IEPER Martin Burke
Belfast Lapwing
IEPER
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 Baskerville Old Face
ISBN 978 1898472 44 5
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Martin Burke
IEPER To love a word is to love the world it holds War called -and they went to the appointed place
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Brueghel has been And is gone And nothing has changed Enough that it has been so – Figures on the skyline Light at a low and far distance Calm shire of ageless heart and home Pure tableau Everything in parenthesis
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Martin Burke
To love a word is to love the world it holds Ieper, beauty and blood, yet of this greenness there should be no end nor was there West Flanders Mile after mile Roads innocent of complicity Going casually though nothing was casual in a landscape of wounds With figures on the skyline and light at a low and far distance Where Breughel has been and is gone and everything is in parenthesis
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Easy to miss
Even as your radiant thoughts gather about you it is easy to miss
Easy to miss the falling of an age when it is falling into Flanders Where tourists come but do not look under the Oak
It is our thoughts which are sacramental but these woods are sacred also
Where inferred ghosts staggering in a drift of smoke and mist teach us their Loneliness
Yet it is easy to miss Even as your golden vanities gather about you where dark is deep and deeper
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Martin Burke
Dear ones, the life you lead is unavoidable The moon cannot meet you and you are childless Dear ones, if this is a Sabbath then you are the Christ-ghosts bringing a pale annunciation to the day
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He was everything that was required of him, honourable and well versed in strategy yet he went to his death like any other.
Do not let his beauty deceive you – he dressed in amber beads but this only matched his fury – at least it did until he was broken to bits.
Laughing when laughter was needed then harsh when harsh was required – then both as the occasion demanded and it demanded much. Bayonets before death, death calling, men falling, falling.
Dawn, and many with fear in their hearts. The field seemed a pit of red blood but they held firm, fear having departed them as they faced the counter-charge.
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Martin Burke
Ardent, yet with a warrior’s prudence until battle called him to abandon, everything and fight, which he did with skill until he could do no more.
He was first in all things – battle and horseracing; yet this undid him for he was the last to retreat.
A shield in himself to many, he was many things to the enemy but most of all a flame that seemed a living thing until his blood flowed over his tunic and he died.
That he was among the best at everything is no surprise for he honoured custom as befitted his stature and status and was as sharp in a battle as he ever was with a verse.
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Hard to believe the world is what it is yet it is Beauty and brutality slung on your shoulders as a yoke with two buckets of water too precious to spill
So will I sing in ecstasy or will I in sorrow where one choice is the denial of the other?
Whatever the world is this is what it is – Dry earth, spilled water, too much and not enough
An imbalance that must be balanced
On shoulders willing or unable to carry the weight of wood
Yoke and cross hacked from the one tree left to suffer or rot 12
Martin Burke
Hard to believe this is also the world where willow and oak are splendid
It is spring but the mood is autumn
Sorrow in the veins of leaves where the cherrytree has no fruit
Truth or lie have no meaning
Enemy a faceless word The living do not recognise each other and the dead have cares of their own
When the calendar says it’s Christmas a season says it’s hell
A map says there is a wood with a mill and a village but there isn’t There is no one to asks where they’ve gone 13
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Hard to believe that this is the world but it is
Hard to believe that what’s human endures to survive being human
Blank eyes more no-mans’ land than the land they stare at
Visions of ghostly bowmen
(We believe what comforts’ us when we have need of comfort)
The lie but also the truth of the crucifixion parody
Hard not to believe this is also human
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Martin Burke
As for faith, as for doubt, leave them under the oak
Briar and rose -flower for them Briar and rose, emblematic blooms Garland for them a healing grove Let waters anoint their mortal wounds Briar and rose, assume their love-cry Consume us as we live and die
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Autumn began with malice and only death was satisfied The air was hushed until a held breath was released Ash and stars Soldiers gathered in a wood Violence and speech arrayed against them A blemished page Love-cry or death-cry – storm or kiss? You who watch observe them well for you will see them no more Swallows have long since departed A chronicler weeps, some few survive The plaintive note of a pibroch’s wail impeaching the air History become memory’s omphalos Living so as not to live though dying so as not to die
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Martin Burke
They went as war demanded to the necessary place led by one who did not shirk from duty and who gave to altar and minstrel their due.
Brave, and perhaps a mite reckless, only death’s malice was able to cut him down
Relentless – a tide that overcame all obstacles but well versed in those courtesies all men honour so as when in battle his people held him to be the pride of their race.
Even to be in his shadow was a blessing.
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The goddess who is his mother tells him he carries two kinds of destiny towards his death
Stand and fight now, let there be no let-up, fight at the walls of Ieper
But there will be no return home. No home but the lasting fame his name will ever be held in
Or return home to the loved-land but the excellence of all glory will be gone.
It will be a long life, good in its way but not glorious, and death when it comes
Will find little to take and men will have little to remember
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Martin Burke
Men cowering behind men Peering out to take a shot Dashing back to cover again
Dead men held up to take the bullets intended for the living
Letting dead men fall Firing and seeking cover Some gaining it Some not Madness or clarity gripping a captain Attack!
Attack the Trojans! Up close Man to man Packed tight against each other as the stones of the wall of a house
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As for faith, as for doubt, as for bayonet, rifle and sword, leave them under the oak
Cower in a mud-hole
Crawl away (if you are lucky – and you may be)
Difficult with the weight of a gun – leave it under the oak
Rightly or wrongly it is easy to accuse both dark and day while he who is lord sleeps in his necessity
Anger, bitterness, calls for revenge – leave them under the oak
As you did passing four bright stones at a clearing in the wood but will you pass them again?
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Martin Burke
As if your body’s wounds were the entrance of
Christ in a radiant poem from under the oak Yet easy to mistake him in the dark
I will never be rid of the mud or the rats of these guts These you must carry, cannot be left behind Tin hat with the slack-sling of it Your clumsy prayer aiming for radiance even as you crawl towards stretcher-bearers crawling towards you Yet easy to miss them in the dark
Once, in these woods, Pan’s flute, verse and painter Textures and contours Colours, shades, degrees of light Until the past was taken into an impious core 21
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Darkness gathering against the earth-lord as if, thereafter, in rat-hole or bunker a redemptive grace…
That certain words might teach us glorious wounds…
That from an amulet worn against a bullet, carved from a bullet… That a saint’s ivory might…
Yet easy to miss it in the rat-hole dark
Awaiting judgements Condemnations Where a cock crows
So who amongst us has denied when who amongst us has not?
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Martin Burke
Passionate about weapons Sexual metaphors of bullets randy as pricks A monument for the populace safely abed in indifference, perhaps even love As they shuffled towards what was now
The Front Do I come with a threat? I do, and here it is for you I will take what I will, whatever and whenever I will and teach you to fear me more than you do already So that other men will also fear and not contend against me. Do I come with a threat? I do and this is it That you are already dead even if you nor the world yet knows it I am the first part of your destiny My shadow is the second and my shadow is already upon you I will take from death and I will give to death 23
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I am what I am but you are no more than what you are nor ever will be Even if the dead are ever resurrected you will not be so deep in death will I place you
Green flame-washed roads Not hindered Not faulted The owl welcomes and warns the trespasser (Priests and kings pass in an indifferent parade) The world has no in-fire to equal their dreams They enter alone and leave seeking the comfort of water When hell burns your face hide it from your heart
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Martin Burke
Charge but don’t charge too far ahead and don’t lag behind Keep the line straight Whatever skill you have the man facing you has Get within range and fire, then charge again That the effective way Anything else will damage us more than it will them Fire when you can, take shelter when you must As for the dead -leave them in the mud for no oak grows in the mud between here and there
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To skewer a man is like skewering a flying horse He twists on the point of your bayonet and tried to hold it the more you drive it in Drive it in as if you were the god of death and war combined His blood will squirt out of his nose He will fall backward in an ending pain He knows he is dying but can do nothing about it Don’t be squeamish – it’s either you or him When your helmet flashes in the sun you are Achilles or some-such If it doesn’t you’re dead Don’t die Make others die Stay alive Kill
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Martin Burke
Stay alive for you are death’s door-keeper worth only as much as the dead you create Move on The mud will accept the corpses you give it Let you helmet be a terror to all eyes If you die you are nothing, if you live you must kill Wait for the whistle where no life is worth more than a half-meter of gained ground No one knows if it is the living or the dead who are damned What has been gained must be held When you kill kill beyond redemption Don’t stop Death stops but the living keep on going nine degrees beyond exhaustion where the enemy aims at you And it does not end –
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Dug-out to map-mark to hill sixty-one If your helmet flashes you have survived
Incidents are beads of an unholy rosary Why blood rhymes with mud is not your concern Silence lasts half a minute before new orders are given The silence lasts half a minute then you move on If your helmet flashes in the sun then you are Achilles If it doesn’t you’re dead
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Martin Burke
Will the land yield and refuse a harvest yield? Surely this or something like this will come to pass because he died. No, he did not come home unless it be the grave is home of all.
Think of it – one man who was more than one man. Graceful in all the needed arts which peace and war call for. He proved himself to be what he was and men where proud to be with him.
Some men gather shame like a shroud about them but this one gathered fame -and rightly so. Defending his brothers, going forward until he reached the point men do not know the name nor nature of.
That grief still wounds me -slaughtered and not in brightness but in terrible pain. A tragic tale; no one escaped; why did no one return?
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But if the fields are wounded the crocus do not show it You have left your heart under the oak Hell burns but you have hidden your heart under the oak and the crocus does not betray you Fields are your ally and peace is sought in this conspiracy – no, the crocus will not betray you The wounds of the fields are not unlike your own where the crocus grows near the oak Hell burns everywhere but the oak maintains its calm Crocus form a bouquet of innocence and their silence is either memory or prophecy Come with your questions but leave them under the oak The world is wounded but the crocus does not show it
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Martin Burke
The oak is composed of memories and prophecies yet come with unknowing and leave it under the oak Walk back to the world where your report will be no betrayal You have left all guilt for forgiveness under the oak Hell burns elsewhere but not under the oak Hell burns elsewhere but not under the oak
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Sleepers in barrows face the moon their white bones numbered for healing There is no other beauty nor is its name mentioned yet some ask for ‘poetry’ as if Swinburne was still writing sensible verse and the poet laureateship was up for grabs Or that it mattered A world separated from the world nor justified by offhandedly citing
The poetry is the pity
Don’t ask, don’t speak Only the truly living can speak about the dead He who is earth-lord sleeps Land and memory seemingly at ease where nothing is forgotten yet still it is asked
Who is he in his sleeping?
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Martin Burke
Oak and battlement, wounds drained into the earth yet still it is asked
Who is he in his sleeping? Have his wounds been reconciled with time? And neither elegy nor eulogy accurate unto it The Last Post played but not the final note of men who so loved the world they gave their only begotten life for it The human strain embedded like iron stains rusted in snow By which if you pity what lies beneath the snow you must pity the snow also By which some came to radiance, some to pain, praying they would not be forgotten in the dark
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Now Flanders my Flanders The scent of apples as forgiveness on the crucifix of the world illuminated beyond despair The road tree-lined with shadows where the brightness of life joins what they hoped would be The brightness of an afterlife Remember Forget Even as the birds in sighing orchards begin to sigh and remember The air is not empty where a human strain is stained into the ground
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Martin Burke
To give things back their proper names Ieper (not Ypres) word and world Human mud and history Wailing and wound Even as you love the mould and earth of it Pluck crocus to forget and poppies to remember This is their season and there is no other
Gravestones Earth and air repossessed Innocence and slaughter where oak and willow grow on ground which gives our words Their human worth
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Martin Burke is an Irish born poet and playwright currently living in Flanders who has previous published
Solstice Song, Ithaca, and For/Because/After with Lapwing Publications
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L A P W I N G PUB L I C A T I O N S
MARTIN BURKE
An Irish born Playwright and Poet resident in Belgium, Flanders to be more precise, for many years. He is also an animateur of ‘ideas’, making things happen such as the Green Door on-line arts magazine. In this single poem Martin Burke brings to the fore-front of war the hideous horrors of history and the blood sacrifice which is central to most cultures in the world. The Paschal Peace is loud with the echoes of ghostly gunfire, nails and knives through flesh and wood enumerate the heroes of history. How many died and why? Perhaps the answer is as Martin gives us in his final line ‘Their human worth’. The title of the poem is Ieper, not the Dutch or French version but the Flemish and that alone indicates the durability of this small nation through centuries of imperial machination and religious intolerance which poisoned western ‘civilisation’.
The Lapwing is a bird, in Irish lore - so it has been written indicative of hope.
ISBN 9781898472 44 5 £10.00