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FOR / BECAUSE OF / AFTER
MARTIN BURKE ———————————————
Belfast Lapwing
FOR / BECAUSE OF / AFTER
MARTIN BURKE
Belfast LAPWING
First Published by Lapwing Publications c/o 1, Ballysillan Drive Belfast BT14 8HQ lapwing.poetry@ntlworld.com http://www.freewebs.com/lapwingpoetry/ Copyright Š Martin Burke 2012 All rights reserved The author has asserted her/his right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Since before 1632 The Greig sept of the MacGregor Clan Has been printing and binding books
Lapwing Publications are printed at Kestrel Print Unit 1, Spectrum Centre Shankill Road Belfast BT13 3AA 028 90 319211 E:kestrelprint@btconnect.com Hand-bound in Belfast at the Winepress Set in Aldine 721 BT
ISBN 978-1-907276-82-8
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FOREWORD These poems cannot, and do not, pretend to be ‘translations’ in any form of guise. Had translation been my intention then I would have been totally disqualified to attempt it since I do not speak a single word of the various languages in which the poets presented here wrote their poems. The intention was other: to attempt to write new poems in English which utilised the various tones, themes and shades of these writers without in any way suggesting that I was presenting versions of their poems. Naturally there are a few moments when a word or phrase associated with them crept onto the page -and while it was tempting to immediately strike them from the page they were a means of linking these poems to the masters they found their origins in. This is not the place to attempt any statement which would locate these poets as central to the modern canon - yet modern poetry would not, could not be what it is without them. Each of us has debts to be paid - of friendship, or love, or gratitude. These poems are no more than an attempt to pay a poetic debt which is on-going, enduring, and real. Martin Burke 2011
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ‘Lorca’ was first published as a chapbook by The Knives Forks and Spoons Press, UK
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CONTENTS FOREWORD ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
iii iii
HOLDERLIN
7
Some things are self-evident – . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Streets – old cities, old streets – where are you now? . . . . . . . . Yes, I know the proposition: ‘Once there were gods’ . . . . . . . . . . Thus the life I live conditions the life I used to live . . . . . . . . . As it strike mine. As it calls up the immutable laws of earth. . . Of course, in the lean years (and it seems they are upon us . . . . What science must now investigate poetry… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Now you see why I insist what I insist though I do so . . . . . . . But ‘bright shadows’ – you see an inherent contradiction? . . . . . A wind. The northeast. My favourite. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Spirits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . That the night shines in astonishment at its source and purpose Night, being night, foreshadows its own infinity. . . . . . . . . . . “Wherever I go Greece keeps wounding me” . . . . . . . . . . . . . Yet if the wounds will not heal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Now a shadow falls upon the threshold of my door. . . . . . . . . . CELAN Autumn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Beyond – more than – outranking nostalgia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Salt-wave spumes attend the leaf-work of years. . . . . . . . . . . . . As if in some ghostly conversations with a ghost…. . . . . . . . . . Spasm. Heart to hand. A poem of dark knowledge . . . . . . . . . . Unrelenting. As if history condemned them . . . . . . . . . . . . . . There are rumours . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . It is said they invented no song but I have heard it . . . . . . . . . Into the world, out of the world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ice? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . No-man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . For those burned hands could not hold the gold . . . . . . . . . . . Delicious . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fire. Burning in hoops. Tigers as Blake might have . . . . . . . . . Shadows. As dark as my mind’s necessities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . If I tell what must be told . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Circling me . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I write this poem for all the poems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 16 17 18 19 20 21 21 23 25 25 26 27 29 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44
LORCA To speak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The joy – the solitude – that mountain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . As deep as the beautiful dark rose is – . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cante Jondo: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Passion of water – agony of water . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A halo rings the moon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . That night . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Where do you come from? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . She stood there – naked . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . There is a rational truth – there is a poetic truth. . . . . . . . . . . ODYSSEUS ELYTIS PATMOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ONE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Not knowing brevity I sang brevity . . . . . . . . . . . . . Placing my lips to the conch of the world . . . . . . . . . Bird, you whose shadow falls on the page, . . . . . . . . . Not knowing beauty but singing beauty . . . . . . . . . . TWO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Earth, air, fire, stone, song . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Citizen, exile, sailor, pilgrim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . THREE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The essentials? – Luminosity and transparency . . . . . FOUR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Turn to the sea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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45 45 46 49 53 54 55 59 60 62 62 63 64 65 65 66 67 68 69 69 70 71 71 76 76
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Martin Burke
HOLDERLIN
7
For / Because of / After
8
Martin Burke
1 Some things are self-evident – that there are wounds in the earth which will not heal, that from an assemblage of shadows and swans a life can shape a life In innocence Or in the foreknowledge of such innocence I am the vagabond of my life in which I expect to find (Or if needs be, create) my Germany of the soul.
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For / Because of / After
2 Streets – old cities, old streets – where are you now? Once you were Jerusalem now you are nothing Of what you once were: a mockery as much as a comfort. A memory survives your masonry -but that is all. Your memories and ghosts (I see how they are active yet) Prefigure our condition in these atrocious times. See – already I am speaking in the past tense. Your absence conditions even the language of the future. What is it that will not die? I ask what I cannot answer Then ask it again of water and wind but there is no reply ‘Another day’ they call it -as if there was such a thing There is no such thing. There is memory and absence And they are one in this place which used to be beautiful Because you once walked here.
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Martin Burke
3 Yes, I know the proposition: ‘Once there were gods’ I believe it, I accept the fluency of that argument – But I, as you already suspect, Am an exception to the age I live in. (This neither shocks nor thrills me – A poet must inhabit whatever landscape he is given And any one age may be as bad as any other To which we are exposed) However, now we must ask: friend, did we arrive too late? Did we come with solutions to problems already beyond fixing? Now accusations of nostalgia are made against me – and why? Simply because I insist a simple fact that though we work in the muck Of history and its aftermath it is only by poetry that we live at all. The storms of god treat us as angles or fools: the fact that he Is both near yet difficult is already well known -what is less Well-known is that being angles and fools is his gift to us And having a foot in both camps we are the better for it. Out of this double-necessity we pass on wisdom from generation To generation – but that is enough of polemic for today. I would rather dumbfound this generation than explain it To itself. Eventually this will be regarded as “my legacy” Yet I am more interested in, and moved by, the fever-touch Upon my mind that says – look: ‘there is the lightning of god Coming over the mountains to be reflected in the river’. Transmit that into verse is the command I give myself An example of which you are now reading – another of which Will follow, but what that will be I cannot yet say: I only know as much as the poem allows me to know.
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For / Because of / After
4 Thus the life I live conditions the life I used to live And what I remember of it. Do you want to know what I know? Will I place my memories before you in their naked simplicity? The child that I was (and somewhere still am – as you also are) Was one who played among the kindness of flowers and trees. Who in moonlight paid court to the older names of trees and stars – My true teachers, not those scribbles of a schoolmaster On a blackboard which made no living sense to what I knew Of the woods. So see me in moonlight -but see yourself also We who said the woods were our instructors, we who danced With gods as if some godly grace touched our feet and minds! Yet you have forgotten your minds and distrust mine yet mine Is the one which remembers. I grow old, will grow older But will not forget what you have chosen to deny. I remember The words we spoke, the promises made, the initials carved on a bark: See: the old affirmations still exist and we are no less star-struck Then the stars themselves! Whatever you remember this is what You must remember as the lightning strikes the river in your mind.
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Martin Burke
5 As it strike mine. As it calls up the immutable laws of earth. Cycles and gyres -we understand, but understand nothing Yet if that Wind, that Fire, that Élan, that ‘Something’ We call God strikes the river, then water is compatible With the fire in which we live. Seeds are roasted In the pots and pans of kitchens. This is also an obedience To the one law. And no matter how true it is that snakes Are dreaming on the hillsides of heaven, or that horses Are slipping on stony paths -this changes nothing: The burden is like a burden of wood on our shoulders But what can we do? I cannot cast the wood aside For there is no fire to accept it. Sometimes I’m steady But sometimes I’m shaky on my feet. Also a law. As if the laughter of heaven at our human condition Was the most constant of our companions. No, I won’t offer you false comfort. If you come with me You will carry your load and curse the fact you came with me So be forewarned: steadiness is essential – all the more so When what you carry you cannot let fall. You are unsteady And the wood is a weight: somehow you hope the laughter Will one day explain the joke.
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For / Because of / After
6 Of course, in the lean years (and it seems they are upon us Again) there is always some cynical joker who asks: “Who needs pots? Who needs firewood? Why bother With something for which you have no name? As for a good joke – if you want a good joke then tell me What is the worth of wisdom?” I’m tempted to answer with foolishness where prophecy Is required, yet when the lightning struck the river An old vision re-awoke in my mind with such authority That neither prophecy nor foolishness can undo it. Gods live where men could not live. In scripture they call that The great world yet I’m beginning to ask myself if this is not The truest world of all? It’s not that I doubt the gods It’s just that I prefer being human. Let them live in their shadow-giving World above this world. Let them be what they must be to themselves Yet this is also a right I claim for myself. Adam’s story Begins with a handful of clay – yet with what water Can it be mixed to be the one who carries wood on his shoulder To the hill of crucifixion? Every particle of the believer I am is equalled by one Of a heretical faith. I have no false comfort to offer you: I ask these questions only on my own behalf But so far have no answers. (If history is God’s great joke Then at least we serve some necessity). I think that when I die a tradition will die with me. I began in the simplicity of an age which led to the complexity Of an age knowing too much but knowing too little To satisfy itself. Love will be replaced and the whole edifice Of poetry undergo a radical shift. I have no argument with this But doubt that the new scepticism will satisfy our natures or our needs. Only when the lightning strikes the river can a new fission enters the world. I set myself to achieve that – for my sake and for yours.
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Martin Burke
7 What science must now investigate poetry has long held a fruitful dialogue With. Thus it insists that the heavens remain; that the archetypal world Subdues us into wonder; and that even if the gods ignore out plight This wonder cannot be done without; and that sometimes human clay Is strong enough to absorb godly water. It is a Greek condition We have never moved from – and perhaps never will: as if science Will argue for the primacy of numbers while the poets, those disciples Of the Wild One, will continue to walk over moonlit fields In obedience to a duty that can never be abandoned.
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For / Because of / After
8 Now you see why I insist what I insist though I do so In the most mild-mannered of ways? What I have to say I say However, is contained in poetry -not dogma (Understand it as such but do not discredit it on that account). ‘Once there were gods’ The new history, whatever it will be, will never replace this truth With anything so satisfying. Regardless of whatever elegance Comes into the world (and already such truths are gathering On the borders of history) nothing will be as elegant to the soul As the healing of Apollo. No, this is not a dogma but a truth With a number no other number will replace. Everything begins With the One and thereafter separates into fractions; From a necessary simplicity all complexity will emerge. The weight of this wood cannot be replaced by any other wood. The hill you walk towards cannot be avoided. There are few, If any, who are willing to walk with you. Yet from among the onlookers a woman rushed forward To wipe your face – so what mark will you leave upon that clothe? What shadow has entered your life so as to enter history? There are no simple answers nor should there be. Love is As complex a weight as any tree and either Christ or Judas Hangs there. This is hardly mild-mannered but needs to be said So as to keep faith with the first intention of this poem. I have no other credo, no other way of saying what must be said: The tree is green in the new spring of the world of bright shadows – A fate which I must master to this art.
9 But ‘bright shadows’ – you see an inherent contradiction? There is none, not in the woods I walk in, finding the Germany Of the soul I always hoped to find is the one I’ve always known.
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Martin Burke
10 A wind. The northeast. My favourite. The promise it brings is that of the spirit of fire Foretelling a good journey for sailors. This is no small promise given the turbulence of the world In which if I have not been a sailor I have always been a voyager With memories of Gargonne, memories of gardens in Bordeaux, Of a path beside a river, of a stream running into a stream, Also of particular oaks and poplars – in other words, Of memories enough to populate a world with. A world of gardens, and Presences, wisdom reshaping foolishness, An Arabian delight in the context of Europe – a text which says Dark women walk from solstice to solstice with golden dreams Their lovers must waken from the flesh by touch of flesh. Thus the erotics of the poem are born and shaped. Nothing is more Natural and nothing as pleasing. A cup of light auroral-dark is handed To the dreamer. He moves through every human thought. He does not understand the meaning of the word ‘forbidden’. Yet as beautiful as this is, as satisfying, life-give, affirming, The heart -oh the heart is nostalgic for those absent ones Those friends who made certain moments meaningful So that memory feeds the source from which it springs Like a river returning to a pool so as to acknowledge The simplicity in which its complexity began. If this is not The true country of the soul then what is? If this wound Will not heal then what would ever will? Thus I dream A reconciliation of wood with wood; of Christ forgiving Judas, Of a kiss exchanged, of history handed a cup of dark-light To show the names of its numbers. Childish? Naïve? Let it be so -but in those gardens the shadows showed to me The true festivals of song, and dance, native to the soul So that if I expressed doubt or proposed outlandish questions I did not do so as a cynic. Let the sea give what only the sea can give. Let memory give what only memory can give. The poem endures, survives, lives in, whatever is expected of it.
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For / Because of / After
11 Spirits Holy in light on soft earth A sweet god-wind blows Like a woman’s hand Might pluck the strings Of a stringed instrument The breath of heaven Moves upon me Without scheme or calculation – An innocence which Also in innocence I must achieve Falling like water From height into depth From turbulence into stillness Year after year Growing towards what I only know as The Unknown
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Martin Burke
12 That the night shines in astonishment at its source and purpose Is no surprise. Astounding? Yes. Astonishing also – but not I repeat, a surprise. This is its nature, its gift, and I am a recipient. The moon shadows the earth as if it were its mirror. An undemanding beauty covers the city. The illumination seeps into the golden dreams of the lovers To find its perfection in flesh. If I know nothing else I at least know That much, yet I make no demands of what I know beyond what Poetry demands of me. ‘Perhaps sadness carries its own splendid Beauty when the night is full of stars carrying music even if unconcerned By our human condition’ Who can say? Perhaps the wisdom is in The not knowing, in living with it, in making it as splendid as a city In starlight? It is true the marketplace is empty of flowers and birds But shadows remain to insist a life of flowers and birds in a life Other than this. What can I share with you but what I have of shadows? The birds flutter above a city we cannot even begin to imagine Where a watchman, mindful of time, calls out the time as if to warn That even time itself will pass into the shadows. I know There should be sadness at this but there is not. The wind Comes from a harbour which proposes that we depart To where the winds and shadows issue from A place where the words ‘bread and wine’ assume a meaning No lesser meaning can usurp.
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For / Because of / After
13 Night, being night, foreshadows its own infinity. How many years has it taken me to make this simple statement? Or to acknowledge that I would offer up an entire tradition for one Moment of pure vision? That darkness, the one night comes from, The one that shadows the world with shadows, what other glittering Does it keep to itself as if jealous that we might come to a knowledge It wants to keep to itself? Yet if night conspires I conspire. Flesh and poetry have formed a lasting alliance. Reasonable minds Love the day but only the glittering can offer a true satisfaction. The mind lays siege to the dark with songs and glittering seed. See -the lovers are sacred in their beds! Dark cannot undo What they have come to know. Reasonable minds are frightened Yet this is the way the race achieves what is expected of it. At such moments it seems the damned walk in sunlight While the saved travel the dark. Nothing is more human Than this oddity. The world, or we, are upside down And this imbalance accounts for everything we do. So how long Has it taken me to make This simple statement? Perhaps I have come late to know what I know yet I know this: That the dark is glittering; that a tradition has no justification If it does not lead to a pure vision; that in your flesh Atlantis stirs Towards the purest of pure moments; that this is my tradition, My true country of the soul.
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Martin Burke
14 “Wherever I go Greece keeps wounding me” A hundred years from now a poet will write that. Until then I guard a truth which finds no expression. Travellers go to Athens and Delphi but what do they find? Nothing. They see the masonry of old cities and streets; They remember scraps of schoolbook ‘facts’ – But they see nothing. Athens and Delphi are no longer where they were. And, unless you bring them with you, you will only see Some stones and broken statues . Stones speak But if no one listens nothing is transmitted. In a hundred years the wounds of Greece will not be healed And perhaps there will be a generation for whom this means nothing As a hundred years become another hundred years and the wounds Of the earth prove to be beyond all healing. The caves of prophecy Are empty. Pilgrims, masters, apprentices shuffle from site to site But I have a better idea. To each of us something personal is granted So let us look at the obvious day, let us greet mockery with our madness Granting it access to holy night. Will we go to Isthmus? Yes! We will go to Isthmus, to Delphi, to Olympus where the new god comes from As he always has. As for Athens, we will leave that to those who desire it. The caves are empty, the cities are empty, but prophecy must occur. I see no better purpose for a poem.
15 (Yet if the wounds will not heal If a hundred years becomes a hundred years but nothing happens What choice will there be but to be fully human to ourselves Or abandon the project entirely? Mine answer is already formed And built into this poem -what is yours?)
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For / Because of / After
16 Yet if citizens and tourists have abandoned Athens and Jerusalem The believers have not. Do not however confuse me with ‘the believers’ My heretic heart demands a freedom the priests despise. The traditions I espouse they seek to put out; the shrines I have knelt at They want to desecrate. The battle is on. Indeed, is on and on-going Though (and only a few understand this) there is no final outcome. Christ and Judas hang from a tree. You can free one but not the other. You stand before them and realise there are oppositions you can never Reconcile. So, will you shuffle in daylight or go towards the glittering dark? This question could be added to or framed in a thousand other ways But the essence would remain the same. Daylight or glittering dark – There is no other choice; there never has been; there never will be: The daylight drives against the dark, our poetry drives us onwards. Everything we have ever heard of Greece is true – The sunlight, the islands, the dolphins at play in sacred waters So that the heart rejoices that such things Are But If a new Greece should come If some new Athens enters the world, If some new ‘Plato’ seeks to shape the State to please his name Will it be that of a wise king or that of the thirty tyrants? The future ferments its name which I have no name for Yet Greece endures, survives, outlives our expectations -and see: Here, upon the page, as on every page hereafter, shadows move Across an acropolis of light. “Wherever I go Greece keeps wounding me”? From this wound, this wound, this lasting wound, May there be no healing which outlives the pain.
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Martin Burke
17 Now a shadow falls upon the threshold of my door. Glory commingles with fear A name I do not know the name of speaks my name You want more? You think there should be more? As if it were a demi-god poetry tolerates such questions With its silence and its smile
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For / Because of / After
18 Some things are self-evident Yet I only know as much as the poem allows As I watch shadows and swans assemble Where lightning strikes the river of this town. Child of a harbour – I arrive, then depart, so as to create My homeland of the soul. Call it Germany, call it Greece: The godhead tolerates us with its silence and its smile.
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Martin Burke
CELAN Autumn (is it Autumn?) Exile (continuing) Autumn
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For / Because of / After
1
Beyond – more than – outranking nostalgia Your hair its lusciousness its lusciousness (It is Autumn but your hair is not brown) The hours turning in on themselves As I turn again – as I always have Towards You custodian of your own beauty You say: a kiss, kiss me I do There is no nostalgia in this – not even for the present.
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Martin Burke
2
Salt-wave spumes attend the leaf-work of years. Does Autumn begin or end in this leaf? Time is a nut in a shell which opens me as I open it. Sunday: in dreams lies my true sleep (nor ghosts attend nor charge me with infidelity) Sunday. A darkness. Poppies in memory. The moon. Its blood-beams. Where Were it not for the darkness of the sex of the loved one…. Let the window allow the world to witness this entwining! Heartbeat. Unrest. Stone. Flower. Yet on in that darkness… Time will forgive time (perhaps) As for I –
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For / Because of / After
3
Those cruelties. Their endurance. A house its occupants Cannot escape from (sometimes they does not want to) Daybreak extending into evening but neither stars nor sunrise Attend. There is a grave. There are snakes. The old ones of the race Trouble the earth. Someone says my Germany of the soul. A believer dances with a heretic. With an infidel. Your hair is not brown Your hair is not brown. Black milk. Drinking at night. To occupy an abandoned House. Write there. Cover the grave. Avoid the snakes. Do not disturb the dust nor cobwebs on the stairs. Open the grave, close the grave, dig a deeper one. Big enough for all the occupants who are returning. The earth is not deep enough so dig in air. A moon of blood-beams watches. Snakes slither Towards the living. There are few living. Snakes sup At black milk and offer their tongues to the living – What is the homeland of my soul? That there should be a dance for this. In Autumn. Its brownness. Not unlike your hair but never your hair. Nor are those eyes equalled. I live in the golden house of your hair but play with snakes. (there is neither forgiveness nor condemnation enough for this) Dig a grave in the unconfined air place the unconfined there. Gold hair. Brown hair. Smoke over the city. A fine ash falling. History does not know what to do with this. There is a grave In the clouds. The house was not abandoned but desecrated. They return. They want to dance. Where is the orchestra? Enough. Is never enough. The homeland betrays us. Offers Black milk. Sends snakes as emissaries. A grave. Big enough But never enough. No dance. The dogs barking. No orchestra. Your hair is not brown Your hair is not brown.
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Martin Burke
4
As if in some ghostly conversations with a ghost…. Bitter almonds. A tradition. A necessity. Almost sacred. As the poem wants to be (see me – almonds and language my companions) You above all others You as no other than you A cruel landscape yet the landscape indifferent To pain I remember – cannot forget – will not – never – never Death saw fit to walk with us. I remember. The three of us Almonds. History. As if a ghostly conversation with a ghost Was necessary to the life I live and will until the river…..
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For / Because of / After
5
I: ritual, candle, ancient, custom of words Where the dead are more real than the living as Dante foresaw History’s wind battering the flame Other flames Remorse for words unsaid to the dead To speak a blessing The river calling in a manner I so far refuse
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Martin Burke
6
Spasm. Heart to hand. A poem of dark knowledge Anticipating itself. Mystery. I know nothing in advance – little thereafter Yet there were three -their ring gleams on my finger Their word goes before me Their Amen overpowers me (I pronounce you free of all this) An altar of white stones at which…mother-word Time through which the spasm passes Into the hand, this hand – if…..there, now, the heart!
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For / Because of / After
7
Unrelenting. As if history condemned them To it. Digging. In air. In earth. Planting the seeds of themselves Before death panted its shadow On them. Which it did With all its intentions. Laughing at, undoing, what they did When all that they did Was to dig in the air, in the earth, A trench for their grief to bed down in.
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Martin Burke
8
There are rumours Of beauty existing before desolation smothered it But In the exile of Autumn (No one foretold this nor the elders who with singing flame and prophecy‌) What am I to believe? There are rumours -also other rumours – but also I do not Believe them I only believe as much as is necessary to survive.
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For / Because of / After
9
(it is said they invented no song but I have heard it sing it in my fashion as if history were an innocent witness a lamentation carried by the river underground my vein pulses to in the now in the whatever of forever earth – yes, they dug – by day, by night with song without song some – none – no one – you – all and every nowhere-leading witness’s became indifferent – became the jury of our fate)
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Martin Burke
10
Into the world, out of the world With my thought my every thought my gentle, open one Receiving Received As if nothing had ever died As if everything was at the first moment of birth A sun (the one out of the old traditions) Came to bless the inhabitants – all the inhabitants Where the silence was as masterful as any lyric could have been (indeed, the silence was a lyric) And light again from the traditions but exceeding the traditions As if it existed before its name was uttered Yet thrilled vibrantly within your throat When I kissed it with the first of many kisses
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For / Because of / After
11
Ice? Even Eden is unguarded Cold burning of moonlight Cold burning of the moon on reeds (this can be seen – is seen) Ice Earth under its nudity (do not ask more than this) It sees what I see It will return The hour will pass The moon already freezes
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Martin Burke
12 No-man (do not think this a Greek myth) Some hand shuffles us on a loom But no spirit enters our dust No-man Weaver of nothingness to this flowering substance In which we may outlast the deities Greece or any elsewhere – the where does not matter Nothingness – yet a rose – a movement – language and location Is it heaven which tears us from the earth we are rooted to? No-man singing of thorns Until –
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13 For those burned hands could not hold the gold Yet is there not some incantation by which to bless the ash? Perhaps we ask impossible questions – of ourselves Of history Where only silence rewards us with words dying away‌. Where sometimes even the ash refused to leave traces of itself A sense of a motherland regained then lost A sister-shape to which so much remains to be said Yet these burned hands which could not hold gold Cannot hold ash Nor these words what history needs of them
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14
Delicious And pleasing Yet Can this fruit Satisfy Our expectations? They told me a king lived within an almond. I have yet to find the almond I have yet to find the king Nothingness lords itself over us As for my race‌.. Even my homeland does not credence my use of its language Where so many who should have grown old‌.. The king of nothingness dwells in nothingness As if it were an unripe fruit Or a rotten one There are orchards I will never pluck from No matter how much I admire their seeming beauty
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Fire. Burning in hoops. Tigers as Blake might have Spoke them. Then in the finite singing -You! The symbolism of a generation and a country Was made real in that moment. Even the sky was ready To celebrate the events of earth The lost were un-lost and the heart was at peace – Perhaps a fraction only But a fraction not forgot.
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16
Shadows. As dark as my mind’s necessities. Yet even they cannot conceal the wound. A landscape drenched in its own nakedness Where nothing abides Not even silence can articulate it.
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17
If I tell what must be told In the way that it must be told No one but no one will understand: Crane – Thought – Flag – Syllables – Snow Eyelash – Shadow – Hour – Mouth – Doors Yesterday – Tomorrow – Forever – Pulse Unpulse – Construct from them the words I cannot say.
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18
Circling me More real than any life I might have lived The death-woman Tonight the stars can only mimic themselves There are night-birds, moon and stars But I can make no connection My name is already engraved on the urn of my heart.
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(I write this poem for all the poems I will not hereafter write) Bless us, bed us, for I can still see you Echo that you are to all I say Lamp-brightness towards which (do I have to say it?) Against shadows of which I am tempted to use the word ‘Never’ Consistencies. Contradictions. Yet when the present fails us Can the past provide a refuge? Who now will believe the names I give to the stars? Who will absorb them into their own vocabulary? Perhaps my ghost will possess an authority I could never achieve? As for angels, as for the silence of stars…… As always (history repeats this) There is talk that Jerusalem actually exists Yet the spume of a small wave against the quay-wall Would be radiance enough to guarantee forgiveness To the needs we have of it…. That one voice – on behalf of the many – yet remain one voice Resetting the clock to that innocence of Adam With good bread for altar offerings…. Or is such bread as un-nameable a burden As sorrow is? My inheritance is snow beginning to thaw Tonight the river’s grammar is my grammar. 44
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LORCA To speak To be granted that grace lucidity of star intent of wave
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1
The joy – the solitude – that mountain Heart’s grub weaving the mind’s silk-threads Eating apples and seeds – finding branches and fruit sprouting from my every limb And unafraid – Yes, even of the most outlandish thoughts The solitude – the joy In such as this (I said to the world) The first soul was born and became immaculate myth: In mud and starlight the dance-adorning flame ignited Freedom became a flag challenging the brazen wind Seeds scattered themselves into the nuptials of night and day On the horizon the first cities appeared
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*
The woods were wet There was starlight I wanted to generously fill her with my seed Even the swallows were luminous and erotic The earth itself was almost as fragrant as her mouth Stones glittered in the light of a flickering flame But what had any authority to flare Compared to her body’s flame? There were no rights other than those she granted – Granting me permission to expose her breast To kiss its dark star
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*
Noon Noon so bright that not even death could cast a shadow Only our shadows on the road to that village Our thoughts carrying themselves to the distant places by the wings they sprouted Not having thoughts which did not find their equal in the living world about us “Ah!” said one of the companions, “So this is Spain!” (meaning: this is the world) At which we carried on Well aware (how could it be otherwise?) That we had understood Nothing? Yes, we had wandered unknowingly Into that luminous country within my country A Spain not subject to borders nor maps A Spain not subject to fractions of time A Spain accepting the generous tides, ungenerous time without yielding to them A landscape exposing its secret intentions By what it exposed of water, wood, and stone. “Hold to the purpose brother, and push on!” Was the command it issued to the day Which if it was sober was not sterile Glittering in the resurrection of itself Where whatever tumult there was in the world Was human and divine.
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2
As deep as the beautiful dark rose is – The new dark of the new poem. The rose has a dark the night desires I desire the dark of the rose. As if from a country buried beneath “my country” Dark sounds that I would have enter my voice Not in the throat But deeper Not even from my innards and guts But deeper, deeper Down there Deeper In and from the earth As if some bull-god stamped and the world shakes! Without whose hooves on the earth of your heart There is no authority in what you say. As the singer said: Without the dark sounds You only have ‘style’. So don’t talk about “my country” Unless you are talking about my country Offered in a poem of such glittering dark That its language is not one of words. Dark sounds, dark sounds – how the thrill the roots of my hair! A beguiling erotica A temptation to which… A secret shuddering
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Nor allow history to define us with its limitations (What the Greeks insist I also insistHowever that is a matter between me and them) Where if my roots shudder Then so do those of the rose A current driving through the core of the world The bull waking it The poem useless without it But I repeat: We do not need the sanction of history The bull The rose The shudderings And out of such engenderings… Throwing off the fine but damaging ash of ‘civilization’ Facing into the raw beauty that the self is Nothing so splendid – so life-giving Yet ‘irony’ draws elaborate ivory knives Such as dazzle a generation – But who wants to be a singer Of gaudy trinkets from a market stalls? Give me the woman stretched before me In her glowing radiance And I will give her, and you, a rose – Dark rose She my desire Nor will I have some other But as for those who don’t have the balls to be what they are…. Leave them to their “mandolins and moonlight” Even though the moonlight will have nothing to do With their desecration of its beauty
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Dark sounds of the rose Dark sounds of the voice You hear it in Andalusia In Jaén In Cadis – The deep song The dark song The restless song (The bull-god bellowing) Which the bride’s virginity adorns While all this is happening And it is happening In Andalusia In Cadiz Some hob-knob professor from the capitol Thinks a thousand lectures will be enough To nail it down Like a butterfly in an ornate glass case Has he forgotten? This dark rose scorched Nietzsche’s heart And will scorch his Without ever exhausting itself! All that is dark has depth and is my inheritance Flowering out of the muck of the world To shudder the bones of the world Confusing the so-called ‘learned ones’ Laugh with me at their confusion as you offer the woman your golden seed. Such splendid beauty shudders your bones -and look: A poem is as rampant as the flesh is Are you now beginning to understand “my country”? Are you now as on fire for it as I am?
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If so – for it must be so – let us sing with the drunken sailors And with those angles whose steel wings are merciless yet this is their love Of the deep love found in dark sounds In the dark earth In the dark rose I could go on but I have said enough I give you the dark angle who walks with me: Make from this a religion or a poem Announcing the endless baptism of freshly created things.
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3
Cante Jondo: Forget the old superstitions – the old immortalities – the taverns – the cheap lipstick staining the sailor’s cheek – the denunciations of the priests We are speaking of, and in, an older language – also a newer language – doing so for the sake of our souls – doing so for Andalusia – crossing thereby from the old rope bridges of customs and folk rituals to the cathedrals of better traditions (they are in the earth – they are in the blood – you know them instinctively in the deepest places of yourself) An animal cry – or a cry so human it has no precedent – except its own necessity You hear it in the thrilling of birds migrating – and in the sexual arrogance of the cockerel in the farmyard – also in the intrinsic music of wood, of stone, of water, leaf and wind The first kiss engendered the first cry – the rituals of the race arose – the channels of our lyrics responded – the fire it brought makes us what we are Yet night is its nature Deep night – dark night – dark as the dark rose is deep in its gothic beauty – attended by the abundance of stars – the essence of which our memories remember Like a bowman remembering (every time!) the essence of the target he is aiming for Yet the bowman is a woman and the woman is called Suffering…. From such a song I cast fine nets to catch the wind-birds circling in the night-wind.
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4
Passion of water – agony of water In the silence of night (long night of long silence) I am pierced by love In my heart? No! I have carried the Christ of my passion In my veins and verse Where it is pierced by love Cities entice me – I succumb Yet the priests are unfaithful The virgin impure Not one of them is pierced by love Dark moss and nightingales Fires lit in the ancient hills A wind blows in from the eastern lands It too it pierced by love Perhaps the gypsies will understand what I am saying Only a language which holds moss and nightingales Is capable of sustaining the passion, the agony of water As it pierces the Christ in my veins Tomorrow I’ll go to church and repent. Tonight I’ll drink with sailors and whores Wwithout encountering a noise or a song Which might disturb the angles
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5 A halo rings the moon my love has died, is dead Listen: I’m salvaging bits of songs from the old country. The elders of the tribe, a useless lot, don’t give a tinkers curse About such things and would let them die Saying these song are only fit for drunkards, sailors and whores. I however have a different opinion and view this work As a work of human salvation, of friendship, of love: When I sing of Andalusia I am singing of the world listen, I’ve lost my way climbing this sad mountain, so let me hold up with my sheep in this cabin clouds one piled on top of another no wonder I’ve lost my way so would you if you followed the same path that I have followed for days You see what I mean? An insubstantial song, that’s true And I don’t always know what they mean nor do I have to After all, I’m not one to make grand judgments about this or that But I know a good tune when I hear it And this is as good as any that’s sung in the city And if you disagree with me keep your opinions to yourself Then only interest I have is this song That I sing of Andalusia knock on my door for all your worth but I won’t open it because you might hear my weeping and now you say that a particular bird from a particular grove has flow from tree to tree – (flown?) what can that mean to me?
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Something old stirs in these lines. Something I have no word for. Perhaps such a word exist or perhaps it doesn’t – What does it matter? If you have the song you do not need to discuss If it is worth singing. The song sings itself to you as you sing it To the world. As for the world -well, what can we say about that? It also needs salvation, friendship, and love – thus When I sing of Andalusia I am singing of the world. to a sea-rock my girl told her suffering only the earth was fit to hear the things she wanted to ask: tell me, she said, is there a herb or a potion, to cure love? you ask but nothing answers that’s the way it was with her yet the wind carried lamentations the stones wept with her even the sea, the deep sea cast up its dead in protest till there was nothing left but emptiness facing into her emptiness but even that made me jealous (understand that if you can) so I went to the sea in a boat with no oars so that the tide would take me as it pleased A big-wig from the city came and talked about “The prodigious latent talent of the audio-able tradition in half note and hesitations” – whatever that means.
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I only know that when Antonio wanted to sing He grabbed his crotch and sang about What passed between his hand and his balls so that When he sang of Andalusia he was singing about his balls And their natural hunger. And then the was the night when the gypsies came To dance in the procession for Holy week – But what did that one do but piss on the fire the priest had lit And we all, including the priest, broke into necessary laughter (Only those from Andalusia will understand this) And how, thereafter, we came to a road without crossroads Where a girl sang and the first bird died and the first arrow rusted In the earth that is the Andalusia of the world But now I’m getting serious. Enough of that. Let’s go back to what I started with: a nonsense song But a delicate one, and accurate in its way, For we sing such songs wherever we are in the world Though the song we sing is Andalusia: tears? everyone has them common as beach-stones or grass in a field that being so my pain is not as unique as I like to think though the one I cry for is more unique than any tear can measure A song which left the bigwig puzzled As if simplicity was too simple for him to understand Who never understood the world he walk in was the world Where gypsies could sing of green guitars As the most natural thing in the world.
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That’s when I grew to pity them: the big ones, the professors Who needed books to explain what any Spanish child Could have told him: that the earth was sacred, was pure, Was blood-bound and flowing, And that Antonio clutching his crotch (all the virgins were watching and eager for seed) Was the most beautiful sight in the world. But if you have to be told that; if your balls don’t talk To you with a natural human need and delight Then what use are you to the world? If you want Every butterfly to be nailed down in an ornate case Then how will you ever know the necessities of the wind As it blows across the passions of Andalusia? Expect no further help from me. I only know As much about this as a fisherman knows about nets: So here it is, the last song I’ll sing For every Andalusia of the world hearts they are windows – look mine are stained with blood don’t make comparisons I don’t want to hear let my pain be valuable to me because it is mine I am roped in her long hair and I weep for my loss my bones rattle out this music in a song that never ends.
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6
That night That guitar That singer holding his sex as he sang to that strange Madonna Who could forget it? Nothing is forgotten Everything is known – everything remembered: I hold my sex in memory of my memories of that strange beguiling Madonna
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7
– Where do you come from? -From the icy cold heights -What do you need? -The warmth of your flesh Five o clock – shadows and death Five in the after noon Shadows and daggers The passion of Christ become the passion of Spain branches are stirring in light a fountain is gushing in light animals are at their rest and the moon -ah the moon glitters in your hair Become the passion of one man One man of pride One man of beauty One man whose heart was a swallow copulating with a bull Then death wrote his name in its appointment book The daggers flashed in the shadows Wild men swore terrible oaths The distance between darkness and the sun was obliterated Death laughed through the holes in its rotten teeth The clock could not hold back the prophecy the white hills are your breasts the branch of every tree is your limb the fountain is your gushing joy Jasmine began to rot Even the sand was stained with blood Five o clock – shadows and death 60
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Five in the after noon Shutters closed out the sun – the rooms were full of sorrow Old women tightened their black scarves and began to wail (Even the sun wailed but nobody heard it) Animals prowled beyond the compounds of reason There was no reason – none to speak of – none that could be spoken of The moon refused to meet with the night I’ll break before you and for your sake but I will not break before the face of the world Trees wept Fruit turned sour – it would not be eaten The earth went sterile – the women barren Paradise was exiled from the dreams of a child The red earth was ashamed of its redness The rivers refused to flow under bridges In Madrid In Cadiz In Andalusia you should be near why are you far away? The bells covered their sound like a naked man covers his sex in front of the virgin. The virgin wailed already your flesh smells of jasmine already the branches are stirring already the fountain is in delight Five o’clock – shadows and death All light is gone from the world.
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8
She stood there – naked Lady of water Her laughter like the flame of morning See – she shines! she shines! Now, for delight, sheer delight, The flesh of the other is quivering!
9 There is a rational truth – there is a poetic truth. The poetic, which by its very nature is inherently erotic, has no need of the rational for its justification Thus: I sucked honey from your breast while you slept I was the water you swam in I was the wavelet that rippled over your thighs to enter your sex like a hungry explorer where I remained Until The white foam that fell on the white strand you slept on Was all of my glittering seed
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ODYSSEUS ELYTIS
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PATMOS Homage to Odysseus Elytis
May I speak for the necessities the luminous untrammelled by restrictive deities: the shimmer-haze on the horizon the horizon that is another beginning? Each to his weapons I said as over the world I’ll make the sign of the pomegranate (in honour of that poet) as over the world I’ll post my sentries not, as you might suspect, to bar the way but to open the way, to give a bright welcome to the beautiful one when he arrives
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ONE
1
Not knowing brevity I sang brevity Expectation filling my lungs My heart satisfied for a moment Waiting where the sea was Bowing to the water-goddess Translating all to her sacred aims Landscaping a life accordingly Swimming in waves so as not to sink Engaging in metaphors Greek to the core though I did not know What that would mean: singing for gods Singing for men; hoping to clothe, unclothe myself In the caves of prophecy.
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2
Placing my lips to the conch of the world I sang the world Nothing if not ardent Obedient in all the necessary ways Yet, should I now sing, what would I add to creation? Yet master, teacher, brother, friend (I dare call you by these beautiful names) The sea that unites us divides us For you have learned death’s jealous wisdom One more bond between us – That pull of the moon on the waves of the heart Before which I bow in liberty And remembrance.
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3
Bird, you whose shadow falls on the page, In your relentless beauty resides that justice I thought only poetry capable of Shadow from a well of shadows, hunkering for the light Your innocence remains primordial Untouched by the blatant forces of decay So, until death comes disguised as itself I will adhere to your blameless judgements Arriving as only they can arrive In shadow-retaining ink.
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4
Not knowing beauty but singing beauty Greece appeared in every poem Disguised as sailor or pilgrim. I followed Disguising myself as one or the other, Drinking the sun in fabulous locations Crossing from one niche of time into another Beginning and ending in the one moment Though there are no ends the heart will subscribe to Not as it walks by the olives and figs Not as it sings by the sea.
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TWO
1
Earth, air, fire, stone, song I stood by a river and called for the boatman Yet what answered me was neither human Nor not-human I felt I should utter a cry of praise That I should bow to the hand which shaped the world thus Yet even that was not enough Again I called, again It appeared One who was pleasing, speaking a language unlike any I knew Yet, somehow, I understood “Sing for me” “I do not sing except that you sing” Earth, air, fire, stone, song Out of this I constructed what I call ‘the soul’ As again that bird flew To say that by his shadow and speech All chronicles would be written
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2
Citizen, exile, sailor, pilgrim I moved between town and wood Adam of the earth’s brightness The clay of the world adopting speech to address me “Then I will address all things and shout the battle-call of the soul!” How those words escaped me I do not know But they could not be rescinded speaking as they did My duty and joy To walk the many side-roads of the world To conspire with Greece against the world To live in the world for the sake of the world To live so as to dance
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THREE The essentials? – Luminosity and transparency We creatures outliving the dark in which we were weaned Compositions of balance and imperfections Yet something splendid stirs our bones Swimming naked in the sea, or calling like a suckling child to its mother Eager for a vivid metaphor with which to address the abounding significances Stone from one period, Icons from another And someone suggesting the (possible) use of pure color to indicate “the divine”– Truth captured by metaphor, a revelation and its scripture – yes, what would we not give for that? So thus (and in its archaic usage) certain words revealed themselves to me as my vocation Something now sneered at, laughed at, decried, by the loud ones who seeks to silence every voice Thus the new orthodoxy reinstates the old accusation That we are dealers of ‘truth’ and ‘light’ That this is the world Keats walked out of (that world the new world has abandoned) That to swim naked is as useless a gesture as writing a poem on water There is nothing that can be said that has not already been said. Yet when all is said not enough has been said for the Angel’s form is more potent than the demons who make it their enemy So pardon me if I cite a tradition you thought to be extinct The word conceals whatever it expresses but this is no negation of its core No shadow-play to cancel the light No striptease-show to damn us into silence Light is the deep dark we enter A pilgrims route, beginning in unknowing to arrive at….. A path through the undergrowth where a story awaits the accurate voice Or failing that A voice to say such a story exists
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It has a name but I do not know it I only know it surpasses us/ surprises us – which is as close to ‘definition’ as I am ever likely to go I come to the world with my unknowing Yet what is more precious, more necessary, lucid, or transparent, than colors suggesting auroral dark? I come with affinities and heresies Refugee more than citizen One of the new barbarians camped outside the city walls with a chant to shatter those walls where love is the cause which batters the walls with a song (I am telling you all my secrets now as if they were a source of pride and not of shame) Yet out of that pit of erosion, of death, it is given to draw a word indestructible and eternal Shadows interlock to copulate Something dies but something survives The crucifixion occurs in every life – Yet, with grace, so also the resurrection Theory follows theory, replaces a theory but the crucifixion continues Shadows have had their glory but are gone where no living breath will follow We interlock or copulate, making our breath our signature Then if not with water or auroral dark with what can a poem be written? I enter border-zones Fault-lines are everywhere Two choirs contend yet only one has a viable Word I salvage light from dark – A history predating history poetry gives the carbon date of The luminous answering our needs by which it, and we, remain vital to the earth
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I see the knots of history – Heraclitus to Christ Various forms of the same form Voice of necessity speaking in/to the world; showing this world, showing those others A reality to which our rights outranks our betrayals of the light Water I step into has been stepped into before I give it a name, some other gives it another Heraclitus, when speaking of here and hereafter, speaks of a harmony of opposed tensions Something only a Greek could say with conviction enough to satisfy the world A signature, a breath on which if the poem is not spoken it will have no life but be an empty mouth talking to an empty mouth where nothing will be said A breath lays itself upon a breath You see this in Holderlin, Lorca, Celan, in others (they are few but they exist) Those who move beyond fashion or have never entered it Those whose luminosity offers a befitting reply to “Wozu Dichter in durftiger Zeit?” Thus if I inherit one I inherit every tradition An exactitude which finds a parallel in that landscape Hans Memiling brightly painted to show the shape of rooms I now walk through I am whatever I have become and want to be no other though where I move Vondel once moved And there are footprints on the path beside the river How could I suspect? How could I know this would become my obligation? That to swim naked in the sea was to call to the mother? Was to write a poem of water with the density of stone?
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As much as those who precede me I have learned to surprise myself by what they have to Show They speak, calmly but with determination of conviction to say the luminous is necessary That we are a child of water and stone That water is the world’s abiding ink That the shadows on a page of ink are the shadows of the heart When the past enters the present When the bird stirs within the stone When all the water turns to ink – the future happens! What I inherit I transmit Becomes your own Yet in this we are speaking of efforts and intents -not yet of final success Whatever I speak has already become a translation in my mouth A shadow remains to cast a shadow visible only in a certain shade of light Yes, much fades, falls into darkness, falls out of time, yet essential necessity remains A second, a third translation perhaps, yet such water contains enduring ink Greece falls into my heart (as much as I have fallen into it) to become my essential homeland Silence enters the dialogue but the dialogue is not mute I have winnowed history I do not come to this table with empty hands See -in the wood I am carving a poem like initials of love on a tree I think this is how revelation enters the world Sap oozing through carved words A juice out of the past enlightened by the present Or something so new it shatters the world and every tree thereafter carries those letters like a luminous word to those who wait to lick the sap of spring Forgive me 74
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Even now I grow nostalgic for the future Yet the past extends itself in ways I cannot ignore The tree that grows in Patmos, grows in Golgotha Grows again in the mind for its, and our, necessity Judas-tree, Christ -tree, where one tree is enough to change the world and alter the possible future Such a tree is added to the weapons I possess Shall I name them again or do their shadows fall across the common language that we speak That language no ideology can shroud in blood or flame or pain Language residing at the edge of ourselves where, and by which, the spirit is formed The hands which hold the sun in their palms will be blessed by blessed pain A moment which on behalf of, every poem is written Those hands are cast into cooling water so as to cool The vapour which rises from the vat is the template for this poem
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FOUR Turn to the sea Where island nests in perfect form Where there are tides and necessities Where in so doing you are turning to yourself With expectations of revelations With the certainty that something will happen Where it already has You have departed You will return You will never be the same The island I call Patmos another calls Ithaca I live with this contradiction without finding it A contradiction. As if one word equalled another Or cancelled all opposites, or brought them to a solid mass Of rock in the sea we call Aegean When, let us admit it, we are always and only talking about The sea within ourselves. You have departed You will return You will never be the same So, we are speaking of ‘revelations’ Of Ithaca without vengeance or sordid triumphs Prefiguring the camps and railways carriages Shunting east and west across our century We are speaking of Patmos -but not of dogma Vestments or sterile rituals. We are, Let us admit it again, talking of ourselves In the only way that we can speak Of a name within a name. So, the sailor sets out with the name of a harbour But not with a chart. This unknowing is part of knowing. Indeed, there are sailors for whom charts are a blasphemy Against their art – so let us agree:
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What they know is worth knowing. Perhaps we are as transient as our fears But we are as essential as our joys. You have departed You will return You will never be the same Ithaca Patmos Aran – What is an island but our longing for it? We dress in masks of names to woo its many revelations. Dear one Dear darkling shade Unwind the sheet that I have wound Out of my knowing and unknowing From which all wisdom is made. Let dark’s deep wisdom complement the light I sought to be the singer of. Into darkness I have gone With many impious words: Change my state Change my song Give me the voice of birds
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L A P W I N G PUB L I C A T I O N S
MARTIN BURKE
FOR
/ BECAUSE OF / AFTER
These poems cannot, and do not, pretend to be ‘translations’ in any form of guise. Had translation been my intention then I would have been totally disqualified to attempt it since I do not speak a single word of the various languages in which the poets presented here wrote their poems. The intention was other: to attempt to write new poems in English which utilised the various tones, themes and shades of these writers without in any way suggesting that I was presenting versions of their poems. Naturally there are a few moments when a word or phrase associated with them crept onto the page -and while it was tempting to immediately strike them from the page they were a means of linking these poems to the masters they found their origins in. This is not the place to attempt any statement which would locate these poets as central to the modern canon - yet modern poetry would not, could not be what it is without them. Each of us has debts to be paid - of friendship, or love, or gratitude. These poems are no more than an attempt to pay a poetic debt which is on-going, enduring, and real. Martin Burke 2011
The Lapwing is a bird, in Irish lore - so it has been written indicative of hope. Printed by Kestrel Print Hand-bound at the Winepress, Ireland
ISBN 978-1-907276-82-8 £10.00