Murphy is the eponymous hero of Samuel Beckett's early novel. Being typically Beckett it is funny and very strange. Murphy spends his days naked and strapped in a rocking chair trying to achieve a state of non-being.
In a previous recent poem, "Genealogy," posted on 12 April 2021 (here) I had tried to encapsulate the thought of a range of thinkers (including Jesus Christ who is much more than that) in the Western tradition in quatrains. I wanted to try doing the same again but in couplets using alexandrines, and used Murphy on which to hang them.
Decades ago in February 1980 I had written "Descartes at Dinner Darkly Said" which handled similar material but concentrated on Descartes, Berkeley, Russell and Spinoza. I posted it on 27 August 2012; it is linked here.
----------------
I.
Ah, the sun’s heat sizzles the pane,
And I must seek my Phase again,
Strapped upon this frame:
Naked to the searing air,
How stiff my flesh, how loath my name,
Said Murphy in his rocking chair.
Come death, its foul or glib mishap,
Embroiled, I’ll deliquesce to sap,
Puddling in these bands;
Dried by months which pass like prayer,
That dust will strew to cornered sands,
Said Murphy in his rocking chair.
Swept out by landlords quick to let,
My dust will roll in the wind’s jet,
Settling like a frost,
Earth-inhumed with bone and hair
In gardens that the self be lost,
Said Murphy in his rocking chair.
Then molecules once mine, or not,
Will mesh with others to a clot
Moulding beans or fruit;
Fed to one below the stair
He’ll spring an agon boy, though mute,
Said Murphy in his rocking chair.
And grown, fast-roped within the arms
Of some new chair, refusing psalms,
Treadmill-like he’ll rock,
Laved in sweat, his glassy stare
Outdistancing the ticking clock,
Said Murphy in his rocking chair.
II.
Heraclitus grabbed the water with his hand,
Untameable, it spilled in dancings to the sand.
Parmenides at goddess-call approached her cell,
He stumbled but surmised he neither stepped nor fell,
Sang Murphy in his rocking chair.
Plato, despairing, slapped and shook a thousand chairs
Then found in heaven a Form which purified his prayers.
Aristotle crawled in dust around his yard,
He prodded ants and droppings, looking very hard,
Sang Murphy in his rocking chair.
Moses, sun-parched in the desert, rasped the Law,
His tough-skinned tribes closed ranks, a bone for God to gnaw.
Christ, cross-hung, cauterized the world, and from His grave
Rose to insist that blood-and-hormone men behave,
Sang Murphy in his rocking chair.
Descartes distilled the soul’s free airs and strained them through
A gland to oil the body’s crankshafts like a dew.
Newton grinding lenses, plotted planets’ tracks,
Equationed clockwork symmetry, though there were cracks,
Sang Murphy in his rocking chair.
Darwin plucked a toe-spread lizard from a stone,
And complex man stood up and thought, but with a groan.
Einstein tugged space-time like a thick sheet of dough,
Made matter somersault and time go fast or slow,
Sang Murphy in his rocking chair.
Bohr pierced the atom’s darkest ooze to draw a chart –
The quanta dodged like three-card tricksters at a mart.
Monod watched his fusing chemicals collide,
He crooned for spirits though might just as well have cried,
Sang Murphy in his rocking chair.
Truth is glimpsed in a half smile and broken bread,
It’s in the throb which binds, the sun’s at-gloaming red:
Petri dish and cursor woo the “how?” and gone,
But “why?” which wrings the desert men, goes ever on,
Sang Murphy in his rocking chair.
====================
© May 2016 - July 2017
----------------
I.
Ah, the sun’s heat sizzles the pane,
And I must seek my Phase again,
Strapped upon this frame:
Naked to the searing air,
How stiff my flesh, how loath my name,
Said Murphy in his rocking chair.
Come death, its foul or glib mishap,
Embroiled, I’ll deliquesce to sap,
Puddling in these bands;
Dried by months which pass like prayer,
That dust will strew to cornered sands,
Said Murphy in his rocking chair.
Swept out by landlords quick to let,
My dust will roll in the wind’s jet,
Settling like a frost,
Earth-inhumed with bone and hair
In gardens that the self be lost,
Said Murphy in his rocking chair.
Then molecules once mine, or not,
Will mesh with others to a clot
Moulding beans or fruit;
Fed to one below the stair
He’ll spring an agon boy, though mute,
Said Murphy in his rocking chair.
And grown, fast-roped within the arms
Of some new chair, refusing psalms,
Treadmill-like he’ll rock,
Laved in sweat, his glassy stare
Outdistancing the ticking clock,
Said Murphy in his rocking chair.
II.
Heraclitus grabbed the water with his hand,
Untameable, it spilled in dancings to the sand.
Parmenides at goddess-call approached her cell,
He stumbled but surmised he neither stepped nor fell,
Sang Murphy in his rocking chair.
Plato, despairing, slapped and shook a thousand chairs
Then found in heaven a Form which purified his prayers.
Aristotle crawled in dust around his yard,
He prodded ants and droppings, looking very hard,
Sang Murphy in his rocking chair.
Moses, sun-parched in the desert, rasped the Law,
His tough-skinned tribes closed ranks, a bone for God to gnaw.
Christ, cross-hung, cauterized the world, and from His grave
Rose to insist that blood-and-hormone men behave,
Sang Murphy in his rocking chair.
Descartes distilled the soul’s free airs and strained them through
A gland to oil the body’s crankshafts like a dew.
Newton grinding lenses, plotted planets’ tracks,
Equationed clockwork symmetry, though there were cracks,
Sang Murphy in his rocking chair.
Darwin plucked a toe-spread lizard from a stone,
And complex man stood up and thought, but with a groan.
Einstein tugged space-time like a thick sheet of dough,
Made matter somersault and time go fast or slow,
Sang Murphy in his rocking chair.
Bohr pierced the atom’s darkest ooze to draw a chart –
The quanta dodged like three-card tricksters at a mart.
Monod watched his fusing chemicals collide,
He crooned for spirits though might just as well have cried,
Sang Murphy in his rocking chair.
Truth is glimpsed in a half smile and broken bread,
It’s in the throb which binds, the sun’s at-gloaming red:
Petri dish and cursor woo the “how?” and gone,
But “why?” which wrings the desert men, goes ever on,
Sang Murphy in his rocking chair.
====================
© May 2016 - July 2017
