Returns
 

Returns

Shall we reveal the gifts we never gave
or even bought? Me first. I want to show
you how the ribbon might have looked, the way
one present would have led to homely roads.
Then you can trace for me your empty stores
of festive memories and future bones.
It’s better like this, don’t you think? The more
we gave, the more we sacrificed alone.
I’ve never understood how to repay
the wealth that you bestowed on me, although
at times I’ve tried. What measure could explain
my gratitude for all you left ungiven,
or plumb the depths of the regret we’ve spun
at one another’s accidental bidding?

An intriguing sonnet. The first six lines are an ironic invitation to list all the things that two people have never done for one another. The second six say the same thing by ironically asserting the reverse: how thankful the N is that they’ve given each other so much. The last two lines confess to regret. I particularly like the conversational “Me first” and “It’s better like this, don’t you think?” and the heavy irony reminds me of Tsvetaeva’s “It’s nice that I’m not lovesick over you.” I don’t really understand a gift leading to homely roads or tracing stores of future bones or regret spun at accidental bidding, and maybe I don’t need to. The central thought is clear enough, but I get the impression that it’s been dressed up in some tricky language. That may just be my usual denseness about such things.

Two specific nits: 1) There’s a period missing after “bones”; 2) “at times I’ve tried”—You’ve tried to repay gifts that were never given? I guess this poem would count as such repayment, but I wonder if it isn’t an irony too far.

I’m impressed by the delicate balance you strike between tenderness and bitterness. The speaker seems to be describing a relationship based on negatives—things not done, said, or given—but nevertheless sincere and loving on his side. It struck me as an inversion of Elizabeth B. Browning’s “How Do I Love Thee? Let me count the ways.” The mournful /ō/ assonance in the octet and the rather sinister effect of images like “empty stores,” and “future bones” plays against the forced cheerfulness of the speaker’s excited, “Me first.”

Like Carl, I’m not quite sure what to make of the roads, stores, and bones, but I’m thinking that the gift leading to “homely roads” might have made their domestic life happier—a nice piece of furniture, perhaps. The “empty stores,” which are empty because they are imaginary, might have held “festive” food like prime rib or ham that would have been quickly turned into a pile of bones. The speaker seems to be remembering a now-ended relationship that seemed to thrive on affluence and the giving of meaningless gifts. He realizes now that the gifts were just a way to avoid really sharing themselves with each other. They filled their loneliness with objects, but now he realizes, “The more / we gave, the more we sacrificed alone.”
I really enjoyed your poem, Simon. You packed a lot into it.
Glenn

Carl--Thanks for starting the conversation on this one. I'm glad it's mostly coming across, and I appreciate knowing those sections that were a little obscure for you. I'll look up the Tsvetaeva. You were just correct about that missing period (there now); not sure how I missed that.

Glenn--Thanks to you, too. It's nice to make your acquaintance, and I'm flattered by your attention to the mournful sounds and the namecheck of EBB. Above all, it's always gratifying when a reader picks it up as one has laid it down. As with Carl's reply (you specify some of the same spots), it's helpful to hear where things could be perhaps more sharply focused for you.

It may be her most famous, but you won’t find it under that name. There’s a readable translation by Lydia Razran Stone at https://ruverses.com/marina-tsvetaev...-with-me/5780/, with links to twelve more for comparison.

To me this reads like a riddle. I’d appreciate being offered a bit more space for my mind to breathe and understand in this poem.

I just looked up “homely” and it seems I’ve run into a cross-continental distinction here: while for Britons it signifies what we’d call “homey,” for us statesiders, it means “unattractive.”

Thanks again, Carl.

Thanks, Alexandra. Yes' it's a riddle; the relationship (now over) seems a riddle to the speaker, but it's good to know where you'd like some more clarity. I was kind of hoping to have both valences of "homely." That paradox makes it a word I particularly love.

You can now look it up right next door: https://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showt...689#post497689. The poems do resonate.

Simon, on a first read, I found this a bit puzzling. "Homely roads" was a stretch to make sense of. In L7-8, would you consider making it present tense? "The more we give, the more we sacrifice alone" would then be a general statement about the way things work, not suggesting that there was a lot of giving in the past. But maybe you did want to suggest that there was a lot of giving, as well as a lot of failure to give. Though I get your reason for using slant rhymes, "ungiven" and "bidding" clanked for me. What would you think of something like "my gratitude for all you were not giving," and "at one another’s unintended bidding"?

Susan