The Age of Cardboard and String
It is a machine for eating oranges.
It is a machine for humming new tunes.
It is a rocket bound for the moon.
It is, whatever string you pull, the same machine.
When it breaks we apply more sellotape,
and when it breaks again we sulk, mixing our tears
Into the glue. When it works
we set off for the moon,
scattering orange peel on the floor
and singing songs not yet written down –
hot, fierce songs
that almost burn our mouths with their newness.
*
Faster! Faster! We want to overtake
Anna, who is seven. We want
gears, automatic transmission, wings, clouds
to fly through, flags, fuel injection,
solar panels, stabilisers, sometimes just
to be left alone.
And no,
it wasn’t us (with crumbs on our lips)
who stole the cookies from the cookie jar.
Maybe God
Maybe God was hungry.
*
The moon was OK.
There were holes in it,
We saw biscuits and things at the bottom.
It was raining, the cardboard melted.
Tomorrow can we build a boat?
Wait! We brought you back a secret,
but we’re going to tell it to the zebras first –
the black one with stripes painted white,
the white one with stripes painted black,
who sleep on the landing,
leaving just enough room to squeeze by.
****
Published in 2001, The Age of Cardboard and String is the title poem of Charles Boyle’s final collection to date. After what he calls “an amicable separation” from the Muse, he has gone on to be the founder-editor of CB Editions, and continues writing in other genres.
A mock voyage narrative adroitly divided into three, the sequence opens with a riddle. Put the various functions of the “machine” together, and what do you get? A cardboard box transformed by a child’s imagination? Or is “it” the “age” of the title, symbolised by the cardboard box with strings attached – in the more ominous sense of that phrase? There’s also the question of the narrator’s identity.
While a child-spokesperson is the easy answer, the poem’s diction doesn’t represent a big stylistic departure for the poet. So, to state the rather obvious, this “child’s voice” has adult knowledge. We’re not expected to believe we’re hearing the fully reliable transcription of a real six-year-old’s words.
I’ve hit on the idea of a six-year-old male narrator because of the reference to Anna in the second poem of the sequence. The urgent desire to “drive” faster than a seven-year-old girl suggests younger male sibling’s rivalry. Anna surely has her own vehicle, and (although I hardly dare say this) it’s probably one less liable to fall apart than the boy’s.
This “machine” is a casual though versatile construction for “eating oranges”, “humming new tunes” and travelling to the moon. To the adult, though not the child, it is “whatever string you pull, the same machine”. There are venial, adult associations with the metaphor “pulling strings” and possibly a suggestion of “leg-pulling”. The functions of the machine, not at all clear-cut, convey a lively muddle of motives and desires.
The emphasis seems to fall on creative imagination in the first poem. After the machine’s breakdown comes the failed mending and the sulky tears. The latter perhaps help the glue to hold next time, and soon the lunar rocket is launched. All the possibilities are united: “we set off for the moon, / scattering orange peel on the floor / and singing songs not yet written down – / hot, fierce songs // that almost burn our mouths with their newness”. The excitement is sharply drawn. If it had finished here, we’d conclude (with a glance towards William Carlos Williams) that this was a poem about writing poetry.
Social interactions in the second poem emphasise competition, greed, and crafty excuse-making. More than ever, the children’s self-portrait seems a lightly disguised representation of adult behaviour. The portrayal of a deity driven by appetite (“Maybe God was hungry”) is particularly revealing.
A light shrug of disappointment accompanies the report on the voyage in the third poem. The longed-for moon was only “OK”. There were holes in it, and at the bottom of the holes merely “biscuits and things” (a perfect expression of consumerist ennui). The moon itself might have been made of cardboard and string. Rain has subsequently “melted” the spaceship, but an eager new desire is born: “tomorrow, can we build a boat?” Since God entered the picture, it’s easy to imagine a reference to Noah’s Ark at this juncture. And perhaps the addition of the two zebras amplifies that thought.
The awareness of the zebras’ presence, and especially the awareness of the distinction between them, seems to insulate the child’s consciousness. Their special secret may never be divulged to the adult listener. Generational menace may be implied by the size of the zebras “who sleep on the landing, / leaving just enough room to squeeze by” (room for children only, it seems).
At the core of the sequence, too-ingenious humans seem to want too much – “gears, automatic transmission, wings, clouds / to fly through, flags, fuel injection, / solar panels, stabilisers, sometimes just / to be left alone”. Like the children’s voyage-game, the poem is more than playful. It illuminates how fatefully the best and worst of human possibilities are fused.
• Charles Boyle’s The Disguise: Poems 1977 – 2001, edited by Christopher Reid, was published by Carcanet earlier this year.