The Portrait of a Poetaster as a Man - Book III - Squandered Opportunities

Say, what should be if it should come to pass
That child of yours abandons favourite themes
Not through their inclinations or their wish
But through a strong parental influence?
What if a father were to use a bribe
In order to encourage his own child
To choose a course and university
Because that's what he wished that he had done?
What were a child as ignorant of worth
To see this bribe as motivating cause
In blithe decision as to what's the best,
In choosing matters that mould things to come?
Ignore the questions, as this came to be:
And ask the question that these three contain
Their opposite reveals the matter straight:
What would have happened were this not the case?
In asking so we leave the narrative
Entering the lair of chance hypothesis;
Were not our nation's aims construed on such,
This verse's topic would not venture there.
So let us leave our child (as is the case)
Directed by well meant paternal bribes,
And see the ends that it might well have met
Spurred on with more self-willing tendencies.
The youth, following natural aptitudes
And knowing growth at university,
Would automatically be drawn to learn
And concentrate on academia.
This student might discover joys of mind
Pursuing comprehended favourite themes
And even if he failed to win some prize
Would gain enjoyment from the chosen course.
The youth could form friendships on marks of worth
On marks of other youths' abilities,
Ignoring social status (which forms pride),
Ignoring superficial game and laugh.
The student might avoid (or be shunned by)
Societies where drinking played a role,
Prefer the library to the Shakespeare's Head,
And pushed might choose a book before a beer.
A good degree obtained in likelihood,
With it, firm understanding of the field
Because as chosen by the youth, not for,
And thus he'd show interest in learning's ways.
A different course, by Jove, a different man;
A different university: changed youth;
Deep draughts (not beer) but from knowledge's font
Form modest and a sober disputant.

There's something wrong here, we cannot proceed
There are some fundamental flaws in this:
First, isn't someone wishing on themselves
A role below first rung of social norms.
If pushed might choose a book before a beer?
In life preferring study over play?
You can be sure that such as these exist
But show the ones that wish it on themselves.
But hindsight thus as speaking in reply:
'When he considers how his light is spent
Ere half his days in this dark world and wide
He stands in awe at waste and idleness.'
A love of books is wished upon the youth
As having seen what other passions do:
A steadfast mind in front of social wiles
Has never harmed possessor or the crowd.
This were a favour to the student youth
And such a course would guard against that drive,
That untempered alcoholic desire,
That cause of ruin running through his life.
The model is not too extreme to serve:
Many the student must apply themselves,
For each barfly there's one that loves to learn,
For each and every sot there is a swot.
That said, to second fundamental flaw:
In life we have no less than reprobate,
With change of course we have a geek or nerd:
When did subject of study change a man?
The choice of subject is but secondary
To person's composition - character -
The latter moulds the way the chance is formed
And makes or breaks the opportunity.
And seen objectively, this small difference
Would go no way to fundamental shift
And would not hold the power so to mutate
And change inebriations phenotype.
It seems that aptitude (or lack of that)
Follows a person in their path through life:
Donne, leaving youthful poetry behind,
Applied and so turned able clergyman.
Were Gordon Brown to turn his hand to verse
We'd still expect an economic sham
With windfall tax on other's prosody
And borrowing from couplets left and right.
These two examples show consistency
As it would seem the youthful student would:
Small chance of pupal metamorphosis
Through change as insignificant as this.

Hold on, there's something further in our road!
In both projected scheme of things and flaws
We see propounded opposite extremes
With scant regard to chance of middle path.
And thus he spoke of life's enduring traits,
Whilst other side described the mould of youth;
And neither one of these extremes is right
Realities will rest between the two.
So when he said of Donne and Gordon Brown
(When fuelling fervour's fire of his extreme)
Examples weren't in youth - and what had Donne
Not learnt in youth the modes of scholarship?
He was a bit unfair to Gordon Brown:
With verse just like the world's economy
In stark decline; this true for all who try,
Despite the muse the parapet's a hell.
What's being said is thus: ignore the fact
That others may or may not demonstrate
Consistency with self in later years,
We talk of formative experience.
The change considered for the student youth
Is in those days when character is formed
And but a slight incline to left or right
Could steer development a better way.
Of course, this short of outright victory,
But still a battle won in that campaign;
It would have been a nudge towards the goal
A gifted block which could be used to build.
And in proposer's favour, weak or strong:
We are allowed to dream and cast our minds
To fantasy and ifs, and failing such
We'd be no more than objects lacking will.
But let's avoid proposed extremities,
Interrupted in talk of middle path;
This path the one that's frequently followed,
What had our student youth so done the same?
With change of course a change in attitude
Neither from black to white nor bad to good
But from a darker shade of grey to light
No reprobate, perhaps he'd normalise.
The love of learning might not transplant whole
But rather graft a shoot to living stem
And thus although the whole were not in bloom
The living plant would bear forth study's flower.
The change of course, not cause of abstinence
But might have gone some way to putting stop
To what occurred - youth spending his third year
Pursuing nothing but his love of beer.

Now we've exhausted our hypotheses
Hypothesising grounds of what if not,
So, in related mode then let's explore
What further might have come to pass, what if?
The student won and took his father's bribe,
And started out following chosen course
With some amount of trailing aptitude,
But gave himself but small encouragement.
Following three years having tried to learn -
Tutorial investment in the self -
Our student laboured to do worse than fail:
He didn't sit exams for his degree.
There was a course of further study set,
Continuance for good career in place,
His action quite reduced such plans to nought,
This marked an end to smooth development.
The youth returned, and at a later date
Applied himself, obtained a poor degree,
With all his plans for future ease and weal
Reduced to short-term plans for short-term gain.
This act as seen by those who knew the man;
The greatest self-affliction whilst still sane:
A discarded gift opportunity:
The act and point that disappoints the most.
Had this not been they saw relaxing life,
Unfolding luxury and contentment,
What each mother would wish upon a son,
What most father's know pride to know achieved.
They saw a wasted chance of proportion,
They saw a winning ticket thrown away,
They saw prospective jackpot within reach,
Son dropping out when on the brink of ease.
This chaos, seen by those who knew the man,
Example of a traffic accident:
As man mown down not taking care on roads,
Not realising chance of injury.
If he'd but looked, all would be fine and good,
Perhaps he didn't know the road so well,
We trust he hadn't had a drink that day,
Oh heavens! what a dreadful accident.
And then they see before and afterwards
As if the accident had changed the man,
As if the person so divides in two:
One after, one before, the day that's marked.
This was the fateful choice he can't reclaim,
This was the act from which there's no return,
As when bold Caesar crossed the Rubicon
But in this case, retreat, not moving on.

Although residing in this attitude's
A falsity which when it's understood
Perhaps not tilts but alters balance scale
Slightly in favour of the ailing youth.
All was not well, nor had so been a while,
The university and course were geared
To that conduct equating those of class:
To high abilities, beyond the norm,
Our student mingled, trying, didn't match,
Began to learn, no sooner overwhelmed,
The choice of course remained his father's choice,
Perhaps his father would have flourished well.
The listing ship was holed and bound to sink,
Our student mixed with, did not join elites,
The Battle of the Books inspired a fear:
Appraising, disaster was due to strike.
Truth to be told, he'd killed his waking soul,
And being dead though nonetheless awake,
Wore his own effigy around his neck,
A self-made mark which meant he'd fail in all.
Ambition's full with ambiguity,
But he had ceased aspiring, ceased to yearn,
He wouldn't raise his eyes to meet the sky,
He'd greet each morning with a heavy heart.
Around this time he felt that he'd been caged
What matter if his bars persist self-wrought;
The observing soul needn't be astute
To see him captured in a gilded cage.
Through stress, both external and internal,
He'd grown to be at odds with ruling world:
Over several years his once tender grip
On actualities had given way.
And this was not psychiatric illness
(No more than arguments presage divorce)
Although psychiatric illness followed
And would have come excepting total ease.
Perhaps the choice a wise decree of fate
Excluding student from a stressful path
That would have generated like illness
With double blow of lost career and mind.
Much for the better separate the two
Than leave the student wondering on ifs:
The pain to think that he'd have had success
Had he not lost his mind might break the strong.
It may appear an academic thought,
And such ones, as precluding bitterness,
Are preferably kept to yourself, kept hushed:
Much better throw yourself than have been pushed.

And if the causes were to be explored
There would be found merged and intermingled
A one as feeding others and as fed:
The curse of actuated love of drink.
In woe the bottle offers many charms
And in this case represented Lethe:
Her calming waters of forgetfulness
The balm that's not to think of anything.
There battled in uncomprehending mind
Exams to come and learning mounds by rote,
Comparison to those who were well formed,
And this was swapped for ease with but one drink.
With great naivety he held in thought
That there must be another simpler way
Some other path through life's harsh veil of thorns,
Not having seen the slightest sight of woe.
At times his self from self seemed evanesced,
He played the fool without intelligence,
And this a recipe of certainty
For proving him below an idiot.
And all this came from, and led back to drink,
Not to maintain without an anodyne,
Encouraged by the self-same poisoned salve
Which made excrescences of failing traits.
And if there was a single fateful day
Then was the day with means and will to drink
He reached the age of his independence
And started to frequent the public house.
And if there was a single fateful day
Then take the day of tender teenage youth
That bribe was offered (we'll admit well meant)
To fix his course and university.
And if there was indeed a fateful day
Then mark the day he first felt singled out,
That day he first felt different to his peers,
And saw himself a separate type or kind.
Alienated individuals drink
And just as much, drinking alienates:
Our self-afflicted student felt apart,
This cause of thirst with others stated here.
The Book before last he told of himself
And there follows a Book on alcohol,
Perhaps you're starting to discriminate
The overlaps and joins between the two.
Oh would that we could make a joke of it
Somehow cash it in for a chink of mirth,
Oh gramercy! but none of him's plastic,
That means instead of laughter, it's tragic.

Count (a) and (b) as one, so let's relate
The squandered opportunity that's two:
In class it's down a notch or two in state
But nonetheless this chance was wasted chance.
Two years had passed since act of dropping out,
Our student no more student, not a youth,
But youthful man in search of greener grass
Had moved abroad with hopes of finding self.
And something that he found, that slid to place,
A little ease he's only once since found
(Not standard for a generation past):
A stable job that paid food, rent and more.
And here he worked his days, sometimes his nights,
A factory small in size, amicable,
And its purpose, to duplicate software
For firms' promotions or advertisements.
His tasks began with standard manual work
Monotony of which he could endure,
It brought a pride to work ten thousand piece
And see them packaged for delivery.
And gradually his skill-set extended
And he'd manage many aspects of work
From ordering to sending out a bill,
He had been taught with eye to competence.
And where he should have seen a job for life
In ignorance he saw an hourly rate,
And when he should have thought symbiosis
He never thought beyond his daily task.
The time a time of sound self-subsistence,
The rent was paid, necessities were bought,
And over was enough to have a drink,
And that well earned by him who's working hard.
And youth would not aspire to such a life,
Although there's some adults, not jump at it,
But with a sense of resignation, see
There are few better offers to be had.
Our grown up youthful man is such a one
And looking back upon vicissitudes
But yearns a little share of certainty
To work and earn a living and unwind.
To overpass such opportunity
Is next to nought if moving on in life:
Though as my fate would wildly vacillate,
Return of thoughts is marked with some regret.
If move was accompanied by guarantee
That some such job became available,
With implications all outside his ken,
He'd have some thoughts, but move abroad again.

Follows the squandered chance that's number three,
Although this was more like a massacre
Of all and everything that he held dear,
All jettisoned for burning passion's flame.
Four years had passed and he still lived abroad,
He'd place at foreign university,
He was married, his wife was kind and good,
And brave to take a husband diagnosed.
His wife arranged to be some time away,
He could not see the continuity
And fell in love with other wingéd soul,
The tracks that led to second marriage train.
And all converged on this important time,
Our student youth (for that he was again)
Was drinking, verging on insanity,
And, that to him anathema, in love.
With passion he rejected all that's old
For new found love (and cursed her with his faults)
And leaving all the ease he'd known abroad,
Deserting loving wife, moved to London.
The choice reflected his decisiveness,
Though motivations still remain obscured -
That meaning that they stay unclear to him -
And thus as such, perhaps are hid from you.
A clarity surrounded this his choice
And nothing in equation was unknown
And barring obfuscation of his thought
A choice of (dare we say) a reasoned mind.
The choice so made was his and his alone,
No other agent forced his thought in this,
Indeed it might be said he forced the choice
On she who'd earned and loved independence.
The choice was bad and so the choice was good,
The choice was wrong and so the choice was right,
The choice was just as inconsiderate
As unconsidered, choice here chose itself.
And he regrets the choice for pain he caused
Not just to first, also to second wife,
And he regrets the choice as later on
The second suffered past her tender scope.
And to himself he didn't learn to say
What should be obvious to all who hear
(Irrespective of what they think of him)
He, slow in learning: "Better none than two".
And looking back he sees two separate lives
Without the clue that he's the causal link
Between the stages that are one and three,
Again he lacks a continuity.

And he can see that there is common ground
Between his love and his insanity,
And since he views his form of love as base
Perhaps the link's deluded love of self.
There'd seem an infantile design of love
(A precursor to weighed maturer kind)
That reifies the object of desire
And loves in company more than apart.
And through this kind, aspiring to the loved
Revolves round self, as if the self's served first,
The boundless joy to see the other one
Is but a way to gratify the self.
There is a second selfish mode to love
And that is that the tokens from the loved
Are weighed beyond what is reality,
Each word and gesture is referred to self.
This said, this love may not be infantile
And maybe most love raises worth of self,
And just he's burnt by love's consuming flame
In ways that others are protected from.
Regardless, with indulgent company
And blithe interpretations on love's trade
The self succumbs to flattery of mind
And sees import in place of seeing none.
This flattery of mind is just the way
Insanity so tricks the self to gain
The preferment of feckless thoughts and ways
That win their place in some enfeebled mind.
Say what you will, love and insanity
Are both infectious, each to some degree,
The one a passion, other like disease
Which can transfer on touch as like a heat.
And there was some of this with second wife,
She was intoxicated (or sent mad)
With fumes of passion (base the mix, or pure):
She didn't find herself her normal self.
And recollecting on this time she said
She saw herself as bordering on the mad,
She didn't feel somehow that she was sane,
She didn't comprehend the choice she made.
Hindsight can be as flawed as some foresight,
She didn't understand but yet she chose:
A rash insanity or form of love
One or the other motivation pricked.
And even though he might have been insane
(And minds associate when they are near)
Still he would like to think of it as love
(A union based on madness - skies above!)

And leaving this digression to one side
Let us return to waste and squandering ways:
Before all else what he has lost is mind,
Through alcohol and continual misuse.
When viewing those declining powers of mind
The first to fail - association's leap;
Ability with ease to bound and jump
From this to that in conversation's course.
This essential leaven, ingredient,
That liberates the running play of thought,
That makes the talk a joy and not a woe,
The driving engine to a train of thought.
His power to make a join of thought is gone
The skill is not deficient, it is dead,
And in attempts to resurrect itself
Result is like a putrid zombie's dance.
And do you know the actress, stars a role
In such and such, she's in the news today?
And it is true he wouldn't recognise
The star if she turned barber, cut his hair.
And with this ignorance of current views
Runs parallel the inability
To make associations, trim or glib,
Which might dovetail with that which others think.
And recently we went on holiday
To southern France, lovely this time of year:
He says he's heard the food and wine are good
And thinks he'd better button other thoughts.
You said you've eaten in that noodle bar
The ambience is tempting, how's the food?
He slurs a non-committal "OK, s'pose"
And lacking metaphor says less than nought.
As far as love of poetry's concerned,
The bard! how do you rate Shakespeare's sonnets?
Straight faced he says the woman who's addressed
She must have made someone a stunning bride.
And then your love of literature as next,
And currently you're reading Laurence Sterne?
He says he wished the author talked the less,
The book would be improved if there were plot.
Although he never had the gift of gab
More than in past, associations fail:
The simple thing to say is in his grasp
But when required is shy of utterance.
And tied with this in conversation's play
He will attempt to make connecting links
The gist of which defies the best of sense
And leaves the interactors thinking 'Whence?'

Adjunctive to association's lack
He suffers from a failing memory
And that which used to be a pride in him
Reduced from what it was in perfect health.
And where were we? memor...? memorial!
He can't remember on the left or right
But isn't there a list of those who died
In time of war on entering Waterloo?
What was said? ...orial? tutorial!
He's still attending university,
In past he has forgotten to prepare
When he and tutor made a plan to meet.
He can remember theme - tutor? Tudor!
There is a charming Tudor edifice
Here in central London on High Holborn ...
It's just he can't recall if mock or real.
London, that majestic city, London:
He questions whether it's a love or hate
That motivates his lasting residence;
Like so much else the reason's slipped his mind.
The talk has turned to that of love and hate:
He doesn't dote or show a bitterness,
Forgetfulness is source of attitudes
And all is viewed in mind as having passed.
And now he thinks the talk's of bitterness:
A gin, tonic and bitters has a name,
He's quite forgotten though, what it is called,
He knows he used to drink them in that pub.
And then that pub of course he can't recall:
He thinks the place was on a busy road,
And most the tables either square or round,
The serving staff appeared as friendly souls.
With this the state of memory is piqued
In that what came before was far from this:
There was a time a printed text as read
Was paired and equal to a text as learnt.
There was a time when thoughts and facts adhered
Dovetailed as through association's strength,
With each archived to lasting memory
And leaving clear impressions on the brain.
For him those days begin to fade with age:
In case of learning, work replaces ease,
In lieu of relaxation's overview,
He's straining to focus on things narrow.
He takes inventory of what he's left,
With honesty, and looking to himself
He only hopes and prays forgetfulness
Does not go hand in hand with hopelessness.

And with association and recall
Impaired with chronological ascent
Knowledge crumbles, recedes into decline,
To point where factual lack is cause of woe.
And his acquaintance with the world is scant
With scarce an actual source that's utilised
He doesn't try to read between the lines,
The lines ignored for fear they enervate.
He rarely reads the daily newspaper:
For different reasons he's attracted by
Those papers previously named broadsheets,
And on the tube, he'll read what's offered free.
The former just describe the world of news
According to agenda which they set,
To disentangle what is actual fact
From journalistic angle needs explained.
To read the latter you'd be led to think
Celebrity lifestyle within your reach
And that you'll be the victim of a crime
Before you've read the paper end to end.
And thus, mostly, he chooses not to read:
And in his ignorance of world events,
Celebrity, gossip, and what's called news,
He is limited in discussion's scope.
He finds in television laxity,
Not in morals, but his suggested thought,
For him suspension of his disbelief
Extends beyond the reach of programmes watched.
This marks him off from others as naive
As others know the bounds of real and false:
Regardless, God could spend eternity
In watching television, not alone.
And as he doesn't read or watch TV
He has a slender grasp of politics:
Topic which often leads to argument
And leaving wish that things were left unsaid.
And as regards his blinkered views on this
His attitudes reflect an ethos, gleaned
From thoughts received in days of yesteryear,
Outmoded at the moment they were formed.
And thus there's little knowledge in his head
Although that is the way he's chosen it:
For fair or foul he's started down the road
That's signposted: 'A barren soil that's pure'.
Just think of those required ingredients
For able conversation's lilting flow:
Association, knowledge, memory:
They intertwine and he's short on all three.