Man at the End of Something
Admit the day’s veering toward something
else, the tiny flag of your heart inverted.
Admit the pause between words, wearing
away at the febrile. Admit jealousy, the want
for what you have if you didn’t have it.
Admit hunger. And an absence of which
you are far too aware. Admit the necessity
of breathing, the sound of several thousand
humming birds in torpor, ruby throats
pinched against their breasts. Admit sorrow,
which is the only heirloom that lasts.
Admit the deity, hallowed be his hollow
name. Admit change, but not so much
its progress or lack thereof cannot be seen.
Admit intrigue. Admit hangnail. Admit lovely,
how it casually and often passes you by.
Fail, because you won’t find respite.
Recourse, only as an occupation for the hands.
Reject delicate because you have walked
on glass for reasons. Admit deduction,
how easy it was to itemize. Then possibility,
but limit it to the aroma of an orchid, wilting.
| John Hogan |
|
levelheaded: Man at the End of Something
This poem’s title is willing to reveal that this “Man”—maybe the speaker himself—is “at the End.” It’s less willing to reveal what he’s at the end of, substituting “Something” for more precise info. Either he’s not sure, won’t say, or deems irrelevant where the title’s “End” lies. Although lacking any “I,” the poem, littered with “you,” feels intimate, as it even-handedly runs through what seem to be a set of instructions on how to handle the end—or sketches this man at his “End.”
The poem relies on anaphora—repetition of a word at the start of successive sentences. In this case, the bulk of the sentences start with “Admit.” A very powerful rhetorical device, anaphora here could be a metaphor for human attempt, over the span of our lives—as we’re faced intermittently with “Ends”—to say or think something meaningful, by starting over, adjusting, and restarting. This way of reading the poem is just that—a way of reading it—but it seems worth mentioning that a poem’s rhetorical or formal decisions can (must? That’s another argument…) push beyond the poem itself.
Admit—to allow to enter, to permit, to validate.
Continuing on this galactic scale (a scale which this piece seems to request, and then skewer), with “Admit the pause between words,” we wonder whether that “pause” might represent a poem—a pause on the continuum of our spoken/mundane/improvised speech. This even though a poem’s material is words: A complex, counterintuitive thought that erodes one way of thinking while building up another. The poem is incendiary, sparking tidal waves such as these.
The poem is split in half, a possible “End” arriving with line 11 (the final word of which is “lasts”—or, continues, or is the final one). Line 11 is an “End” in miniature, like a study in pointillism. Periods (ends, full stops), specks cohere to form an image. A Sunday afternoon on an island.
Now we veer off (like “the day’s veering toward something / else”), pausing at Alcoholics Anonymous. The “Admit” mantra brought us there. “Admit” makes us consider why we’d do so, and, ultimately, that it’s the first step in a course of action toward recovery, toward integrity. Not for nothing, AA is a 12-step program recognizing a higher power, and line 12 of Hogan’s poem suggests we “Admit the deity.” A stretch, for sure, raising the question of intention and meaning—of finding and identifying these, of creating and imposing on them.
The poem revolves around separation, a separation which may or may not refer to a relationship (“an absence of which / you are far too aware”). Separation of objects, like together with like: All the admissions go together; the denials, the rejections culled. “Admit deduction, / how easy it was to itemize.” To be “hallowed” is to be set apart: “hallowed be his hollow / name.” Separation as a means to unite what’s similar. Indeed, there’s comfort to be found in separation of this sort. Maybe separation is actually what you do, how you kick into action, when you find yourself at the end of something.
– The Editors
