Part VIII: The Giant Slipper

my favourite chapter!

 

Men Like Giants
walk along the civilization of
the future
it’s lonely here
now there’s no one left to torture
except ourselves
so we do
each in his own way
everyone in their own path.
A giant slipper!
it emerges from the hidden compartment
of the sofa
I’ve been sleeping on
the whole time I was here.
Just the one?
It seems so, the other
to make a pair
seems to have flown off
somewhere
we don’t know.
But Ben & I make
the most of what we’ve found
‘put it on your head.’
‘My head?
Is that how you wear it?’
‘Of course,
it's a slipper
where else does it go!’
We both laugh
intoxicated
by the atmosphere of madness
that each of us creates
in the apartment in Berlin
up here
in the old gray building
along Karl Marx Strasse.
We’ll be mad together
now and hereafter
the walls echoing eternally
with music and insane laughter
packed to the rafters
our minds, and the laundry
room
nowhere else for storage
broken ideas and violins
stacked the walls
in the chamber down the corridor.
It was never like this before.

Or, who are we kidding?
We were born like this,
rather, we were never born at all
just sort of sprang out
out of nowhere
into this cosmic space
we call the world
The apartment in Berlin
Karl Marx Strasse
in Neukolln, yes!
we are damned, damned
to be blest!
with such gifts
as each other.

Men like giants
with giant slippers
  (or just the one)
and minds of giants
  giant ideas
  and full of philosophy
 gigantic beliefs
 and infinite poetry
we circle the entire earth
in three or four steps
dancing upon its peaks
atop Big Ben and Berlin Dome
down the winding road
of Europe and Qatar
and streets of ancient Rome.
Is this the future
or history on loop?
what a future, oh!
A Brave new world we
created for ourselves
with so much to see
but nobody who listens
not many
just shouters shouting
nonsensical slogans
and competing
with one another;
music overlapping
the melodies all blend
together
to turn movements
into noise
horrendous mixtures
with no aesthetic pleasure
at all.

From the highest tops
to the grand fall
we’ve been everywhere
seen it all
empty seats
and curtain calls
the expressionists
never properly understood
the popular stages
splashed with colourful lights
and eclectic sounds
and money thrown around
 the final fight
 the last bow
 then the climatic steep
 and the final blow
the all-consuming spectacle
of lights and sounds and dance
numbers, figures, letters
money thrown around
the singers sing
the violinists tune
the shouters shout
and Ben and I
philosophise
or exchange tiny gestures
that make us smile
our voices grow soft
and the music loud
nobody knows where this
 road will go
no one knows
 what this story’s about.

Men like giants
this is the future
lonely here, brother
it is murder.
And nobody will listen
the vast majority
deaf to the music
Nietzsche’s sanctum

a clap �" too soon
the shining moon
the endless repeats
an empty stage
the audience
 rising
from their seats
music still
my last retreat
and the empty room
a dark patch
on the face
of this earth
without redemption
without re-birth
I exist
on and on
walking along
the uncertain road to Jerusalem.
No light, no sounds
will accompany this trek
the angels’ hymns shall die
nothing saves this wretch
a wretch
like me
(something here to salvage
no?).
So we the giants
will find a home
at the ends of the earth
the lost corners of the globe
where it might be dark
enough
in the wreckage of the missing ark
and

so
all on board!
Reise! Reise!
all on board
and nobody on deck
all bearings lost
the ship is wrecked
the voyage to nowhere
I’m alone by the stern
my first mate
the madman
somewhere in the cabin
I think
curled up on the sofa
with his treasured giant slipper
on his head
on his head…

‘Where else does it go?
it's a slipper!’
and the other gone
lost
like driftwood
never shall be found again
like the odd grey sock
or childhood friend
but we go on
we
who have long ago
departed from land
sailing the uncertain blue
of the world
Madmen
and a sinking boat
we row, row, and row

Men like giants
this is the future
lonely here now
there’s no one left to torture

 

Author's Note

so. in the apartment on Karl Marx Str. where i was staying, Ben and i were going through the storage room for some reason. out came a violin! which Ben tried to play "sounds like a dead cat!" he said. if things couldn't get stranger we find a hidden compartment in the sofa where we found a giant slipper (about a metre in length) and god knows where that came from. we had a bit of fun with it, as you have seen.
there was also mannaquin, which we named Sara, in his roommates room. i dont know why i didnt write about it.

Reviews

[Eilis]

As I read the last line I felt an incredible sinking. The silence after a great shock. Or those moments in life when we are struck by a sense of un-understanding the self and its place in all this. Then I went back to the top of the poem and started again and the ending at the beginning struck so much different. I think of Beckett. Well, your overall symphonic movements here make me think of Beckett. The beginning is the collective but at the end the beginning of this lifetime—at least to this place it is situated within the frame—is personal. The loneliness in the face of realization is personal and larger than life. As Lucy Brock-Broido said ‘some grief is larger than my body is.’ I feel the embodiment of that at the end. The way we face things that we cannot possibly process or assimilate.

What I like is that even among that bigness, in the midst of “madness” the two in the poem still laugh and still find solace in one another’s company. To me that is the hope here. That among all the confusion and fractured ness of our modern reality, there is still the ability to connect and to understand someone in a way that makes the confusion of living somewhat blunted and that sense of loneliness less predatory. You personify hope here (for me) while also creating this space where we can see ourselves in the confusion of existence, recognize ourselves, and feel like we don’t have to shy away from what we see but embrace what we have within and keep moving into it. The ending rings, but also it loops back to the beginning and we can read the story again.

The writing is so solid, fluid, engaging. You put us there in the room but also in the expansive mind space of a poet learning to understand through the act of recording experience. It’s really excellent work. Hope you’re faring well, Ern. I’ll work my way through these as I can. Looking forward to it. You’ll be in my thoughts.

[Lorry]

My granny had one of those giant slippers and Billy Connolly in his early comedy days used to do a bit where he would talk of buying two, just in case anyone broke into his house. They would sh*t themselves at the thought they must have broken into a giants house! 😃
I also remember hearing Kay Red field Jameson, author of the quite brilliant "an unquiet mind" explain during an interview that "just think how madder the world would be if we couldn't laugh insanely in our own madness (and she did go out her way to use the term madness, being a sufferer herself and having disdain for the medical equivalents of madness)
Your poetry and prose come to the fore in this chapter Ern, while we try to differentiate between people making noise to be heard or making noise to be listened to.
I could almost hear a scratching as someone lifts the needle from the record at your last line, with the words "its lonely here" echoing and finally fading away as the laughter stops so abruptly.