07 April - Roger Zelazny Poetry Month - Divine Madness

Today's story is Divine Madness, which I consider one of the finest stories of its kind ever written. It is the story of a man whose partner died in an automobile accident after an argument. He is now, inexplicably suffering long spells where time runs backwards for him.  It's a simple story, brilliantly told, written with crushing precision along with two others on Zelazny's blackest day, when his father died unexpectedly. 

The poem...I wish I were better read, with a keener understanding, because choosing To His Coy Mistress seems like a cheat. 

Yes, the story alludes to it directly, (Time's winged chariot fled before him as he opened the door) and yes, I feel like the language matches. I'm not sure if the tone is quite right. I mean, the story references Jabberwocky too, but I'm not about to suggest we go galumphing through the tulgey wood.

Still, there is something to it. I don't think many people would be able to name the poem itself, but passages like "Had we but world enough and time," and "The grave’s a fine and private place/But none, I think, do there embrace" have acquired a kind of mythic resonance that echoes. People know it without knowing it.

 

Had we but world enough and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime.

We would sit down, and think which way

To walk, and pass our long love’s day.

Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side

Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide

Of Humber would complain. I would

Love you ten years before the flood,

And you should, if you please, refuse

Till the conversion of the Jews.

My vegetable love should grow

Vaster than empires and more slow;

An hundred years should go to praise

Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;

Two hundred to adore each breast,

But thirty thousand to the rest;

An age at least to every part,

And the last age should show your heart.

For, lady, you deserve this state,

Nor would I love at lower rate.

       But at my back I always hear

Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity.

Thy beauty shall no more be found;

Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound

My echoing song; then worms shall try

That long-preserved virginity,

And your quaint honour turn to dust,

And into ashes all my lust;

The grave’s a fine and private place,

But none, I think, do there embrace.

       Now therefore, while the youthful hue

Sits on thy skin like morning dew,

And while thy willing soul transpires

At every pore with instant fires,

Now let us sport us while we may,

And now, like amorous birds of prey,

Rather at once our time devour

Than languish in his slow-chapped power.

Let us roll all our strength and all

Our sweetness up into one ball,

And tear our pleasures with rough strife

Through the iron gates of life:

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run.