Last Chapter of a Novel

Last Chapter of a Novel

They’ve made it to the end

and the prose is slowing down. 

They are none the wiser, 

though, and still think there’s a chance 

that the story 

will redeem them 

and their fate will not be thus. 

 

But their author who thought

of them and of little else 

besides each and every 

morning had other ideas. 

So they are left 

as uncertain 

as he or she was and so

  

they are a group portrait

and as such are immortal, 

looking through a window 

on a view that’s picturesque 

where the future, 

if there were one, 

was expected to arrive.

--

I can't even now remember where it was this weekend I read about someone imagining the lives of fictional characters after the end of their stories. It might have been in Vita Sackville-West's Heritage that had lots to enjoy in it and was seen off in short order. It is, of course, an erroneous idea because, as L.C. Knights pointed out, it is not appropriate to ask How Many Children had Lady Macbeth? There are none mentioned in the text; you might have thought she didn't have any but the question should be not put.

It made me think of it from the characters' point of view. There they are, stranded in the words that make them live, presumably thinking there is more to them than what their creator wrote down about them, except there isn't. And there but for the grace of whatever author was wicked enough to create us, are we, forever stuck in our eternal present which is forever the end of our story as far as we know.

 

I'm a bit more confident about my other recent poems, Walsingham and Background Music, but for whatever reason want to keep them to myself for the time being.

This sudden burst of creativity is welcome whether or not the poems are any good. One likes to be writing something at least. The release into 'letting go' and just doing it probably comes from a feeling of not worrying whether it's any good or not, let's just try.

One maybe needs to bat like Gower more than Boycott or else one runs the risk of spending too long producing what you regard as a masterpiece but nobody else likes it.