Creative artists and writers help us see the world clearly, bringing new perspectives, even to tragic events. In this session we will look at a poem, an elegy that arose from the pain of losing a loved one to AIDS. You may remember that I suggested three books at the beginning of the course. One was Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir, by Paul Monette. Borrowed Time tells the story of the illness and death, of Paul's partner, Roger Horwitz. It is a grueling difficult book, but it is also beautiful because of the clarity with which it depicts the love between the two men. After Rog died, Paul wrote a series of poems, elegies, published in a book called Love Alone: Eighteen Elegies for Rog. Today we'll read one of those poems, the poem is called Gardenias. Before we read it, let me give you some information that may make it easier to follow. Paul and Roger were well-off financially. Roger was a lawyer and Paul was a writer, who made a living sometimes by working in the film industry. They traveled a lot, until Rog got sick. They lived in a nice house in the Hills of Southern California. They enjoyed the garden very much and this poem talks about the garden and the gardenias that grew in it. The poem makes reference to Billie Holiday, the iconic jazz and blues singer who wore gardenias in her hair. This photo of Billy Holiday and her dog is appropriate because Paul and Roger had a dog who was an important part of their household. I think the poem also makes reference to one of Billy's song that mentions jealousy. Our love is different dear, to me it's almost heavenly. Let us guard it, ever preciously, even jealously while we may. As Paul thinks about his life with Roger, he regrets that he didn't know Roger earlier when they were both very young. I'll read the poem while the text is on the screen and you can follow along with me. If you like, you can turn down the sound and read it aloud yourself. Pain is not a flower. Pain is a root, and its work is underground where the moldering proceeds. The bones of all our joy winded and rained and nothing grows. A whole life's love that longed to be an orchard forced to lie like an onion. Secret, sour, in the mine of pain. The ore veined out. There's just these tunnels shot with roots. But then we were never gardeners, were we? Planters, waterers, cleanup crew. More yard boys, three bucks an hour, than rose queens. Still, the place was the vale of Arcady to us. And after all, a man can plant a stone here, and it'll sprout. But gardenias now, those vellum Billie Holiday prom flowers, what a shock to learn that they grew on trees, well bushes. Then we urned one in the shade of the Chinese elm, watered and watered the white blooms wafting May to mid-August. Now and then you'd bring one in, floating in a bowl, leave it on my desk. By such small tokens did the world grow green, and the Billie Holiday song is this I'm jealous of all the time. I didn't know you yet and the month since, so full of risible scalding blankness. I crave it more that secondhand past. Oh you can keep the lovers, the far countries, but you young, you twenty, you in Paris with a poem in your boot. If I could have that, really be there then, beside you or waving across Boulevard Saint-Germain, I'd face these dead days, longer, the cave of all that's left. Enough now as to gardenias. Look, this is such a cliche. But one happened to break in October. By then I was bringing them in. Leaving them at your bedside between the Kleenex and the talking clock. Smell it good now Rog, it's the last one. Fourth day, yellow and smutty, yet I gave you one last whiff right under your nose while you talked to Jaimee. Then you died a week later and that next day I was out in the garden to die of the pain. But wait, what is this Thomas Hardy, a furled gardenia coming out which I bowled by the bed? I sleep now just where you slept, curled in the selfsame spot. That one lasted the funeral. Next week a third billowed out. What is this, Twilight Zone, which I laid on your grave as if I were your date for the prom, which I would have been if we'd ever been 18. But for all the spunk of the three gardenias, still, the pain is not a flower and digs like a spade in stony soil. No earthly reason, not a thing will come of it but a slag heap and a pit and the deepest root, the stuff of witch banes winds and winds it tendril about my heart. I promise the the last gardenias Rog, but they can't go on like this. They've stopped. They know the only garden we'll ever be is us and it's all winter. They tried, they tried. But oh, the ice of my empty arms, my poor potato dreams. Paul Monette himself died of AIDS in 1995 in the year before antiretroviral therapy became available. The words of another poet have been used to describe Paul's elegies for Rog. Ron Prince wrote, cutting events out of flow, turning grief into lamentation, and lamentation into praise, little by little and piece by piece. I think Paul was turning grief into lamentation and lamentation into praise. In his case, into praise of both Love and Roger. Many writers, artists, filmmakers, have tried to capture and help us deal with the AIDS disaster. I think this poem, and Monette's book of elegies is one of the better attempts.
