Again Thinking

Came across a poem I don't remember writing, let alone the when or why of it.

Since it was published in Commentary, the Singapore version I once edited not the US one, in April 1979, I must have written it before this date and it has my name printed over it, so it must be mine.

The poem is titled Voyage into night, an obvious reference to the second world war vintage voyage au bout de la nuit by Celine, the French extreme right writer, whose writing I love as much as I hate his racist ideas.


liar. you lie, to feel yourself alive, to hate.
the world moved ..... you ran to stand alone.
the applause in your ears is your own
but you heard the world
and despised them.

Rereading both poems today, I see myself the angry young idealist who could not understand how someone of such literary talent could have such extreme ideas. But then even today I still cannot understand how so many intelligent people can still harbour similar ideas, long after the last world war, the end of empires and colonies and of divine cultural supremacy and after the advent of the united nations, human rights and equality.

The poem in question?

Again thinking about it, I believe I was putting myself in Celine's mind trying to understand his reasoning.

Not sure I succeeded. Perhaps the reason why it lay forgotten.

voyage into night

songs, from childhood. words gone
astray in memory. tunes faulty.
remembrance of things past.death.
each rebirth brings another death. mine.
yours. resurrected today. bled anguish.
did I feel? your departure? mine?
what is not finished has not begun
to eat the days. we all lie. twitch
pull on days, blanket nights
with demons. walking to your death.

a chorus for the damned, out of tune
voices reach cadences we never heard
the dead walk singing in rain.
you lie waiting for my embrace.