Alasdair Gray - The Ends of Our Tethers

He smiled slyly and asked, “Can I sell it?” “No. Too short. If you made it part of a story with the rest equally good Chapman might print it but Scottish magazines pay very little. Even in England the best literary magazines pay less for a story than a shop assistant’s weekly wage. But this is a beautiful description, perfect in itself. Write more of them.”

He shrugged hopelessly and said, “I can’t. You see I was inspired when I wrote that.” “What inspired you?”

“Something I heard by accident. I switched on the radio one night and heard this bloke, Peter Redgrove, spouting his poetry, very weird stuff. I’m not usually fond of poetry but this was different. There was a lot of water in what he recited and I’m fond of grey days with the rain falling steadily like I often saw it on my granny’s farm when I was a wee boy. I suddenly wanted to write like Peter Redgrove, not describing water behaving weirdly but water doing the sort of things I used to notice and like.”

“If a short burst of good poetry has this effect on you then expose yourself to more. There are several books of Redgrove’s poetry. Read all of them, then read MacCaig, Yeats, Frost, Carlos Williams, Auden, Hardy, Owens —”

“Why bother?”

“You might enjoy them.”

“But what would it lead to?”

“If they inspired you to write more prose of this quality … and if you persisted with your writing, and got some of it into magazines … eventually, at the age of forty, you could end up sitting behind a desk like me talking to somebody like you.”

He giggled, apologised and asked if nobody in Scotland earned a living by writing. I told him that a few writers of historical romance, crime fiction, science fiction and love stories earned the equivalent of a teacher’s income by writing a new novel every year or two.

“Thanks,” said Gentle standing up to leave, “I don’t think I’ll bother. But if it’s genius you want read Luke Aiblins’s stuff. It’s as weird as Redgrove’s.”

“Is he a student here?”

“In a way, yes, but then again, in another way, not really.”

“Tell him to show me his work.”

“I will, but he’s hard to pin down.”

In the college refectory a week or so later a sociology lecturer walked over to me looking so grimly defiant that I feared I had offended her. She placed a slim folder with a bright tartan cover on the table beside my plate and said, “Read these poems. I typed them but they’re written by Luke Aiblins, a truly remarkable student of mine.”

“I hear he’s a genius.”

“He is, but needs guidance. Can I make an appointment for him?”

We made an appointment. She said, “I think I can ensure that he keeps it though it won’t be easy. He’s very hard to pin down.”

She left. I glanced through the poems and saw they were beautifully spaced and typed. The first was titled PROEM. I read it with interest, re-read it with astonishment and a third time with pleasure. I then knew it by heart.

Bone caged, blood clagged ,

nerve netted here I sit ,

bee in stone honeycomb

or beast in pit or flea in bin ,

pinned down, penned in ,

unable to die or fly or be

any one thing but me ,

a hypochondriac heart

chilled by the spittle of toads that croak

on the moon’s cryptic hemisphere .

But yet, loft-haunter, tunnel-groper ,

interloper among men ,

I am the Titan & my pen

wet with blue ink or black

alone can tell them what they thought

and think and give them back

the theme, scheme, dream whose head

they broke, & left for dead .

Crown, King, Divinity: all shall be mine

to take, twine, make into a masterpiece

of fine thread, strong line .

Yes, let me write my life

ten volumes in one book

of good and bad friends, women who will

and will not walk with me ,

the warped, harmonious, happy, sick & dead.

While I have eyes to look, so let it be. Amen .

All his other poems were equally resounding. I was now keen to meet him and quite unable to imagine him.

He kept the appointment and was a dazzlingly beautiful boy of eighteen or nineteen. His brown eyes and head of neatly curling brown hair harmonised perfectly with brown sweater and faun slacks. Relaxation and eagerness don’t usually blend but in him they did. He entered with the happy air of someone who has all the love he wants while looking forward to more; entered silently, sat down, folded his arms and leaned toward me with an enquiring tilt of the head and encouraging smile. Beauty in people makes me want to stare with my mouth open. In men it almost strikes me as indecent, yet I felt a pang of envy that I quelled by turning my chair a little so that I looked past, not at him. As I cleared my throat to make an opening remark Aiblins said, “Excuse the question: why don’t you look straight at me?”

“I look straight at hardly anyone in case they think me rude. I suppose I’m afraid of most people but I’m not afraid of their writings. I like yours very much. You know that the rhymes of words inside a line matter as much as rhymes at the end. You know that the rhythms of lines in a verse can vary. You enjoy playing with the sounds of words and you make them entertaining for the reader.”

“Right,” said Aiblins, smiling and nodding.

“You have also learned from some very abstruse poets, Donne and Hopkins. Am I correct?”

“Eh?” said Aiblins.

“Have you read John Donne and Gerald Manley Hopkins?”

“No. Wait a minute. Yes. I once dipped into them but my work is original. I hear it inside this.”

Aiblins tapped the side of his head with a finger.

“Never mind, Leavis says inspiration is often unconscious reminiscence. Now, creative writing teachers usually, and wisely, urge young writers to use the plainest, commonest words because many of the profoundest and loveliest and funniest ideas have been put into plain words. To be or not to be, that is the question. I wish I were where Helen lies. So you despise me, Mr Gigadibs .”

“No,” said Aiblins reassuringly.

“I was quoting Browning. Now these well-meaning instructors forget that the same great wordsmiths very often relax or ascend into sonorous complexities: sharked up a list of lawless resolutes, and Eleälé to the asphaltic pool, each hung bell’s Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name , (and here I flatter you) a hypochondriac heart, chilled by the spittle of toads that croak on the moon’s cryptic hemisphere . That line of yours is absurdly pompous, grotesque, almost insane but!” (I started laughing) “It works! We are often depressed for reasons we don’t understand but feel are caused by something huge, vague and distant, something …” (I paused on the verge of saying weird , an Ian Gentle word) “ … something uncanny that might as well be on the moon.”

Aiblins, who had looked puzzled for a moment, smiled then said “Right.”

“But I want to point out that these are the first poems of a very young writer, someone who is (please excuse the simile) like a bird flapping its wings to attract attention before launching into the air. You know that because it is your only theme. You should now —”

“Excuse me,” said Aiblins quietly yet firmly. “Are these my poems?”

He lifted the folder from the desk, glanced inside then laid it back, shaking his head, smiling and saying, “Yes, my poems dressed in tartan. Women are incredible. What can you do with them? You were saying?”