Melancholia

Tom Ph

 The whirring internal machine, its gears

grinding not to a halt but to a pace that emits

a low hum, a steady and almost imperceptible

hum: the Greeks would not have seen it this way.

Simply put, it was a result of black bile,

the small fruit of the gall bladder perched

under the liver somehow over-ripened

and then becoming fetid. So the ancients

would have us believe. But the overly-emotional

and contrarian Romans saw it as a kind of mourning

for one’s self. I trust the ancients but I have never

given any of this credence because I cannot understand

how one does this, mourn one’s self.

Down by the shoreline - the Pacific

wrestling with far more important

philosophical issues - I recall the English notion

of it being a wistfulness, something John Donne

wore successfully as a fashion statement.

But how does one wear wistfulness well

unless one is a true believer?

The humors within me are unbalanced, 

and I doubt they were ever really in balance

to begin with, ever in that rare but beautiful

thing the scientists call equilibrium.

My gall bladder squeezes and wrenches,

or so I imagine. I am wistful and morose

and I am certain black bile is streaming

through my body as I walk beside this seashore.

The small birds scrambling away from the advancing 

surf; the sun climbing overhead shortening shadows;

the sound of the waves hushing the cries of gulls: 

I have no idea where any of this ends up. 

To be balanced, to be without either 

peaks or troughs: do tell me what that is like...

This contemplating, this mulling over, often leads 

to a moment a few weeks from now, 

the one in which everything suddenly shines 

with clarity, where my fingers race to put down 

the words, my fingers so quick on the keyboard 

it will seem like a god-damned miracle.

C. Dale Young