Free A Whistling Woman by A.S. Byatt

rain,

They dance and sing the roots and flowers

Weave magic circles whole again.

The metal men are full of hate

They bind the children with a chain

They clang the institution’s gate

And box the children up in pain.

The children’s eyes are red with rage

They burst the prison-gates and chain

They burn the spectacles and coats

The men go naked in the rain.

The children teach the men to play

They teach the body’s ancient truth.

The naked men kneel down and pray.

Rainwashed to innocence, and youth.

    â€œSo you think the young may be able to save the world from the scientists?”
    â€œListen. I
know
. They
are
saving it. It’s happening. They’re saving it by
natural spontaneity
. They are putting the blast of the orgasm against the radioactive spout of the bomb. They can do this by just not giving in. By changing our consciousness completely.
We will make everything
new
.”
    â€œYou will change politics?”
    â€œPolitics for a start. No more dead men in deadly dark suits. Singers and sayers and hearers in lovely colours. No adversarial debating. Meditation together. A way through.”
    â€œBut there are difficult decisions. Population. How to feed the world.”
    â€œIf you change the
mind-set,
darling, you change everything. There will be new fabrics created, new colours brought to light, new styles, new ways of—of growing things, you know. New ways of sharing what there is on this earth. Yeah.”
    â€œBut the young won’t stay young forever?”
    The poet frowned.
    â€œThat remains to be seen. I think we may find that being truly young is a matter of being, so to speak,
in the truth,
in the truth of youth. I do believe in mind over matter. I do believe you get old and die because you secretly
want
to, you can’t resist because you don’t know how. But we will learn how. We will learn to live in infinity where we belong.”
    â€œCUT,” said Alexander.

Mickey Impey had done even less preparation for his interview than Frederica. He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, swayed to and fro, and after a time intoned
    â€œWell, what do you want to talk about, then?”
    â€œWell, we could talk about my idea of education. It’s different from yours. I believe in learning things, and knowing things. I don’t think it all just comes without work.”
    â€œYou’re uptight, I knew it. I could tell when I saw you. I expect you’ve had an awful lot of it.”
    â€œAn awful lot of what?”
    â€œAn awful lot of education.”
    â€œQuite a lot. I went to university. I studied literature. I happen to believe you think better for yourself if you know something about what other people have thought, and the ways they have thought it.”
    The poet swayed faster, without opening his eyes. Crash, creak, crash, creak. He said indistinctly
    â€œAll that junk. History. The past. Bad, bad, a bad trip, all that. Like copulating with corpses, girl, whatever-your-name-is. Now, you want to copulate with the living. A
lot.
Like I do. Then you get spontaneous poems, spontaneous
overflows
as the man said, I expect you thought I didn’t know that.”
    â€œI like your poems,” said Frederica. “They amuse me. They amuse my son.”
    The canvas chair lurched to a standstill.
    â€œListen. Stop the roundabout. Sing to the Lord. O all ye stars sing together. The lady likes my poems. Ring the bells. The condescending bitch likes my poems.”
    â€œHave you any idea who I am?”
    â€œVaguely, vaguely. You’re a teacher sort of person, a condescending bitch, a po-faced inerlectual, I know your sort.”
    â€œBut this particular version of it—of my
sort
—whom you are supposed to be interviewing—”
    â€œ
Whom
. Listen to her. Listen to the condescending bitch con-condescending-descending. Her descant. She puts in definite object pronouns. I expect you didn’t know I