[1301] Meeting Point

Time was away and somewhere else,
There were two glasses and two chairs
And two people with the one pulse
(Somebody stopped the moving stairs)
Time was away and somewhere else.

And they were neither up nor down;
The stream's music did not stop
Flowing through heather, limpid brown,
Although they sat in a coffee shop
And they were neither up nor down.

The bell was silent in the air
Holding its inverted poise -
Between the clang and clang a flower,
A brazen calyx of no noise:
The bell was silent in the air.

The camels crossed the miles of sand
That stretched around the cups and plates;
The desert was their own, they planned
To portion out the stars and dates:
The camels crossed the miles of sand.

Time was away and somewhere else.
The waiter did not come, the clock
Forgot them and the radio waltz
Came out like water from a rock:
Time was away and somewhere else.

Her fingers flicked away the ash
That bloomed again in tropic trees:
Not caring if the markets crash
When they had forests such as these,
Her fingers flicked away the ash.

God or whatever means the Good
Be praised that time can stop like this,
That what the heart has understood
Can verify in the body's peace
God or whatever means the Good.

Time was away and she was here
And life no longer what it was,
The bell was silent in the air
And all the room one glow because
Time was away and she was here.

	-- Louis MacNeice

MacNeice in this poem tries to capture the suspension of time that seems
to occur when one is in the company of a loved one. Three images in
particular stand out for me: the stalled escalator (escalators being the
embodiment of perpetual motion -- the infinite loop, as it were), the
inverted bell (pendulums at their extrema always seem to slow down more
than they should) and the empty desert (the high desert, like the
Siberian tundra and the antarctic plateau, has a profoundly hypnotic
_sameness_ to it).

Sadly, the rest of the poem (beguiling rhyme scheme apart) doesn't quite
do the trick. I found the sixth stanza somewhat pointless, and the
scansion of the second stanza is decidedly uneven. (That said, I'm not
sure if more exact prosody would have helped the poem or reduced it to
sing-song triteness). And finally, the ambiguity that gives poems like
"The Sunlight on the Garden" or "House on a Cliff" or "Snow" their
power, here seems to betoken a lack of confidence, a thinning of the
blood.

Methinks I cavil too much. All criticism aside, this remains a very
accomplished poem, if not MacNeice's finest. I really must read more of
his work.

thomas.

From: "Ian Baillieu" <iblawyer@>



When does a poem know it’s finished?   Paul Valery said “A
poem is never finished, only abandoned”.   It appears to me
that Louis MacNeice, having hit on a striking format and
assembled some great images in ‘Meeting Point’, abandoned it
too soon.

The problem is not one of inexact prosody.   The metric
irregularities are minor and easily absorbed in skilled
recitation, which uses subtle changes of rhythm and syllabic
weight to make a poem more meaningful aloud than on the
printed page, the only justification for recitation.   Too
sing-song a scansion can frustrate that.

IMO the main problem with ‘Meeting Point’ is the use of the
third person viewpoint when the theme is the profoundly
subjective one of time suspended in the presence of a lover.
That detachment seriously thins this poem’s emotional blood.

Suppose that MacNeice, before abandoning it, had revised it
thus.   In the 2nd stanza, change ‘they’ to ‘we’ (thrice).
In the 4th stanza, change ‘the cups’ to ‘our cups’.  In the
5th stanza, change ‘them’ to ‘us’.  In the 6th stanza,
change ‘Her’ to ‘Your’ (twice).  In the last stanza, change
‘she was’ to ‘you were’ (twice).   The general structure and
appearance would have been identical, but would not the poem
have had more power and been more involving?

I agree the sixth stanza could be discarded without much
loss.   It has become dated.   The image of crashing markets
as the symbol of troubles put out of mind was probably
always too contemporary to endure.   Yet MacNeice could
hardly have foreseen the stigma now attaching to tobacco
smoke.   In his day it was thought stylish.   The curlicues
from a lighted cigarette could be seen romantically as
imitating the shapes of ‘tropic trees’.

His lovers are in a coffee shop by a stream, so the exotic
image of camels crossing a desert may need to be explained
as something depicted on the walls, or on the table linen.
It is harder to understand how a swinging bell can also
feature.  Was there a belfry visible nearby?   I don’t rate
these puzzles as faults however.   A poem, like a woman, can
attract by being a little mysterious.

It is interesting to compare ‘Meeting Point’ with another
poem tackling a similar theme and setting but in a very
different style: ‘On The Road’, by MacNeice’s friend and
schoolfellow, Bernard Spencer (1909-1963), whose collected
poems OUP published in 1981.   I think Spencer’s free verse
poem of only 19 lines succeeds where MacNeice’s fails.   His
lovers, referred to as ‘We two’ are in ‘harvest France’
drinking in an ‘arbour’

…built on a valley side where time,
if time any more existed, was that river
of so profound a current, it at once
both flowed and stayed.

I won’t quote all of it here because it is too beautiful to
be relegated to quotation in a comment on someone else’s
poem.  It deserves Minstrels selection in its own right.

From: "Steve Campbell" <s.campbell@>

> Whereas Crane's originality is almost obtrusive, Hein delights in
> pointing out things that everyone *knows*, but just never thought of.
> His characterisation of a pineapple as "sweet and undefinable" remains
> the best description I've ever seen of the fruit, and that's in large
> part because I knew exactly what he meant the minute I read it.

It was actually:

Love is like
a pineapple,
sweet and
undefinable.

which is a bit diferent.

Steve

From: Martin DeMello <martindemello@>

--- Steve Campbell <s.campbell@> wrote:
> It was actually:
> 
> Love is like
> a pineapple,
> sweet and
> undefinable.
>
> which is a bit diferent.

True, but quoting my comment on Poem #1092:

"Thinking about it, the poem's true revelation is not that love is sweet and
undefinable, but that a *pineapple* is sweet and undefinable."

Where I should, perhaps, have clarified that that was the poem's true
revelation for me.

martin

From: "KOFMAN, GALINA (SBCSI)" <gk7986@>

I am not an expert in English poetry, and English is my second language.  I
do like poetry a lot - Russian and English.  This is one of my favorite
poems, in terms of emotional impact.  I wonder if there are other people who
feel this way.  If you one of them, l would like to know what other poems
make you feel the same way.    

Galina Kofman
gkofman@

From: Wad2314@

i feel exactly the same way, another poem that gives me similar feelings is  
"To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell, the feeling of time in both poems is  
very strong. although it is courtly poetry i feel the tone can at times be  
similar to "Meeting Point", however, passing time in "To His Coy Mistress" is  
more like an enemy as the speaker feels it is being wasted. 

Pleas write back with your thoughts.