Who Killed Cock Robin?
That period between Vietnam and the peace marches, between Pleiku and D.C. and Austin? Basically, they were fairly ordinary for someone still wearing a uniform, commuting to work each morning, carpooling with my friend Don Mohr in his MGB (or was it an MGA?), top down when the weather permitted and both mags were firing. I eventually bought my own car, a not new, blue and shiny, Volkswagen convertible. I re-entered a world that included Vietnam only from 8 - 5, Monday through Friday.
Among the first things both Don and I did was enroll at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland. Not only was I planning to do what I had set out to do three years earlier (go to graduate school at UT-Austin) but I wanted to meet young, well-educated women. I know that sounds snotty but I did not want to hear again, not ever, “I love you so much, GI” and I did not want to "date" (quaint word these days) any of the mostly conservative women I met at the National Security Agency. Those were mostly women with a professional mission or clerk/typists with security clearances. I wanted to forget what we always called The Building (upper case letters implicit in the pronunciation) and immerse myself in being a college student again.
I took two classes at the University of Maryland: Renaissance literature and a course in Melville and Hawthorne. Damn that was wonderful. I decompressed, became totally human once again. I can hear combat vets now: “Puh-leeze!!!!!!! You were safe. No one pointed an AK at you. You got to talk with young women.” Yes, that’s all true. And I will repeat something I have said many times before: I mostly enjoyed my tour in Vietnam…from the ship ride over, to internment at Subic Bay with huge quantities of San Miguel beer, to the LSTs rocking down the coast of what was then South Vietnam while we sang Country Joe’s “Vietnam Rag,” to my strange last night in Nha Trang and the Pan American “Freedom Bird” home. But I wasn’t happy with myself for having, if not enjoyed it all, been separate from it while being in the middle of it and standing on the periphery while helping locate people who were going to be killed.
My first little book, about the war mostly, was called From the Periphery: poems and essays and that’s mostly how I felt: on the periphery of the war, not truly involved, marking time, doing something I had never questioned but had begun questioning while in the middle of it all. Dak To was a part of that questioning, the young P.O.W., an increasing feeling, after Tet, that the waste of life on both sides was futile. Those who did believe were correct in that we did not fight to win. Those who were opposed to the war were correct in that we should not have been there in the first place. I was, by the time I left, irrevocably on the side of those who felt we should never had been there in the first place.
My first semester at the University of Maryland, I was besotted with being a student, fell in love a few times with young women not much younger than I was, met Linda and fell in love with her. When I got back from Vietnam, I started falling in love with everyone. I met Linda in that Renaissance lit. class that was a reintroduction to college classes. Dr. Spurgeon had assigned a poem by George Gascoigne called, quite ironically, “Lullaby.” Here’s the whole poem and it’s quite long for this medium:
Gascoigne's Lullaby
Sing lullaby, as women do,
Wherewith they bring their babes to rest;
And lullaby can I sing too,
As womanly as can the best.
With lullaby they still the child,
And if I be not much beguiled,
Full many wanton babes have I
Which must be stilled with lullaby.
First, lullaby my youthful years,
It is now time to go to bed;
For crooked age and hoary hairs
Have won the haven within my head.
With lullaby, then, youth, be still,
With lullaby content thy will,
Since courage quails and comes behind,
Go sleep, and so beguile thy mind.
Next, lullaby my gazing eyes
Which wonted were to glance apace.
For every glass may now suffice
To show the furrows in my face.
With lullaby, then, wink awhile,
With lullaby your looks beguile.
Let no fair face, nor beauty bright
Entice you eft with vain delight.
And lullaby, my wanton will:
Let reason's rule now reign thy thought,
Since all too late I find by skill
How dear I have thy fancies bought.
With lullaby now take thine ease,
With lullaby thy doubts appease
For trust to this, if thou be still,
My body shall obey thy will.
Eke lullaby my loving boy,
My little Robin, take thy rest.
Since age is cold and nothing coy,
Keep close thy coin, for so is best.
With lullaby be thou content,
With lullaby thy lusts relent.
Let others pay which hath mo pence;
Thou art too poor for such expense.
Thus, lullaby my youth, mine eyes,
My will, my ware and all that was.
I can no mo delays devise,
But welcome pain, let pleasure pass.
With lullaby now take your leave,
With lullaby your dreams deceive,
And when you rise with waking eye,
Remember Gascoigne's lullaby.
That is not a difficult poem but the class was mixed: juniors and seniors mostly, a few older people. Some of them did see that the poem was all about sex; some did not. And, when we got to the “little Robin” stanza, no one was wiling to offer their reading on what Gascoigne was talking about. Spurgeon grew somewhat exercised over this and, finally, I raised my hand. “At last,” he said,” Mr. Hall, will you explain the stanza. I did. The whole poem is rather like Shakespeare’s “All the world’s a stage” speech, about how raunchy we are when young, how we may sprinkle pollen and babies around the landscape in lust run amok…okay, okay, we don’t do that sort of thing anymore, but…
The stanza in question has got to remind us of the “Cock Robin” lullaby and that old reprobate and deflowerer of virgins, George Gascoigne, is saying goodbye to an active penis in an age when we had not yet invented Viagra. It was not that I knew more or was smarter than the other students but that they were unwilling to say out loud what needed to be said out loud (and there was no Viagra or Cialis in those days).
So, why am I telling you all this? Well, Spurgeon applauded. I figured I’d still be able to cut it in grad. school, and Linda asked me out for a drink after class. MORAL: When you’re amongst English majors, it always helps to read poetry well: you get the grade, the girl and everything.
Later, she was my constant companion at rock concerts in the parks and at the Corcoran and, more importantly, on peace marches. Her twin children often went with us. The way I left her is among the more shameful things I’ve done, but that’s a few blogs away still.
No comments:
Post a Comment