Poem Post: "Crackerbell" and Grace

This morning while I tried to decide whether to be awake or asleep, as though I had any real say in the matter, I was listening to episodes of The Slowdown, Major Jackson's poetry podcast.

I must have heard about The Slowdown on Poetry Unbound, and the format is similar, except that the story the host tells at the beginning is more elliptically connected to the poem, which is left uninterpreted, except for the juxtaposition of the two.

The episode about Mary Ruefle's "Crackerbell" was guest hosted by Shira Erlichman.

Half-listening, I was captured by the grace of Ruefle's last stanza, and I thought I'd like to share the poem with you.


Crackerbell
by Mary Ruefle

I grew up

I became myself and
was haunted by it

and I loved to wander, utterly alone

listening to the sound of tears
striving to guess my own secret
and racking my imagination for
a dream

meanwhile,
everybody else knew my story
and there was not one of them
who would give me so much as
a bird dropping

so on I wandered
with arms and nitric startled eyes,
nitpicking my way through the world
when the electrical current
that runs in all directions
deep beneath the earth
shook me

and at once I felt
there are so many years to fail
that to fail them all, one by one,
would give me a double life,
and I took it.

* * * * * *

( Notes to the poem, for those who like that sort of thing. )

What do you notice?

* * * * * *

Here's a response from this morning, not so much an answer as a parallel journey.


Hero

I aged, and acquired
a little wisdom, sometimes from injury,
often through sheer repetition

And now it may be too late
to set off in any fashion
other than alone

Since, for all the gifts given me,
and there have been many, from many hands,
the whole city equipping and adorning me
while begging me not to go

I did go, and found myself lost
in the wood without names,
where that child -- who was it? –
and that animal – what was it called –
well, you see how this goes --

Unable to recognize, let alone make use of,
any of the implements I carried,
I had to begin again with what was to hand.

This, I saw finally,
was nobody's fault, or my own,
which amounted to the same thing;
and that gave me, in my long labours,
some peace.

{rf}