Philoctetes is Dying

[vagantes]

"Someone is rustling a brown paper bag";

Their coats are streaked with the rain,
That drives and rattles against the windows;
And their disordered hair is tousled-blown
By the wind I can see scattering the leaves.

"Have a good look at those two in the corner".

She has unbuttoned her white blouse,
Bending over to reveal the swell of her breast,
While her hand moves under the bedclothes
As, with eyes tight shut, he opens his thighs to her touch.

I hope my Visitor does not come today
With his pleasant smile and silly jokes;
I can still see the crumbs on his yellow teeth,
And smell the stink of his breath from his mouth.

"I DO NOT WANT TO DIE".

Can you hear me God?
Was that loud enough?

"YOU Bastard".

[PrinceMyshkin]

If I ignore the incomprehensible first line, I very much enjoy the sharpness of these glimpses of the two lovers, but I do hope that "I am dying" &c. is not meant to be part of this poem? There's nothing I can see to connect it to the preceding.

Also, the reference to Philoctetes seems gratuitous.

[~Sophia~]

Hi Vagantes

I very much enjoyed the abstract of this poem. Some say life and death are overdone in poetry but really, what else is there but the will.

Philoctetes once heroic enough to kill Paris and save Troy probably died of the festering snake bite that never healed. I have heard that oncologists sometimes refer to cancer as Philoctetes wound. The slow death of cells.

My interpretation:

The rustling paper bag is "the death rattle". Death at the doorstep.

The narrator in his room (probably hospital bed) either daydreaming or looking out a window or the "flash of your life before death" recounts a memory or scene of lovemaking - life, which is now beyond his reach.

The visitor, I can't decide if it's death or just a well meaning friend that tries to cheer him up. Either way, an unwelcome intrusion considering where his mind is wandering - "She has unbuttoned her white blouse..."

While my interpretations may be all wrong, I did enjoy the challenge of thinking about it and trying to understand your intent.

With your indulgence, I would make just one suggestion... delete the commas in the fourth line so the read is smoother...

"And their disordered hair is tousled - blown
by the wind I can see scattering the leaves."

[a_little_wisp]

I'm almost too nervous to comment on this poem, because you seem to lay yourself so very bare here. This was very much a challenge, a wonderful challenge - there are some poems that you simply can't get around, but this one... my gosh. This was ghostly, if that makes any sense, the interjections sweeping in and out like whispers - and then the shout, "I do not want to die," shattering through the (at first glance) seemingly random images, to make them that much more solid, that much more important. I do, however, see the poem as Sophia does. I don't think the visitor is death though simply because I guess I want to see it as a friend who doesn't live as he should - he's all laughter and jokes on the outside, but all rotten and gluttonous on the inside, and only the narrator, so close to death that he feels he can measure life (and probably can, better than most), seems to recognize this. The scene with the woman, either a memory or the present moment melding into an aching underlying desire for life in general, for the unknown, for the hand that is able to, not just reach, but touch.

I'm stabbing so hard in the dark and maybe trying to put too much into this, but godd*mn this is good.

[vagantes]

Philoctetes is the inspiration behind Edmund Wilson's study "The Wound and the Bow", where he develops the theory about the artist( poet/ writer) being someone who is alienated from society by being damaged, but who is also needed by society as someone who tells the truth. Based obviously on the story of the Greek hero who was abandoned on an island because his wound was so offensive but had to be recalled because of his expertise etc.

Truth of course comes in different guises and this poem tries to demonstrate the unheroic/ cowardly nature of individual death and its quality of being an extraordinary event which is mundane, being merely a part of everyday life that goes on around the hero dying in his hospital bed.

His death which is offensive teaches us that there is for the dying no easy way to die.