Uncle
Sometimes they talk with me,
these children I have not fathered,
and the things they say,
though I forget them,
seem like sentences out of books
I read once and haven’t thought of since.
Today, a boy who in the absence
of his density might have been me,
the fiddlehead of his hand
in mine, followed me
through the upstairs hall,
asking something which,
if I had to guess,
I’d say had to do with destiny.
Outside, a school bus was passing,
the rev of its engine
like a bow drawn across a string,
a brief life’s arc of sound
into and out of the house –
windows and walls and quiet rooms –
where I stood dumbstruck
and almost ready to answer.
GARY J WHITEHEAD
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Gary J Whitehead’s poetry is pleasant-voiced but not in the “easy listening” sense: it combines approachability with subtlety and seriousness, and the lightness of touch is never wearyingly “lite”. Uncle is from his third collection, the intriguingly titled A Glossary of Chickens, published in the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets, edited by Paul Muldoon. A distinctive, quiet-voiced, sharp-eyed collection, its attentions range over the literary and the linguistic. You can read an interview with Whitehead, and also the delightful, word- and chicken-fancying title poem here.
Uncle is an elusive poem about elusiveness. From the first line, it resists simple interpretation, and challenges any stereotypes we may harbour concerning uncles. While the title might establish the relationship of the speaker and the children we first meet, the narrative, for all its kindliness and tactfulness of tone, immediately seems filled with distance more than kinship and connection.
At first “these children” are plural, undifferentiated. That they are described as the children the speaker “never fathered” might suggest they are his unborn, therefore imaginary, offspring, rather than nephews and nieces who simply have fathers other than the speaker. They are shade-like, or shadowy, presences: “Sometimes they talk with me.” Their voices seem careful and intimate, emerging out of history, not like the shrill voices of children fully present. These children are more powerful than the adult in question, and it seems a special privilege when they engage him in conversation.
The sense of lost time is cleverly conjured by the resemblance observed between “the things they say” and the “sentences out of books / I read once and haven’t thought of since”. The children belong to the past – perhaps a past where children spoke more precisely than now, predating the speaker’s childhood, although part of his reading. It’s even possible that they’re no more than remembered storybook characters. The poem keeps us guessing the extent to which these children are revenants, memories, fictions – children of the mind. While the narrative remains low-key, it folds itself ever further away from realism. It’s like a soundtrack to a gentle ghost story about children who died long ago but have never realised it. I thought of the Alejandro Amenábar movie The Others and also, more pertinently, TS Eliot’s lines in Burnt Norton: “Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children, / Hidden excitedly, containing laughter. / Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind / Cannot bear very much reality.”
The switch to the present, “today”, brings a new focus on a specific child, “a boy who in the absence / of his density / might have been me”. That phrase, significantly enjambed, “absence / of density” is full of pathos. The lack of density suggests the ghostly, or doppelgänger, theme: he’s the shade or memory of a past self of a person still living.
The depiction of the child’s hand as a “fiddlehead” is beautiful and tender, but brings a suggestion, in its image of tightly curled fingers and slender boniness, of something not quite alive. Whether we imagine the scrolled neck of a violin, or a tightly-furled fiddlehead fern (the plant is named for its appearance), the image is not quite animated. The hand seems fixed in time – and perhaps it will never allow the hand holding it to let go?
When the speaker vaguely suspects that the child’s question “had to do with destiny”, we’re immediately reminded of the earlier word, “density”. With a crossword maker’s deftness, the poet has given us an anagram. The two words may almost signify binary opposites, like life and death, but they are shown literally to fold into one another and almost fuse. To lack density is our destiny.
At first, the “school bus” in line 15 has an effect like that of “uncle” in the title: it’s reassuringly solid and ordinary. But then it becomes unsettling. There’s the way in which the outdoors sound passes through the house. And then the fiddlehead metaphor recurs in the super-astute comparison of its sound to that of a bow being drawn across strings. That “brief life’s arc of sound” seems to move through the walls of the house and out again, as if in and out of time.
However dreamlike the poem has earlier seemed (in fact, it could be read as the recollections of a dream) there’s an important, if unfulfilled shift towards certainty in the last two lines. The speaker depicts himself standing “dumbstruck” – on the verge of a terrific discovery. But he doesn’t quite get to what it is, and neither do we. The boy’s still unspecified question will be left hanging: the speaker is only “almost ready to answer”. The profound insight has slipped from view, unless the poem itself has been offered as the answer, an answer that can’t be transmitted any other way. These moments, images, hauntings as the speaker moves through the house to the “upstairs hall” embody density and destiny. Hope is sounded but fades like the engine’s rev, and the bookish chatter of little revenants reliving an interrupted or unsatisfactory childhood. The single, slowly-bowed note is a full lifespan in miniature. And it’s not only that “humankind cannot bear very much reality” but that humankind cannot know very much reality. The adult’s answer, like the child’s question, moves through time and becomes the past too quickly, too ungraspably. The poem’s sadness is all the more intense and poignant for the restraint of its tone.