Caught to your heart

John Masefield wrote a cycle of sonnets which were published in 1916,and this is one which is the penultimate in the series. it seems to me a contemplation on death, and it had a strange resonance for me of a film from the 1950’s, ‘The Incredible Shrinking Man’. I have mentioned this film before when commenting on Masefield’s sonnets; the film was released in 1957 and was based on a science fiction novel of the same name by Richard Matheson. Matheson died two years ago, at the age of eighty-seven, and wrote many famous stories and novels, many of which have been made into films, including ‘I Am Legend’, and ‘What Dreams May Come’. He also wrote screenplays and for television.

‘The Incredible Shrinking Man’ is the story of a man who is affected by a mysterious mist and begins to shrink; when I saw it as a teenager I found it quite horrific, and its disturbing idea and the way it was filmed left a lasting and unpleasant memory.  However, this sonnet is not horrific, or disturbing is almost a meditation on the end of life. As usual with Masefield, it is full of imagery, the inescapable decomposition of a body, glow-worms, dust beneath feet, eyes, mourning clothes, poison fruit, jewels, April sunshine, Spring and primroses, and not a typical poetic image, the smell of urine.  Another common feature of Masefield’s work is unusual vocabulary – which sometimes has to be guessed at, defying identification in any dictionary I have – ‘pourried ribs’, ‘pash that rots’, and ‘pismires’ – which I think I can be sure means the smell of urine…

When all these million cells that are my slaves
Fall from my pourried ribs and leave me lone,
A living speck among a world of graves,
What shall I be, that spot in the unknown?
A glow-worm in a night that floats the sun?
Or deathless dust feeling the passer’s foot?
An eye undying mourning things undone?
Or seed for quickening free from prisoning fruit?
Or an eternal jewel on your robe,
Caught to your heart, one with the April fire
That made me yours as man upon the globe,
One with the Spring, a breath in all desire,
One with the primrose, present in all joy?
Or pash that rots, which pismires can destroy?