ENDOCRINE LYRIC (poem) - Damir Šodan - Croatia

Endokrina lirika

godine 1934, nakon što mu je umrla
pokroviteljica koja je tijekom 40 godina
podupirala njegovo pisanje i politički angažman,
star i sam, nobelovac W. B. Yeats,
počeo je patiti od visokog krvnog pritiska
i slabog srca, do te mjere da je u pitanje
umalo došao i njegov stvaralački zanos.

ali Yeats, taj mistik
koji je s podozrenjem gledao
na svaki neosobni vid nauke
načuo je negdje za najnoviji
postupak rejuvenacije i na učas prijatelja
pronašao u Harley Streetu, u Londonu,
nekog australskog seksologa
koji je na njemu u proljeće iste godine
izvršio tzv. Steinachov zahvat
(varijantu vazektomije, prvi put oprobane u Beču,
koja je navodno vraćala zatomljeni nagon).

operacija je po svemu sudeći uspjela,
budući da se William u pismima prijateljima
ne bez ponosa povjeravao
kako mu se vratila seksualna želja
i da se zaljubio u mladu i talentiranu
pjesnikinju Margot Ruddock
kojoj je tada bilo svega 27
naspram njegovih zrelih 69.

cinični Dublinci prozvali su ga
smjesta “stari žljezdomat”.
međutim, W. B. je ponovno počeo pisati
pjesme i to je bilo važno.
jedna od tih novih pjesama
naslovljena Nagon glasi:

Misliš da je strašno u starosti bijesu
i požudi se podati, i njihovom plesu,
kad u mladosti ne bijahu počast za mene,
a sad jedini na pjesmu me nagone.

William je uskoro sastavio
i Oxford Book of Modern Verse
i počeo raditi na novom izdanju Sabranih pjesama
takvom silinom “kao da je potpisao”
– tvrdili su očevici – “novi ugovor sa životom!”
umro je tek pet dugih godina poslije
od srčanog udara na
– of all places –
Francuskoj rivijeri.

ENDOCRINE LYRIC

In 1934, having lost his patroness
who for forty years supported his writing
and political engagement, W. B. Yeats,
the Nobel Prize winner, old and alone,
began suffering from high blood pressure
and failing heart to the point
that his creativity almost waned.

But Yeats, that mystic
who would frown upon
any form of impersonal science
had heard somewhere about the latest
rejuvenation treatment and to the horror
of his friends found an Australian sexologist
on Harley Street in London who in the spring
of the same year performed on him
the so-called Steinach operation.
(A kind of vasectomy, first tested in Vienna,
which allegedly restored dormant drive).

The operation appeared successful,
judging by letters to his friends
wherein William proudly claimed
that had he regained his sexual desire
and fallen in love with a young and talented
poetess Margaret Ruddock
who was then all of 27,
in contrast to his ripe 69.

The cynical Dubliners immediately began
calling him a “gland old man”,
but W. B. set out writing poetry again
and that was what mattered the most.
One of those new poems entitled ‘The Spur’
goes like this:

You think it horrible that lust and rage
should dance attention upon my old age.
They were not such a plague when I was young;
What else have I to spur me into song.

William soon compiled
The Oxford Book of Modern Verse
and began working on a new edition of his Collected Poems
so intensely “as if “ – said witnesses –
“he was given a new lease on life”.
Five long years later he died
of heart failure on the French Riviera,
of all places
Imaginez?!