The Portrait of the Poetaster as a Man - Book VIII - Asocial interactions

And there was time long gone when all went well,
A time of waking growth and sense of self,
A time when childhood's blithe enchantment grew
And blossomed blossoms rare and magical.
A year's duration then, no more no less,
The time I'd grown to seven years of age,
And one of Britain's cities was my home:
Not free but ignorant of cares and woes.
The world unfurled a constant source of joy
(Not known as such because nought else was known)
And hiding as behind of each delight
Was soon revealed another equal one.
The sun was out, I'd be surfeit with warmth,
If it was cold, I'd look forward to snow,
The rainy days, I'd splash in rain with glee,
The windy days, I'd lean into the wind.
And I'd enjoy with friends on equal terms,
With thought devoid of adult jealousies,
With thought unsullied by forbidden fruit,
With thought of smile and laugh, and thought of play.
And each small friend was just as full content,
And words and talk and chatter would reflect
The depth of life through straight simplicity:
A sky reflected in a seaside pool.
All through the day I smiled in happiness
And when I smiled, someone returned the smile,
All day I smiled in blissful ignorance
And at that age that was sufficient due.
And nothing troubled, not one speck of woe,
Not any thought or real disturbing angst:
One nightmare did repeat (were it so called)
And even that concluded in a joy.
This year of memory, my golden age,
And as you'll see unfold against my will,
This, where I learnt my stunted social grace,
And failing exemplar for later life.
Around this age you need to just present
And adults start to make a fuss of you,
You need but smile and mutter syllables -
Your company initiates applause.
A pretty one is one who doesn't cry,
A clever one is one who asks for sweets,
Politeness is to know the words thank you,
Maturity to be the size you are.
My golden age was time of wondered joy
Compress of childhood to a single year
Then I'd but smile, and praise and grace were mine,
But laugh, and all would turn out good and fine.

And then this golden age of innocence
Began to fade from gold to silver greys,
Things dulled, though nothing in comparison
To how the sheen would fade in days to come.
The golden age was wounded close to death
By mass uproot of home and hearth and friends;
The family (no father - they'd divorced)
Moved to another city: reason - work.
The blurred boundaries of gold and silver age
Will merge into the other over years:
With me they're drawn with greater clarity
When looking back upon my life's time-line.
A glee had transformed to a boisterous joy,
Thus changed, some golden rays persisted still:
An outing to the swimming pool, a game
Of hide and seek or playing in the street.
But school was harsh and I was singled out
And picked upon for talking differently,
And picked upon for dressing like a tramp,
And too was picked upon for being posh.
The world extended, others round matured,
And developed motives sensed alien,
These motives were nascent antipathy
And played with power in way which I admired.
Though awed, I wasn't quick to cotton on
And interacted as I would have if
I still remained in golden age now gone,
I stayed in innocent stagnating pool.
I couldn't quite perceive the right or wrong,
And my moral hypotheses would see
The good or bad of deeds dependent on
The absence or presence of punishment.
And through this time, in search of happiness,
My mother met her partner, and not wed
But cohabiting, fate so blessed them with
A daughter, my half-sister then a tot.
At school I played the part of teacher's pet,
A dim reminder to the golden age:
Through doing clever sums and reading books
I gained at least one fond admiring gaze.
In silver age I learnt some joys of mind,
The joy of learning that which I was taught,
Encouragement in fields where I excelled,
And warm reward for bookishness's bent.
In this the silver age I slight progressed,
But with the sudden change of home and hearth
I neither thrived nor fell retreating back,
But seemed to compensate against a lack.

The next mile-stone was comprehensive school
And marked the death of warming thoughts of past,
With change of age from silver to the bronze
Arose a changing state of happiness.
What I had seen as animosity
Now reared her head as cruelty and spite:
In others and in me, as it grew fun
To joke and tease and to humiliate.
In school a pecking order firm in place,
I neither on the top nor bottom rung,
But overall as closer to the base
Received some stick, more than I handed out.
In this the bronze a something subtle grew
That had been planted in the silver times
A seed of difference sprouted shoots and leaves
Alienation grew around, in me.
Aspects of this difference were positive:
I had a brother in a higher year,
With ease I still remained the teacher's pet,
I went some way with formed relationships.
Aspects of this difference were negative:
Respect was through my brother's acts and deeds,
I known and classified and called a swot,
I formed relationships - they did not gel.
I started to perceive myself different,
And that perhaps as all do at this age,
It never clicked that others were like me,
I lived untutored in cerebral spheres.
The opening of the bronze was good and grand
With scant unpleasant moment standing out,
Few would detect the problems which have come
To view me at this stage and at this age.
Around this time I took inventory
And saw I bore the corpse of golden age
About with me, as parts of it still glowed;
To reminisce brought breath of joys though faint.
And it was time and I interred the corpse
Complete with rites and sadness and regret
As should befit a thing that once brought weal:
Respect much like should grace a favoured star.
The place a secret only known to me
Bore this inscription on the ruined tomb:
"To joyous time of innocence sore missed
Remembered source of bliss and sustenance".
And thus transition silver to the bronze
Was painless, marked by little woe, few tears,
Progressed in ways as like normality
As would be found in great majority.

And then there grew a state of open war
Between my mother's and her partner's views,
Him granted license free to vent his spleen
On me, my brother and of course on her.
His type is common - it demands respect
And shouts and rants and screams to terrorise
Abusing its authority, enraged
The more when what's demanded is withheld.
The kind is that of archetypal drunk,
This one, dry-drunk on magnified self-worth
And showed the raging anger that's drinks curse,
Blood rising to his face at sober times.
He fought both frontal and a petty war
Against perceived opponents, me as one,
And this warfare remained unfair, unjust,
I was a child and he a full-grown man.
His anger maimed and stunted and confused:
On tender cusp of entering adult world
I was exposed to violent tendencies,
Antipathies the like I'd never seen.
Displayed with adult rage of man on child
I bent and buckled, weaker of the two,
In youth and vigour I withdrew from life
And too withdrew from forming memories.
The times are lost as in a dream or trance,
I recollect the waking hours at night
With shouting keeping me from wanted sleep
With blame attached to self, self's impotence.
And it got bad with cults thrown in as well
Some innocent, although, some pernicious
The kind of holidays you didn't share
With school friends, neighbours, not with anyone.
Alienation was the clear result
As I withdrew from normal modes of cheer:
Alienation from the group and self
As I became one different from the rest.
Withdrawn, my world began to polarise
I separated pleasantness from pain
And compartmentalised experience,
Which was a building block for later ills.
I stayed a swot at school and loved to learn,
The motivation stayed in war as peace,
Though much of what I learnt in form of rote,
And that in academic disciplines.
My mother and her partner brick by brick
Built hell in spite of heaven, woes self-made,
A child at heart I tried and failed to build
A heaven blest in spite of hell which killed.

The skies they were ashen, also sober;
The leaves they were crispéd and parched and sere -
And it was night in lonesome October
Of this, my most immemorial year:
I, close to that dim lake they call Auber,
In the misty, drear mid region of Weir:
I, down by that dank tarn that's named Auber,
And hard by ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
And here once in a bower idyllic
Below willow, I joined joy with my soul -
Under willow and with Psyche, my soul -
And in those days my heart was seraphic.
But it was night in lonesome October,
And talk between Psyche and me was sere -
Our thoughts were serious also sober,
We failed to mark the night of nights of year.
Psyche mild said beware, I said proceed,
I pacified my Psyche and kissed her
And conquered her scruples, ill thoughts and gloom
We passed on to the end of the vista:
Our path barred by the door of ruined tomb
I murmured to Psyche's ear: "Sweet sister
What can you read, what's written sweet sister
Upon the door of this legended tomb?"
Her answer: "Golden age - your golden age! -
Here is the vault of thy lost golden age!"
My aching heart turned ashen and sober
Just as the leaves that were withered and sere.
And with the anger I'd been taught of late
I burned to desecrate the ruined tomb,
I yearned so much for those distant past years
With even memories preferred to now.
My one desire that happiness returned
I forced the vault, detached the corpse's head,
Moved by contrast of gone and present days
I bore the head in cloth away with me.
At home I cleaned the disembodied face
Removing signs of death I combed his hair
And wrapped him in a silken handkerchief
And planted him in pot of earthenware.
And in this pot a graft of rose of red:
I watered it both night and day with tears
And placing it where it drew light and warmth
I prayed each night, by and to and for it.
This starts the story of my potted rose,
Initially a blessing and comfort,
But later more and more impediment,
And obstacle to fair development.

The potted rose was blessed with flower and thorn
And this portended conflicts in myself;
Through it I yearned for past of memory:
Save time's reverse, this couldn't be reborn.
I took my attitudes and views from then
And saw myself as innocent though grown,
I lived at odds with new realities
Cocooned, bound up, within my private world.
Transported, I worshipped my potted rose
Advantages that came into the world,
So disadvantages, were fruit of it,
So pricking thorns, so fragrant roses red.
With backward look my social graces failed,
Development was not in question now,
I took stagnation with idolatry
And that degree of innocence that's sham.
I never learnt to interact on terms
But as of old I just presented dumb
With youthful look upon my youthful face
Expecting others to initiate.
And I avoided much social contact,
I kept my head below the radar's screen,
And persevered and shone in work at school,
And for whatever little that was worth.
And seen by me at noon in light of day
I saw this world of me and potted rose
Was but pretend, a type of make believe,
But I persisted forced into this path.
My life at home revolved round argument,
Polarity was stark and harsh at times,
A bristling state of tension was the norm,
And commonly erupted into worse.
My mother and her partner knew no shame
And screamed and raged before their own offspring,
Expecting them somehow to weather it
Or just ignore their animosity.
Increased woe drove me to my potted rose,
It wasn't hard to water it with tears,
And guard the fruit from others' jealously,
Fruit that I treasured, kept and made my own.
Although I spoke of thorns of social grace
And though they held me back in spite of growth
Yet at this time there were advantages
That still arose from reifying past.
Supplied with retrogressive innocence
Through concentrating on my golden age
My potted rose in flowers bore the fruit
That I was seen as likeable and cute.

And now the reason was recalled to me
Of why I loved the growth from out decay
That was my potted rose, as memories
Were reinforced by new experience.
There grew renewed association strong
Between myself, some teenage friends of mine
And those the self-same ones I'd known before,
In self-same city, as of golden age.
It were as if my potted rose had worked
Some wonder in attempt to raise the past -
Though altered now the players and the place,
A reassembled similarity.
My mother and her partner's war on selves
Had not abated its ferocity:
His animosity towards myself
Fired by my teenage years, intensified.
With such a home environment in place
Myself was drawn by any loved option
That represented feelings like escape
Away from family antipathy.
And such an option was a brief return
To fond-remembered days of yesteryear,
To places, faces from the golden age,
A time I reified and doted on.
The option was both staged and realised
First through attention to my potted rose,
And second through adored weekends away,
And during which no woe would rear its head.
It was a confluence of dreamt and real
Which was as rare as centaur in a glade,
Repeat of dream I'd dreamt objectified,
This was an aim too high, a treat too good.
But then I drank with regularity
And in that company and in those days
This seemed the start of something grandiose,
But what were jests, for me were play with fire.
And then through drink I learnt a brazen pride,
One which contradicted, so too destroyed
The charms half way I'd gained from potted rose;
These drunken airs a curse on all that's good.
Then though I mixed with those that were my age,
And though through them this seemed a waking dream
I still remained different to everyone,
I still maintained my potted rose with tears.
And those around had struggled with the heart,
And through this innocence and peace depart -
And differently I'd struggled 'spite of heart
And thus maturity and sense depart.

The passing time allowed to reinforce
My stock of retrogressive tendencies
And when I reached the cusp of adulthood
As others looked forward, so I turned back.
I still admired what was my golden age,
And gleaned my morals and my attitudes
Though not in whole (in part with poisonous grafts)
From those distant loved times of memory.
The days displayed allowances of youth
And with that show, I sort of fitted in,
Like youthful platitude that finds a place
In learned discourse on more worldly things;
Like green banana on a bunch that's ripe
I shared a class, though different attributes.
Like talk of seances that finds a place
In Yeats's otherwise maturer work.
And now although I didn't live at home
I lived a level off reality,
I lived a sheltered, pampered way of life,
A laboured fantasy in all but name.
Such fantasy encouraged fantasy
And motivated backward look to past,
Above all other times of health this time
The one that laid the ground for indolence.
Through retrogression my poor state decayed,
And still enamoured of my potted rose
I lost the lever to initiate,
I could not plan or start the large or small.
My conversation's void ability
Was marked by failure to instantiate,
I failed universal instance of self
(And was and am no master in small-talk).
This was repeat of tack I took in youth -
To but present myself and hope for grace,
I would converse (the same) with those I knew
Though novelty, however shown, foxed me.
The seed of difference waxed in me full strong:
Alienation from my peers was felt:
I shed few tears upon my potted rose,
My sacred plant but proffered thorn on thorn.
But still, against good sense some liked those thorns,
I knew not why and still can't see the grounds,
And thus I made some friends in spite of drink
And utter lack of readiness for life.
But thorns they were and I replete with them,
I was unpleasant to engage or near,
Initially my friends forgave the prick:
Most shied through realising thorns grew thick.

With adulthood my backward looking ways,
The attitudes and failing social stance
That went with fawning on my potted rose,
Became, to all intents, as things ingrained.
For worse, outlook was coloured by a blind
Alcoholic's unconscious brazen pride:
Almost a pride in lack of social grace,
Almost perverse, a boast to cause offence.
And thus I navigated on through life
And on through three unthinking marriages
A parody of man I drifted far
From reason's shores and all their certain sense.
I still can't disentangle potted rose,
Alcohol and madness to separate strands:
Through life they have remained triumvirate
Dictatorship which had no weal in mind.
And what connects these three to make a prile?
In each stands forth a difference from the crowd;
Each one alienates those who know it,
Until they stand alone, too from themselves.
Eventually these three created woe
Which turned my heart to stone and banished joy:
And it was like my thoughts were dead to life,
My corpse endured, a fane to absent soul.
And as my heart was stone I wept no more,
My potted rose ran dry of tears and died,
Without a single verdant shoot or bud:
A dry as dust, withered display of thorns.
Eventually I turned antisocial,
Though it was flavoured by desires of old:
I still would wish for others' company
Despite the glaring fact that mine repelled.
It would have made some sense to just withdraw,
Though golden age's farcical desire
To be the cynosure spurred onward to
Repeat and failed attempts to interact.
Though there were times of joy in adult life
But just that I'd always compare them to
The innocent delights of youthful life
And not comparing like with like, they'd fail.
Sure, there were wells of light in adult life
But like all joy beyond a certain age
The pleasure only showed in looking back
With no more here and now, joys just recalled.
And then I still adored my potted rose,
A lifeless plant fed by a rotting head,
It will not come as greatest kept surprise
Now rose nor adulthood I idolise.

And most through potted rose I find I'm left
With lack of social grace and niceties:
I'm not antisocial but see myself
Asocial, said for want of better word.
And these difficulties, as seen by me,
Are counterbalanced by innate talents
(Buried talents - if so, a sin to hide)
That I somehow imagine I possess.
I thought my failings were not obvious,
I thought the cause was that I felt awkward
A fact that went undetected by most,
But to assume as thus was to be wrong.
What stands out now (and should have always done)
Is that I stand as different from the rest
And that through my attachment (dear it is)
To potted rose and all that this includes.
One time discussing aired hypothesis
That I'm antisocial in way and form
A friend surprised me with his apt reply:
"You're not, you just can't buy things from a shop."
And it's a fine and true analysis:
I make no small-talk when I'm buying things,
And too I fail in smiles and eye contact,
I fail to put the man and me at ease.
Importantly this failing stands noticed
And is not seen as innocence or void:
Asocial lack is seen as lack of clothes -
Is seen a nakedness which screams offence.
From his simple comment, I reassessed,
It served as catalyst for change of views
And new analysis of self and state:
This change remains as undergoing change.
The alteration was not sudden change,
Simply, I kept returning to that said,
I could not deny what seemed plain logic,
Unable just to shift the thought from mind.
At first I did not dwell upon effects,
Or those consequences that might follow,
But rolled the idea round about my head,
And thus when it recurred I toyed with it.
And with repeated thought revolving thus,
It dawned on me the need to jettison
My now defunct dejected potted rose,
And it's with pains I've made a start on this.
The future may bring joy, this much I pray:
As I'm the thief as much as anyone
I hope I will not say: "O cruelty,
To steal my potted rose away from me!"

The whole as example of some life lie -
Perhaps not as life lie serves some purpose
In simplifying things and not reverse,
And abrogates responsibility.
The stock life lie's a private source of ease
So long as it remains beyond challenge:
So yes, perhaps this was my potted rose,
Life lie, that fault which almost all possess.
Yet it would come as no surprise to me
If to exist without this strange life lie
Were not some form of blessing overdue,
Which paid to me would simplify my ways.
The crux is thus: for more than one decade
I've taken stance, pretending to myself
That I'm possessed of average social grace;
I find I'm not: what chance acquiring it?
Ignore the size of chance, the chance is there:
In days gone by I had my potted rose
And that prevented me from hoping to
Repair this grave social impediment.
The realignment, urge to reassess,
And view the matters in the light of day,
Is new to me, has waxed to certainty
With passage through the days of last few months.
And there has been some minor progress made:
In light of what my friend had said to me
The patois of the shop or store's exchange
Is studied, and I feel I make small steps.
In some small sense I've found the aptitude
To direct conversation as I wish:
This skill is new to me, and though I know
Those well and they allow, somehow I've gained.
The aim is grand, I'm starting from low base:
And thus a simple forward step looms great -
My tale of shops' patois may seem naive,
But to me it's a victory of kinds.
My object's high, I'm starting at an age:
I must use reason well, for others it's
Reflexive - it's no matter, if achieved,
The end result of social grace, the same.
The prize obscured, I might be autistic:
So what if there are obstacles ahead,
I wish at least to say that I have tried,
I wish to test myself on even par.
Regardless, if achieved or out of reach
I yearn and aim for this accomplishment,
For others it's a given, yet to me
A feather in the cap of normalcy.

The incomplete initial part of this
Preceding book was written in the year
1812, at Stowey, delightful place,
A part of Somerset (here I may jest).
The second part was written on return
From Germany on or about the year
1815 at Keswick, Cumberland,
With scar and fell and lake inspiring me.
Were book complete at either former times,
Or even if the first and second parts
Had been published around 1815,
Original impression were more great.
For this omission there's only my own
Poor indolence to blame, and at a time
As rich as ours in soaring ideas,
Not to publish is but to hinder self.
The dates are mentioned here exclusively
For that purpose as to preclude the charge
Of plagiary, that wrong to rob from kind;
Or like in crime, servile imitation.
There seem to be amongst us grouped critics
Who hold belief that each image and thought
Is but traditional, in new they see
Simple repetition of standard themes.
These same critics have no notion, can't grasp
The simple fact, of fountains in the world,
And small as well as great, the origin
Of thought however it may flow from there.
They would therefore in charity derive
Every the rill that they behold to flow
As coming from a perforation made
In tank belonging to another man.
As far as my preceding book's concerned,
The celebrated poet whose efforts
I might remain suspected to have read
And imitated, would sure vindicate.
Regarding this preceding Book (Book VIII),
The recognised dead poet whose sound verse
I stand suspected now as having learned
And imitated, would not raise a brow.
As for the matter of my potted rose,
A greeting, celebrated poet, please
You would permit me to address to you,
Monkish Latin restyled to doggerel:
The thing belongs to me, is likewise yours:
If this my mode of thinking won't suffice,
Let it be mine, good friend, I bear on you,
Because I am the poorer of the two.