Consummate, or rather hard-hitting, mysteries.
I was most like a veteran patron, not the
Jaunty customer just going by, but the
Neighborhood sitter that the waitress has
Long nursed to like a series of special
Dinner plates, like beef and noodles and
A side order of french fries with gravy,
With milk and cherry pie, sitting at the
End of the counter, eating with both hands,
A napkin in his lap, and lost in the years.
Well, I wasn’t that guy, no I was
strictly pretentious,
But I was most like that guy, only I was
A world traveller, and nobody knew me at
All, I was a victim of the streets, and
Beckoned by the weather, and aware, unlike
Henry or George, precisely of
the calendar.
Well, I was not composed, but thinking,
And the tenor of my thoughts was yielding
To a description that embraced all around
Me, in scenes still vivid; I was not the
First person in fact or representative in
Fiction to have struggled
ridiculously
Against the rain and wind, with a black
Umbrella constantly collapsing, unfurling,
And withstanding the lashing water,
to be provided with
Occasional, but sensational, glimpses
Of the immediate city, whole corners of
Which were washed away in accidental
Floodtides from exhausted gutters, or in
The collision of two wild and slippery
Streets. I always caught the sight of
Other people also caught in such
harmless disasters;
And deemed them, like myself, the more
Fortunate! Yes, crossing Edinburgh--for
Example, I think this was seven years ago--
In a sudden storm consumes all the skill
One has, as a soldier and a scholar, an
Adult of the seasons, a fairly witty fellow,
Not confounded by natural comedies. And
Retaking the northern bridge, with the
Sense that my troops were lost
in lower Cannonmills--
Clearly a historical, or imaginary, scene!
I considered that the whole green park
And fringe arcade, which led in normal times,
I mean normal weather, to the sunken train
Station, had been obliterated, forever.
As I would judge in my rare perception,
It was clear if I could remain vitally aware,
I was undoubtably headed for
transcendental encounter
With the clouds. What are words, and what
Are unforgettable impressions, for?
Violent church spires that stood tall in
The ludicrous, low, white clouds, were
Claiming their final witness for man,
In view of the wrath of the heavens. I
Was preaching then, from a terrace behind
Which a winding stairway . . . fell.
A
Winding stairway of stones where, once,
The people climbed, had turned into a
chute of water.
I was not the first person in fact or
Indeed in some fiction to see the
relative obscurity of my position,
And the unmerited grace, or rather
spectacle of cooperation
Of the bright weather, the laughing rain,
All that awaits the threatening
re-emergence of the sun.
Then the irony, if not comedy, of my position
In the Coffee Shop was that it seemed I
Was entirely, or rather physically,
Alone in the profound malady, or the
recovery;
Like I was recovering for all of them. It
Became quite clear to me that nobody else
Was at work, no fountain of expectation
Buttressed the stay of the others, surely,
In the Coffee Shops. And yet I was certain
This was where what was going to happen
Would happen first. I was watching. I
Had truth in my grasp, and I was watching
For revolution. And had there been any
Vanity attached, even the slightest degree,
To this occupation, or this martyrdom
I might say,
Then certainly, in the Coffee Shops, I
Would have become lonely, and silent,
and disconnected.
But being only circumstantially held at
Bay, being always diagnosed by
acts of kindness
On the part of the waitress, or the guy
Sliding down the counter space the ashtray,
The being spied as one needing secret succor,
Or a second cup of coffee, or an hour
Unmolested, being allowed the
madman stance of waiting,
And, who knows, maybe taken into the heart
Somewhere by someone who glimpsed an
Overt sadness displayed or held within
If, for a moment, I put my face into my
Hands--
well this was all caused,
Ironically, and even humorously, not
Because I was the supreme, the epitome,
Of a philosopher, or rather a wastrel,
But because Coffee Shops (you see) were
Never made as a field of study, were not
Intended to receive these congratulations,
But were slapped up to serve precisely
Those people taking a break from
humdrum labour, or real life--
In other words, you might say, I was in
The perfectly wrong place. And if there
Was vanity in the thought that reaches truth,
Then that vanity would have made complaint.
But I had no strategy, I had strayed at
A certain date into Coffee Shops of this type,
And I could never leave,
never abandon this
World. I mean this context of unassuming,
Even rigorously repetitive, simplicity . . .
I could not transcend them, for truth had
Told me that pity stands
with reserve;
And I watched the waitress serving Henry
His warm noodles, and I thought nothing at
All, I wanted to be there, I didn’t want
To describe it, but the witness
Of reality always seemed cataclysmic
Enough, in this life. I would be at some
Point the narrator for the others. In
Defense of the backward history of thought
Itself, the thought inside the person,
The whirlwind scenery that grasps and replays
The terrain of the history of the world,
I was rivetted in sheer hope and with a
Naivite that stretched back to
the thought of total mystery
In which a person starts.
Like--like
I observed from the circular garret at
The top of the castle, in the yard there,
At the wall, I observed
the vast extent
Below, the gross extent of the modern city.
Smokestacks and factories to the east
Would appear as on illusory plains and
beaches of stagnant dust,
Sinking in the distance. There was a
Network of piers out on the water, but
The air, it was not clear, there was a
Network of roads and bridges spanning the
Slums, the lower slums of clapboard and
Brick. I had nothing to say.
Turning
Around from the wall, by the massive gunrails,
I was caught up and I joined the growing
Throng of tourists milling around the
open floors and fragmented walls
Of the castle whose physical reality in
The past was, obviously, unretrievable,
If it was ever there. One could doubt it.
I was quiet. I was stopped. I was closer
Then, to the monumental stones, and
listening to the fragmentary speech
Of the people going by. I was walking in
A tired gait, but my mind suddenly alive
With absurd images, behind the holiday couples,
At St. Margaret’s Chapel, where the voice
Of the tour guide, who was a schoolboy,
Was explaining, again, the main facts of
The occupation
of this church, by somebody,
Sometime. This was a hopeless kind of scene,
It was a slow dance, it was like the people
Were going to be entranced and die of this.
And then in the Coffee Shop, like a home,
Even with the reflection of my face in
The glass, with the smile and unease of a
Clown, off-base, knowing all the others
were going in and out, still
I knew I had nowhere to get back to--
I had not the sense of the coffee break,
But was held with a mere awareness, and I
Didn’t know what it was all about, the
Humming along, the staying between events;
Nor what kind of work the other patrons
Had, that didn’t go on day and night.
So
While you might make it sound like wisdom,
And make a summary explanation, call it
Irony, or make a contrast, as if to
preserve the person
Whose identity is thus confessed, or to
Describe what was happening as if you
knew how it looked from above--
To me the chief reality was the Coffee Shop
Itself, and the sense, like the sense in
The other scenes, that I was missing,
or chasing a phantom.
Oh, it looks like out of a contrary mood
Whole cities were built, complete with these
Kindly staffed retreats, and that people
Are capable of moving, day after day with
occupational fervor,
Needing only a few scheduled breaks. It
Looks like corridors connect offices, and
That benches in the park are to relax
between other occasions, it
Looks like the world is established over
Time, maybe, and you can, well, visit it--
And keep a destiny in reserve. And people
Talk like talk were a kind of dancing
accompaniment to their way
Of walking, straightaway, between the
breakfast table and the bed, and
That it’s never time to veer into a crisis,
Or break the spell holding the grand public
Together, like in a big fiction;
well really!
Like in a book, somebody wrote before.
But the truth is, the life that is told
And heard about, comprehensively,
is the life of the narrator.
Certain traumas, when admitted, feel better
In the memory. And the truth is, I never
Felt so much at home, when with no qualms
At all I watched the changing of humanity,
From a coffee shop counter, with the
Mystery all around me, and nothing to say--
When, with no assignment, I got the sense
Of pure adventure. And I stayed put there,
As if that (and the other scenes, that words
Can express) were where
God should find us.
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