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Martin Burke
from In History
A note to the reader
That we live in a critical time is not a new assertion. History is perceived as moving towards some form of conclusion. For some this is a conclusion of destruction; for others it is a conclusion leading to renewal. In History clearly takes its stand with the latter viewpoint while being clearly aware of the dangers of the present moment of transit. And yet poetry as a whole has not, since Pound, addressed itself to this issue. Part of the problem lies with Pound and all that he engendered and sought allegiance with, and so any historical assessment is full of poetical difficulties. Even so, the attempt must be made and the present poem is such an attempt. I have cited various authors so as to show that historical process in motion and to illustrate the fact that while the issue as a whole has not been address it none the less has crept into the consciousness of the recent and present generations.
The notion of the redemptive in history is not wishful thinking though it is wished and longed for. Here again the evidence is there to be found and the present poem sees itself as a link in that chain stretching from longing into fulfilment.
This concluding part of a long four-part poem can then stand on its own while being viewed as part of a greater entity. Hopefully enough spaces have been left for readers to fill in for themselves and so add to the poem in the privacy of their reading – that space and moment in which the true validity of a poem is tested.
In history and in the privacy of the soul – it is here that poetry takes its stand and it is to this imaginative centre that it makes its appeal.
4
Let us lock the doors
with seven locks and a bolt
let us close the shutters
let us turn off the lights
T Carmi
Crucified Christ
You swim upon the cross and our weeping rises
Our hands are clenched in desperate prayer as if that would explain us to ourselves
And we need such explanations
The rose withers but the rose endures
Time shatters the hope of the heart and it is winter in the world
Winter and winter
Ice on the rose and all things fading in ice
To what purpose then do our prayers rise?
For what do we endure the trials of December?
Answer, answer, from there where you watch the flooding of the earth in this the coldest season
The frost is all over
Pearse Hutchinson
And history side-steps so many issues yet nothing can be avoided
So what are the redemptions of time awaiting in the shadows?
Side-step again and no befitting reply
This is the winter of the world and word
It seems as if the ancient weave has come undone and we are left with nothing but loose threads in our hands
Somewhere in the darkness a child cries and a dog howls and who can say what it is they hope to utter to the world?
The fairground lights cast a ghoulish glare into the night and nothing can be side-stepped in the light and half-light
All things seek a meaning in December
But what can be woven from the fragments of time and the blighted rose?
Nothing makes a befitting reply
It is silence and silence in the world though we are that generation waiting for a sign
Seeking an explanation
Seeking in silence the intention of history
Seeking—o how do we know what we seek when ice blocks the paths that we must take and the rose withers in ice?
We mourn, we mourn
All seems cast in a double darkness while Christ swims upon the cross and we seek what would explain us to ourselves
getting entangled in my heart
like driftwood
Yehuda Amichai
Prayers in the dark
World in the rounds of December
I strike the tuning fork of the world and offer up these notes
We had no terrors while he played
in this our age of terror
Ondra Lysohorsky
And yet I have dreamt beyond the moment’s possibility
I have shrouded all things in a glittering ring of words
I have spoken with hope on the tongue and fire in the eye and spoke with an intention to set all things on a rightful course
I have warmed myself at ancient and more recent fires
I observed the older calendars of the world
I held a stone and spoke in a voice that sought dialogue with all creation and not just with the limits of history
History, history, we waver between the dark and the light
Between the spoken and unsaid
Between the fire and shadows of flame
Music had driven their wits astray
W. B. Yeats
And I remember the voices through the linden trees in April
April turning to May and May turning to June
Summer of the/in the world
World and word in harmony
O yes, I remember such things and cite them here to a good intent
As if history was atoned, explained, and then made new in a glittering ring of words
As if one word contained all the words
As if the rightful harmony re-entered creation
As if the psalms of desolation became the psalms of hope
As if
As if
As if
Blessing upon this time and place
Blessing upon the disfigured face
Edwin Muir
And if this cannot be sung then what can be sung?
Upon what tuning fork will we strike a note in April and December?
All’s changed, changed utterly
W.B. Yeats
Red sky, red sky, traces of an ancient light
And the battle-bird stretching its wings over the world
Old names stirring in the nest of the world
Old wrongs come to some new fruition
As if prophecy moved over the grass of summer and all was cast in ancient light
Red sky, red sky, and ancient light
This is the fated summer of the year
The comets’ pulsing rose
Seamus Heaney
Yet all might dream a softer weave than history has woven
All might dream the fullness of the word and things spoken with a good intent
Might dream also the righting of old wrongs as divinity co-mingles with history
O yes, in our time, our time, these things in our time
Now when the festivals of spring occur in the world
Now in the places where the cry and the song co-mingle on the tuning-fork of hope
Old wrongs forgiven in the fruition of summer and summer yielding all the rightful verbs
Verbs of the heart
Verbs of the mind
Language of heart and soul to the one purpose and intent
O yes, the heart can dream this much and more
Can see all in the splendid light
Can see summer reaching towards the fullness of the rose and the rose not just in one season
And if not in these things then where resides the proper modulations of the heart?
O the heart has need of these
Needs modulation and all the accurate verbs
Verbs that carry the yeast of spring
Verbs that carry all the subtle finesse of the mind
—it is a splendid instrument as is the eye—
Verbs weaving the weave of summer from the golden threads of Jerusalem and the heart saying ‘yes, I have found you my Ithaca’
Ithaca, Ithaca, we long and we long
Through the fullness of summer we seek the ancient harbours
Aran and Ithaca and wherever the heart is at peace
And it is at peace in these the ancient waters of the world
In spite of history
In spite of the cold calculation
In spite of all the uproar in the world
Peace that it longs for and rests in
And the spirit singing brightly there
Singing and singing—yes, even in this the fateful time the heart has the need of song
Now more than ever
Here and here and wherever you are
Your Ithaca
Your Jerusalem—and they are one
And Aran glittering in the mind in a bright ring of language that defies all history
O I have known these ancient harbours under the redness of the sky
I have listened to the low hum of voices through the linden trees
I have sung with those voices and walked under that sky and where was I walking to but Ithaca and Jerusalem
Ithaca, Jerusalem, and Aran
Between the stones and the void
Geoffrey Hill
Crucified Christ, you swim upon the cross and history watches
As into the weave, into the weave, into the weave of history we go
All words echoing in that auroral dark
And over them I will take
ever more painstaking care
Thomas Kinsella
And after the night-time songs of the world there arrives the songs of morning
Songs that seek the modulations of the heart
Songs that cast shadows on the three towers of Brugge
Songs that enter in and claim the voice and demands that it sing
Songs that enter into the world as is their brilliant right
O yes, these songs in the first morning of the world
These songs in the voice that rises with dawn and sings the first notes
These songs sung from a heart in love with the clarities of day
These songs from a heart deeply in love with the contours of Brugge and beyond
this whiteness, lightness,
sweetness in the air
Wendell Berry
Kerie, Kerie, Kerie
A soft breeze shudders through the seven linden trees and the leaves bespeak a music
The lake holds its still purpose as bells echo across the roof of the world
As if I was the first Adam to see and hear these things
As if all rights were given me in this place
Rights I translate as Kerie for the beauty of morning
Rights that open before me the pathways of the world
Kerie, Kerie, Kerie—
What can the heart sing but its own bewilderment?
To what can it give voice in morning but to the beauty of the world?
And history neither forgotten nor denied
Neither the cry of Baghdad nor the cry of Darfur
Nor the cry of the child in the morning
Yet all voices betray their origins if they do not sing out Kerie
All voices that seems to echo where I stand by lake and linden trees
Seven antimirrhinums in a jar of stone
Charles Causley
O I have sung for morning
For the beauty of the lake and the echo of the bells
I have sung Kerie for all things that demanded recognition and called on the voice to praise them
Kerie, Kerie, all the world bespeaks this word this morning
The first Kerie of the heart—
Heart that moves in tempo with the light
As it shines on the towers
Shines on the lake
And shines on the soul as it rises into bewilderment and joy
Joy that moves beyond the mumblings of the heart
Joy that races ahead of the mind
Joy that seeks the perfect modulation
And finds it in Kerie
Kerie, Kerie, Kerie
All things sing in the morning
Kerie, Kerie, Kerie
I add my song to theirs
Everything in parenthesis
Martin Burke
In our time
In this time of the world and the word
In this time, this time, this time
And not forgetting the elegies of history
As they come to me where I stand witnessing the lake and the trees and the towers
Our time
Grief of the world
Grief in spite of beauty—and that beauty is everywhere—
Grief of the severed lovers
Of the maimed and disfigured
Of the victim as the figure of this time
Nothing forgotten
Nothing denied
And the night-songs of the world still echoing
Echoing here in my heart and these lines
Echoing over the fields of Flanders
To land in those places where grief abounds
In Ieper and elsewhere
What can be forgotten by the heart?
What, in walking these fields, may I ignore if I claim to sing the Kerie of the world?
Nothing ignore and nothing denied
In the night-watch or the seasons of dawn
Nothing in the voice that would sing all things and so must sing its grief
Nothing in the heart embracing all and therefore embraces the past
And the past is happening today
The past into the present like a wedge driven between fate and circumstance
Even the olives are bleeding
Anonymous, Spanish Civil War
And Flanders still bleeding at Ieper
And the fields still blood-soaked and wet
And yet to bind up the wounds of the heart
To bind up the wounds of history
And give them both the perfect modulation
Here where the soft breeze flows through the linden trees
Here where three swan swim out in the shadows cast by the three towers beyond
Here where the longing heart has found a home
That welcomes in the Kerie and the grief
And over the submerged dryad-ways
intensively his ray searches
David Jones
And if there is Kerie then there is also Gloria
Glory for the patterns of water
Gloria for the density of stone
Gloria for the lurchings of the heart towards the beauty of morning
Shadows of three towers on the three swans swimming
Shadows that are a script the heart deciphers
Shadows that are a language of praise the heart sets itself to learn
And it sets itself so much—
Mastery of the water-verbs
Fidelity to density
And the lyric chosen as its chosen mode
O yes, there is Gloria in the world this morning
Gloria that I tell you in this manner
Gloria towards which the heart surges like the waves surge towards the coastline miles away
Yet what is distance to me?
And what is nearness when every place is a Temenos and infinity can begin anywhere?
O may my song sing that song and shatter all distance and nearness
May all songs rise and rising praise the given beauty of the given world
With what stones, what blood, and what iron
With what fire are we made
Odysseus Elytis
Sunlight and sunlight—What is the world but what it seems to be?
The beauty of towers
The beauty of water
The coy appealing shyness of a stone
Verbs drift in and out of the mind
Bewilderment holds you in awe and awe seeks out the proper modulations of the heart
Verbs drift
I think on the music of water and would sing that song and say the water verbs are the best of verbs and that all things are seeped with longing
As they were last night under the multiplicity of stars that lit this pathway through the trees
Pathway I have frequently taken
Pathways that open into the heart
And for which the mind seeks out the accurate verbs
And somewhere—O where?—an unsung music plays its many elements to the mind
Song rises
The soul—O remember it—rises to the lips and what can those lips say except Gloria?
The true bewilderment
The true and perfect joy of the mind that comes on the world and finds all cast in sunlight, sunlight, sunlight
Sunlight as if this was the first morning of the Genesis
As if this was the fulcrum from which all sprung and to which they returned
Returned and named all the longing of the world
A longing blessed by water and shadow
By tower and swan
By all the fragile glimpses of the first true Gloria
I did not learn this today
I knew it before yesterday
Zbigniew Herbert
Praise for the world as it is and will be
Praise for all that is spoke and sung
Praise for the longing rising in song
Praise for the song that is sung
Poet and playwright Martin Burke was born in Ireland but now lives in Brugge, Belgium. His poems have been published in the U.K, the United States, Ireland, Austria; Sweden, and Algeria. Recent publications include Into History (Arabesques Editions, Algeria) and Psalms (Default press, Ireland). His book The Easter Ballad, an excerpt from which first appeared at Nimble Spirit, has just been published.
Copyright © 2007 Martin Burke. All rights reserved.
This page was published in May 2007.
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