Poetry

Resurrection 7

“I’m nearly fifty years of age now, Nain

I have achieved precisely nothing good.

Where are the friends from my generation?

How many of them are already dead

Or failed as I did in their ambition?

I blame the land, what the age demanded.

Since, as a child I only dreamed to be

A selfless useful man in my country

“A member of the gang and of my nation.

A soldier, naturally, irresponsible,

A modest worker at regeneration.

But that turned out to be impossible.

The subtle codes of entry and submission

Seemed so shameful I found myself unable

To pronounce them. Your son, my uncle Jack,

Told me you used to sing and play music?”

“Oes. Canais a chwaraeais gerddoriaeth

Ond barddoniaeth yw'r ysgol anodd, Jason.

The choice you made when you were still a youth

Determined you would end up almost no-one.

For poetry is the hard school of the truth

Collecting all the past works into one

And modifying it with something new

Bringing the past into the present day

“That living members of the tribe recall

The antique virtue, modified today,

Reviving it, and waking up the soul

Through conscious words. But no one wants to pay

To voluntarily attend that school.

Such is the fate of songs and poetry

And it’s your job.” “Could I have been someone

If I was rid of imagination?

“Did doing poetry ruin my life?”

I asked her, and she smiled and shook her head:

“Remember where you are now, in the stuff

That dreams are made on. Here is the reward

For work with virtue on the tribe’s behalf.

It goes in step with the footfalls of God.

To create the land by singing of the song

Of good and beauty despite other wrong.”

My children were descried far off the while

I laid the tiles down and I set to work.

In Brownian motion they were moving ‘til

They found their grandam and with her did speak.

A great-grandmother, a stripling and a girl,

With other shades there gathered for the talk.

Look, this is how a people must survive,

The old, young, unborn, dead and those alive

Assort together, every soul in place,

Like that fellowship told by Tolkien,

The Dungeons and Dragons adventurers.

So, a coherent infantry platoon

Or any football team which wins a match is

A strange collection of dissimilar men:

The weak and frail are strong in some respect

The team will lose if they suffer neglect.

The fat and lean, the cruel and sensitive

By nature’s law are born to do their job.

But I am guilty, and cannot forgive

Or mostly I feel separate from my tribe

Unhappy, thinking on my previous life.

Eliot was there to hear my diatribe:

“There was no social ladder I could climb

There was no class or means of gaining fame.

“So, I will make society have ranks

And sets and grades and streams and proper rules

Of right and wrong, and means of giving thanks

By saying prayers, where ritual prevails.

That’s how it was at school, those days when things

Made sense and made us glad to be in Wales.

Rural estates of a paternal lord

And people close to earth all working hard

“Where families can rise or fall in trade.

The local bishop, a prince of the church,

Would oversee the flock and lead the herd.

But though in school I learned to expect so much,

There was no such thing in the actual world.

It was so terrible to see the breach

Between the dream of England and the real

For this was real: a technological

“Nomadic nowhere land where people squat

In mechanised and brutalistic tents,

Convoys on Airstrip One.” That’s what I said.

And he replied: “And this makes perfect sense

That you have known the twilight and desert;

To build the dream today that you saw once

With hope and not despair.” The young returned:

“Let’s go, dad, let’s explore this new found land

“As once America and New Zealand

Or southern Africa, or India

Called people forth to voyage and try their hand.”

“We’ll do that shortly, but I must stay here

And clear these forests which are growing round

So as to leave it fit for Galya.

This guilder rose with sphere-like canopy

Like the one in Chester that grew across the way

“The leaves lay heavy everywhere in Autumn.

And this one here is an elder by the flower;

We had one in the back yard just the same.

See how, left to themselves, the sycamore

Grows with the cherry tree, being welcome

To put its roots down shoulder to shoulder.

When men retreat, green things fed by sun

And water and mere air come and return.

“Like at Chernobyl or there outside Mold,

Or like the year the state proclaimed Lock Down,

Or like that other time nobody mowed

Or cut the weeds back since there was no one

To pay the workers. Then the weeds controlled

And undermined the brickwork of the town.

But our world now in Paradise will be

An ordered place of effort and beauty.”

The girl said, then: “Let’s say a last goodbye

To that old world and make a confession.

The state had tried to kill the family

That was its main objective and its plan

To ruin private life and force to die

The childhood and the childbirth of woman

Controlling children so as to control.”

“The memory is burned into my soul,”

I said, and: “How they paid a wife much more

Than I could give her, so they bought her out

And paid her welfare. That is what I saw.

And when I was made homeless, down and out

Forbidding me to see you, by force of law.

How they encouraged women to abort,

And made the children fatherless just as

Eugenics came next, so incestuous.”

“But we survived and made it in the end!”

She said, “We thrive by God’s protection now,

And nothing can withstand Jesus’ command

To follow God’s laws and the natural law.

But don’t forget, dad, so you understand

That restraint, fasting, gentleness and prayer

Are those things which have got us all this far;

Now we are ready to proceed somewhere.”

I would now tell the reader all about

The potash that I gave then to my wife

A white dry ash you get from plants or wood,

Dissolved in water and left to dry off

It’s loved by crops. But see what I have said,

About glass elswhere. Is there time enough?

Boil animal flesh ‘til the fat floats up,

Add salt and potash then to make some soap.