The Fly
Imagine in your dreams
fumbling towards
a four metre high sandstone sculpture
of a common house fly-
with wings outstretched/ layered
in the traditional style
of Pacific Coast totem figures
dead to the world wild around it.
Look up-
examine more intricately
the stone golden artifice
as it enfolds before your imagination.
See its membranous wings
take shape/ translucent
see them lifting the insect free
from its puparium of mortal strivings.
'The Fly' (2001) first appeared in the wonderful Zygote in my Coffee #39. It was inspired, in part by my HSC close study of William B. Yeats' poetry, in particular 'Sailing to Byzantium, Part 4:
IV
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
The speaker of the poem, presumably Yeats, is reflecting on how he can achieve immortality through his Art. He knows his physical body is falling apart and he imagines if he can be reborn as an artwork
"of hammered gold" he can transcend his mortal self and personal short comings. The bird "set upon a golden bough" appears to symbolise the artifice of eternity that can "sing" through his poetry.
In his Preface to Poems (1906) Yeats writes, "All art is in the best analysis an endeavour to condense as out of the flying vapour of the world an image of human perfection." In 'The Fly' Yeats' "golden bird" is changed to that of a common house fly to foreshadow a less elitist view of Art, subject matter and form in my own embryonic work.
