Robin Robertson

Robert Hunter (Grateful Dead lyricist) said a poem in a selected works is like an orphan, it’s not the same as it is in the book from which it came. Well, he said it better than that, here, but my point remains--the poem is out there all on its own without its relations. This is how I have to look at Robin Robertson’s poem “On Pharos” as I have not yet read his book, Swithering.

On Pharos

Four hollows and four seal-skins
on the beach, by a cave, their stink
undercut by the faint scent of ambrosia;
some tracks, of wild boar and panther;
the scales of a serpent; the hair,
perhaps, of a bearded lion;
torn leaves from a tree
when there were no trees anywhere near;
and, round a puddle of fresh water,
scorch-marks in the sand
and the signs of a struggle.
Seemed quiet enough now, though,
so we went and got our towels from the car.

I laughed on my first reading, a good sign, I think to get an emotional, instinctive response--it means that this poem resonates with me. Uh, oh, I thought, but what could it possibly mean, then? The note below clued me in to the mythological references and from that the poem opened itself to me…that we don’t remember the lessons of the gods. This poem for me is a Cassandra.

Note:

In Book IV of the Odyssey, Menelaus, King of Sparta, recalls being becalmed under the spell of the gods on the island of Pharos. He meets Eidothea, who advises him to capture her father Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea: a prophet who so dislikes being questioned that he will assume any form to avoid his questioners. Menelaus and three companions lie in wait, covered in freshly flayed seal-skins, and surprise the sea-god on the beach. They hold him tight as he changes successively into a variety of animal, vegetable and elemental forms before returning to the human. Proteus is then obliged to break the binding spell and free the waters.

Comments

[Rus]

Hi Carol,

Love this blog post of yours.

Just focussing in somewhere . . . What a nifty shifty ending. Isn't that our relationship to the sea, as the tsunamis remind us, what everyone living on any seacoast knows?

Rus

[Carol]

Our relationship to the sea...good point. And a little bit worrisome as we head to the height of hurricane season.

Thinking about this some more...every reading offers up a finer point. Take this line,"the hair,/perhaps, of a bearded lion;" and you say to yourself, perhaps? What a great way to show us that what we see is not so easily defined or catagorized. Maybe it was a mythic allusion or maybe it wasn't. Hah. Nice going, Mr. Robertson.