Author: Stevan Harnad

The real dread’s
not the endless loss
of one’s own life,
but the endless loss
of the lives
of the ones
one loves.
To live long
is to be damned
to live long
in that expanding
purgatory.

9/9/9

no/nem/nein

I can’t say all
you cannot hear
and others do

and all I say
and leave unsaid
I know you knew

this too I know
is not for you
it’s just for show

except the tears
they’re real enough
when words won’t flow

I never lived a day on earth
that you were not there too
more far than near yet everywhere
what made this home was you.

You’re gone now and this place is not
what I contracted for
or would have done if ever asked:
Renew? No, nevermore.

Two sure truths the firmament
will ever owe Descartes:
P and not-P can’t both be
and as thou feelst thou art.

Yet all my life one certainty
inhered in every thought:
that you were why my being meant;
without you being’s naught.

Losing one’s love’s
an ache
an agony
yet at bottom
just about me

Losing one loved’s
an abyss
an eternity
fate worse than any
yet not about me

Losing one’s love
is an ache
that poets
immortalize

But losing one loved
intimates
that abyss where
mortality lies

Raoul Jobin was a wonderful tenor. And his French accent is certainly authentic — perhaps too authentic, for he often (perhaps always) uses the uvular (gargle) “R” that almost everyone in France uses in speaking, rather than the apical (tip-of-the tongue) Italian “R” that is virtually universal in operatic singing. He rolls his throat Rs so well that one sometimes cannot tell, but when evident it inadvertently calls to mind French cabaret singing (Piaff, Montand, Patachou) where the rolled uvular R is the norm, indeed a must, and gives the French chançon populaire its distinctive character. (This doesn’t detract from the beauty of Jobin’s voice or his musicianship, but it does give a bit of an intrusive jolt now and then.) It’s all the more surprising since in Quebec the use of the apical R has persisted in some regions (e.g., Montreal) even to the present day, whereas it’s largely obsolete in France.

When I was a student in the ’50’s at the Camp Musical in Mount Orford (the creation of Gilles Lefebvre of Jeunesses Musicales) Raoul Jobin was a voice professor there, although he had, I believe, already given up his public performing career. (I remember that in a satirical student skit in which the professors were given nicknames, he was called “Çaroule Pa’b’en” but I believe that was just an affectionate play on his rotundity, not the rolling of his Rs!)

realistic
resigned
reconciled
to facts
but this fact
I cannot assimilate
it touches on existence
not mine
and essence
mine
irreconcilable

The only way to restore my heart,
I know,
and make the universe habitable again,
would be to reduce Life
to a macabre, metaphysical mockery

so there is no way