For Michael Hrebeniak’s jazz saxophone

[This memorial poem was published in Radical Poetics (Inventory of Possibilities), Issue One (London), Spring 1997, n.p., edited by one of Eric Mottram’s students at King’s College. Mottram for whom a special Chair (Professor of English and American Literature) was created in 1983 passed away on January 17, 1995, the year when, finally, the Nobel Literature Committee’s attention was focussed on him. He left behind an enormous corpus: some thirty books of poems and some fifteen books of criticism. He was unanimously recognized as one of the leading authorities on American Literature and United States Studies. His teaching career extended over half a century and over nearly half the world. He edited 22 issues of the Poetry Review, the organ of the Poetry Society in England during the seventies. He obtained a double-first for his Cambridge English Tripos after serving out the War in a minesweeper. He was the recipient of absolutely no prize whatsoever, for the Establishment everywhere gladly shunned him.]

I

a life of toil for the man in the centre

a hub in the peripheral tireless wheel

where he go then where he go this working man

he go on waking people working at waking man

II

no words cling now no words meant in blame

the tongue he lash the words they now tame

no shock of blast open laughter rock the hall

everyman there say there sure were a man

a man no fear cowed in communion to other

made for no gods made for no demons either

all men he know best when he see just once

no second thought resurrect the man if bad

so go tell the magi no trek in sight in sky

here a man be born here he so sure die

other no like see one so bright stand up high

other no like feel like sky fall low into ocean

what make ‘m i say with feeling so just

is sure he different he force hisself work

work work work work an’ again work

he work nite an’ nite so 50-hour in day

where he go then where he go this working man

he go on waking people working at waking man

where you go from word born here now

turn and twist all whoring the alphabet

III

‘don’t write anything you can get published’

so publish only what you can’t call your own

writing like reading’s a public coital act

so showing your work is exhibitionism

‘why don’t you send your stuff around

keeping it to yourself’s sheer masturbation’

reading-watching-listening’s just voyeurism

so sending wares around is prostitutionism

where he go then where he go this working man

he go on waking people working at waking man

IV

he it was in minesweeper capture aurora borealis

message from extrasensory enter into he word

in Bengal waters alone he hear No-man cry

only in deepdown psyche water drip drip dry

then on land he no see reason to the fight

so he let he wrists spill he guts to the fill

then he take the world on all by he torn self

he spare no skin in dug-Malayan-jungle-out

what he do what he think he do he no tell

everybody meet man an’ no see albatross hang

he no tell story like ol’ mariner in dream

he go wake people from dumb dead trance

many many people high up no like this act

some call him stuckup other just ‘im damn

where he go then where he go this working man

he go on waking people working at waking man

is all he do then what kind of working this

is big work man ‘cause most body dead sleep

where he go then where he go this working man

he go on waking people working at waking man

NOTE

When I first met Eric in the summer of 1957, in London, at Wang Gung-wu’s flat in Shepherd’s Bush [ Wang a former colleague of Eric’s in Singapore – later becoming the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong – is now the Director of the East Asia Institute of the National University of Singapore ], he had already read most of the manuscript of my first collection: Tracks of a Tramp, and more. He came late for dinner and was so vociferous and ebullient, I had hardly time to think. Now and then he stopped short to shoot a few questions at me, mostly about my educational background, and, finding there was none to speak of in literature, riled me for not having joined Raffles College of the University of Malaya in Singapore where he taught from 1953 to 1955. By the time he had finished raging over my poems, I thought I might be able to see him in a more relaxed mood after dinner [he arrived in the midst of a delicious Chinese dinner prepared by Margaret, Gung-wu’s wife, a former student of his], but, instead, he gulped the soup down amidst appreciative munching-crunching sounds, jumped up and excused himself for another appointment. I was feeling quite frustrated for I couldn’t even get a word in sideways, but just before he left, he asked Gung-wu to give me his address [for my sleeping quarters then was huddled in the midst of some trees in Hyde Park] but told me not to take any notice of what he had to say about my poems. Both Gung-wu and Margaret tried to console me like the fabulous hosts they were after Eric had left, but I didn’t let out the fact that I was secretly delighted: I had at last met a vigorously straight-talking person who knew a hell of a lot about writing and literature [the first I had heard of ‘poems are made with words, not ideas’, echoing Paul Valéry] and was not afraid to voice his views, even to a stranger.

Some time later, in the mid-sixties, when I had been published and Eric was then ghosting the American literature columns of the Times Literary Supplement, Eric gave me the best advice I’ve ever listened to in our métier. He said very offhand-like one day, and his demeanour meant every word he pronounced ponderously: ‘Don’t write anything you can get published!’ with the result I’ve only managed to publish about ten percent of what I’ve been writing since then.

In the early nineties, Eric seemed to me to soften his anti-Establishment stance. He urged me to publish. He appeared as if he would make certain concessions, and it took me some time to realize that he may have changed course for strategic reasons: you can’t fight the Enemy where no one hears of the victory!

Paris, France

© T. Wignesan 13-15 October 1995