Notes for a ballad titled 'John Hennessy's Balcony'

  

From John Hennessy’s balcony, one can see mornings bathed in pale blue and pink. Come evening and it is crimson that paints the sky. Not always, of course, for landscapes commune with seasons and weather can willy nilly wreck or repaint. One thing is assured: John Hennessy’s balcony is a place to feast one’s eyes and that prompts the mind to meditate on the eternal verities.

John Henessy has Irish and Sicilian blood. How much of each I do not know and neither does he. Not in the sense of cultural trace in ways of being. He was born and raised in New Jersey, USA. He is a citizen of the USA. That’s stamped on his passport and probably elsewhere too. I think he is also from Sri Lanka, even though he doesn’t have dual citizenship.

 John Hennessy after finishing high school, thought of applying to Amherst College. He didn’t because the school, in its application form, had wanted to know if John had relatives who had attended Amherst. I applied too, but my application was rejected. We were brothers then. We were what Amherst missed. Sadly or thankfully! In fact, two years ago, John and I visited the school and took a photograph to commemorate the momentous occasion!

 

John attended Princeton and later completed a Masters in Fine Arts, I think in some university in Texas. Ironically, he now lives in Amherst, Massachusetts and teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Ironically but happily nevertheless it’s where I had the best conversations with John. 

I have not had the privilege of absorbing that particular slice of Amherst’s pastoral outskirts in all months or all four seasons. My visits were in early and late Fall, the first in 2023 and the next and last the following year. John sends me pictures though. And in this way, admittedly limited, I’ve revisited John Hennessy’s balcony many times.  

 There are horses beyond the road that lies below the apartment complex where John lives. I’ve seen them being trained. For what, I do not know. There’s a lumber yard beyond; I don’t know which forests are being cut down though. There’s cattle. They move from one end of the field to the other. And back. I have not monitored their movement though.

There are hills too. They get coloured and recoloured by sun, cloud, precipitation and time of day. They turn grey after sunset and jet black not too long afterwards. They almost disappear into the night. Moonlight and even starlight ensure that their presence is evident nevertheless.

John Hennessy’s balcony is made for quiet times. It hosts stimulating conversations too. Tea and coffee are welcome. Wine too, depending on time of day and mood. Crackers and cheese. Fruit too. It is also a place to read a book, write notes or poetry and, in John’s case, grade papers of undergraduates and graduate students.

News of the day, John’s in particular, is best ‘read’ in John Hennessy’s balcony, I’ve found. It is a good place for post mortems too. Children, parenting, love, relationships, horrors of the world, tyranny of the sophomoric, and the courage in the midst of hopelessness find the balcony to be the most comfortable place in John Hennessey’s apartment.

I think it was when we were passing a particular house that John told me about a move to change the town’s name from Amherst to Emily. Amherst was named after Lord Jeffrey Amherst, a British general who has the unenviable reputation of an expressed desire to spread smallpox among Native Americans during the Pontiac’s War. Emily was the alternative proposed since it was the birthplace and home of the 19th-century American poet Emily Dickinson. The house was where she lived and is now a museum. John mentioned this in passing, literally. I can’t remember returning to the subject but I do know that sitting in John Hennessy’s balcony, I wondered on more than one occasion of Amherst, Dickinson, what is, what could or ought to have been and what may one day be. There, in that corner of an America unknown to and probably unrecognisable by Walt Whitman, another poet celebrated in and beyond the USA, and in other parts of the planet, especially in Gaza, Occupied Palestine.

John, like anyone of our age (we were both born in 1965), has stories. Many. Here’s one. On one occasion, John was taunted by an ill-tempered, ignorant and arrogant restaurant owner. A man who would rather walk away from unpleasantness and conflict even if it costs him dearly, John decided to leave. However, it was one of those rare occasions when one feels like doing the 180-degree turn. In this case, literally. John stormed back and re-confronted the uncouth restaurateur.

‘I can read. And not only read, I am a poet!’

He is. John writes and also edits several poetry periodicals. He can tell good poetry from bad, and promising writers from the hopeless. This is why he is a good teacher, I think.

John speaks of his day. Of his students. Of their work. Of his classes. The innumerable frustrations that are somehow redeemed by that one student or one essay or poem or even a single line that he will not forget for years. Small but necessary rewards to keep a teacher in school, year after year, decade after decade, regardless of salary anomalies, intra-departmental noise and personal tragedy.

Such things we’ve spoken of sitting in John Hennessy’s balcony, as light and shadow, colour and the shapes of hills and creatures dip into our conversations without causing ripple or rupture.

As I write, it’s a little past midnight in Amherst. It’s early Fall. The leaves are probably starting to change colour, but even if they have it would be too dark to detail such things. There were snow flurries one morning when I visited John two years ago, but it’s too early in the year for that and the consequently magical transformation of the landscape. There would be the odd vehicle and in its lights one might catch the shape of a shed or a tree. It would be cool. John is probably fast asleep but I am not and would still be wide awake had I been there. I would be in John Hennessy’s balcony, with a cup of coffee, patiently waiting for physical weariness and mental composure to drive me to bed.

John Hennessey is probably fast asleep. There’s no one on the balcony right now. There’s the table. There are chairs. Unoccupied, but not for long.

There will soon be poetry and conversation, coffee or wine, pained expressions and loud laughter. Touched by pastel shades and love. That’s John Hennessy’s balcony. A ballad that will hopefully get written. 

 

[This article was published in the Daily News under the weekly column title 'The Recurrent Thursday']