travail littéraire de mon père

2010-06-06T16:44:00.000-07:00

SMALL ROBERT

You lay on my chest, small Robert,
All eight pounds and some ounces
Of You.

Ticking and clicking and clinching,
Startled too, when a door slammed.

You were warm against my chest. small Robert,
Quiet, contented.
Our breathing synchronized, oddly enough.
Perhaps the rhythm of my heart
Was reassuring yours'.

My old right hand looked huge
On your small back.
Patting and stroking,
Enjoying.

Left arm close under your small butt,
Supporting.

Sixteen days of your sojourn
Had gone by.
I was proud to hold you.

Be strong, small Robert,
Grow apace.
Be brother to the human race.
Cherish all that God creates
And long years hence
As life abates,
In your children you will see
Where lies immortality.

I love you, small Robert.

****

Dec 13, 1972

Robert Ernest LaRock; 1920-1978

2010-06-06T14:31:00.000-07:00

Jacob

I looked at little Jacob
As he slept unaware,
He'd just then come to join us
(He didn't have much hair).

Comely, strong and healthy
With a quirky little smile
He nursed upon his mother's breast
with pleasure and with style.

Watching tiny Jacob,
My heart upon my face,
I thought about the future
And the course he'd have to trace.

Will he walk on astral planes
And pull old Plato's beard,
Hunt with vast Orion
And talk with creatures weird?

Wish to be on Venus
And find that he is there,
Know that Ursa Major
Is really not a bear?

Gently baby Jacob,
Take your lovely time--
Let those multiplying cells
Nature's trellis climb.

In you is a miracle--
Teeming, rampant, rife.
Flaming issue of the sun,
Pulsing, potent life.

Grandpa LaRock
1978

Robert Ernest LaRock 1920-1978

2006-11-05T17:43:00.000-08:00

Silent November

He rides on silent wings
Hen hawk in November skies
And preys on warm and furry things
As the old year dies.

Bleak and dwarfed, wind-slanted,
Stark and bare the tree.
Blackened earth, hill-canted
Sleeps, and waits for me.

Robert Ernest LaRock (1920-1978)

2006-10-08T10:00:00.000-07:00

Sunday scribbling 8 Oct. 2006

A short essay written by my Dad some time before 1978. This is for the assignment re; people watching for Sunday Scribbling.

Countdown

A young lad eight or ten years of age, sturdy and handsome, stopped his bike across from my porch the other day on his way out of the park. Still straddling the crossbar, he planted his feet solidly, looked straight ahead and stated his case.

"I'm gonna count to ten," he hollered, "then I'm goin' home."

He didn't seem to be talking to me, so I didn't answer. He counted in a loud voice, conscientiously, not stopping at ten but giving whoever he was shouting to the benefit of the doubt by continuing to twenty. He waited , silently, then hollered again.

" I'm goin' home."

He said someone's name, too, but I couldn't make it out. There was no one in the street as far as I could see, but then I realized he was orating for the benefit of some kids in the park playground, which was almost a block behind him.

Threatening to go home three or four more times without moving a wheel, he started counting again. I watched the group of kids in the playground but they didn't seem to be aware of his existence. All of this time he never turned around.

Two neighborhood dogs came over to investigate and get in on the action, so the lad got off his bike and rolled in the grass while they licked his face, but he soon remembered his wheel and started the countdown again. This time there was a note of desperation. Still no response.

Finally he rode away, leaving a trail of invisible tears.

Robert Ernest LaRock (1920 - 1978)

2006-09-12T04:45:00.000-07:00

Gratias

Gray and silver in the sun
Glassy smooth and still.
Giant river steady run,
Give my heart a thrill.

Green sometimes, sometimes blue,
Gargantuan in size.
Graceful is the word for you,
Grateful are my eyes.

God made the river's mighty flow,
Gave this gift to man.
Generations come and go
Gliding 'cross its span.

Gather up each brook and rill
Gently seaward stream.
Give me leave to look my fill,
Grant to me this dream.

2006-08-31T15:05:00.000-07:00

Esperanto

The precarious beat of the lonely heart,
The valiant pump of life's blood
There in its dark cavern, working,
Working.

Who thinks of thee, dear heart
'Til you cry out in anguish,
Perhaps to be stilled forever?
Stilled.

Pick up a silken, squirming puppy,
Feel the wild throb of terror
And love.
Gradually it slows, trusting.

Listen sometime, if you can,
to the beat of a baby's heart
Within the womb. Deep.
Muffled

Pick up an injured birdling, gently,
Oh, ever so gently.
Mute eyes seemingly unblinking,
Watchful.

Let his warmth permeate your hand-
Speak softly, murmur reassurance-
There is a universal language.
The language of the heart.

God knows.

© Robert Ernest LaRock (1920-1978)

2006-08-31T14:36:00.000-07:00

"What In Me Is Dark . . . "*

Within my ill-sorted lexicon
There lies a treasure infinite in scope
At which I peer with tantalizd hope
And pry and probe for pearls that I can pawn;
Or glowing phrase which I might build upon.
To seek, to find and not forever grope
With fumbling fingers powerless to cope,
Before the fervent flame has flared and gone.

If limpid luminescence fades with time,
perhaps the fault lies not within the eyes;
This flashing brilliance is but pantomime
Of stellar light that waxes, wanes and dies.
Though blind, man still the infinite may climb
To win again a promised Paradise

© Robert Ernest LaRock

* John Milton (1608-16740, Paradise Lost [1667],
Book I Line I.

2006-08-26T09:50:00.000-07:00

Utopia

© by Robert Ernest LaRock (1920-1978)

Durward Winze had spent most of his life without a goal. he read many books on how to be a success. Some of them were cleverly done and easy to understand, whereas others were patent frauds or come-ons. A few were honest, practical how-to books that could be of real benefit to the serious success-seeker. All, without exception, predicated success on the establishment of a goal, which he did not have, so the rest of the advice, however expert, was of little value. As he drifted along, a plaything of fate as it were, his lack of worldly success would sometimes cause pain, but he became inured to it and somewhat fatalistic.

Then one day he heard about another how-to-book. Its title was Goals, but his informant didn't know the author's name. Durward understood that the book was essentially a list, in alphabetical order, of thousands of goals ranging from adultry to zealotry. He tried the book stores; they'd never heard of it. He went to the local library; they did not have it but promised to try to get it. No success. He wrote to the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, The Vatican Library in Rome. His self-addressed, stamped envelopes came back containing regrets and asking the author's name. Books in Print listed seventeen titles beginning with "Goal," or "goals," and he sedulously checked them out, even one that proved to be about hockey, but all he had to show were several useless additions to his shelves.

He refused to be daunted, however, going from city to city, attending auctions and pestering librarians; to foreign countries (incidentally expanding his linguistic abilities to eight or ten languages) where he badgered bibliophiles and bookworms, Oxford Dons and archivists, and caused the book-stall owners on the Left Bank to petition the Prefecture for protection. He would travel until his money ran out, take six months off from his quest and work at any available job to build up a stake. As he became older he returned home and conducted his search by mail and telephone and word of mouth. He filled dozens of notebooks with fascinating book-lore, human-interest stories, personnal philosophy and observations. He died at a great age, his search unrewarded.

After his death his son gathered up the notebooks and took them to a publisher. The editing job was colossal, but it was done with care and affection and rare discrimination. Released to the trade it exploded overnight into a best-seller. Its title is Goals, by Durward Winze.

2006-08-24T18:54:00.000-07:00

Sonnet For Julie

The sonnet's made for lovers to impress--
Or maybe noble sentiments impart.
A kiss, a wish, a fragrant rose to press,
A catalyst to stir rememb'ring heart
With sudden chill. Not fitting place for Dad
To tell his love. Perhaps a simple verse
Would do, to tell sweet Julie that he's glad
Of her. No trite and banal lines rehears'd,
No fond and foolish sentiments of love;
He borders on old age and she is youth.
Can Spring and Autumn walk with hand in glove
Pretending that the truth is not the truth?
Enough! Enough! What need of reason clear?
Just say it with your heart and she will hear.

© by Robert Ernest LaRock (1920-1978)

2006-08-23T18:34:00.000-07:00

Not With a Whimper

The world will end when the poets die. It will end, not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with a sigh----and a silence.
Just as the great ocean rolled silently over Moby Dick and Ahab, so too will the great universal ocean roll silently over us, and there will be no herring-gull or albatross to pipe us to the grave.
Over the vast void the unquenchable Spirit will brood for a time, then turn with a cosmic sigh to other dimensions. The Spirit contains many elements (indeed it contains them all) and among the brightest, most durable and unquenchable of those elements is poetry.
Then poets are the "Chosen Race"? Poetry is the alpha and omega, the first and last? Yes, because there is a poet in each of us. What is it that cries in us, laughs in us, loves and despairs in us? Inside the fat man, it is said, there is a thin one crying for release. So too there is a poet in each of us, a soul if you prefer, striving for expression.
There is no nobility in matter, only in spirit, and even though it is a poet who says in triple tongue, "This is the way the world ends/This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper," it is demeaning to the human spirit to impugn it thus. Poets deserve better at the poets hand.
Everyone writes a poem. Perhaps it starts in a fourth dimension or in the electrified air between lovers. It may begin in the velvet sea of the womb ("The Cradle Endlessly Rocking"), but it does begin and verses are added every hour. The lengths of the poems vary according to our spans. There will be dull, pedestrian stanzas interspersed with harmonic passages. There will be dirges and wedding-songs, aubades and nocturnes; paeans of celebration and tinkling tunes of laughter. Each of us will write a love-sonnet -- if not, more's the pity -- and there will be ironic poems and sardonic poems, along with cradle songs.
Each of us has a built in metronome calibrated for hexameter, pentameter, what you will. We will call it the heart, the core of our life, and somehow we sense that it is more than muscle. It is hooked up with the mother sea and the urgent moon and keeps time for us tirelessly and incredibly.
And when, soon or late, this noble heart cracks, its impulse does not die. Its throbbing beat is one with the spheric music that will never die.
Yes, the world will end if the poets die.
But there will always be an Ishmael.

© by Robert Ernest LaRock (1920-1978)

Carpe Diem

2006-08-20T13:28:00.000-07:00

Carpe Diem

You think sometimes that greener pastures lie
Across the fence or down the road away
Impatience makes you fret at such delay
And in your mind barbed questions wonder why.
"This life, this now, green pastures will deny
As work I must from dawn "til end of day;
I put off dreams with what good grace I may
And let the midnight pillow hear my sigh."
Yet all around your feet are pastures green,
Your love beside you strong and warm and bright;
Like saplings are your children lithe and keen
And youth is yours to celebrate delight.
"Tis well to plan for future ills unseen--
But seize the day, leave sighing for the night.

©Robert Ernest LaRock (1920-1978)