We especially miss those we have lost during holidays and anniversaries. Today we consider the poem Last Words by Michael Symmons Roberts, which was written to commemorate the first anniversary of 9/11. One of the purposes of physicality, says Dr. Thomas Dilworth during our conversation, is the expression of love. He traces love through the motifs of touch, Paradise Lost, the Crucifixion, and the Big Bang. We discover that silence is not absence, as well as the importance of saying “I love you” while we still have the chance.
We trust you will find Dr. Dilworth’s exposition of the poem to be both insightful and moving, as well as the recitation of the poem by Seth Wieck at the end. We’ve included the poem below, in addition to information about the music selected for this episode. There is also a PDF of an essay that Dr. Dilworth wrote about the poem.
Michael Symmons Roberts is an award-winning British poet with a degree in philosophy and theology from Oxford. He is also a librettist, writing operas with the composer James MacMillan. Symmons Roberts is Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. His website is symmonsroberts.com.
The Poem
Last Words Michael Symmons Roberts (i) You have a new message: Kiss the kids goodbye from me Keep well, keep strong, you know I’m sure, but here’s to say I love you. I lay these voice-prints like a set of tracks, to stop you getting lost among the tall trees beneath the break-less canopy, on the long slow walk you take from here without me. (ii) You have a new message: I do not want to leave you this magnetic print, this digit trace, my coded and decoded voice. I do not want to leave you. If I had a choice, my last words would be carried to your window on three slips of sugar paper in the beaks of birds of paradise. The words would say, I’m sure you know, I love you. (iii) You have a new message: I throw my voice across the city, but it meets such a cacophony we overload the network. Countless last words divert on to backup spools and hard drives. Systems analyst turns archaeologist: his fingertips, as delicate as brushes, sift through sediment of conferences, helpline hints, arguments and cold calls, searching for the ones that say You know, I’m sure, I love you. (iv) You have a new message: This is the voice you hear in dreams, this is the tape you cannot bear to play. This is the voice-mail you keep in a sealed silk bag in a tin box in the attic. But the message is out - in the sick-beds and the darkened rooms; in the billowing curtains and the hush so heavy you can hear the pulse in your wrists. The message is out, in the ether, in the network of digits and wires. I know, you’re sure, I love you. (v) You have a new message: Don’t remember this, don’t save this message. Keep instead the pictures of last Sunday in the park when summer leaves were turning, Rollerbladers hand-in-hand, our boys throwing fists of cut grass at each other. Think of the extravagance of green, and think especially of the sky, its blinding cloudlessness. You know, I’m sure, but here’s to say I love you. (vi) You have a new message: This is the still, small voice you longed to hear among the ruins. This is the voice you fished with microphones on long lines, lowered into cracks between the rocks of this new mountain. And your ears ache with the effort, the sheer will to listen, to conjure my words, your name on my lips, out of nowhere. Here’s to say. (vii) You have a new message: When a city is wounded, before it moans, before it kneels, it draws a breath, and keeps it, as though all phones are on hold, all radios de-tuned, cathedrals locked and all parks vacant. It becomes a windless forest. But remember, silence is not absence. Learn to weigh them, one against the other. Each room of our house contains a different emptiness. Listen. Then break it. Say you know, I’m sure, I love you. (viii) You have a new message: Do not forget the beauty of aeroplanes, those long, slow pulses from the sun which passed above our garden as we lay out in the heat. Do not forget their gentle night-time growl, and how we used to picture people in them - sleeping, talking, just as we were, how we used to guess the destinations. Do not forget the grace of aeroplanes, the majesty of skyscrapers. You know, I’m sure. (ix) You have a new message: Still, a year on, you rifle through black boxes, mail-boxes, voice-boxes, in search of my final words. You hunt them in the white noise between stations on the radio, the blank face of a TV with the aerial pulled out. You walk in crowds, wondering if my words were passed to him, or her, as messenger. If I’d had time to leave you words, you know, I’m sure, they would have been I love you. (x) You have a new message: Now, my voice stored on your mobile, I can tell you fifty times a day how much I love you. “Tell the kids,” I say. I don’t know if you still do. Sometimes, when you’re out of town, on trains, or in the shadow of tall buildings You lose the signal. The network breaks. You hear vowels splinter in my throat, as if struck by a sudden despair. (xi) You have a new message: Where did my last words go? Out and out on radio waves into the all-engulfing emptiness, fading to a whisper as they cross from sky, to space, to nothing. Or in, and in, as litany repeated in your heart until all tape is obsolete. Each cadence, every tongue-tick, every breath is perfect, as you say my words: You know, I’m sure. (xii) You have a new message: There is nothing new in this. My voice has printed like a bruise, like a kiss, like a kiss so strong it leaves a bruise. I love you. You know it, I’m sure. Beyond the smoking ruins, smoking planes, and empty rooms, above and beyond is a network. A matrix of souls, as fragile as lace, but endless and unbreakable. To save the message, press.
The Music
I chose the well-known composition Gymnopedie No. 1 by Erik Satie for a couple of reasons. The Greek word gymnopaedia refers to an ancient annual festival where young men danced “stripped” either of clothing or of weapons. Symbolically, appropriately, this is the reversal of an event like 9/11, where men took-up weapons, airplanes, in an act of destruction. It is also a reversal of the fall into shame of Adam and Eve. But at the same time, the music points to moments when we can put aside our violence and stand before each other naked and unarmed: physicality as violence vs. physicality as beauty.
The second reason I chose this music was for its intense peacefulness. A commenter online wrote, “It’s a piece that always makes you stop what you’re doing, and feel like you have suddenly become more aware of everything.” The music does what grief does, and what this poem does. Below you will find a downloadable version of the song from Classicals.de.
Our “Fourth” Cohost
Dr. Thomas Dilworth is the author of the collection of poems Here Away. He is also the pre-eminent reader and interpreter of the work of David Jones, and his forthcoming book is on the illustrated limericks of Edward Lear. Here is the essay he wrote about the poem Last Words, which you can download.
