Who Done It?
 

Who Done It?

In a dream, analyzing a poem, I noticed various patterns of emphasis and ambiguous diction indicating the narrator’s loss of his beautiful lover. Attended by his Soul, he unintentionally travels to the tomb he took her to a year ago, on Halloween night. No mention of how she died. Tone, emphasizing his fear, also his Soul’s, suggests it was a woman the narrator/author murdered. Similarly, I’m finding possible murders by several other poets. We begin:

To Lenore

Lenore, your beauty was to me
xxLike when we both were poor,
And on cheap gin could barely see
xxAt the nearby Dollar Store,
xxFor our daily chore.

But lately you’ve been coughing, foaming,
xxA derelict’s disgrace.
Your naked airs that stink our home,
xxSmelling worse than cooking grease,
xxThe reason I would roam.

Lo! I am not Humbert-rich.
xxNo more with you I’ll stand.
You drank the jug held in your hand.
xx'Twas dry gin I sweetened which
xxYou sleep with deep in sand.



Of Lidian

Daughter of Time, hypocritic always,
As dumb as a single-file cub scout troop,
out marching robotically and dreamily
And sighing sighs about our savage friend
Who built a cabin out of pines he loves
In such insanely centric self-enwombing,
And so cold, I’d rather hug a tree,
But your admiration of his little
Gifts made out of grass and whittled wood
And tales about some ancient arrow heads
That cause your smiles and giggles like a girl’s
May make you suffer hypocritic scorn.



When learning there is only one of me

When learning there is only one of me
And that my once full brain pours down the drain,
I note my books are not a rarity,
Mere trifles of some poets who complain,
And seeing that my hand includes no ace,
The card I need to even have a chance
Of staking out a claim for your sweet face
So we might soon be blessed with rare romance,
I check my chronic watch and heed the hour,
Begin to feel that you’ve become a chore,
That it was due to my diminished power
You ever even saw my private door,
Which means I’m finally brainless, cannot think
Sufficiently so let your beauty sink.

This translation did not find favour with the classical scholar who judged the competition in which I entered it. He called me a “naughty boy”. However it is founded on the assumption (based on the poem that precedes it) that, however “Lesbia” may have felt about the bird, Catullus himself was not displeased to see the back of it. In fact, it’s my belief he done it in.


Oh Dear Me – Did The Little Birdie Die, Then?

Catullus. Poem Number 3


Cry your eyes out, love-goddesses and godlings
(and all men with anthropomorphic leanings).
My bird’s bird’s been and gone and turned its toes up.
Bird, that is, that my own bird used to fancy,
bird she loved even better than her eyeballs.
Sickly-sweet bird. Disgustingly familiar;
used to act like a baby with its mother,
squat her crotch or canoodle in her bosom,
always flitting from one place to the other,
chirping things she pretended to make sense of.
Now it’s gone down the long and shady alley
“from whose bourne no traveller returns”, like.
Shame on you, oh you naughty Powers of Darkness!
Old Grim Reaper, who gobbles all the goodies,
bagged a bird of particular importance.
Oh, dear me! Poor old Tweetie! What a bummer!
It’s your fault that my little love is blubbing
and her eyes are all pinky-rimmed and puffy.
.

Thanks, Ann. After my ham-fisted stuff yours is delightfully subtle!

Thanks, Ralph. This is an old one but it seemed to fit your notion. Do you have any more of these startling accusations?

He done it in...!?

"I tawt I saw a pooty Catullu acweepin' up on me...." Oooh, you are a naughty child. Go to your room. Little birds is fun.

I was carefully misquoting Shaw, Allen. Pygmalion.

Ann, I knew that. 'He done her in' said at the Ascot milieu. It also appears in "My Fair Lady", a truly great musical, as one of my best friends will know, I trow. (There ain't nothing like the real thing, baby. Worth fighting for.) My sin here was carefully misquoting a song trilled by "Tweety Bird" in a Disney. Your effort is indeed an interesting take on Valerius Catullus, especially since so much phallic rubbish has been ladled out about that animal, starting with Martial, and since I like little birds. I'm going to get back to Mr C as soon as I reasonably can, and I shall take pains to gently refute in print your theory -- if needed. Do you have a footnote? Has your poem been published anywhere else?

Best.

Ann,

After the dream, I popped out these bits of Poe, Emerson, and Keats before lunch and realized I was doing something for nothing, so retired my Muse.

Oh, dear, I've just rediscovered this thread. Ralph, please don't retire your muse.

Allen, the line from Pygmalion is slightly different in the play. There is no Ascot in the original. The Catullus piece was written first for a competition but later appeared in a collection called Between Dryden and Duffy, along with a version of Catullus's poem no.32 and a riposte from the addressee thereof, "The Love Song of Ipsitilla".

You are correct. I was misquoting from memory. Still, "done ___ in" is so non-U it's U, it's me. Ipsitilla always made me think that Catullus was about seventeen when he did that one, and as horny as a 35 piece marching brass band, J P Souza style. Best,