Outlook, July-August 1986

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

In the Suburbs by Aaron Kramer, c.1986
Ali Baba Press, Sesame Signature series
20 pps. paperback

This select group of poems, all of which first appeared in print in small-press and university literary magazines, have an imprint and read like a wistful adieu by an accomplished and superb poet. Almost as though he is sitting back, metaphorically and taking stock of the experience of life, contemplating an inescapable change.

These poems bespeak the consciousness of an individual fully connected with the world, which also happens to be his particular world. That's not as much as a conundrum as it may appear, since Aaron Kramer makes it quite clear to the reader that he acknowledges the supremacy in importance of all living matter, and apportions importance to all things. This is a world in a personal sense of both inner and outer spaces, integrated to reflect the whole. Many poets write of their inner spaces, neglecting that which may appear extraneous, Kramer is not one of them; he well knows that we are all the whole bred from the sum of many parts, while in the same token we are an infinitesimal part, making the global whole. In this collection Kramer moves as readily and effortlessly between the I and landscape, and the place of the person in the landscape, as he explores the landscape of self. And as he probes the inner landscape reaching outside to fondle memory, so too does he bring to the reader an appreciation of how we probe the landscape of nature to help bring peace to the landscape within, and solace to the soul.

In his poem "Raking" he deftly shows us how we come to terms with nature sharing the background with us, in the way we think we neatly keep her in check; witness the raking of leaves in autumn; witness too the cocky manner in which one of her creatures keeps our hauteur in check by enslaving us to the perceived need for order while nature imposes in reality, on the whole of her creation an orderly chaos.

This sees its mirror image as the mind betrays the chaos of uncertainty and dismay with the recounting of the distemper of an argument which breeds incautious words. the break-down of a relationship. There is a symbiosis in every relationship, be it between man and wife or man and nature. And we see again a mirror image in the destruction of another type of relationship where the presence of a venerable tree is held in contempt and the decision is made to end its existence. The result has far-reaching consequences for other denizens of nature's background, as well. Just as a person-to-person relationship must be nurtured with empathy and kindness, he demonstrates, so too must other relationships be appreciated; our very life's breath is gifted to us by the vegetation which surrounds us.

Interdependence, Kramer illustrates movingly, is subtle. On learning of the death of old acquaintances and friends, one turns in bewilderment at the inconstancy of expectations, to the small comfort that the sight of a bird feeding outside the breakfast window can afford - that too denied, in the poem, "the Bird Feed".

The insecurity one feels as old age approaches relentlessly, as one realizes one's mortality through the death of a friend, highlights the unfairness of it all ...

"It was exactly then it sank in
that what I wanted was a call from Ben,
all those dependent clauses, parenthetical biographies;
what I wanted was to phone him for advice,
what I wanted was for him to be the life of another party,
to roll out an outlandish joke, whichever he'd told most often, to hurl his spectacular wrath against rascals old and new,
to utter one more cosmic lamentation,
one more Maccabbean prophecy;
What I wanted, frankly speaking, was to call for him
on a Sunday morning bright as this,
the two of us pushing strollers - no lawns - no mowers there -
up Grand to the newsstand roaring right under the Astoria el
a Hitler defeat."

Who could be unmoved by such an eloquent outpouring of grief? And it isn't quite enough to wish a cherished old friend back to quickness; one will still be old, still be threatened by the spectre of death. If one will wish one will wish for the equally impossible - to have the friend back yes, but young, both of them alive, attuned and oh so young. Only youth and freshness has the gift of thrusting hooded death far to the future. A future which remains so startlingly, inexorably close to death is scant comfort indeed.

From the hopelessness of the desire to bring back life, to return to youth, there is the overwhelming fear of illness. Illness is capable of culminating into the impermanence of all things. One's restorative capabilities have so declined with age that illness, and physical immobility caused by accident or incapacity caused by disease becomes the kissing cousin of death.

And the vast grief, the emptiness the yawning open stretch of loneliness is almost too much to be borne. Homecoming, for example, becomes a sad pejorative; it's not the joy of returning to the comfort of one's familiar surroundings. It's the vacuum of the sudden space created by the absence of one's spouse. The familiar comfort of home suddenly echoes with the ghost of familiarity while denying, in an inorganically obtuse manner that anything is 'wrong'. And so, in "Homecoming" we read:

"...that the house, if it could, when its kitchen light came on,
would have quaked with wonder why, instead of two treads, one
wakened its walls, instead of two voices, none

"It was understandable
in half-light for the kitchen
and he by then
not even half open-eyed
while readying for bed
mechanically
to place her pillow and his
side by side

"Nor was it unreasonable
at 3 a.m.
considering the dream
to which he was tied
that he should wince at the floor's creaking
and shut the bathroom door
good sense would have left wide.

"But having waked at the toilet's flushing
to realize no one else alive
heard that waterfall,
having returned
to the bedroom
fully aware that no one
heard the creaking in the hall,
it was by no means understandable
that he should skirt her space
and as usual squeeze
between bed and wall;
to take so many
chill, rugless footsteps
rather than climb across her absence
made no sense at all."

Having lived a full, a good and valued life is no guarantee that to leave that life will be without considerable regret. Perhaps because life has been so good this is what makes even the contemplation of its loss all the more poignant. The kind of bafflement and hesitancy we all experience when contemplating the uncontemplatable - the cessation of thought, resource, emotion and response - may be mitigated by the thought of our children and our children's children re-living our experiences, joyfully approaching the fullness of life's offering. But nothing, nothing at all can render comfort for the attenuation of expectation and experience. The last and final mystery remains just that.

Life flutters in the body's encasement, its corporeal essence, and as Aaron Kramer informs in "In The Cage":"

"The death now locked in my cage of bones
You soon will see as my body's cage.
One mystery yet: will I beat with moans
at the bars? fall brooding? blaze into rage?
or, shrunk like the Sibyl, at last turn sage?"

Do we greet finality with equanimity? Or do we greet that dark final night with rage? The answer eludes until the final moment, and with its resonant reality we are then free of wonder.

Kramer's flawless rendering of this ageless dilemma, of the anguish which is shared by all of us helps us to confront our fears and the finiteness of our precious time. This which we feel is a legacy, of sorts. Like the endless question: do we live, only to die? Or is life one long arrival at death?

In the end, does it really matter?

Perhaps what Kramer is trying to tell us is that every facet of being, every aspect of life is to be wondered at, cherished, valued for the sparkling jewel that it is. Everything else will look after its own eventuality.

c. 1986 Rita Rosenfeld
published in Outlook, Vol.24, No.7-8
Canada's progressive Jewish magazine