Sam Reads Poetry

Window

End of season, end of play – no one left
But a boy playing with the lonely sea
On the rain-wet shore below that runs 
Helplessly on and on into advancing dusk.
Pushed under the cliff, houses look to themselves,
Look blindly away from the darkening game
In which the boy runs purposefully
Seawards and shorewards at the tide's edge
Like someone bearing a message no one
Wishes to receive – something written long ago
In his head, now overgrown with hair.
He never will stop running, for his limbs
Are oiled, his skill increases mysteriously
And the sea has become hopelessly attached.
When he runs shorewards feigning fear,
Like a father being chased by his own child,
The sea rushes after him, monstrously grey;
But when he turns, it whitens and retreats.

And while this goes on, here in the house –
As if by special arrangement – 
Someone very quietly plays Reynaldo Hahn.
The boy does not know this; he is only human.
Soon the game must end unaccompanied. 
But no, he is turning and running again
To hidden music, as if for the first time.


Freda Downie

Why I like it:

I seem to remember being old enough to play on my own or with friends in the evening, but young enough that the games still included some folklore spun up by ourselves or passed down from one schoolkid to another in which the trees, boulders, and houses were important characters. I seem to remember those evenings best some time near the end of the summer, when school was probably on my mind, giving the play some fresh importance. At some point in the games I’d find myself alone, searching for someone, or taking care of some small mission of my own invention, and those in particular are the moments that I remember best. Alone, still enfolded in the world of the game, but cognizant of its coming to an end soon. 

I think there’s so much tenderness in this poem towards the boy, and reverence for his game and the world of his game. I feel that the speaker earnestly believes, if only for the boy’s sake, in the loneliness of the sea and its hopeless attachment to the boy. There is a sense of summer coming to an end, play coming to an end, the day coming to an end, and It’s difficult to read “he is only human. / Soon the game must end unaccompanied” without feeling that the boy’s childhood itself (if not, by some distant echo, his life) is flirting with its end, amidst the urgency of his game.

But what is so moving about this poem is that it identifies most with that fresh beginning that starts right at the end of everything. The boy is “turning and running again […] as if for the first time.” I think we forget how much of the world children actually feel. I don’t think the immensity of an ending season or even an ending life is lost on them, and the fact that they find a way to not only continue playing amidst all that, but to actually befriend the things that later in life seem to represent the end – in this case the literal tides – is itself miraculous and worthy of a poem like this. 

This poem feels a bit elegiac, but it’s really more of an epic poem (it is even written in a loose blank verse, typical of epic poetry). It’s interesting that the rest of the houses in the poem turn inward towards one another, looking “blindly away from the darkening game” – both away from nature and the boy. The poem seems to say that there is a genuine bravery, even a heroism in the boy that allows him to run with what adults would rather not look at. 

And there’s no irony or quaintness in the way the speaker depicts the boy as the central force in this scene, rather than the sea: the boy entices the sea to chase him by feigning fear, and then the boy causes it to whiten and retreat. The boy is described as the father of the sea, in a touching reversal of the traditional role of the sea as the origin of life, and there is something almost surprising about the line “The boy does not know this; he is only human.” 

I think we’re lulled into believing in the boy’s world by this poem, and his heroism, and in the end of the poem there’s a necessary call back to a mature perspective of the world. But in doing so, the speaker manages to preserve a reverence for the boy’s task. The poem reminds us that the boy is only human, but then immediately goes back on itself, and depicts the boy not turning while some hidden music plays, but turning to the hidden music, as if he actually could hear it and were not only human.