Ritsumeikan University

Robert MacLean: among what is lost

by

Lyle De Souza, Tomiko Minami

The poem I would like to analyze, among what is lost by Robert MacLean, was published by Cowan & Tetley in 1988. The poem, in its published guise, runs to about eighteen pages. The title of the poem, among what is lost, is a good literal summary of the poem. In the poem, MacLean explains to his readers various instances of how he became "lost". He became lost listening to the sound of crickets, when awakening from a dream, when coming home after a party, when walking around his neighborhood, and in many other everyday situations. For me, the power of this poem is in the way that the poet links seemingly innocuous everyday events to deeper soul-searching, for which there may or may not be an answer.

I would now like to guide you through the poem, picking out sections that struck me as important or particularly worthy of comment.

The poem begins by setting a beautiful scene in the mind′s eye of a rice field in Japan where frogs sing in "green choirs" and tadpoles peer above the water among "lighthouses of rice stalks". Anyone who is familiar with Japan can easily visualize such a situation since we see it all the time but I think this situation is also quite a common image of Japan as imagined by non-Japanese. I wonder if MacLean wrote this poem with an intended audience in mind, possibly foreigners who are interested in Japan?

The recurrent images of green represent nature and in turn symbolize peace and serenity, however, this is a deceptive image since in the next stanza the mood changes and the poet becomes "lost". The crickets are a full contrast to the frogs, this is acknowledged by MacLean by the word "counterpoint". Instead of the delicate image of frog "choirs" the crickets "full blast, a shrill blood keening / if you listen you become lost".

MacLean keeps the use of animals in the next few stanzas, this time "2 dusk animals" but changes the tone of the poem from one of loneliness to one of companionship with the animals playing a "game". Again, following the pattern of the preceding explanation, the situation begins innocuously but ends in one of loneliness, with the capitalization of one line "DONT YOU GET IT I WAS NEVER HAPPY WITH YOU" a particular contrast to the cute images of furry animals "huddled" earlier. The choice of a "feather drifting away" is not only a good symbol of loneliness but also an appropriate one given the animal context.

In the next stanza, the poem drifts very much into the human realm - albeit the subconscious world of dreams. I am sure we have all woken up in the middle of the night on occasion in our lives and experienced disorientation. That MacLean should choose to link this to "sins" is interesting. Perhaps here his Western cultural background shows. Are his sins the result of Christian guilt? Are his worries of "impending senility" the by-product of Western culture that places such a premium on youth? The words "sins" and "senility" have quite a heavy impact to Japanese, and their impact on the reader is all the more exacerbated since MacLean expresses them in such a matter-of-fact manner whilst doing everyday things such as "roast coffee and return / to futon window open wide to / dream".

The Christian notion of sin and guilt continues in the next few stanzas. When coming back from a party MacLean resists the advances of "a girl on a swing". He then wonders, while lying uncomfortably on "bare tatami" whether he made the correct choice or not. Interestingly, his "penance for sins not committed" is the opposite of what one would expect from a practicing Christian. Does this mean that in MacLean′s world Christian moral judgment is reversed? Is this an anti-Christian statement? Perhaps MacLean can answer these questions later.

For me, the most moving part of the poem follows when MacLean sees in "old men passing" his own father. I would like to read it out to you:

I keep seeing my father
in old men passing with stooped shoulders
and Salvation Army suits which never fit:
and same gray moustache carefully trimmed
and big framed glasses which don′t quite hide the
eyes holding such sorrow
I want to embrace him weeping father father
but find myself frozen
my own bones hunching into his shape
Anyway it turns out to be only somebody else′s father:
the world filled with the same ancient men
unladen from wives and children, walking alone in the dark

It is interesting that in a completely different cultural context MacLean can still see his father, "the world filled with the same ancient men". This section of the poem is wonderfully touching, not just because of the way it is written but because of the remarkably human sentiments and emotions it so honestly represents. People in Japan, and indeed people anywhere in the world, can identify with wanting to feel closer with their father and ruing distance in their relationship.

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