Come Pain with Me
 

Come pain with me
Beatify
The goodnesses
That virtue us
With beaten breast
And bloody sleeve

Come pain with me
Self sorrowing
In victimhood
With hollow chains
On beaten breast
And bloody sleeve

Come pain with me
And bleed awhile
But not in truth
The narrative
Is beaten breasts
And bloody sleeves

Hi, Jan—
I was struck by the heavily marked dimeter. It made me think of a martyr in chains being led to the arena to be fed to the lions. Ironically, the lugubriousness of the meter is at odds with the speaker’s almost cheerful anticipation of his immolation.

The repeated line, “Come pain with me,” reminded me of the Sinatra song, “Come fly with me” or Marlowe’s passionate shepherd who begins, “Come live with me and be my love.” Is the speaker proposing a masochistic tryst?

If we are following the speaker’s embrace of martyrdom, I wonder if the order of the stanzas might work better in reverse order. Step one is the acceptance of the narrative that makes pain a ticket to heaven. Step two is the self-infliction of the martyrdom, and step three is the reward and beatification.

I’m pretty sure that you are offering the speaker as an example of the type of hair-shirt-wearing, self-flagellating Christian who thinks that misery is necessary for salvation, and that we readers are supposed to reject his pathological theology. The repeated “beaten breast” recalls the mea culpa of the Confiteor, and implies that the speaker is inflicting his martyrdom on himself. It occurs to me that if you wanted to expand on this, you might treat the poem as a dramatic monologue and add a fourth stanza in which the speaker reacts to Christ’s judgment of him on the Last Day.

One quibble is with “hollow chains.” Wouldn’t hollow chains be fragile and easily escaped from? I wonder if you might have had the sound of hollow chains clanking in mind, or did you intend for “hollow” to modify “victimhood” as a transferred epithet? This suggests that the speaker knows that the virtue and sanctity he hopes to purchase with his suffering is hollow and bogus. The “but not in truth” reinforces my conclusion that he, like Chaucer’s Pardoner, is fully aware of his own lack of real holiness. He is really fascinating as a character. Nice work!

I’m not yet sure what to make of this, Jan, though Glenn’s thoughts are enlightening. All I’ll say for now is that I love the light songfulness that undermines the self-flagellation.

I will try and respond for the third time. Steam power is so dated. Lol

Hi Glenn,

Not martyrs per se but victims by adoption and for every espousal of victimhood there has to be a perpetrator. World wide there seems to be a rapid growth in the number of victims who take up the mantle without fact or lineage. It manifests in some symptoms of oikophobia. The sins of the fathers passing down through many generations. There is power in assuming victimhood. There is enjoyment in the assumption which is not there in the actuality. There is even a politician crying victim to give him semblance of Truth. Maybe victimhood is now the last refuge of the scoundrel. But I digress lol.

I think perhaps a small change in the confessional to the accusatory:
‘Tua maxima culpa”

The hollow chains, appearance without substance.

Truth can be called upon in the abstract.

Hi Carl,

I hope my explanation above helps.

My thanks to you both.

Jan

I like the interesting use of “virtue” as a verb. You’re using “pain” in a novel way, too, it seems—meaning “to feel pain” rather than “to impose pain.”

I found the repetitions in the last two lines of each stanza to be a bit much—it’s unpleasant enough to read those two phrases once! But it seems that onerous repetition of these references to self-imposed misery is the whole point, as it mirrors the onerous repetition of self-imposed miseries--so perhaps I should just accept this feature.

You might be able to come up with a more evocative way to express what’s in S2 Ls 2 and 3. Interesting symbolism in “hollow chains,” though—nice subtle way to convey manufactured pain. You’re similarly effectively elliptical in S3.

Jan--

This is a powerful start to a poem. On purpose, I didn't read your explanation of the poem in the comments--so I'm giving you my reactions as I read it the first time.

The strongest stanza is the first. I found the use of "pain" and "virtue" as verbs intoxicating. I'm totally going to verb some nouns this week and see what comes from it.

My first read through was actually that the poet is admitting that what we poets sometimes do is take pleasure in writing about and transforming pain into a weird kind of pleasure. That is, "come pain with me" is an invitation to the game of making beautiful what is intrinsically ugly.

But then, I realized the next two stanzas don't bear that idea up. Too bad. Let's just say that's what I *wanted* the poem to be about.

I thought the use of "self-sorrowing" and "victimhood", especially stacked, was too much of a dog whistle. These expressions are pretty clearly pointing to a group of people who you don't feel are true victims. It no longer feels, at this point, that you're inviting me to a game, but rather that you're poking the woke, if you will. I did, however, love "hollow chains", which is a much subtler way to point to this group whose pain you find suspicious.

Finally, I think there's something in here acknowledging that "paining" with someone who's actually really in pain can be a weirdly satisfying thing to do. Borrowing pain, as it were, because you don't have enough of your own. I almost wanted to hear "not quite in truth/ but adjacently", in the last stanza, or something like that.

Now I'll read your post and find out what it's really about.