The Tending

Text by Leon Wing

Poem by Sharon Olds, from The Unswept Room, published in 2002 by Jonathan Cape, UK

The Tending

My parents did not consider it, for me,
yet I can see myself in the woods of some other
world, with the aborted. It is early evening,
the air is ashen as if from funeral-home
chimneys, and there are beginnings of people
almost growing—but not changing—on stalks,
some in cloaks, or lady’s-slippers,
others on little trellises.
Maybe I am one of the gardeners here,
we water them with salt water.
I recall the girl who had a curl
right in the middle of her forehead,
when she was good she was very very good, I was not like that,
when she was bad she was horrid, I am here
as if in a garden of the horrid—I move
and tend, by attention, to the rows, I think of
Mary Mary Quite Contrary
and feel I am seeing the silver bells
set down clapperless, the cockleshells
with the cockles eaten. And yet this is
a holy woods. When I think of the house
I came to, and the houses these brothers and sisters
might have come to, and what they might have
done with what was done there,
I wonder if some, here, have done,
by their early deaths, a boon of absence
to someone in the world. So I tend them, I hate
for them to remain thankless. I do not
sing to them—their lullaby
long complete,
I just walk, as if this were a kind of home,
a mothers’ and fathers’ place, and I am
among the sung who will not sing,
the harmed who will not harm.

--

We wonder what that “it” is, which the poet’s parents didn’t consider for her. Is “it” the “woods of some other/ world”? We make this association when drawn to the alliteration of the w of “woods” and “world”. In some mythology a world of woods can either be paradise, a garden or some kind of Hades.

From “stalks”, “trellises”, “gardeners”, and “water them”, we gather “it” would most probably be some kind of garden. But, with “the air is ashen as if from funeral-home/chimneys” and “we water them with salt water”, we can narrow “it” down to a cemetery.

More so when “and there are beginnings of people/almost growing—but not changing—on stalks,/some in cloaks, or lady’s-slippers,/others on little trellises.” These “people” are “beginnings of people”, as when the old die they are said to have gone back to the beginning, before there is life. They are “almost growing “, planted beneath the ground. But they cannot “grow”; they are “not changing”, remaining the age when they died. The only growth to be seen around their graves are “stalks” and “little trellises”, which support these plants, these leaves. Some are buried with their belongings (“cloaks, or lady’s-slippers”).

This would be the place where the poet comes to weep (“we water them with salt water”) and remember the past , the good and the bad recollections (“I recall the girl ...”; “Mary Mary Quite Contrary ...”). She also comes to tend to the “rows”: her parents’ graves and tombstones.

Besides her parents’ graves, she also sees others, with younger people inhumed: “the houses these brothers and sisters/might have come to”, “their early deaths”. She pities them and their “aborted” lives, and so helps to tend their graves, as well. She takes on the role as “one of the gardeners”.

She is well aware that the “it” is a “holy wood”, that it is her parents’ resting place(“a kind of home,/
a mothers’ and fathers’ place”). This is also the resting place of all the other “brothers and sisters”; their “house”, as it were.

She walks among the “rows” of graves and gravestones, “among the sung who will not sing,” because “their lullaby” is “long complete”. And, “the harmed who will not harm”, because if some of the buried were harmed in death, they do not have any inclination for harming back. We see the manner in which lives come back to the beginning, a revolution from birth to death, in the circuitous way the lines run in “might have come to, and what they might have/done with what was done there,/I wonder if some, here, have done”. We are all reconciled to the ineluctability of dying: “a boon of absence/to someone in the world”.

Harking back to the first line, “My parents did not consider it, for me”, we now see how her parents – any parent – would never want their children to die before they do. We can confirm this view from “aborted”: parents do not wish to see their children’s lives cut short.

Note: Yesterday Eric Forbes of the famous goodbooksguide blog asked me if I had any idea what Sharon Olds's "The Tending" was all about.  He actually meant for me to give just a simple,  informal interpretation.  However, a mere summary turned into a full-fledged 500-word piece.

Long Marriage

Text by Leon Wing

Poem by Gerald Fleming

from Swimmer Climbing onto Shore,

Sixteen Rivers Press, San Francisco, 2005

Long Marriage

You're worried, so you wake her
& you talk into the dark:
Do you think I have cancer, you
say, or Were there worms
in that meat, or Do you think
our son is OK, and it's
wonderful, really--almost
ceremonial as you feel
the vessel of your worry pass
miraculously from you to her--
Gee, the rain sounds so beautiful,
you say--I'm going back to sleep.

In the beginning of Long Marriage, you can sense the comfort of the speaker in sleep, who has just woken up, in the long vowels at the start of the line ( “You're worried”). The r sounds somewhat evoke the sensation of snoring, don’t they? The comma in the middle of this line literally disrupts the snoring, by inserting a pause. After this you hear an aspiration, in “so”, which marks the moment of being brought out of sleep. But he remains as sleepy as at the start of the line, as indicated by the alliteration, or rather, the symmetry, playing on y and w of “you wake” and "You're worried". The end-stopping, with “her” has the waker exhaling.

Line two begins with an ampersand, normally used as a short form for and. This inidicates a precipitousness in the waker, so much so that he doesn’t wait to direct his talk towards his sleeping partner beside him. He just goes and talks into the emptiness, “into the dark”.

In the third line, there is an immediacy in the way he puts into question his worry of the first line, by leaving out quotation marks. The “you” at the end of this line breaks for an enjambement or run-on, to “say”, in the next line.  In this next line his worry is so uppermost in his mind that “were” is capitalized without ceremony. We know he is worried, from the alliteration in “Were there worms”.

Further on, in the next couple of lines, we realize he is not really pinpointing just one major worry which happens to wake him up. He happens to possess a few more, like his worry over their son. Then, a comma is again utilized, this time to signal a change in his mood. The run-on “it’s” to “wonderful” of the next line plays down his worries. The w in “wonderful” echoes that in “worry”,”wake”, “Were” and “worms”: we – and he – see how ridiculous all these worries are.

And all this are “almost/ ceremonial”, like their marriage, when he lets his spouse do all the worrying now; a kind of sharing between loved ones, like a vow.  It's interesting, the use of vessel, which is a tube in which bodily fluid circulates.  In  the context of marriage - and sleep and bed - it hints at marital sex.  It is more than "your worry" passing "miraculously from you to her": it's as ceremonial as their wedding night.

The dash of an end-stopping is very strong: the next line echoes the wonderful motif, in an earlier line, with “beautiful”.  

Finally, in the last line, the poet uses, not a comma anymore, but a dash, to signal a break in tone. He decides to go back to sleep, while it is his spouse who is now staying up to take on all his worries.