“You have cancer…”
I didn’t hear any more.
It was like being under water.
When I surfaced I asked him
“Can you fix it?”
He paused and said “Well….”
and I went under again
I thought
‘Hell, it can’t be!’
then, ‘Why me?’
I was floundering
in a sea
which suddenly
looked very big
and scary
The rocks and land
on which I’d been standing
only ten seconds beforehand
had simply vanished.
How ordinary I’d thought them
then.
How exotic they looked now.
What I’d give
to simply cling to them
again.
I heard myself ask ‘When…’
And I realized
I’d had this disease
all my life
but had called it
Complacency
Author notes
Every minute of every day someone , somewhere, hears those awful words. Not me though.....
In a list
Comments
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ok let me jump into this if I may..........the poet sets up a scene of being told he has cancer and accuratly describes the unreal feeling that happens during that time. Frequently people do not remember anything said after those words and find themselves having to call their Dr. later and asking a hundred questions. suddenly the poet realizes all he will miss and has never payed a whole lot of attention to...........suddenly he understands that his entire life had been spent in complacency and it was only until facing what it meant to lose everything that he was jolted awake..........or i could be a all wet......i dunno. either way from a "clinical" perspective (you know sometimes I just cant turn off being a nurse) the poem does give an accurate representation of hearing this dreaded diagnosis. Another view point I think is that the poet setes the poem up to be about cancer Cancer "the big 'C'...and twists it deliberatly in the end to show that we dont need a deadly disease to suddenly realize we have become uncaring about our lives........either way nice write
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I disagree with Lad
on this one (for once!!) but perhaps our mates the Yanks (sorry all, someday I'll explain why I use such an offensive expression as freely as I do!!) don't call cancer the Big C in everyday parlance like we do. I'm not sure they have the same squeamishness about naming the thing that seems to afflict us in these islands. And they're altogether more optimistic anyway...
I thought you set up, in the title, the expectation that it was cancer, then went through the narrator's internal experience and then his external one, very neatly with that thing, that heightened awareness that the Japanese value so... and then to the final, almost "pun" of what was really the Big C and how the narrator had lived it.
So it worked for me all the way... glad to know it was an act of imagination rather than god you were writing about... and that you'll be around, given luck and a fair wind, for a while yet!!
xx
RA -
I know the feeling, John, and you've set that tone up well in this one. After months of weird intestinal problems, my physician wanted a colonoscopy done, my first. For weeks, I worried, deeply. Then, finally, that damned invasive test showed nothing was wrong; all was normal. And, something like your poem says, the sky never looked so lovely, and lover and friends never seemed so precious.
Now, in your poem, I'm relieved again - the big C is not yours, but apparently someone else's, or perhaps the poem is a highly imaginative look into how you would react with such bad news. Either way, its emotions are life-like. And, for sure, Complacency is not a pretty disease. For me, you hit deep there, and true.
I must say, though, that the poem, for me, is illogical. It first sets up - wonderfully - what is clearly a real, objective, physical and emotional situation for the poet, then dismisses it as illusory in the final lines. In other words, I'm trying to say, badly I suppose, that the poem's narrator is the poet himself in most of the poem, but that narrator becomes separate from the poet in its final lines.
In any poem, combining narrator and poet, or separating the narrator from the poet, are both useful techniques (I know you know this, of course), but using both techniques in a short poem seems to me to confuse the poem's point of view. So, at first the poem clearly says that the poet's got cancer, but the final lines say that he doesn't. OK, then I thought that the narrator - not the poet - clearly has cancer, and in the final lines, the poet - now not the narrator - is musing on his own disease, complacency, and the real events of most of the poem pertain to someone else or are imaginary. But that distinction isn't made at all clear in the poem as a whole. It's in your Notes, but not in the poem.
I know I'm babbling on and on here, John, but it's hard to be clear about what I believe is an important thing in a poem, its point of view. (Again, I know you know that; I'm just trying to make a point here.)
I wonder: If the first line of the poem weren't "You have cancer" but "You have the big C", then the poem would hang together completely realistically, because the poet and the narrator would be the same; the point of view would be clear. Might even give the poem more punch than it already has.
I mean, I get the main idea of the poem as it now stands: complacency is an often hidden Big C, which reduces the world's beauty to ho-hum until we're shocked into realizing what we have, until the complacency is cured, or at least recognized. My confusion with your piece here is not being able to logically tie together most of the poem with its final lines.
As always, my friend, disregard completely what I'm suggesting up there. Just thoughts on a cold, gray morning.
Ciao,
Lad -
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The curse of the footnote...
Hi Lad and hope I find you so much more than well. I fear the footnotes have had undue influence here. It was not my intention to change the point of view as you perceived it. The poet is the speaker. He has been told he has cancer. One of his first thoughts as the reality of it dawns is 'My God! I've taken SO much for granted all my life. The regret is the speaker's, not some onlooking writer's.
Whenever I lose money of any substantial amount I always think 'Shit! I could have really enjoyed squandering that!' I hope when I finally lose my life I won't wish I could have squandered it better.
Carpe diem Amico mihi. Thanks as always for taking such time and care. My Best to you. >W<
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Tricky
Denial, anger, acceptance. Well, you hit 3 out of 4 basic diagnostic responses; the fourth, really the third, being 'bargaining'. Well done.
Complacancy, yes we all suffer from that terminal disease.
However I'm glad your poem was not auto-biographical.
Mine is: "Whistle of a distant train." [you might read "Hospice", also]
Be well and prosper, and above all, be appreciative
J.G.
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hrey john
a good massage and well delievered of not taking things for granted, seems we only appreciate something if we risk losing it. the big C indeed for clever.
dave. Rewarded 4
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We all do it.
Hey Professor. Thanks for dropping by. I think taking things for granted is a natural thing and somehow a defense mechanism. But then cancer is just a natural defense mechanism that lost the run of itself. I'm flattered by the 'clever' remark but I wrote it in the first flush of heartfelt sympathy for a friend of a friend having received a sharp dose of reality applied to my own so-called problems. I know I'll slip back into my own Complacency very quickly. But hopefully I'll remind myself once in a while.
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Oh man, you had me thinking you have caancer, so I am glad you dont, but that also means you did a great job with the writing to have the reader believing
This says some important stuff, I know you expressed the emotion well, I have felt that way in regards to finding out about serious illness, luckily not cancer.
The ending is brilliance my friend & does indeed rap it up & say it all
Cin
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Not Autobiographical
They say you can't kill a bad thing, Cin. Happily this is NOT autobiographical but I heard about a sister of a friend of a friend today and I thought 'Shit! What would SHE give to have just my problems right now?' The poem is a lament for the fact that we really CAN'T appreciate what we've got - until it's too late. That's either very healthy - or a serious disease. Today at least , I vowed not to complain about ANYTHING. Thanks for reading and commenting once again. My Best. Be Well. >W< -
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Not autobiographical
Yes im happy it's not autobiographical.
We do all need to stop & ppreciate what we have I will remember that
My best to you to friend
Cin
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