Boredom is a necessary evil:
There is no real escaping it,
But this doesn’t mean that
You have to plunge into a Schopenhauer
Slough of despond and pessimism
As I did so disagreeably
When I was 15,
Shocking and dismaying my mother
And slapping her undying kindness
And good humour
- All this despite having been a wartime widow
struggling with two nippers -
Which is women’s gift to us men,
The daily sweetness
Unlike a father’s
Periodic sourness and constant cynicism,
Or, so it seems to me, unless
I am extrapolating wildly.
Her dismay, it must be said,
Was more than a little tinged
With disapproval of the freshly minted
1970s self- indulgence,
Barely more than a decade old,
Which, perhaps, I had unconsciously absorbed.
The root cause it seemed to me
Was my constant companion, boredom.
Yes, I was bored and wanted more,
But, instead of leading me to action,
To taking steps, it spawned a vista of
Endless signs declaring
You were in or about to enter
The neighbourhood, the region, the township of pointlessness
- Population: 3,000, Altitude 2,500 feet -
Which now I wonder at
As there was a gloomy but impressive imagination
Busy at work, conceiving
So many things ahead
As pointless with a certain, precocious logic
But, in an extreme way of unmatcheable purity
That only teenagers can emulate
Standing as they do at their gateway.
Ironically, that ruthless, defiant clearing away
Of the worthless, the shallow and mechanical
Deserted me as an adult,
Learning from spiritual thought leaders
About how to be true to oneself
To understand the world beyond the world
Had become cerebral and redolent
Of Sartrean bad faith.
At just 20, my first fierce flame,
Six years older and aeons wiser,
Ruefully cast blame
As I battled with parental expectations, restlessness
And an equally ironic and pointless
Never-fulfilled desire to sow wild oats
Declaiming, ‘why didn’t you follow a path with heart?’