Jame Mckendrick "Afterquake"

Jame Mckendrick

"Afterquake"

By some cosmic quirk the disconnected phone unleashed a scarlet squeal. – I pounced. Before the apology expired I asked and got the wrong number the voice had tried, so for a whole year without a single bill I owned those magic digits to dispense – only for incoming not outgoing calls but a tiny lifeline to the ancient flat in via Torquato Tasso I shared with the din of Cerberus barking in the courtyard – forget the rat – and a crack the earthquake leſt in the vaulted ceiling. Thirty years on, in the small dark hours, I reach for the black Bakelite receiver to hear the music of Venus receding.

From Drypoint, Faber & Faber, 2024

This poem by James McKendrick, set in Salerno, speaks of a surreal and intimate connection forged through a fortuitous chance—a wrong phone number that became a "small lifeline." The poem weaves together memory, mythology, and nostalgia, with Venus symbolizing love, beauty, and desire. Venus here may not only represent love but also the juvenile experiences that permeated the poet’s life in Salerno, in the South of Italy.

Venus, the Roman goddess of love, is metaphorically evoked. Her "music fading into the distance" suggests that what she represents—love, a sense of wonder, the memory of a magical time—slowly recedes into the past, yet lingers as a faint echo in the poet's psychic life. Venus thus embodies both the allure of the past and the melancholy of its distance.

The "scarlet shriek" of the disconnected phone symbolizes an unexpected intrusion into the poet's present. He vividly describes his life in an "ancient apartment" on Via Torquato Tasso in old Salerno, surrounded by marvels as well as daily inconveniences: the barking of a dog he names Cerberus (the three-headed dog of Greek mythology, perhaps symbolizing something menacing or chaotic), a mouse, and the cracks left by the earthquake. These details ground the poem in a distant, concrete, and tangible reality, enriched in these verses also with an epic resonance.

In a dream, decades later, the poet reaches for a phone receiver that still rings in the dark—suggesting the memory of a profound connection returning. The "black Bakelite handset" becomes a symbol of a moment feared as unrepeatable, a direct channel to something deep and distant that, in the dream, he tries to reach once more.

By juxtaposing the mythical (Venus and Cerberus) with the mundane (the apartment, the phone), the poet elevates his experiences in Salerno to something deeply human and universal.

Venus's "music fading into the distance" hints at the inevitable passage of time and the dissolution of beauty, love, and wonder. The voice dissolving into music represents the nature of memory.

In this context, "Venus" can be interpreted as both a real muse—the female voice at the other end of the phone line—and as a symbolic inspirer. The nostalgic tone of the closing verses suggests that this reconnection in the dream tries to prevent that memory to slip away. 

to hear the music of Venus receding.