Every time we pass his house he says the same thing, It's blowy out here.
He's an old, frail man, more bone than flesh. Only the white shock of hair reminds you that he was young once. He was okay last year, Ubo informs me, until his fall. And is there no recovery from a fall, I ask. No, once the cells start to degenerate there is no way back.Those words, 'no way back', haunt me since there's something menacing about things that aren't irreversible.
He walks gingerly to the garden gate, shuffling his feet as he does so. And each time he taps the gate three times with his trowel. And those same words. It is as if the needle of a record has come stuck. How strange that we say "in the groove" when this means precisely the opposite in this case. I wonder, is this ritual a form of senility or is it the ritual that staves off its onset? There is something unkempt about his appearance and the hint of wildness in his eyes, untamed, defiant, though not quite the 'unconquered fire'. He has lost his mind -how ordinary language reveals so much!- and seems to wander back and forth in his little cemented garden like a jilted lover or an exile.
The storm strikes up at it's appointed hour. There is something mechanical, predictable about its arrival. It must be 2 or 4. Why always an even hour? The wind is in a revengeful mood tonight, tearing through the trees' outstretched arms, howling across the empty fields. It has come from the north to destroy us, like a barbarian king or a trowl. I imagine it picking up its strength across vast, undefined seas, sucking in the blackness around it. When man's activity comes to a grinding halt then, and only then, does one hear the great silences that allow us to perceive the striking up of nature's forces. And it takes a kind of strength to face all that loneliness on one's own. And I think to myself, maybe it wasn't madness I saw in the old man's eyes...
Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men
Thistles spike the summer air
And crackle open under a blue-black pressure.
Every one a revengeful burst
Of resurrection, a grasped fistful
Of splintered weapons and Icelandic frost thrust up
From the underground stain of a decayed Viking.
They are like pale hair and the gutturals of dialects.
Every one manages a plume of blood.
Then they grow grey like men.
Mown down, it is a feud. Their sons appear
Stiff with weapons, fighting back over the same ground.
---Ted Hughes
(Photo: courtesy of Roxana. Thanks!)
7 comments:
so what draws us always to such things as the "unconquered fire", the untamed, the howling of the wind across the empty fields? some atavic memory of those past "ages of Man, dark, bronze, silver, gold"? or the longing for some infinite force which can save and destroy us in the same time? good night, K. or maybe it is already dawn for you?
Hello, Roxana. Can't write now but yes, i think it is some distant memory of former lives..as if the whole history of the universe was in us.
Yes, it is dawn now, but maybe it was night when you wrote. And maybe you are asleep whilst I write these words..in which case: sweet dreams!
Good morning then! it's such a blowy morning here :-)
what a Jungian thought... I also believe this, we are totally hopelessly unfashionable :-)
take care, R.
Hmm. I'd rather not think of Jung. I was thinking more on muslim lines: the creation of a single soul is as the creation of a universe.
And also the traditonal view that 'Man' is a the centre and therefore 'contains' the others.
As Ibn Arabi would say: we are created with the TWO hands of God.
Oh yes, forgot to say: hello ! :)
Perhaps that resolves the issue of time!
Take care,
b.
I think "the creation of a single soul is as the creation of a universe" does not (or does not have to)imply what you said before "i think it is some distant memory of former lives". but what do you have against Jung? :-)
I have nothing against Jung per se..mainly because I've only read half of his 'moses'! but I do get the *impression* that he's mixing up the sub with the supra conscious.
Yes, you're right roxana...one doesn't have to imply the other. But it is not(for me at least) about always drawing distinctions between the religious, the mythical, and the poetical but , instead, betweeen those and the view that we are cut off from the past (and perhaps, therefore,from a future), the view that nature is a radical 'other' that has no relation to us, and that is so much material to be simply used or 'consumed'.
there are a wonderful few lines by Rumi on this that I forget now..how we pass from stone to mineral to bird to man.
it's true, there is a lot of haziness in Jung, but I believe that your thoughts go along the same lines with his ideas on archetypes and collective unconscious. and it is such a poetical conception also. I'm too tired now to look up some quotes for you. But I do have this Novalis-one: "Under their hands friendly nature died, leaving behind only dead, quivering remnants, while the poet inspired her like a heady wine [...] Thus she enjoyed heavenly hours with the poet and called the scientist only when she was sick and bowed down with conscience. [...] Those who would know her spirit truly must therefore seek it in the company of poets, where she is free and pours forth her wondrous heart. But those who do not love her from the bottom of their hearts, who only admire this and that in her and wish to learn this and that about her, must visit her sickroom, her charnel house".
sleep tight :-) A.
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