Suite Ste. Luce (1 & 2)
1
Black backed gulls,
nature’s alarm clocks,
waking the seaside
with their glaucous rattle.
High tide? Low tide?
We have drifted on our life raft
far from the grasping hands
of the city clocks.
Gulls dine on the beach.
Day’s rhythm all at sea.
2
6 am? 7 am? 8 am?
What do they mean?
The planet’s slow revolution?
This sun arc sketched in its stretch of sky?
Salt spray combing seaside fingers
through a young girl’s hair.
A man in a red boat, fishing.
Empress of Ireland
Poems from Ste. Luce-sur-mer
is available at the following link:
Click here to purchase Empress of Ireland
The Empress of Ireland
The poems which have come together to form the Empress of Ireland were begun in Ste. Luce-sur-mer, Quebec, in May 2002. It was off-shore from Ste. Luce, in the early hours of the morning of the 29th of May, 1914, that the Empress of Ireland collided, in dense fog, with a converted Norwegian collier whose bows had been strengthened for ice-breaking. There were approximately 15 minutes between the moment of impact (1:55 am) and the moment the Empress caught fire and sank (2:10 am). Although the disaster has received little international attention, more passengers perished in this accident (840) then in the loss of the Titanic (832) or the sinking of the Lusitania (791).
Introduction to the Empress of Ireland
Click on the link below to read an early post with a new sound recording of
A Survivor lights a candle
https://rogermoorepoet.com/2020/11/23/a-survivor-lights-a-candle/
I first heard voices in the cries of the sea birds on the beach at Ste. Luce-sur-mer.
Borne on the wind, over the sigh of the waves, they seemed high-pitched, like the voices of children, or of men and women in distress. These were lost voices, the cries of people alone and frightened by the dark. I heard them calling to me.
That night, there were knocks at my cabin door and finger nails scratched at my window. Tiny sounds, almost beyond the range of human hearing: the snuffling of puppies when they turn over in their sleep and tug at each other, whimpering in their dreams.
“Who’s there?”
I started from my sleep. But there was only the wind and the waves as the tide’s footsteps climbed a moonbeam path to ascend the beach. When I walked on the sand next day, at low tide, there was a whispering behind my back. Little voices crying to be set free.
“Who’s there?”
A lone gull flew past my head and battered itself against the wind’s cage with outraged sturdy wings. That night, the mist descended. The church stepped in and out of its darkness and shadows gathered, persistent, at my door.
I walked out into the night and saw a lone heron surrounded by gulls. It was as if an adult, clamoured at by children, was standing guard over the beach. Then I saw the shadows of little people searching for their parents, the shapes of mothers and fathers looking for their off-spring, lost among the grains of sand.
Beyond them, on the headland, the church stood tall above the shadows. I saw grandmothers and grandfathers, their lips moving in supplication, kneeling before the granite cross which stands above the sea. As I approached, they turned to me, opened their mouths, mouthed silent words, then disappeared. When I went back to bed, faces and voices visited me in my dreams. When I got up next morning, they came to me in the speech of birds hidden in the foliage, in the words dropped by the osprey’s wing, in the click of the crab’s claw as he dug himself deeper into the sand.
“Release us”
“Speak for us!”
“Set us free!”
The words of the M Press of Ire are not my words. They could never be my words. Foundered words, they are, rescued from the beach, and dragged from the high tide mark with its sea weed, carapace, charred wood, old rusted iron, and bright bones of long dead animals polished by the relentless action of wind, sea and sand.
A Survivor from the Empress of Ireland
Lights a Candle During the Old Latin Mass for the Dead
Before the Main Altar at the Sanctuaire Sainte-Anne
Pointe-au-Père
1
I am still afraid of fire:
in principio erat verbum
/ in the beginning was the word.
I am still afraid of the loud voice of the match
scratching its sudden flare,
narrowing my pupils,
enlarging the whites of my eyes:
et lux in tenebris lucet
/ and light shines in darkness.
Booming and blooming,
igniting the soul’s dark night.
Voice of fire:
et Deus erat verbum
/ and the Word was God.
Flourishing to nourishment,
flames whispering on the flood:
omnia per ipsum facta sunt
/ all things were made by Him.
Wool and water,
this sodden safety blanket;
and what of the cold
plush of pliant teddy bear,
the staring eyes of the doll:
et tenebrae eam non comprehenderunt
/ and the darkness comprehended it not.
2
The lashes of their eyes bound
together with salt water,
they were doused in a silken mist:
hic venit in testimonium
/ this served as a witness.
Still the patterns pierce my sleep,
hauling me from my opaque dreams,
holding my wrists in this sailor’s double clasp:
non erat ille lux
/ he was not the light.
Oh! Curse these dumb waters rising!
“Not a hair on your head shall be harmed!”
he said,
hauling my sister up by her hair
only to find her staring eyes
belonging to the already dead:
et mundus eam non cognovit
/ and the world knew her not.
3
Night waters rising.
The moon raising
its pale thin lantern glow:
et vidimus gloriam ejus
/ and we saw His glory
shining forth
upon the waters’
mirrored face.
Comment: I searched everywhere, but I could not find a copy of my poetry book Empress of Ireland. Nor could I find a file containing the poems. Lost, I searched everywhere yet again and then, on an old USB, I found the text of the chapbook M Press of Ire. The above poem comes from that chapbook. Empress of Ireland is available on KDP / Amazon. I had forgotten how much I loved the sequence.
Angel Choir
(on seeing the Northern Lights at Ste. Luce-sur-mer)
listen to the choristers with their red and green voices
light’s counterpoint flowering across this unexpected son et lumière
we tremble with the sky fire’s crackle and roar
once upon another time twinned in our heavenly bodies
we surely flew to those great heights and hovered in wonderment
now our earthbound feet are rooted to the concrete
if only our hearts could sprout new wings and soar upwards together
the moon’s phosphorescent wake swims shimmering before us
the lighthouse’s fingers tingle up and down our spines
our bodies flow fire and blood till we crave light and yet more light
when the lights go out we are left in darkness
our hearts fill with dreams of what might have been
Ste. Luce-sur-Mer
(1995 &1996)
marooned and listless
monarch of all he surveyed
this ancient sea-side crab
caught naked on a wave-wet beach
surrounded by thronging gulls
their powerful beaks
pulling at the carapace
half-buried in the sand
moment of truth
the second the oyster’s
protective vacuum breaks
the crab sucked from the sand
battered the scattered body
spread over crisp sheets
pillowed on mermaid-hair
claws that once clicked
silent now hushed
listen to the tide
watch the wind’s footprints
walking on warm summer sand
A Survivor Contemplates
the Crucifix on the Point
Ste. Luce-sur-mer
Christ of the Rocks
hanging here on the point
from the crucifix
with your open eyes:
do you see, out at sea,
where gray waves cover
the graveyard of the Empress,
at rest, her passengers,
caressed beneath shallow waters.
They have gone on before me,
those friends I numbered,
their piercing eyes
lie covered now.
Splayed toes:
last night’s footprints
erased by wind-blown
dust and sand.
Dry crunch of skull and skeleton
crushed underfoot by sea boots
ascending, descending
the beach’s gentle slope.
Unknown,
these lands around me:
emitte lucem tuam /
send forth Thy light!
Unexplored,
these mountains that surround me:
ipsa me deduxerunt /
such things have led me on.
Unsolved,
these mysteries that confound me:
in montem sanctum tuum /
unto Thy holy hill …
… in nomine Patris /
… in the name of the Father.
I wander from grave to grave,
reading the headstones:
quare me repulisti? /
why hast Thou cast me off?
Coarse grass weaves bindweed
with columbines combining.
Incessant mourning of glove grey
morning doves,
drawing tears from dawn’s face:
quare tristis incedo? /
why do I go sorrowful?
Verdant stems,
unsophisticated flowers,
weeds dark between stark
granite stones.
Names!
Whose names?
My long lost brothers’ names,
Eric, Phillip, Peter,
not yet carved in stone:
non in tabernacula tua /
not yet in Thy tabernacle.
This churchyard,
will it always be
as steady as a headland
even in a storm?
Here, the terrestrial
centre is stable:
quare tristis es, anima mea? /
why art thou sad, oh my soul?
The ark on the waters
moves from side to side,
lulled by the sea waves,
up and down.
On the altar,
a gilded chalice,far from the far flung
malice of the sea:
quare conturbas me? /
why dost thou disquiet me?
Graveyard on the Point:
A Survivor Remembers his Catechism
Ste. Luce-sur-mer
The survivor at the cross roads,
wreathed in his personal storm:
… et discerne causam meam /
… and distinguish my cause
de gente non sancta… /
from the unholy nation.
Rising waves:
bells on buoys
peal out sea warnings.
Tonight there is a grief across the grève.
Sa griffe / his claw,
ma griffe / my claw
homophonic puns
scratching at reality’s surface,
hiding inner meanings,
leaving the depths unplumbed.
Did he really paint
the reality of the shipwreck,
this Magritte?
Cette pipe, qui n’est pas une pipe! /
This pipe which isn’t a pipe!
Mi grito que no es un grito! /
My cry which isn’t a cry!
Cette vie qui n’est plus une vie!
This life which is no longer a life!
This littoral bay
no longer a literal bay.
ab homine iniquo et doloso erue me /
from the unjust and deceitful man deliver me.
Over bird frosted rocks,
a ring billed gull cries out whose name
on its early journey to greet pale stars?
On the beach at the cross’s foot,
a grey robed pilgrim
stands in dusk’s failing light.
et introibo ad altare Dei:
ad Deum, qui laetificat juventutem meam /
and I will go unto the altar of God:
to God, who giveth joy to my youth.
Mouettes, göelands muets:
sea gulls, silent sea gulls:
white arrows shot over sea wet sand.
He stands solemn before this graven stone
waiting to be blessed:
sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper /
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be …
The eider duck sigh for their siblings,
tossed from the crèche and lost
in the long low swirl of the sea.
rogermoorepoet 