I ask if he's read any good poems lately, and he picks up the book right away. "Oh, yes," he says, starting to thumb through the pages. He goes straight for "Richard Cory" by Edward Arlington Robinson, pointing at it. "There's this one," he says.
For those who may be unfamiliar with the oft-anthologized work, it tells of a man--elegant, rich, blessed in every way, who has the life that other people want--and who ends up going home one summer night and putting a bullet through his head.
Why this poem? I wonder. I ask Gene what he thinks it means. "Well, obviously," he says. "He had everything to live for, outwardly, but it wasn't enough to keep him going."
Hmmm. "How about another one?" I suggest. This time, he turns to the short poem by Pastor Martin Niemoller--"First they came...(for the communists, trade unionists, Jews....) Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me." This is getting cheerful, I think.
"What about something by Emily Dickinson?" I ask, realizing too late what I was asking for. He goes to the index and finds an unexpected love poem, "Wild Nights," which I'd never seen. There may be hope, I think.
Then I suggest "Invictus" by Henley, known mostly by its final line, "I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul." I never knew how gloomy the thing was until I read it from the beginning:
Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Well, I can only blame myself, right? Though perhaps there's no question of blame. My dad and I seem, for the most part, on the same page, with a similarly dark outlook. It is what it is.
