Ben Howard
Right Livelihood
 

    On the occasion of my retirement

How shall I address you,
you to whom I gave
my youth, my middle age,
and much of my regard?
Now that I’m taking leave

of you, and you are backing
swiftly away from me,
how shall I name your features,
which even now recede,
as does the din of voices

the clamor of demands?
What shall I call you now,
you who were not opaque
nor ever very solid,
your meetings, consultations,

syllabi, appointments
at most an aggregate
to which the name Professor
attached itself, as if
to give that ever-shifting

scaffolding of duties
and transitory desires
a look of permanence
and lasting aspiration?
Say, if you will, that all

those hours disappearing
even as I write,
those hours spent preparing
to say what might be said
of metaphor or meter,

O’Faolain’s ironies
or Yeats’s layered symbols,
do not reside in fraying
folders, yellowed notes
or boxes in a closet,

but are as living beings
inhabiting the wakened
minds of Claire and Jason,
Scott and Domenica,
and all those other seekers

who trusted me to listen
and, when apt, to guide
their nascent understandings
into a lit arena
or call to their attention

channels that otherwise
might never have been opened.
To them I dedicate
these lines, as well I might,
for in their widened hearts

and slow-maturing minds
is my continuation.
But what shall I say to you,
my erstwhile Superintendent,
who summoned me to quarrels

I’d rather have avoided
and when it suited you
subjected me to judgments
better left unspoken?
On more than one occasion

Larkin called you Toad,
a graceless epithet,
though not entirely false.
Frog, I might have said,
though not the frog that brought

enlightenment to Basho.
Rather, the one who croaks
in low, unmannerly tones
whenever he is hungry
or longing for his way.

I might have other names,
not all of them benign,
but today the crocuses
are up, and casting glances
backward or askance

is not my inclination.
So let me take a leaf
from Basho’s heritage
and call you by a name
reserved for such employment

as does more good than harm,
a name appropriate
to rescuers and monks,
priests and clowns alike.
Right Livelihood, it’s called,

and though your character
is not a priest’s or hero’s
much less a martyred saint’s,
the livelihood you offered
was right enough for me,

providing as it did
a forum for reminding
the most recalcitrant
that every waking moment
is worthy of attention

and worthy, too, of words
chosen with precision
and truthful to the core.
Right speech, it’s sometimes called,
by which is meant the speech

that indicates what’s there
and never what is not;
that waters seeds of joy
and equanimity;
and, when warranted,

assigns revealing names
to greed and cruelty,
injustice and deceit.
So let me raise a cup
in gratitude to you,

Right Livelihood, who fostered
right and noble speech
in all of us who sought it,
as though it were your offspring,
your one enduring son.

 

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