Attente. Salles d’attente. Il fait chaud, oui, et les sourires sont rares dans les salles d’attente et me reviennent les images de salles d’attente bien plus moches, bien plus surchargées d’humanité mal en point. Mais ici ou là-bas où le soleil ne relâche pas son emprise, chacun se débat sous le poids de ses soucis. Ici, je fais de mon mieux pour recycler les miens – allez, tenir bon, droit devant et cetera, rien ne sert de s’en faire, il faut lâcher prise. Sauf qu’étant d’un naturel ironique, les mots “lâcher prise” me rappelle aussitôt la scène d’un roman dans lequel le héros, agrippé par les ongles à un buisson qui se détache de la falaise, contemple le vide sous lui puis fixe intensément, à quelques centimètres de ses yeux, le squelette d’une bestiole du pré-cambrien. (Comme il s’agit d’un roman, qu’il reste encore bien des pages à lire – et qu’en plus, il en est le héros – on se doute bien qu’il y aura un sauvetage de dernière minute mais… lequel?).

Lâcher prise. Et ce qui me vient n’a rien à voir. Ce qui me vient, c’est un poème de Seamus Heaney qui me parle d’enfances qui me sont familières. Il s’intitule

A Sofa in the Forties

All of us on the sofa in a line, kneeling

Behind each other, eldest down to youngest,

Elbows going like pistons, for this was a train

 

And between the jamb-wall and the bedroom door

Our speed and distance were inestimable.

First we shunted, then we whistled, then

 

Somebody collected the invisible

For tickets and very gravely punched it

As carriage after carriage under us

 

Moved faster, chooka-chook, the sofa legs

Went giddy and the unreachable ones

Far out on the kitchen floor began to wave.

*

Ghost-train? Death-gondola? The carved, curved ends,

Black leatherette and ornate gauntness of it

Made it seem the sofa had achieved

 

Flotation. Its castors on tip-toe,

Its braid and fluent backboard gave it airs

Of superannuated pageantry:

 

When visitors endured it, straight-backed,

When it stood off in its own remoteness,

When the insufficient toys appeared on it

 

On Christmas mornings, it held out as itself,

Potentially heaven bound, earthbound for sure,

Among things that might add up or let you down.

*

We entered history and ignorance

Under the wireless shelf. Yippee-i-ay,

Sang ‘The Riders of the Range’. HERE IS THE NEWS,

 

Said the absolute speaker. Between him and us

A great gulf was fixed where pronunciation

Reigned tyrannically. The aerial wire

 

Swept from a treetop down in through a hole

Bored in the window frame. When it moved in wind,

The sway of language and its furtherings

 

Swept and swayed in us like nets in water

Or the abstract, lonely curve of distant trains

As we entered history and ignorance.

*

We occupied our seats with all our might,

Fit for the uncomfortableness.

Constancy was its own reward already.

 

Out in front, on the big upholstered arm,

Somebody craned to the side, driver or

Fireman, wiping his dry brow with the air

 

Of one who had run the gauntlet. We were

The last thing on his mind, it seemed; we sensed

A tunnel coming up where we’d pour through

 

Like unlit carriages through fields at night,

Our only job to sit, eyes straight ahead,

And be transported and make engine noise.

Seamus Heaney,  The Spirit Level faber and faber 1996

 

Letting Go

Waiting. Waiting rooms. It’s hot, yes, and smiles are rare in waiting rooms and images come back to mind of waiting rooms much lousier and more overloaded with messed up humanity. But whether here or over there where the sun never loosens its grip,  everyone struggles under the weight of personal concerns. I do my best to recycle my own – come on, hold on, straight ahead and so on, no point in worrying, you have to let go. Except that, being of an ironical slant of mind, the words “letting go” immediately bring to mind the scene in a novel where the hero, hanging by his fingernails from a shrub pulling away from the cliff, contemplates the void below  then puts all his attention on the skeleton of a beastie from the Pre-Cambrian, a few centimeters from his eyes. (Since this is in a novel, that there are many more pages to read – plus, he’s the hero – you suspect there’ll be a last-minute rescue but… which one?)

Letting go. What comes to mind has nothing to do with those words. What comes to mind is a poem by Seamus Heaney that talks about familiar childhoods, called  

A Sofa in the Forties

All of us on the sofa in a line, kneeling

Behind each other, eldest down to youngest,

Elbows going like pistons, for this was a train

 

And between the jamb-wall and the bedroom door

Our speed and distance were inestimable.

First we shunted, then we whistled, then

 

Somebody collected the invisible

For tickets and very gravely punched it

As carriage after carriage under us

 

Moved faster, chooka-chook, the sofa legs

Went giddy and the unreachable ones

Far out on the kitchen floor began to wave.

*

Ghost-train? Death-gondola? The carved, curved ends,

Black leatherette and ornate gauntness of it

Made it seem the sofa had achieved

 

Flotation. Its castors on tip-toe,

Its braid and fluent backboard gave it airs

Of superannuated pageantry:

 

When visitors endured it, straight-backed,

When it stood off in its own remoteness,

When the insufficient toys appeared on it

 

On Christmas mornings, it held out as itself,

Potentially heaven bound, earthbound for sure,

Among things that might add up or let you down.

*

We entered history and ignorance

Under the wireless shelf. Yippee-i-ay,

Sang ‘The Riders of the Range’. HERE IS THE NEWS,

 

Said the absolute speaker. Between him and us

A great gulf was fixed where pronunciation

Reigned tyrannically. The aerial wire

 

Swept from a treetop down in through a hole

Bored in the window frame. When it moved in wind,

The sway of language and its furtherings

 

Swept and swayed in us like nets in water

Or the abstract, lonely curve of distant trains

As we entered history and ignorance.

*

We occupied our seats with all our might,

Fit for the uncomfortableness.

Constancy was its own reward already.

 

Out in front, on the big upholstered arm,

Somebody craned to the side, driver or

Fireman, wiping his dry brow with the air

 

Of one who had run the gauntlet. We were

The last thing on his mind, it seemed; we sensed

A tunnel coming up where we’d pour through

 

Like unlit carriages through fields at night,

Our only job to sit, eyes straight ahead,

And be transported and make engine noise.

Seamus Heaney,  The Spirit Level faber and faber 1996