Intertextuality

Carved in Stone 8 & 9

8

Primeval places,
both light and dark,
surround us.

Dark depths inhabit
the human heart,
and woe betide us if we forget
that eternal darkness
and allow it to thrive again,
for what we believed dead,
will surely rise once more,
and return at night,
to haunt our dreams.

9

One day I abandoned
the temporal quest and left behind
mindless quarrels, bitter strife,
and envious, petty jealousies.

Surrounded by light and trees,
I now confront fall’s splendours,
harvesting golden days,
collecting and storing them,
safe from ravaging storms.

I seek a distant, but honest truth,
that moves, relentless,
through time’s mists.
It sometimes reveals itself
in the low sun’s spotlight
and each enlightenment
lends meaning to many good things
I thought had been lost.

Yet they still linger,
their shadows flickering
across the walls of memory’s cave.

Commentary:

I spoke to a good friend tonight, he shall remain anonymous, just like Anonymous Bosch, and he encouraged me to continue with my blog and my commentary.

Dark night of the soul – yes, we all have them. We question ourselves, our worth, our place in the world and we ask ourselves the five Ws – five W’s – West Indies only had three Ws – Worrell, Walcott, and Weekes – so we add another two, just for ourselves.

Who am I? What am I? Where am I? When am I? Why am I? How many of us ask ourselves those questions and how often do we do so? Like many of us, I am afraid, and I ask myself those questions more and more often as I age. We all do, unless we are non-sentient beings and just waffle along from show – click -to show -click- to show click – to show!

So, if you are reading this – ask yourself the 5 Ws. Who am I? What am I? Where am I? When am I? Why am I? If you can’t be bothered, click to another blog. However, if you are willing to be engaged, send me a snail mail or a husky mail, by sled, via the north pole. I am sure it will get here quicker than Canada Post.

Carved in Stone 6 & 7

6

At Westbury White Horse,
I wandered among unkempt mounds,
forgotten graveyards,
ancient barrows, their secrets
buried deep underground.

I walked to the horse’s eye,
stood there, then sat on the hill’s edge
to watch the sun drown
in a river of blood that turned
the White Horse red.

Shadows encroached.
A creeping chill came over me.
I started to shiver, not with cold,
but with the icy fear that someone,
something, evil and powerful,
long dead, but risen again, lurked,
hidden in the ground mists,
that rose as I fled,
not daring to look back.

7

But that fear,
deep-seated as it was,
could not match the terror I felt
as the sun set
over Badbury Rings.

An ancient horror
reigned over that place.

Mist warriors, visible
only from the waist up,
their weapons drawn,
charged towards me.

I felt chill fingers
clutching my heart, gripping it,
and tightening their hold.
I fled from them in the half-light.

Ancient powers linger long
in spite of charms, spells,
and exorcisms.

No wonder so many ancient tribes
shattered the legs of their dead
so they could not rise up
and walk again.

Commentary:

According to Wikipedia, the Westbury White Horse or Bratton White Horse is a hill figure on the escarpment of Salisbury Plain, approximately 1.5 mi (2.4 km) east of Westbury in Wiltshire, England. Standing at the northern edge of Bratton Downs, on a steeply sloping hillside below an Iron Age hill fort, it is the oldest of eight white horses in Wiltshire. The white horse has long been revered in European mythology. In Celtic traditions, it was associated with the Otherworld, acting as a guide between the realms of the living and the dead. In many myths, the white horse represented purity, power, and the ability to traverse spiritual boundaries.

I love visiting these sites. However, they need bright sunshine and warm weather. When the light starts to fail and the day grows cold, strange feelings emanate from the ruins. Many people have commented on this phenomenon and there are reports of sightings, such as the one that I associate with my visit to Badbury Rings. I went there late one afternoon, and as the evening drew in and the air grew colder, I and my companions felt a sudden (and totally inexplicable) fear. One look, and we ran as fast as we could back to the car park, got into the car, and sped away. None of us have ever forgotten that strange experience.

Carved in Stone 4 & 5

Carved in Stone 4 & 5

4

Maiden Castle –
Rome’s victorious Legions
sought out the main gates,
broke them down,
and placed their altars
to Mars or Mithras
on the ruins of the pagan temples
they desecrated.

What were they, those Romans,
but pagans themselves?

Their false gods
replaced the fake gods,
worshiped there long before
the legions’ arrival.

5

Later, the Saxon sword-song
superseded them
and the Roman Empire fell,
with a pendulum swing
that led to another set of gods.

How did they know
which was the true god?
Was it the belief in miracles
or the military might
that resolved the issue?

Bonfire night.
The sacred texts go up
in fire and smoke.

Brave is the man
who risks his hand in the fire,
defying the flames
to hold on to his truth.


Commentary:

“Brave is the man who risks his hand in the fire, defying the flames to hold on to his truth.” It appears that the Congregation of the Holy Office, aka the Inquisition, threatened to hold Galileo’s right hand in the fire unless he recanted and denied his scientific observations. Church theory held that the universe was terra-centric – the sun moved round that earth and the earth stood still – while Galileo showed that it was actually heliocentric – the sun stood still and the earth moved around it. Old and sick, he recanted in public, but was heard to mutter eppur si muove – yet it still moves.

Bonfire Night celebrates the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. Barrels of gunpowder had been placed beneath the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, but they were discovered on November 5, 1605 and removed. Bonfire Night is also called Guy Fawkes Night, Guy Fawkes being one of the key plotters to remove the English Parliament. Leading up to Bonfire Night, young children in the UK place a ragged scarecrow, called a Guy, around the streets begging for “a penny for the Guy”! With these pennies they buy fireworks. Then, on November 5, the Guy is set atop a large bonfire and the fire is lit. This autumn burning is accompanied by fireworks.

Bonfire night also refers to the old medieval book burnings of texts that were anathema to whatever religion or regime was in control. Cervantes refers to them in Don Quixote, I, 6 (1605).

Hallowe’en

Hallowe’en

1

Today is All Hallows Eve.
Tomorrow is Oaxaca’s
Day of the Dead.
The clocks change
the day after tomorrow.

Today, it’s raining,
and rain is a trick when
it forces celebrants off the streets
and town councils vote to change
the traditional date and send
young children out trick and treating
on a dry, warmer night.

But this rain, after drought,
is a Hallowe’en treat.

It brings a promise
that the aquifers will refill
that wells will not run dry,
and above all,
it brings us hope.

2

Around us, fall thrives
and watches and clocks
will soon fall back.

Trees weep for lost leaves.
Flowers that flourished
now wither and perish.

Hollyhocks topple and fall.
Bees’ Balm is abandoned
by butterflies and bees.

3

I expect time
to change with the clocks
and my body clock
will soon be out of sync
with the tick-tock chime
that denounces each hour.

Hours that used to wound
now threaten to kill.
They used to limp along,
but now they just rush by
and I, who used to run
from point to point,
now shuffle a step at a time.

But still I live in hopes to see
the clocks spring forward
once more.


Commentary:

A great poem for Hallowe’en, even if I say so myself, and I haven’t even mentioned the Blue Jays and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Oh, woe is me. Shame and scandal in my poetry.

Game Six of the World Series on Hallowe’en – wow! – well, one team will get a treat and the other will receive a very disappointing trick. I know which team I support, but I don’t know who will win this time around.

Having said that – with substantial rain after drought, everybody in my province is a winner. And who could wish for more than that?

Carved in Stone 3

3

Death is everywhere.
It rides a pale horse
in the lands
where Odin reigned.

Sleipnir, his eight-legged steed,
carried him round the world.

It also carried the god
to the underworld,
and brought him back,
one of the few to enjoy
a return ticket.

Purity, innocence, power,
the White Horse rules
these Wiltshire hills,
a symbol of hope and renewal.

Above the horses,
hill forts in high places,
lie hidden.

Wave after wave
of earth-wall and ditch
blend into the landscape
making the forts
invisible from below.

Commentary:

Odin > Wodin > Wednesday, in English, not Mercredi (French) or Miercoles (Spanish). English, via Anglo-Saxon, often goes back to the Nordic gods of the invaders. Not so in Welsh for Wednesday in Welsh is Dydd Mercher, the word breaking down into “Dydd” (day) and “Mercher” (which is named after the Roman god Mercury). Alas, it is all too easy to reduce language to its most basic level. But dig below the surface and the wonders of language, history and culture, adoption and rejection, complication and simplification, are all there to be seen.

Our language links us, binds us, holds us across our culture and history. And remember ‘to lose our language is to lose ourselves.’ While to learn another language is to grow another heart and soul.

 

Clepsydra 51 & 52

51

… and thus I sit in silence
     while unspoken words
          echo through
               my empty skull

I cannot produce
     the grit that oysters use
          to smoothly shape
               the pearl of great price
                    that radiates with light

the word
     once spoken
          can never be recalled

word magic
     water magic
          liquid trickling
               from cup to earthen cup

time slowly dripping away
     filtering through my fingers

flickering and dying,
      and the snuffed candle flame
          absent now
               and everywhere
                    the pain of its absence …

52

… and me like so many others
     caught up in time’s dance
          a shadow among other shadows
               moving on the cave wall
                    while the fire flickers

I try to hold them
     as they flit by
          but they vanish
               drifting like dreams
                    half-glimpsed
                         in early morning light

dancers and dance
     must fail and fade away
          when the music ends

I recall snippets of song
     that fan the unborn fires within

what am I
     but a tadpole
          swimming bravely
                into my next metamorphosis

the dancers hold hands
     and sing, oranges and lemons
          as they circle under the arch

“Here comes a candle
     to light you to bed

and here comes a chopper
     to chop off your head

 and when will that be
     ring the bells out at Battersea

I do not know
booms the great Bell of Bow” …

Commentary:

And here ends Clepsydra. One sentence, one poem, 52 sequences. Time, frozen in the writer’s mind, the passing of time, measuring time, internal time, external time, sidereal time, historical time … all linked through memories … personal, cultural, literary, family, events … all tied up with what Miguel de Unamuno called intra-historia, those deep, very personal little histories, that lead us away from great historical events into the minds of the observers, the witnesses, the readers, all with their interior monologue and their own mindfulness.

For those of you who have chosen to walk this road with me, I offer you my gratitude. I do hope you have enjoyed – if not the whole journey, then selected parts of it that may have touched you, or amused you, or aroused your interest. Pax amorque.

Clepsydra 45 & 46

45

… I enter ancient rooms
     on the walls
          pale ghosts walk
               flickering shadows

why am I tongue-tied
     why do I struggle
          a fly in a spiderweb
               to make myself heard

I long for
     the freedom of flight
          for culture restored
                    for a return
                         to my own lost world

I grasp at shadows
     reaching out
          for the ones I know
                         are no longer there …

46

… how deeply time’s wounds

     have cut and carved
          through my flesh and bone

               into the embers
                    of that slow-burn fire
                         they call the heart

some days those wounds
     neither ache nor itch
          but in moments of madness
               a knife-edged finger nail
                    careless in the dark
                         opens them up

they throb again
     and begin to bleed afresh …

Commentary:

” … on the walls, pale ghosts walk flickering shadows – I grasp at shadows, reaching out for the ones I know are no longer there …” Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. For in much wisdom is much grief, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

” … the embers of that slow-burn fire they call the heart … ” Pulvus eres et pulvus eris. Just another shadow on life’s wall.

Clepsydra 39 & 40

39

… all too soon I too shall move on
     leaving behind me
          fading memories and cloud shadows


yet I recall
     standing beneath the cathedral’s
          great rose window
               on a sunny day
                    my body dressed
                         in a harlequin suit
                              of glistening lights 

in such splendour
     mortal things like words
          cease to flow

I held my breath
     shocked by an enormous presence
          that filled me then
               as it does now
                    with the knowledge
                         that nothing happens in vain …

40


… illumination
     I must find it for myself
  were another to tell me
      where it dwells
            its light would be untrue

only I can strike the match
     ignite the flame
          and trap its warmth
              in my body’s bone cage

when it flowers within me
     I’ll need no candle
          not even in the darkest mine

in Alma, I have seen
     the tide lower
          Fundy fishing boats
               down into the mud

like those boats
     I lack the power
          to resist both time and tide …

Commentary:

I asked Moo for a painting of boats from Fundy, preferably from Alma, lying on their sides at low tide. “Let me see what I am meant to be illustrating,” he said. He read the above excerpt from Clepsydra and told me “You’re navel gazing again. I thought I told you not to do that. Now, have I got a painting for you.” I didn’t dare refuse to post it – he’s had a bad couple of days and it has sharpened his sense of humor – so it’s here it is. Moo calls is – now don’t laugh – Naval Gazing.

“Nothing happens in vain.” So maybe I was predestined to ask Moo for a painting he didn’t have and to end up with one that tickled his fancy. Now that set off a light bulb in my skull. Mr. Dimwitty came to his sense – I have been navel gazing. Naughty, naughty. How many of you remember Mr. Dimwitty, the not too bright schoolmaster on BBC radio? Hold up your hands, and I’ll count them.

Meanwhile, things happen to Moo and me, and like the boats on the Fundy, we lack the power to resist both time and tide. And that’s why we help each other, carry each other along. “We few, we few, we band of brothers.” That was Shakespeare. Nowadays we have to say “we band of siblings.” It pays to be inclusive. Speaking of bands, I saw a man walking down Main Street yesterday, blowing a rubber trumpet. I asked him what he was doing and he told me that he was looking for a rubber band. Joy to the world and help spread the joy. If you don’t like joy, spread Marmite. And if you don’t like Marmite I am sure you’ll love Vegemite. Ma might, but Pa won’t. That’s why it’s not called Pa-mite.

Clepsydra 35 & 36

35
… to save myself
     I must grasp it firmly
          as I would a nettle
               not with my hands
                    but with my teeth

but my hands are tied
     behind my back
a cloth is bound
     over my eyes         
          and I cannot see … 

36

… I struggle and squirm
     until released
          I float ashore
               and stand on the sea wall
                    calling out to the moon
                         begging her not to hide
                              her scarred face


I entreat the ebbing tide
     to carry me with it out to sea
          past the island
               beyond the lighthouse
                    into deep water

waves stronger than any

     thing I have known
          thrust rough fingers
               under my arms
                    lift me up
                         then drag me down

to the depths
     where I can finally rest
          in peace …

Commentary:

Mors omnia solvit – death solves everything. But does it? What about the crossword, the jigsaw puzzle, the unsolved ? What about the problem of life itself? What is it? How does it function? And what is that poor bird doing lying on its PEI beach half-covered in sand? What problems did he have solved?

” my hands are tied behind my back, a cloth is bound over my eyes and I cannot see” …  so how can I tell where I am going and why I am going there? Simple questions – yet there are no answers, none that are given to me anyway. And who am I to reason why? Is my detiny, as always, to just do and die?

I do not know. The bird on the beach does not know. The ebbing tide doesn’t know, or care what it carries out with it. And what are we anyway? Why do we search for meaning in the meaningless? For answers in the absurd? And why does Sisyphus roll his rock up the hill, release it, then walk back down, pick it up and carry it up again? And why must we imagine that Sisyphus is happy? Our daily work – ce boureau sans merci – why should we be thankful for it?  Because there is nothing else? Because otherwise we would be abandoned? Or just because?

Oh, ho-ho-ho-ho, tell me if you know, who the… where the … why …. the what for … where did that one go? Even poor old Alf and dear old ‘Erbet, somewhere on the Somme, didn’t know the answer to that one. And they had their little dugout made a mess of by a bomb. Well, at least they found another hole, but when that other shell went over, it left them still wondering! And don’t we all?

Clepsydra 34

34

… my heart so broken
     I can’t count the pieces
          nor solve the puzzle

scars are trenches
     deep defensive lines
          gouged into my face 

every night
     the black dog returns
          and I wake up from a dream
               to find myself pincered

attracted by the light
     squeezed tight
          between cave walls

my top half struggles to be free
     my bottom half
          hips down is held
               in a ferocious grip

I scream the way
     a stuck pig screams
          when the knife flashes
               and the hot blood spurts

all at sea
     I move up and down
          on dark restless waves

I reach for a life raft
     but find only an apple
          bobbing as it floats …

Commentary:

Moo thought I needed cheering up, so he did this painting for me. U R My Sunshine, he said to me, then gave me the painting for today’s post. I think he was rather taken with the phrase ‘attracted by the light’ … hence the nice, bright, sunny painting. Whenever I feel down, Moo reminds me that every cloud has a silver lining. Today’s clouds over Island View certainly do. They have actually brought rain and we need that rain so badly. We are in the middle of a drought, in places it is a severe drought. Wells are drying up, the river and the aquifers are low, we need rain – and now we have some. Too late for the apple orchards and the farmers who do not have enough winter feed for their cattle. Too late for the local deer who do not have their usual post-summer glossy looks. And too late for the trees that look drab, having lost their usual fall glow to appear very pale and peaky. Let us hope that a little more rain, on a regular basis, will change all that, and give us the sort of silver lining that, next year, will produce golden apples and brightly colored fall leaves