FREDERICK FEIRSTEIN
261
lene have gone down to the disaster site after breakfast (N.B. "In The
Restaurant")
to
mourn Jack. While a chamber group is playing, Jill tells
Mark:
"I've come to mourn him here and, as we've prayed,
We've heard rock music classically played.
I see Jack dancing in a masquerade
With Lady Death-black dress, black hat, white plume
Uptown, crosstown, and in our living room.
The music swells and they are out of sight.
I call him, 'Jack, come back to say Goodnight.'
But I hear just this haunting melody:
'My darling, save the last ghost dance for me.'"
After a few more lines of Jill's, Mark responds with end-stopped cou–
plets in parallel
to
end the poem with a music that reunites the three of
them:
"Come on, let's take our baby home, Marlene.
Let's flag a cab or gypsy limousine.
Let's take her home, to thirty years and back
Before another terrorist attack
(Their bodies shaved, their eyes all deadened black)
Attempts
to
make our skyline disappear.
Let's seize the day, this night, this dying year.
Let's seize Thanksgiving, Christmas.... Do you hear
That segue, bows drawn slowly as they play?
They innocently smile at us and sway.
You know that song, since six, Jill ...
Yesterday ."
To sum up: Working with metaphor, plot, characters, meter, and
rhyme in the lyric sequence and the dramatic monologue helped me to
prevent what might have become psychic numbing or at best the for–
mation of symptoms. It also helped me stay not only emotionally alive
but self-analytical as I listened to my analysands talk about what 9/I
I
and its aftermath meant to them. In an earlier issue of
Partisan Review
I described how in general the arts of psychoanalysis and poetry have
certain similarities. In analyzing my own experiences and their relation
to my poetry, I have tried to show how creativity may turn into healing
power after public trauma.
