Free Chapman's Odyssey by Paul Bailey Page A

was still working its way around his brain. It was a joyous meditation on death. He wanted to convey its message to his good friends in his own English, although it had been written in Turkish. He would tell them of the poet’s life, briefly, if they had the patience to listen to him.
    — We’re listening, Harry.
    — Where to begin?
    — We can’t answer that for you.
    — All I need to say is that Hikmet was a devout Marxist who offended the secular state he had helped bring into being. He spent eighteen years in prison, where he wrote love letters in verse to his wife. He smoked too many cigarettes. He died, at the age of sixty-one, in Moscow, where he had lived for more than a decade. I’m going to give you Harry Chapman’s version of ‘My Funeral’, which he wrote in April 1963.
    He paused; he had to, to collect his thoughts.
    — This isn’t something morbid, is it, Harry?
    — No, no, no. Quite the reverse. Listen. The poem begins with two questions. Will Hikmet’s funeral start in the courtyard below his tiny apartment? And how will the bearers bring the coffin down three floors? The lift is too small; the stairs too narrow.
    He paused a second time. Was he making any sense?
    — What happens next?
    — I’m coming to that, Master Philip. Laboriously, I admit. Give me a moment more.
    They gave it to him, and he continued.
     
    — Perhaps the courtyard will be knee-deep in sunlight and pigeons –
     
    — ‘Knee-deep’, that’s good, said Marybeth, sounding like Polonius.
     
    — perhaps there will be snow and children’s cries mingling in the air
    or the asphalt glistening with rain
    and the dustbins littering the place as usual . . .
     
    — Dustbins? In a poem?
    — Oh, Nancy, you disappoint me. He almost called her Virgil, the consummate chronicler of the damned. — Dustbins are a necessity of urban life, and poetry has to address itself (Oh, he sounded so professorial) to muck, to waste, to –
    — Spare us the details, Harry.
    He went on.
     
    — If in keeping with the custom here I am to go, face open to the skies,
    on the hearse, a pigeon might drop something on my brow, for luck.
    Whether a band turns up or no, children will come near me, children like funerals.
     
    He stopped once more, recalling the many funerals of his childhood: the distant relations, whose virtues were lauded by bored and dishonest clergymen; the stillborn; the ancients whose existence he had to take on trust, thanks to Alice Chapman’s approval or disapprobation.
     
    — Our kitchen window will stare after me as I go,
    the washing in the balcony will wave to see me off.
    I have been happier here than you can ever imagine.
    Friends, I wish you all a long and happy life.
     
    — Is that it, Harry?
    — Yes. That’s it.
    — It’s not as – how shall I call it? – it’s not as melodious as the others you’ve recited.
    — I suppose it isn’t. But I love the washing waving farewell to him, and the pigeon leaving the perennial message on his brow. I find the poem curiously serene.
    — You’re the expert, Harry.
    The expert? He was no such sterile thing. He was an enthusiast, a hero-worshipper of those who use words or notes or brushstrokes to convey something of the mystery and wonder of human existence. Oh, that sounded so high-minded, so elitist, too precious by half to explain to Nancy, Marybeth and Philip. Yet it was what he was, and what he believed, and what he would die believing – today, tomorrow, this year, next year, or in the immediate or not too distant future.
    — Perhaps it’s because it’s in a foreign language.
    — Don’t worry. I’ve plenty more in my English poetry kitty.
    Then Harry Chapman was unexpectedly sick, and the simple meal he’d been given the evening before gushed out of him. The gushing went on and on, as if he’d consumed an entire feast instead of a single plate of tuna and salad. Bowls were brought for him and borne away, and the bedclothes he’d stained removed