A Riff on Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT

A Poem of Vain Regreats

Or

An Old Father’s Answer to his Young Hero

Or

An Ancient’s Obbligato in Homage to

Lawrence Ferlinghetti and

Alan Ginsberg

With whom he should have stood,

O Vain Regret!

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rage at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Death is a leaf detached from its mango tree in our front yard,

Neither glad nor sad nor anything at all but a floating, unattached leaf.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

I made some words once that bought tears to the eyes of old Hawaiians: “the bones of the ancestors”; mostly my words might have sparked a flashlight. I know that dark is right. And how I love thee, Dylan Thomas; Alan Ginsberg; Ezra Pound, insane and glorious traitor to our beloved land of the free, sorta; Rex Stout; bits of T. S. Elliot; Chaucer; Nabokov; Sheridan; Janwillem van de Weteering; Bertrand Russell: No one would say "the first President of the United Sates was the first President of the United States", except one who had an unusual passion for th Law of Identity; e. e. cummings [e. e. commings! The Enormous Room! Lightning bolts all around!!

pity this busy monster, manunkind

not.;

Shakespeare’s sonnets; Gertrude Stein; Robert Chote [Robert Chote!?]; Lao Tse; Thorn Smith; Joseph Heller: “There’re gonna get you, Clever. They’re gonna get all the Jews.” “But I’m not a Jew!” “Doesn’t matter. They’re gonna get you anyway.”; “But that’s not the kind of God I don’t believe in! The kind of God I don’t believe in is good and kind and generous!”; [Curses on Aristotle and all his progeny!]; FDR, JFK, LBJ, and Barack Hussein Obama; Brian Greene, who would be president in a sane world; Roberto Calasso, whom no one has read, but should; Pogo; all the blessed rest!

The oldest poem there is, though here not in it’s original Greek:

“I do not love thee, Dr. Fell.

Why I do not I cannot tell.

But this I know and know full well,

I do not love thee, Dr. Fell.”

How I love each of you; you ease my way into night with tears of joy and gladness! How grateful I am for the lightnings you have forked!

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

I am not a good man, but I am a good-enough man; I have danced in Diamond Head and at Diamond Head Circle, in Milolii on Kauai’s North Shore, in Palolo, in Kaimuki, on Oahu’s North Shore, in court conference rooms, in Austin, in Korea, in Alaska, at the foot of the Mendenhall Glacier, with those I have loved and lost and those still here: I cherish the memories of each dance step; each is newly made with each memory; each new dance – the steps now slow and cautious – is vital and precious; there are no vain regrets.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

I thought, once, I had caught the sun in flight. I hadn’t. I reached for it and fell. I did feel it’s warm glow. I am forgiven by me. Perhaps.

I approach the sad heights. Who knows what wonders, what horrors, await?

At the end will waves of doubt and regret o’whelm my frail bark , casting me into swirls of madness and grief? I can feel the uneasy currents writhing underneath. If I sink into them, will I embrace them as the old friends I have for so long fended off with reason and manners; will I finally embrace the irrational core?

I guess so. I hope so. It would feel good to do so.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

I’ve never been a grave man. And yes. This one hurts. I do regret the fearful cowardliness that has to often blinded me, dulled the gay step I could have taken. We’ll see what tomorrow and tomorrow bring. There's time, yet. I shall dare to eat a peach.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

I could wish that from my father, now. When he was old and I was young, his rage would have sacred the wits out of me. I hope my children and loved ones do not wish, in vain, for whatever I have to give, at the end.