Nowhere Else To Go Poem by gershon hepner

Precautions must be taken with
precaution, treated as a myth.
If not, they’ll lead us to forbid
the source of life, known as the id,
from free expression, which we need
for every yetser hora deed.

They should be scheduled for deletion
in pastures green that are Beckettian.
Ignore my wise scenario
if you have nowhere else to go,
but only someone who’s a schmuck
would disregard this wise pesak.


Inspired by Christopher Isherwood’s review of Barry McGovern’s performance in “I’ll Go On, ” a lively tramp through the vast, thorny pastures of Beckett’s prose that is being performed at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater through Sunday. The evening, directed by Colm O Briain, is part of the Lincoln Center Festival’s small program of staged versions of Beckett works not originally written for theater, all produced by the Gate Theater of Dublin (“Lingusitic Somersaults Through Beckettian Pastures, ” NYT, July 21,2008) :
He opens the show with a few introductory remarks before the curtain, a little comic warm-up with grim shafts of Beckettian bleakness embedded in it. “You can’t leave, ” he says, bulging eyes leering at the audience. “Because you’re afraid it might be worse elsewhere.” As this music-hall opening suggests, Mr. McGovern and Gerry Dukes, who together selected the texts, have concentrated on the rich seams of humor in Beckett’s writing, the mad cackle that echoes in even the grimmest passages. They have taken a sculptor’s chisel to “Molloy, ” the first novel in the series, and chipped away great chunks of language to reveal the picaresque comic narrative underneath. The title character is a tramp with a bum leg — actually two now — who is recalling a wayward journey to visit his mother. His story unfolds as a series of strange vignettes brought to physical life by Mr. McGovern, jumping back and forth between Molloy and the characters he encounters. While tootling along on his decrepit bicycle, Molloy is accosted by a policeman and taken to the police station. It is there that the unwelcome charity is forced on Molloy, in the form of a repellent cup of tea and stale bread. “Let me tell you this, ” he bitterly confides, “when social workers offer you, free, gratis and for nothing, something to hinder you from swooning, which with them is an obsession, it is useless to recoil.” Freed later, Molloy continues on his way, only to run over a little dog, and not a dog straying in the street but one safely leashed. “Precautions are like resolutions, ” Molloy darkly observes, “to be taken with precaution.” The dog’s grateful owner — the unfortunate thing was on the verge of death anyway — insists that Molloy accompany her to its burial. The bravura comic centerpiece of Molloy’s journey is a long, elaborate discussion of the mathematical processes involved in choosing the stones he likes to suck on for comfort. Such are the useless obsessions that fill the gaping days.


7/21/08