The Pyro-rodent and the Poet Laureate
By Brother Stavros
I was an
odd-duck adolescent: forsaking the Beatles and Chubby Checkers, I cherished the
music of Gilbert & Sullivan and Spike Jones, thanks mostly to the influence
of my older brother, who took it upon himself with determination and patience
to educate me. His future wife, my sister-in-law, gave me a present of my first
45 rpm, the small discs with the big holes. It was a tenor and a mezzosoprano
aria from Aïda, sung in Italian on
one side and spoken in English on the other. When I got my own turntable and
inherited my brother’s little study in the basement under the front porch, I
branched out to collect Folkway LPs and annoy my father with New Guinea war
chants (he told me he would rather I was into rock & roll).
Of the jumbled lyrics in the vivid
grey cells of yesteryear, a trio starting with “Three little maids from school
are we” in the first act of The Mikado
takes my mental stage at the oddest moments. It goes:
Three little maids who,
all unwary
Come from a ladies'
seminary
Freed from its genius
tutelary
Three little maids from
school
My brother explained that
a seminary in the 1800s did not necessarily refer to an institution to prepare
boys for priesthood, but in the case of the little maids, it was rather a
cognate for an academy or a finishing school.
Allow me this rather convoluted introduction to what was
called, when we settled in Cambridge, the Burr and Burton Seminary. Its 1829
original marble school sits at the base of the east face of Equinox Mountain in
Manchester, Vermont, only a few miles from Cambridge. Its address is still
Seminary Avenue, but it is now called an Academy, and it has a proud tradition
as an independent high school and considerable prowess in athletics, judging
from all the championships banners festooning the walls of the gymnasium.
I have long admired its tidy campus and spectacular
location. We used to deliver our smoked meats and the nuns’ cheesecakes to the
Equinox Resort Hotel, just down the street.
The town has a wonderful cultural attraction called First
Wednesdays, sponsored by the Vermont Humanities and various local sponsors.
This past April they hosted “An Evening with Billy Collins,” expecting
four to five hundred attendees, at the Burr and Burton gymnasium.
In childhood I was blessed with a yearly train ride to
visit my father’s people in the mountains of Western Maryland. At some point I
discovered, in a glass-fronted bookcase in a rarely used parlor in my
grandmother’s house, a collection of the poems of Ogden Nash. I thought they
were hilarious, and they inoculated me with a predilection for poetry.
I dabble myself now and
then and of late have discovered a passion for the Sufi poets. I had an early
reverence for Robert Frost, who is buried in the cemetery outside the
Congregational church in Old Bennington, a calendar-worthy edifice.
I’ve enjoyed the poems of Billy Collins, along with those
of Mary Oliver, and I jumped at the chance to hear him read. I arrived early and
got a seat in the second row just about in front of the podium.
I have a recording of his reading and like his voice. His
verse is often sardonic, droll, very straightforward, touching, insightful, and
familiar. The evening was not disappointing. I appreciated the question-and-answer
session, and I liked the way he fielded the students’ inquiries. A low-key
humor permeated the whole event, and I was delighted when he read one of my
favorites.
When the event ended I got in line to get a copy of The Rain in Portugal. The title beaconed because of my
familiarity with “My Fair Lady.” I thought briefly of asking for his signature,
at which time I would have asked him if he had ever considered a poem about not
going in the water after you’ve eaten a meal. The line, however, had
telescoped, so I got in the car and drove home in the dark.
With permission I now offer you a sample. “I Chop Some
Parsley While Listening to Art Blakey’s Version of Three Blind Mice” was
my second choice, but you will have to do with the catchy title.
The
Country
I
wondered about you
when
you told me never to leave
a box
of wooden, strike-anywhere matches
lying
around the house because the mice
might
get into them and start a fire.
But your
face was absolutely straight
when
you twisted the lid down on the round tin
where
the matches, you said, are always stowed.
Who
could sleep that night?
Who
could whisk away the thought
of the
one unlikely mouse
padding
along a cold water pipe
behind
the floral wallpaper
gripping
a single wooden match
between
the needles of his teeth?
Who
could not see him rounding a corner,
the blue
tip scratching against a rough-hewn beam,
the
sudden flare, and the creature
for one
bright, shining moment
suddenly
thrust ahead of his time -
now a
fire-starter, now a torchbearer
in a
forgotten ritual, little brown druid
illuminating
some ancient night.
Who
could fail to notice,
lit up
in the blazing insulation,
the tiny
looks of wonderment on the faces
of his
fellow mice, onetime inhabitants
of what
once was your house in the country?
