Lawrence Holofcener was a gifted polymath, a famous sculptor and a playwright. He was engaged with his times both culturally and historically. His last play being produced posthumously is about Churchill’s Christmas get-together with the Roosevelt family in which the interplay of human relations in a domestic setting was played out with ripple effect on millions of people.
He has written what must be a unique book, Day of Change in that it is half poetry, half prose. The storyline concerns his vision of America, part real, part imagined. It is dystopian though this does not detract from his optimism that it can change for the better. The thrust of his thinking touches on many of the aspects of life to those who are given to reflection. He lays stress on the importance of learning, of thinking about what is going on in the world, mankind’s drives and urges, the beauties and bounties of nature and the ‘un-seeing way in which we live our lives. A sense of the extraordinary strangeness of life pervades his work. What a strange creature is man; what a strange world we inhabit! The poem is continuous narrative though many of the verses could be stand-alone poems. A selection of illustrative verses are below the extracts which are immediately beneath that say something of his philosophy of life:
Teaching is nothing,
Learning is all.
Building, baking,
Shoe and dress-making,
Farming, fishing or fashion
Whatever your call,
Make it your passion!
That Ending is fitting for those who believe in fantasy, in miracles, in a god. Or the tooth fairy. It is for those who denied or ignored the warnings of the earth’s scientists about the failing health of the planet caused in part by burning coal, oil and wood; killing the forests for human exploitation; and worst of all, careless over-population of the human species.
However, for those who fought valiantly to save the planet, there is another Ending.
In the beginning
Was the land itself
Happy child of a star’s debris.
Desert, swamp
Mountain and shelf
Fashioned by wind
And ice and sea.
Tossing about
Imagine the fun
Twisting and turning
For eons and ages
Under the mothering eye
Of the sun.
Smooth or lumpy
Thick or skinny
Some were frumpy
Some wore tails.
Vast varieties of shape they were.
One could roar
Another whinny.
Coats they wore
Of spines or scales
Or leather lined with unfake fur.
But for all their unrelated ways
And looks and language
Animals
For no apparent reason
Lived side by side
And separately
Season after season
After season.
Coming and going
And going and coming
Resting a moment, a month or more.
Perfectly aerodynamically graceful
Scouring the heavens from shore to shore.
Seemingly fragile
All feathers and stuffing
Yet able to travel for miles without puffing.
Swiftly or lazily crossing the sky.
Making one wonder
Just how do birds fly?
Followed by even
A deeper thought-why?
Are they of another world
Captured by ours
Bound by our atmosphere’s limited powers?
Tirelessly wandering here and about –
Could they be searching
To find the way. . . out?
Quiet, wild, and free it was.
Open, innocent, tame.
Being without trying to be it was.
Until man came.
Incredible as it appears
A conclusion that leaves one agape
Is the fact that for billions of years
The earth was managed by billions of things
The smartest of which was an ape.
Until man came.
There once was described in a book
In a chapter called Genesis
A garden much like this.
Until man came.
So in the ground
Beneath the concrete cities
The oil-soaked paths
The iron rails
And flattened fields
The unhurried sweet breath
Of life for countless living things
Which had humbly and hardily thrived
Since the earth had cooled
Was unceremoniously
Ground to death.
Computers were invented
To watch the machines
That made the machines
That flew in the sky
Along the rails
And on the paths
And solved problems at speeds
That made the mind dizzy.
Humans were hired
To watch the computers
Make charts
Check gauges
Scribble notes
Wear frowns
Keep moving
Look busy.
In the name of PROSPERITY
Paper money was printed
To exchange for goods –
Paper which represented gold
A yellow metal buried deep in the earth
Which was dug out, purified, cast into bars
And reburied.
The more paper one used
The richer one was thought to be.
Soon paper was spent
Quicker than gold was extracted.
So into the vaults went I.O.U.
Instead of O.R.E.
But the makers of goods
Accepted the paper
And paid the people who made the goods
Who then would give the paper to people
Who grew the food and then they gave . . .
Soon everyone had enough for their needs.
But the more they had
The more did they crave.
Who was at peace?
Peace was just the temporary absence of war.
Who was rich?
Prosperity was always around the corner.
Who gave anything
Beyond the price, the time
The junk in the attic?
Who was happy
Except in front of an Instamatic?
Who was proud?
Who made anything from scratch
By hand or brain?
Who loved life
Except when drunk
In love
Insane?
One day
A man sat down.
He sat down all day thinking
About the friend
He was too impatient to listen to.
The wife who had died and he missed her too late.
The symphony seat he’d owned but not sat in.
The seeds he had bought but not planted.
The love he now kept inside him.
Things he had left undone.
Things of no certain value.
He was in New York
Had arrived on the 8:49.
He was late so he took a cab
And when he got out
At his glass and concrete place of busyness
He noticed a bench.
Starting up the steps he paused.
!
One day
In a television studio in New York
A woman barked, growled
At everything, everybody.
Missed your cue!
The camera’s late!
My mike’s not on!
My makeup’s shoddy!
Somehow, something or someone
Had pricked a small but clean hole
In the bottom of her usually brimming bowl
Of confidence.
Her head buzzed.
What’s the point?
Learn the lines.
What am I doing?
Read the script.
The years and years—
You’ve made it, you’re rich.
–Of doing what?
Just concentrate.
It makes no sense-
No sense.
One day
All the unconscious folk awoke
To the myth of wash-and-wear.
Wasn’t a fraction as strong as cotton
Or half as warm as wool.
Cotton was easy to cultivate
And the sheep took little care.
Then and thereafter
The folks made certain
That nobody’d ever pull
The orlon over their eyes.
Deodorants made no scents.
Detergents told no more lies.
A year ago I fended and fretted
And fought for myself
Against everything.
Today I gladly tender
The paltry gift of my flesh
For the good of humankind
For all living things
For the earth, the universe
For the life of a child
Or a tree.