Last night, she says, I couldn’t sleep. I thought I might go and jump off the Farr bridge. Then I wouldn’t have to do any of this. 

Uh huh, I say. But regardless of your impending nervous breakdown. If I give what I write to you and then I read out that same paper at my seminar, which takes place the day after your seminar, they’ll think I copied it off you. 

I keep thinking I’ll throw myself out of the window of my room, she says. I keep imagining myself falling through the air. 

You live on the ground floor, I say. 

It’s still got quite a drop, she says. 

I laugh. She laughs too, though this makes her look even more likely to burst into tears. 

I hate poetry, she says. 

Then why are you doing an English degree? I say. 

She shrugs. 

I thought it’d be easy, she says. 

It’s as easy as you make it, I say. 

It’s not. And it’s pointless, she says. 

This poem’s not even a big deal, I say. It’s an e.e. cummings poem. You can easily write something about e.e. cummings. Anyone can say pretty much anything they like about e.e. cummings and it’ll probably be a bit true. 

I can’t! she says. I’ve read it fifty times and I have no idea, not the fucking first fucking inkling, what it’s fucking meant to fucking fucking mean. 

She starts crying. 

I find the duplicate the poem’s on, bright purple from the copier, in among the stuff all over the floor. I come and sit next to her on the bed. 

Okay, I say. Move fucking up. Here we fucking go. 

Don’t make fun of me, she says. 

I’d never make fun of someone I don’t know, I say. 

I put the piece of paper with the poem on it down on the bed between us. 

—————————-

to start, to hesitate;to stop 

(kneeling in doubt:while all 

skies fall)and then to slowly trust 

T upon H,and smile 

could anything be pleasanter 

(some big dark little day 

which seems a lifetime at the least) 

except to add an A? 

henceforth he feels his pride involved 

(this i who’s also you) 

and nothing less than excellent 

E will exactly do 

next(our great problem nearly solved) 

we dare adorn the whole 

with a distinct grandiloquent 

deep D;while all skies fall 

at last perfection, now and here 

but look:not sunlight?yes! 

and(plunging rapturously up) 

we spill our masterpiece 

————————————————

See? she says. Nothing about it means anything. I hate it. 

Don’t be hating a poem, I say. Waste of a strong emotion. Just look at the words. They’ll tell you what they mean. Because that’s what words do. 

What? she says. 

They mean, I say. 

Yeah but what I mean is, why does he have to make it look so strange with all the spacing stuff he does? she says. It’s like he’s showing off. 

Nothing wrong with showing off, I say. 

Now, there I actually agree with you, she says. Though thousands wouldn’t. 

And it only looks strange because we expect spaces round punctuation, I say, and we expect punctuation and syntax to do very expected things. But why do we? Why do we have conventions at all? 

Because how would we live properly without –, she says. 

No, I don’t need an answer to the question, I say. 

Oh, she says. 

I’m just highlighting one of the questions the poem’s speaker’s asking, I say. 

The poem’s speaker, she says. You mean the poet. Or is there another person meant to be speaking too? God. I don’t understand anything. 

I mean the person who’s there inside your head when you read the poem, when the human thing you can hear through its strangeness, and the meanings you do recognize, even through the fog of the strangeness, all hit your eye and your mind, I say. 

What? she says. 

She looks at me, desperate, teary. 

And here, I say. The poem, here it says i who’s also you. So it’s also about you, this poem. 

Me? she says. 

Whoever the me is who’s reading it, I say. Me as well. 

I just don’t get it, from the start onwards, she says. What does it even mean, the first line? About starting and then hesitating and then stopping? 

It means pretty much what you’ve just been telling me yourself, I say. That something about it, on the page, has made you look again, have to hesitate, even stop. 

That’s true, she says. That’s true. But why kneeling in doubt? And all the stuff about skies falling? 

Well you’re the one talking about jumping off a bridge and out a window. Because you’re so worried that you don’t understand something. It’s quite like your own sky has fallen in, I say. 

Her eyes widen. 

Oh, she says. 

She wipes her nose. 

But what about the kneeling? she says. Who’s kneeling in doubt? Why? 

Well, I say, something’s definitely happening about doubt in the poem, and about collapse, and possibly about powers that are sky-high, I mean higher than human, powers that might require a person to pray, maybe. And it also suggests there’s maybe a way to stop kneeling in doubt, maybe a way to be surer. At least that’s the inference. 

Inference, she says. 

Look at what’s beyond all the skies falling stuff, I say. 

I point at the end of the third line. 

Slowly trust, she says. 

Doubt, followed by trust, I say. 

Is that why the doubt and the sky falling are in brackets? she says. 

I don’t know. Could well be, I say. 

And why is it in brackets in one part of the poem and not in brackets when it gets said again later near the end? she says. 

Brackets mean containment, I say. Something set apart, extra, maybe not necessary. The poet must want the sky falling first to be contained and then to be let loose, be something that becomes more salient as the poem goes on. 

What’s salient mean? she says. 

It means salient, I say. 

She laughs. 

Good. 

But what’s that slowly trusting thing about? she says. 

Hmm, I say. Something about giving over control? Something happening in the poem being a learning process in itself? 

And yeah, okay, but what if what we’re meant to be trusting is just, like, a list of random letters like the ones in the poem? she says. Where’s the trust or the learning in that? 

Yes, I say. But. All written words. Everything we make meaning with when we use written language. It’s all just random letters, no? 

Her eyes go wide. 

Yes! she says. 

I look at the poem again on the page. It does deal in what looks like a random fall of letters. They fall loosely through the poem all the way to the second last verse. 

The poem’s speaker, she says. You mean the poet. Or is there another person meant to be speaking too? God. I don’t understand anything. 

I mean the person who’s there inside your head when you read the poem, when the human thing you can hear through its strangeness, and the meanings you do recognize, even through the fog of the strangeness, all hit your eye and your mind, I say. 

What? she says. 

She looks at me, desperate, teary. 

And here, I say. The poem, here it says i who’s also you. So it’s also about you, this poem. 

Me? she says. 

Whoever the me is who’s reading it, I say. Me as well. 

I just don’t get it, from the start onwards, she says. What does it even mean, the first line? About starting and then hesitating and then stopping? 

It means pretty much what you’ve just been telling me yourself, I say. That something about it, on the page, has made you look again, have to hesitate, even stop. 

That’s true, she says. That’s true. But why kneeling in doubt? And all the stuff about skies falling? 

Well you’re the one talking about jumping off a bridge and out a window. Because you’re so worried that you don’t understand something. It’s quite like your own sky has fallen in, I say. 

Her eyes widen. 

Oh, she says. 

She wipes her nose. 

But what about the kneeling? she says. Who’s kneeling in doubt? Why? 

Well, I say, something’s definitely happening about doubt in the poem, and about collapse, and possibly about powers that are sky-high, I mean higher than human, powers that might require a person to pray, maybe. And it also suggests there’s maybe a way to stop kneeling in doubt, maybe a way to be surer. At least that’s the inference. 

Inference, she says. 

Look at what’s beyond all the skies falling stuff, I say. 

I point at the end of the third line. 

Slowly trust, she says. 

Doubt, followed by trust, I say. 

Is that why the doubt and the sky falling are in brackets? she says. 

I don’t know. Could well be, I say. 

And why is it in brackets in one part of the poem and not in brackets when it gets said again later near the end? she says. 

Brackets mean containment, I say. Something set apart, extra, maybe not necessary. The poet must want the sky falling first to be contained and then to be let loose, be something that becomes more salient as the poem goes on. 

What’s salient mean? she says. 

It means salient, I say. 

She laughs. 

Good. 

But what’s that slowly trusting thing about? she says. 

Hmm, I say. Something about giving over control? Something happening in the poem being a learning process in itself? 

And yeah, okay, but what if what we’re meant to be trusting is just, like, a list of random letters like the ones in the poem? she says. Where’s the trust or the learning in that? 

Yes, I say. But. All written words. Everything we make meaning with when we use written language. It’s all just random letters, no? 

Her eyes go wide. 

Yes! she says. 

I look at the poem again on the page. It does deal in what looks like a random fall of letters. They fall loosely through the poem all the way to the second last verse. 

Maybe the poem wants us to trust meaninglessness, or something that doesn’t mean anything, she says. 

Yep. Possibly. But it’s also asking us to trust the fall, if not of the sky, of the letters T and H, and then A, E and D, I say. 

A and E, I know what that is, she says. 

That’s where you’d have been right now if you’d jumped off that bridge, I say. 

Yeah, and D’s what I’m going to get for this paper, she says. Thaed. Thaed. It’s not even a word. 

Unless, I say. Anagram. Sort of. Spell it sort of backwards. 

Oh! she says. It’s – death! is it? – it’s death! 

I smile. She smiles back, a broad, open-mouthed amazement of a smile. 

How did you even see that? she says. 

I didn’t, till now, I say. Till I looked at it with you. And you’re smiling at death now. Look how powerful a poem is. 

Wow, she says. It’s brilliant. But death in reverse. What does it mean? Are we supposed to be, like, trusting death? she says. 

I suppose, I say. But not death per se. Death reversed, like you say. A death that’s different from the usual death. 

Look at you, she says, like that busker outside Marks and Spencer and all the meanings of things showering down round you like loose change. 

The fall of meaning, I say. The fall of understanding. And here, look at the end. Where it says that there’s even a perfection possible in what we make of our own coming apart, well, that word perfection can mean a kind of end, or death in itself. But with this dissolution there’s also, look, this surprise. Sunlight. 

She shakes her head. 

And then the word yes, I say. With its exclamation mark. 

All this positivity. In death? she says. 

In death backwards, I say. Death in reverse, to quote you. 

Thaed, she says. He’s playing a game with us. 

A game with big stakes, I say. 

I write H T A E D down on the paper next to the poem. 

And I reckon he gives us the T and the H the right way round at the start to help with the game, I say. Otherwise the eye might be tempted to make the word into hated instead of the word death. 

Yeah. Like I hate this poem, she says. 

Do you still hate it? I say. 

But she doesn’t hear me; she’s holding the paper with the poem on it and turning it round in her hands. 

He’s saying death’s a game, she says. Which it really isn’t. 

Or saying there’s a way to be playful even in times of really terrible doubt? I say. 

Ah, she says. I like that. 

Even when the day is dark and the sky is falling and things and words and everything they mean are falling to pieces all around you. 

Falling to pieces, she says. Way to be playful. 

She reaches across and takes a pen off my desk and writes on the back of her hand. 

PLAYFUL DOUBT PIECES 

And at the end of this process, look, I say. 

I point to the last bit of the poem. 

Sun, she says. Up. 

Dawn. That whole process of falling isn’t a fall after all, it’s a, a, I don’t know, a rising up. An ascension. 

Yes, she says. Like, is this a really religious poem? You could make the case for that reading, yes, I reckon, I say. 

Could I? she says. 

She looks pleased.