This afternoon over tea I reread the poetry of Sietze Buning in Style and Class. These two are a couple of my favorites.
Ja, Dominie,
on Sunday you said officialdom, elected and appointed,
has style,
but that anointed kings and queens
have class.
To me they sound the same.
Well Sietze,
style needs to be noticed to get votes.
Class is the same, noticed or unnoticed.
Style you imitate from friends or radio
(television wasn't around yet)
but class you're born with or adopted into.
You like my tie, you buy one like it
(he would have said T-shirt today),
you fix up your kitchen like Kitchen Clatter Magazine
(he would have said House Beautiful today),
you sing "Tangerine" this week
(he would have said "My Sharona" today -
always a little out of it) -
that's style.
And style is good.
You need some of it.
But style is not required by the Catechism
(he would have said "laid on us" today),
You learn to do what's right
like it or not
or learn to like it.
When in the right
you're royally indifferent
to being different.
You like what is best
or try to like what's best
whether the best is old or new -
that's class.
Style reads its history in the newspaper,
and history starts with the Titanic
(he would have said Watergate today),
Class is curious about Alexander and Julius Caesar,
about King Floris and his five dogs,
about the myths surrounding King Arthur and Tintagel.
Class remembers what kings and queens are like.
Ja, Dominie,
but I don't feel like a king
and you don't look much like one either.
Tell me one time when you were a king.
(The pause was so long that Sietze thought
Dominie had started on argument inside
against Arminians on the one side
or Herman Hoeksema on the other.)
Ja, Sietze,
one time I know I was a king.
Twenty-two of us were in the courthouse
being naturalized:
one Dane, two Norwegians, a dozen Poles,
and seven of us Dutch.
Time came for each of us to renounce our countries.
I could not bring myself to renounce Queen Wilhelmina.
I got behind the Dane who said,
"I hereby renounce allegiance to King Frederick of Denmark."
I also renounced allegiance to King Frederick of Denmark.
Nobody noticed.
I vote here, but I never renounced the House of Orange.
That day, maybe I had some class.
That day, I was a little like a king.
Bells
It was the style in my church for Dominie,
as catechism teacher, to treat the pupils
after the last lesson in spring.
It was useful for making up.
The custom said,
"Next year hostilities will set in again,
but now we're friends."
One May,
when we had devoured Dominie's treat,
he asked whether I had ever seen the bell.
I hadn't, so he showed me.
Up to the balcony,
through a trapdoor,
up a winding stair,
up a ladder, and there was the bell,
bigger than I had expected even.
Why me?
I had been no better than the others
and deserved no special prize.
I had been no worse than the others
so the cookies should have done for making up.
And as for a bribe,
he might have known it wouldn't stick over the summer.
He did it because all love is election.
Somebody from the next generation
would need to be interested in bells
or bells would go the way of tails.
As bells have.
I moved away and attend a church without a bell.
Bells are out of style.
But ever since that day
it has been my style
to choose guided tours of belfries -
in Chichester, Groningen, and Geneva -
but no guided tour of a belfry ever has had as much class.
I was called.
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