Introduction
We’re all familiar with the paired masks displayed above the curtains of any theater: Comedy and Tragedy, the yin and yang of what you can expect to see performed on stage. In his poem “The Masks above the Proscenium,” Richard Hoffman personifies them as the Greek philosophers Democritus and Heraclitus, contemporaries in the 5th century BCE.
The great French essayist Michel de Montaigne once wrote, “Democritus and Heraclitus were two philosophers, of whom the first, finding the human condition ridiculous and vain, never appeared abroad but with a jeering and laughing countenance; whereas Heraclitus commiserating that same condition of ours, appeared always with a sorrowful look, and tears in his eyes.”
Hoffman resurrects these two figures from the past to tell a timeless story of our divided selves, and he portrays them as two parts of a larger whole, contrary mirrors always disagreeing, and yet they each just might be the other’s “secret weapon.”
Heraclitus: Since we must die I think we must have come from death.
Democritus: I’d rather think we’re life’s and come to life again.
The critic Rick Larios, in The Manhattan Review, recently declared Richard Hoffman to be a “master elegist,” and that his poems “scare, inspire, and comfort. They’re generous, insistent, and beautiful in the way that only truth can be.” Ninth Letter is honored to present “The Masks above the Proscenium,” an exhilarating dialogue that can be seen as both elegy and reluctant praise poem for all of us, in these deeply troubled times that seem to have no end.
—Philip Graham, Editor-at-Large
The Masks above the Proscenium
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—Layli Long Soldier
Heraclitus: Come kindle me, spark. I’m here in the dark, waiting.
Democritus: Please don’t talk to me like that.
Heraclitus: O Marrow-dweller, I am tired of making sense.
Democritus: As if you ever did, Doomscroller, as if you ever did.
Heraclitus: What mourners need to hear is more than words.
Democritus: It could be my palate isn’t shaped to say what’s needed.
Heraclitus: Insights sometimes surface from the depths of sailors’ failures.
Democritus: The sail loves the wind, but the halyard the mast.
Heraclitus: Time heaves and churns, a choppy sea.
Democritus: In icy space alloys are formed by accident.
Heraclitus: Orders for next year’s calendar are down.
Democritus: Now all the maps will have to change. Again.
Heraclitus: When all is said and done I put my faith in poetry.
Democritus: Your suicidal teachers held that words are all we have.
***
Heraclitus (Aside):
I’m a bloody crack across a callused heel.
He’s an alley, a path, a dusty trace.
I’m a memory abandoned, a drifting bubble of déja vu.
He’s a meter for detecting reluctance.
I’m a birdbone flute two thousand years ago.
He’s an even more ancient grand impossible piano.
***
Heraclitus: I’d like, someday, to be more than just forgiven.
Democritus: Why on earth do you always want to reach so far?
Heraclitus: Is that my femur that you’re gnawing on and laughing?
Democritus: Why not? Hyenas can be angels too.
Heraclitus: Oh, so you’re an angel now? Let’s see some ID.
Democritus: You want to picture me but I don’t want you to.
Heraclitus: I long for things that once happened.
Democritus: Everything that happened once continues in its way.
Heraclitus: I have a great big stack of books suggesting possibilities.
Democritus: Words arranged with hope are analgesics, not vaccines.
Heraclitus: I just want to turn off auto-payment for the bombs.
Democritus: Here’s your receipt — surcharges, tax, and tip are not included.
Heraclitus: I am tired of the one I’ve always been mistaken for.
Democritus: You might like these special offers: pain relief, more time.
***
Democritus (Aside):
I’m an ambassador from a far-off flawless country.
He’s an empty rural mailbox with the flag up anyway.
I’m a brazen groundhog in the afternoon.
He’s a sparrow alight just long enough to chirp.
I’m a contrail breaking into clouds.
He’s the blue of the sky which isn’t really blue.
I’m a spruce at Christmas, tagged with others against a fence.
He is music I remember moved me as a child.
***
Heraclitus: I think we agree but sometimes it’s hard to tell.
Democritus: For as long as I can remember, you’ve been rehearsing dying.
Heraclitus: My books are wet evaporating silhouettes.
Democritus: You just don’t translate living fast enough.
Heraclitus: When have we ever not been dangerous to one another?
Democritus: What kind of fool expects a corpse to thank him?
Heraclitus: Maybe it’s a species trait to not say what we mean.
Democritus: One’s mother tongue’s already a protective membrane.
***
Heraclitus (Aside):
I’m a house condemned that fire fighters practice on.
He’s a wrack-line of snails and mussels and clamshells.
I’m a shipwreck creaking at the bottom of the sea.
He’s a brightly colored fish in the murk.
I’m orbiting debris requiring vigilant tracking.
He’s the saltiest of all the ions in the estuary!
***
Heraclitus: I think I’ve got this life the wrong way round.
Democritus: Inversion’s hard to spot when relative positions are correct.
Heraclitus: I believe I saw a crime once from the window of a train.
Democritus: At least back then you had a reason for your helplessness.
Heraclitus: We’re hungry and the larder’s full of rockets and grenades.
Democritus: Now don’t go getting all political again.
Heraclitus: I don’t believe there is a plan but there’s a shape.
Democritus: Now stand a little to the side and look from there.
Heraclitus: I’m fascinated galaxies continue birthing planets.
Democritus: Your carry-on must fit in the overhead compartment.
***
Democritus (Aside):
I’m breathing the particulate debris of genocides.
He’s a larval being that consumes me to be born.
I am twilight when only certain things are possible.
He’s a blizzard of falling stars that cannot possibly go on.
I’m a hardened furrow in a plowed and fallow field.
He’s a primitive barometer.
I’m a constellation in the middle of the afternoon.
He’s the unfurling of a bedsheet, floating down.
I’m a little terrier greeting you in ecstatic circles.
He’s a nearby spider that you never see.
***
Heraclitus: With my mates I drank the potion and became a pig.
Democritus: Some memories will likely remain out of reach.
Heraclitus: Why do you only ever come halfway?
Democritus: There’s just some muck I don’t have boots for.
Heraclitus: I’m not even swimming; I’m only trying not to drown.
Democritus: One can get stronger pushing against an immovable object.
Heraclitus: My make-believe helps falling feel like flying.
Democritus: It’s not imagination’s purpose to pretend but to envision.
***
Heraclitus (Aside):
Whole days go by, a single throb of the bassline.
He’s a frozen apple flashing on a branch in sunlight.
I’m a smoke-lulled drone in a honeycombed hive.
He’s a seagull’s cry that sounds like a derisive laugh.
I’m a one-man avalanche.
He seems to believe in destiny but won’t admit it.
We each consider the other our secret weapon.
Neither wants to know if the other is deluded.
Costumed by history, we share our clothes,
and both of us complain that they don’t fit.
***
Heraclitus: Can there be music in the sounds of an evacuation traffic jam?
Democritus: Is there any poetry left in an empty belly?
Heraclitus: Since we must die I think we must have come from death.
Democritus: I’d rather think we’re life’s and come to life again.
Heraclitus: Why would anyone want to come back here?
Democritus: So much is still to happen and I have questions.
Richard Hoffman is the author of five books of poetry: Without Paradise; Gold Star Road, winner of The Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize and the Sheila Motton Book Award from The New England Poetry Club; Emblem; Noon until Night, which received the 2018 Massachusetts Book Award for Poetry, and his most recent, People Once Real. His other books include the memoirs, Half the House and Love & Fury; Interference and Other Stories, and the essay collection Remembering the Alchemists. Twice awarded a Pushcart Prize, he is Emeritus Writer in Residence at Emerson College and Nonfiction Editor of Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices. He can be found on Facebook at richard.hoffman.718, and on Instagram at hoffman9422. His website is richardhoffman.org.
Featured Image: Gaywood, Richard and Wenceslaus Hollar. Democritus and Heraclitus. 1650-60. Etching. New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
