Hey Jude
(for little Jude)
When you sing your song
you can make it an angry one,
and do it so loud the punks climb out
of their graves to applaud.
Give them your autograph.
When you buy that submarine,
don’t paint it yellow – no, you can
opt for black, and wear a
black eye-patch as you stand
on the conning tower, coming
into the harbour, smiling.
But when you decide you want
a panther, maybe look for a
white one. They’re cooler,
and who knows, you could
name your band after it,
adding an S, and get tee-shirts
made, so you can clean up.
And what about green hair,
and a green beard? (Don’t forget
the eyelashes.) You could try
being a vegan, and if you
play in Chicago on Paddy’s Day
they’ll ply you with green beer.
You could learn to talk to horses,
or even dogs, but not cats.
Take up a weird variant of Zen,
and adapt to speaking Italian,
with a side interest in grappa.
If you stop to think of me at all,
imagine a brown bear in an office
looking for the way out. Don’t
worry, I’ll have my own jar of
honey, and I’ll be wearing blue
sunglasses and a porkpie hat.
And I’ll be whistling a polka
as I blunder down the corridors.
Anyway, I hope you live to be
a hundred and ride a red unicycle
down Kurfürstendamm, cheered on
by thousands, while pink bubbles
float above the Reichstag
and try to get to the moon.
If I had to single out the essential characteristic of Matthew Sweeney’s poetry, my term would be “benign anarchy”. Often described as a surrealist, Sweeney does more than play with estranged and heightened reality: he’s a protector of the morality of subversion.
His most recent collection, My Life As a Painter, was published last year, shortly before his death from motor neurone disease. But these are not his last poems, and the shadows playing over their lively stories and pictures are not exceptional in his work.
The collection begins with an epigraph from the opening of Frank O’Hara’s poem, Why I Am Not a Painter. Sweeney himself will make his own rules, of course. As the title poem declares, he’d like to paint a still life of the three birds his father once shot, “but I might add a few colours that weren’t there. / And I‘d follow up with a long flat portrait of three / spectacularly blue-moulded loaves, all of them rye.”
The blue of the bread mould morphs into the blue of the bear’s spectacles in this week’s poem: it is one of the poet’s favoured bright-dark colours. The palette in Hey Jude, addressed to Sweeney’s small grandson, flashes with primary colours, plus black and white, enhancing the cartoon quality of the images, and giving access to colour’s deeper symbolism.
From the beginning, the tradition of the poet-patriarch delivering epistolary advice to a younger male relative is gently tilted in Hey Jude. There’s the “bridge” of the title: a Beatles song can still connect the generations, especially when the child has the same name as the character in the song. The song title is further personalised in that beautiful, encouraging gesture of donation, “When you sing your song” (my italics). Most striking is the continued avoidance of imperatives: the adult speaker suggests the desirable activities (“you can”, “you could”), never gives orders.
The first stanza is unsentimental in its permission to express anger, and sing loudly enough to rouse the applauding punks from their graves. Life and music are not all Beatles innocence (not that the Beatles were all Beatles innocence, of course) and the advice keeps its edginess with regard to the submarine in the next stanza (“don’t paint it yellow”). The recommended black eye-patch suggests piracy: standing “on the conning tower” the child comes home safe and smiling, some kind of mischief securely accomplished.
Slipping from black to white, the political stance of the next stanza advises peace rather than aggression, a white panther pet that could inspire the name of the boy’s future band, the White Panthers. The reason is carefully child-shaped: white panthers are “cooler”. That knowing, tactfully light-hearted tone continues into the next stanza. Does the promotional green beer in Chicago on St Patrick’s Day represent misunderstanding and exploitation? Sweeney doesn’t preach: the stanza simply has fun with the various bids to greenness – dyeing your hair, becoming vegan. Stereotypes offered the child are not merely comforting, but turned into linguistic play and imaginative extension.
Sweeney was from County Donegal but had French ancestors and lived in – and engaged creatively with – a number of European cities, including London, Timisoara, Paris, Cork and Berlin – our poem’s final destination. So, wishing the child a hundred birthdays, Sweeney sets his now-centenarian grandson on a red unicycle “down Kurfürstendamm cheered on / by thousands while pink bubbles / float above the Reichstag”. It’s a deliberately sentimental, happy foil to older, colourless photographic images (known to the poet, but, not, we hope, to the child) of imperialist ambition and rabble-rousing demagoguery.
Perhaps, though, it’s that digression into self-portraiture in stanza six that forms the real climax of the poem. Conscious of frightening little Jude with the instruction to imagine (“if you think of me at all”) “a brown bear in an office, / looking for the way out” the writer hurries in with a list of reassurances. The bear has his own jar of honey, he whistles a polka. And, of course, he wears “blue / sunglasses” with the incongruous porkpie hat. It’s an upsurge of imaginative vitality and humour, powered by another essential Sweeney quality – kindness.
Enjoy the “song” of his recitation here.
