Nocturnal
I knew a man once who wished he hadn’t been born.
He meant what he said.
He wasn’t a poseur.
In the few, radiant years I knew him
He never spoke for effect.
He said what he meant, I remember,
quietly, thoughtfully,
over tea and scrambled eggs on toast
on one of those perfect mornings
that always follows
a night of rapture.
He had the bright way of speaking
of those in the deepest despair.
He made himself a joy to be with.
He saw the funny side of almost everything.
I knew he had meant what he said
when he departed decorously
with sleeping pills and vodka.
No noose, no razor blades, no blood in the bath,
And nothing so wickedly inconsiderate
as a sudden plunge under an oncoming train –
he valued understatement.
I shan’t reveal his name.
He wouldn’t have wanted me to.
He really did prefer oblivion.
It was his chosen habitat.
This week marks a happy return to the poems of the octogenarian writer, Paul Bailey. Bailey has recently tuned his gift for memoir to the key of poetry. His newly launched second collection, Joie de Vivre, celebrates survival, and looks back, in mischief and love rather than anger, on the variegated past. “Now I am gloomily gay, or gaily gloomy, / and philosophical,” his speaker concludes in Raised by Hand. There are smiles, painful and otherwise, hearty laughs and remembered plaisir d’amour in the assorted poems, translations and deliciously subversive prose anecdotes of Joie de Vivre. While being “gloomily gay” suggests a possibly dolorous note to the gayness (in both old and modern senses of the word) dolour couldn’t be farther from the Bailey style. Nonetheless, the gently sunlit landscape has its shadows. Death, too, gets the “philosophical” treatment, in the everyday, colloquial sense of philosophical that implies tranquillity and a certain detachment. These qualities are underlined in Nocturnal.
One of its charms is that the narrative tone itself evokes the unnamed protagonist, the man “who really did prefer oblivion” yet “saw the funny side of almost everything”. No questions are asked by the narrator, no psychological investigations launched. The protagonist is not a “poseur”: his words are perfectly trusted, his stoicism made perfectly legitimate. Glancingly elegiac, the poem is less an elegy, perhaps, than a “refusal to mourn”, just as it is a rejection of the laborious virtue of positive thinking. A classicist would get it immediately. As WH Auden interpreted the ancient Greek perspective on existence: “Not to be born is the best for man.”
Bailey’s title, Nocturnal, hints that there is a reason to mourn – and even what the reason might be. Loss is felt more acutely at night – especially if nights used to be shared with the one lost. Grief, memory and reflection are nocturnal “creatures” – like lovers.
If the title is an invitation to emotion, the opening lines, crisply abrupt, deflect it. They assert an emotional distancing, not as a self-imposed strategy for handling grief, but as a means of both creating character and honouring that character, the man who “had the bright way of speaking / of those in the deepest despair,” (“of” here meaning “belonging to”).
A lover’s delight remains irrepressible: there are “radiant years”, the nights of “rapture” and the “perfect” mornings. Bailey gets away with these platitudes of romantic love, because they’re the kinds of utterance an ordinary non-literary person would choose, sincerely lost for cleverer words, innocent of ironical quote marks. Such words have the glow of untarnished candour. They’re not the words of a “poseur”.
Entering the cooler zone of vocal pitch, the fourth stanza is particularly agile. Bailey manages to contain the potential horror of the listed suicide-methods in a framework of lightly plotted verbal humour (“departed decorously”, “wickedly inconsiderate”, “he valued understatement”). There’s no mockery: again, the equilibrium of the speaker seems to mirror the mind of the man portrayed, to sustain his own sense of proportion, his wit, tact and insouciance. It would be unloving to regret the oblivion the lover has preferred and chosen.
Bailey handles narrative in a style that’s informal and plain, but eloquently uncluttered. The free-verse stanzas make naturally musical paragraphs, with the rhythmic “punctuation” of the line-breaks exactly timed (though the care is lightly worn). Understatement, transparency and (above all) lack of literariness are unfashionable and rare among the “poetries” that make up the curious 21st-century composite, “poetry”. Bailey’s work offers pure refreshment. He has the right subjects for his style and a beautifully urbane voice, unique but never proclaiming uniqueness. Enlivened by curiosity, he always prioritises the stories and the characters they belong to.
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.
