The Transparent Man Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEFDGHIDJKEDDLMNO POQRSTUVWXYTETZA2TB2 C2DD2E2F2G2H2I2J2KK2 EKL2E2J2J2M2J2MJ2N2J 2J2J2J2O2TP2Q2R2J2TQ J2D2TORQK2Q2S2T2TJ2U 2J2J2V2G2J2M2W2DJ2DJ 2DDJ2J2X2DJ2W2K2NJ2J 2J2J2MV2Y2Z2G2DJ2Q2E| I'm mighty glad to see you Mrs Curtis | A |
| And thank you very kindly for this visit | B |
| Especially now when all the others here | C |
| Are having holiday visitors and I feel | D |
| A little conspicuous and in the way | E |
| It's mainly because of Thanksgiving All these mothers | F |
| And wives and husbands gaze at me soulfully | D |
| And feel they should break up their box of chocolates | G |
| For a donation or hand me a chunk of fruitcake | H |
| What they don't understand and never guess | I |
| Is that it's better for me without a family | D |
| It's a great blessing Though I mean no harm | J |
| And as for visitors why I have you | K |
| All cheerful brisk and punctual every Sunday | E |
| Like church even if the aisles smell of phenol | D |
| And you always bring even better gifts than any | D |
| On your book trolley Though they mean only good | L |
| Families can become a sort of burden | M |
| I've only got my father and he won't come | N |
| Poor man because it would be too much for him | O |
| And for me too so it's best the way it is | P |
| He knows you see that I will predecease him | O |
| Which is hard enough It would take a callous man | Q |
| To come and stand around and watch me failing | R |
| Now don't you fuss we both know the plain facts | S |
| But for him it's even harder He loved my mother | T |
| They say she looked like me I suppose she may have | U |
| Or rather as I grew older I came to look | V |
| More and more like she must one time have looked | W |
| And so the prospect for my father now | X |
| Of losing me is like having to lose her twice | Y |
| I know he frets about me Dr Frazer | T |
| Tells me he phones in every single day | E |
| Hoping that things will take a turn for the better | T |
| But with leukemia things don't improve | Z |
| It's like a sort of blizzard in the bloodstream | A2 |
| A deep severe unseasonable winter | T |
| Burying everything The white blood cells | B2 |
| Multiply crazily and storm around | C2 |
| Out of control The chemotherapy | D |
| Hasn't helped much and it makes my hair fall out | D2 |
| I know I look a sight but I don't care | E2 |
| I care about fewer things I'm more selective | F2 |
| It's got so I can't even bring myself | G2 |
| To read through any of your books these days | H2 |
| It's partly weariness and partly the fact | I2 |
| That I seem not to care much about the endings | J2 |
| How things work out or whether they even do | K |
| What I do instead is sit here by this window | K2 |
| And look out at the trees across the way | E |
| You wouldn't think that was much but let me tell you | K |
| It keeps me quite intent and occupied | L2 |
| Now all the leaves are down you can see the spare | E2 |
| Delicate structures of the sycamores | J2 |
| The fine articulation of the beeches | J2 |
| I have sat here for days studying them | M2 |
| And I have only just begun to see | J2 |
| What it is that they resemble One by one | M |
| They stand there like magnificent enlargements | J2 |
| Of the vascular system of the human brain | N2 |
| I see them there like huge discarnate minds | J2 |
| Lost in their meditative silences | J2 |
| The trunks branches and twigs compose the vessels | J2 |
| That feed and nourish vast immortal thoughts | J2 |
| So I've assigned them names There near the path | O2 |
| Is the great brain of Beethoven and Kepler | T |
| Haunts the wide spaces of that mountain ash | P2 |
| This view you see has become my Hall of Fame | Q2 |
| It came to me one day when I remembered | R2 |
| Mary Beth Finley who used to play with me | J2 |
| When we were girls One year her parents gave her | T |
| A birthday toy called The Transparent Man | Q |
| It was made of plastic with different colored organs | J2 |
| And the circulatory system all mapped out | D2 |
| In rivers of red and blue She'd ask me over | T |
| And the two of us would sit and study him | O |
| Together and do a powerful lot of giggling | R |
| I figure he's most likely the only man | Q |
| Either of us would ever get to know | K2 |
| Intimately because Mary Beth became | Q2 |
| A Sister of Mercy when she was old enough | S2 |
| She must be thirty one she was a year | T2 |
| Older than I and about four inches taller | T |
| I used to envy both those advantages | J2 |
| Back in those days Anyway I was struck | U2 |
| Right from the start by the sea weed intricacy | J2 |
| The fine haired silken threaded filiations | J2 |
| That wove like Belgian lace throughout the head | V2 |
| But this last week it seems I have found myself | G2 |
| Looking beyond or through individual trees | J2 |
| At the dense clustered woodland just behind them | M2 |
| Where those great nameless crowds patiently stand | W2 |
| It's become a sort of complex ultimate puzzle | D |
| And keeps me fascinated My eyes are twenty twenty | J2 |
| Or used to be but of course I can't unravel | D |
| The tousled snarl of intersecting limbs | J2 |
| That mackled cinder grayness It's a riddle | D |
| Beyond the eye's solution Impenetrable | D |
| If there is order in all that anarchy | J2 |
| Of granite mezzotint that wilderness | J2 |
| It takes a better eye than mine to see it | X2 |
| It set me on to wondering how to deal | D |
| With such a thickness of particulars | J2 |
| Deal with it faithfully you understand | W2 |
| Without blurring the issue Of course I know | K2 |
| That within a month the sleeving snows will come | N |
| With cold selective emphases with massings | J2 |
| And arbitrary contrasts rendering things | J2 |
| Deceptively simple thickening the twigs | J2 |
| To frosty veins bestowing epaulets | J2 |
| And decorations on every birch and aspen | M |
| And the eye self satisfied will be misled | V2 |
| Thinking the puzzle solved supposing at last | Y2 |
| It can look forth and comprehend the world | Z2 |
| That's when you have to really watch yourself | G2 |
| So I hope that you won't think me plain ungrateful | D |
| For not selecting one of your fine books | J2 |
| And I take it very kindly that you came | Q2 |
| And sat here and let me rattle on this way | E |
Anthony Evan Hecht
(1)
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About The Transparent Man
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