Remember,
When I clap three times
You will awaken,
Is that all right?
Yes, when you clap 3 times
I will wake up.
OK.
I want to ask you what you are looking at.
Are you looking at anything?
It is a sun-bleached landscape.
Way in the distance there are mountains,
A big range of them very far away.
There is a lighthouse on a spit of land.
There is no water.
I am watching it.
I am wondering why is there a lighthouse
With no ocean?
Why are you watching it?
Because it is where I last saw her.
It was where I first saw her
And where I saw her last.
(He begins to sob.)
Do you want to keep going?
Yes.
Now where are you?
I'm in a sun porch.
There are some renters.
They just said, this isn't what we wanted . . .
Do you know what house you are in?
It is the house where I was born.
Nobody is listening to them.
Everyone is sitting on the sun porch smoking and drinking. . .
When is this?
I am 6.
60 years ago.
This can't be my memory.
Why?
Because I am seeing myself.
Right? This can't be my memory.
It can be your memory.
Who else is there? Look around.
There is a tall man there.
He is by the door.
What does he look like?
He is very tall. He has a mustache and sideburns.
What is he doing?
He is looking over at the woman in the blue dress.
Is that all?
No. He is holding a book and a drink.
Do you know his name?
No.
Wait a second. There is a younger man shouting at him.
He is saying, Go to hell. Go to hell Fred.
But he is laughing. They are all laughing.
They are all drunk.
Go back to the first place.
Do I have to?
No, but I would like you to.
OK, there it is.
What do you see?
Same as before -
Mountains and a lighthouse.
I am very hot.
It's hot. Everything is hot and bright.
The stones are hot and . . . glinting.
I think they have lots of mica in them.
The ground is hot.
I'm looking at the lighthouse.
OK I'm going to clap my hands three times
And you will wake up.
Clap!
Clap!
Wait a second! There she is! I see her!
Clap!
......................
This is a strange poem, a haunting poem, in a good way. As with all poems that come from beyond my ken or intention, this one has an energy all its own. Call it an archetypal field, or, more prosaically, a case of a bigger story emerging within the cover story. What was my intention? To write a poem about a person who has traveled into the future and is being hypnotized to report what he saw there. After I finished the poem, I thought that I had more or less succeeded but I kept going back to the poem. Something wasn't right. I changed just a few things, developing the sun room scene, because the poem wanted me to make it more real, like something that might have happened in the 50s or 60s. But the bigger problem was, it seemed less and less like a futuristic vision of the end of the world, but, more credibly, the end of "a" world. The way the poem reads in its current form, the time-traveler may or may not have seen a future that awaits all of us, but it might just be his future or the future of some of us! This is my take on the poem. Who is the hypnotist? It could be God . . .Great Spirit. And who is the woman he sees before the second and third clap? That is anybody's guess. Will the subject remember the two scenes he saw under hypnosis? I would guess not.
(Article changed on May 21, 2022 at 11:27 AM EDT)
(Article changed on May 22, 2022 at 7:20 AM EDT)
