In good poetry there is so often a great last line, something that effectively closes the poem leaving the reader/listener with the white space/silence in which to reflect on their experience. Sometimes the last line has a sense of fade: take Ozymandias, for example (see here), in which the once-mighty statue of that ancient king now lies broken and decayed and the final line “The lone and level sands stretch far away” draws our attention to the barren desert in which the ruins reside and allows the irony to sink in.
Other poems end with an encapsulating line, summing up the theme of the entire poem in one line: Wilfrid Owen’s last line in Dulce Et Decorum Est (see here), after a series of shocking imagery about the grim realities of the front line, sums up the emptiness of the platitudes around “honour and glory” that the generals had hoped to instil into the common soldier: “The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori” (“it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country”).
Other poems end with a surprise, a jolt – often called the “trap door” or the “rug pull” – and today’s poem from Louis MacNeice fits the bill perfectly. See what you think…
Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) was an Irish poet and playwright, born in Belfast, and a member of the Auden Group, that loose affiliation of literary figures active in the 1930s and including W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis, names that have come down to modern times with perhaps more celebrity than MacNeice’s (and two of whom have appeared in the pages of this blog before, here and here). MacNeice’s body of work was widely appreciated by the public during his lifetime, however, due to his appealing style and the fact that, like many modern English poets, he found an audience for his work through British radio.
Prayer Before Birth is a poem written at the height of the Second World War, and takes the form of an agonised plea from the mouth of an unborn infant in its mother’s womb. Dramatic in intensity, the poem bemoans the deplorable state of the world, but articulates that, whilst living in it is a painful experience, being born into it must be truly terrifying. It mirrors perhaps the growing modern trend of young people choosing not to have children due to their fears of what the world is becoming.
As pessimism goes, it’s hard to beat, but it’s incantatory rhythms, alliterations and repetitions gives it a hypnotic, ritualistic quality and, as I said, it serves up its final line with a powerful punch.
I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the
club-footed ghoul come near me.
I am not yet born, console me.
I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.
I am not yet born; provide me
With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk
to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light
in the back of my mind to guide me.
I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,
my treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
my life when they murder by means of my
hands, my death when they live me.
I am not yet born; rehearse me
In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when
old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains
frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white
waves call me to folly and the desert calls
me to doom and the beggar refuses
my gift and my children curse me.
I am not yet born; O hear me,
Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God
come near me.
I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
one face, a thing, and against all those
who would dissipate my entirety, would
blow me like thistledown hither and
thither or hither and thither
like water held in the
hands would spill me.
Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
Otherwise kill me.
