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Post by nic on Jul 15, 2009 5:40:02 GMT
Bishop Blougram's Apology
Robert Browning
NO more wine? then we'll push back chairs and talk. A final glass for me, though: cool, i' faith! We ought to have our Abbey back, you see. It's different, preaching in basilicas, And doing duty in some masterpiece Like this of brother Pugin's, bless his heart! I doubt if they're half baked, those chalk rosettes, Ciphers and stucco-twiddlings everywhere; It's just like breathing in a lime-kiln: eh? These hot long ceremonies of our church Cost us a little--oh, they pay the price, You take me--amply pay it! Now, we'll talk.
So, you despise me, Mr. Gigadibs. No deprecation,--nay, I beg you, sir! Beside 't is our engagement: don't you know, I promised, if you'd watch a dinner out, We'd see truth dawn together?--truth that peeps Over the glasses' edge when dinner's done,
And body gets its sop and holds its noise And leaves soul free a little. Now's the time: 'T is break of day! You do despise me then. And if I say, "despise me,"--never fear! I know you do not in a certain sense-- Not in my arm-chair, for example: here, I well imagine you respect my place ( Status, entourage , worldly circumstance) Quite to its value--very much indeed: --Are up to the protesting eyes of you In pride at being seated here for once-- You'll turn it to such capital account! When somebody, through years and years to come, Hints of the bishop,--names me--that's enough: "Blougram? I knew him"--(into it you slide) "Dined with him once, a Corpus Christi Day, "All alone, we two; he's a clever man: "And after dinner,--why, the wine you know,-- "Oh, there was wine, and good!--what with the wine . . "'Faith, we began upon all sorts of talk! "He's no bad fellow, Blougram; he had seen "Something of mine he relished, some review: "He's quite above their humbug in his heart, "Half-said as much, indeed--the thing's his trade. "I warrant, Blougram's sceptical at times: "How otherwise? I liked him, I confess!"
Che che , my dear sir, as we say at Rome, Don't you protest now! It's fair give and take; You have had your turn and spoken your home-truths: The hand's mine now, and here you follow suit.
Thus much conceded, still the first fact stays-- You do despise me; your ideal of life Is not the bishop's: you would not be I. You would like better to be Goethe, now, Or Buonaparte, or, bless me, lower still, Count D'Orsay,--so you did what you preferred, Spoke as you thought, and, as you cannot help, Believed or disbelieved, no matter what, So long as on that point, whate'er it was, You loosed your mind, were whole and sole yourself. --That, my ideal never can include, Upon that element of truth and worth Never be based! for say they make me Pope-- (They can't--suppose it for our argument!) Why, there I'm at my tether's end, I've reached My height, and not a height which pleases you: An unbelieving Pope won't do, you say. It's like those eerie stories nurses tell, Of how some actor on a stage played Death, With pasteboard crown, sham orb and tinselled dart, And called himself the monarch of the world;
Then, going in the tire-room afterward, Because the play was done, to shift himself, Got touched upon the sleeve familiarly, The moment he had shut the closet door, By Death himself. Thus God might touch a Pope At unawares, ask what his baubles mean, And whose part he presumed to play just now? Best be yourself, imperial, plain and true!
So, drawing comfortable breath again, You weigh and find, whatever more or less I boast of my ideal realized, Is nothing in the balance when opposed To your ideal, your grand simple life, Of which you will not realize one jot. I am much, you are nothing; you would be all, I would be merely much: you beat me there.
No, friend, you do not beat me: hearken why! The common problem, yours, mine, every one's, Is--not to fancy what were fair in life Provided it could be,--but, finding first What may be, then find how to make it fair Up to our means: a very different thing! No abstract intellectual plan of life Quite irrespective of life's plainest laws,
But one, a man, who is man and nothing more, May lead within a world which (by your leave) Is Rome or London, not Fool's-paradise. Embellish Rome, idealize away, Make paradise of London if you can, You're welcome, nay, you're wise.
A simile! We mortals cross the ocean of this world Each in his average cabin of a life; The best's not big, the worst yields elbow-room. Now for our six months' voyage--how prepare? You come on shipboard with a landsman's list Of things he calls convenient: so they are! An India screen is pretty furniture, A piano-forte is a fine resource, All Balzac's novels occupy one shelf, The new edition fifty volumes long; And little Greek books, with the funny type They get up well at Leipsic, fill the next: Go on! slabbed marble, what a bath it makes! And Parma's pride, the Jerome, let us add! 'T were pleasant could Correggio's fleeting glow Hang full in face of one where'er one roams, Since he more than the others brings with him Italy's self,--the marvellous Modenese!--
Yet was not on your list before, perhaps. --Alas, friend, here's the agent . . . is't the name? The captain, or whoever's master here-- You see him screw his face up; what's his cry Ere you set foot on shipboard? "Six feet square!" If you won't understand what six feet mean, Compute and purchase stores accordingly-- And if, in pique because he overhauls Your Jerome, piano, bath, you come on board Bare--why, you cut a figure at the first While sympathetic landsmen see you off; Not afterward, when long ere half seas over, You peep up from your utterly naked boards Into some snug and well-appointed berth, Like mine for instance (try the cooler jug-- Put back the other, but don't jog the ice!) And mortified you mutter "Well and good; "He sits enjoying his sea-furniture; "'T is stout and proper, and there's store of it: "Though I've the better notion, all agree, "Of fitting rooms up. Hang the carpenter, "Neat ship-shape fixings and contrivances-- "I would have brought my Jerome, frame and all!" And meantime you bring nothing: never mind-- You've proved your artist-nature: what you don't You might bring, so despise me, as I say.
Now come, let's backward to the starting-place. See my way: we're two college friends, suppose. Prepare together for our voyage, then; Each note and check the other in his work,-- Here's mine, a bishop's outfit; criticize! What's wrong? why won't you be a bishop too?
Why first, you don't believe, you don't and can't, (Not statedly, that is, and fixedly And absolutely and exclusively) In any revelation called divine. No dogmas nail your faith; and what remains But say so, like the honest man you are? First, therefore, overhaul theology! Nay, I too, not a fool, you please to think, Must find believing every whit as hard: And if I do not frankly say as much, The ugly consequence is clear enough.
Now wait, my friend: well, I do not believe-- If you'll accept no faith that is not fixed, Absolute and exclusive, as you say. You're wrong--I mean to prove it in due time. Meanwhile, I know where difficulties lie I could not, cannot solve, nor ever shall, So give up hope accordingly to solve--
(To you, and over the wine). Our dogmas then With both of us, though in unlike degree, Missing full credence--overboard with them! I mean to meet you on your own premise: Good, there go mine in company with yours!
And now what are we? unbelievers both, Calm and complete, determinately fixed To-day, to-morrow and for ever, pray? You'll guarantee me that? Not so, I think! In no wise! all we've gained is, that belief, As unbelief before, shakes us by fits, Confounds us like its predecessor. Where's The gain? how can we guard our unbelief, Make it bear fruit to us?--the problem here. Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch, A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death, A chorus-ending from Euripides,-- And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears As old and new at once as nature's self, To rap and knock and enter in our soul, Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring, Round the ancient idol, on his base again,-- The grand Perhaps! We look on helplessly. There the old misgivings, crooked questions are-- This good God,--what he could do, if he would,
Would, if he could--then must have done long since: If so, when, where and how? some way must be,-- Once feel about, and soon or late you hit Some sense, in which it might be, after all. Why not, "The Way, the Truth, the Life?"
--That way Over the mountain, which who stands upon Is apt to doubt if it be meant for a road; While, if he views it from the waste itself, Up goes the line there, plain from base to brow, Not vague, mistakeable! what's a break or two Seen from the unbroken desert either side? And then (to bring in fresh philosophy) What if the breaks themselves should prove at last The most consummate of contrivances To train a man's eye, teach him what is faith? And so we stumble at truth's very test! All we have gained then by our unbelief Is a life of doubt diversified by faith, For one of faith diversified by doubt: We called the chess-board white,--we call it black.
"Well," you rejoin, "the end's no worse, at least; "We've reason for both colours on the board: "Why not confess then, where I drop the faith "And you the doubt, that I'm as right as you?"
Because, friend, in the next place, this being so, And both things even,--faith and unbelief Left to a man's choice,--we'll proceed a step, Returning to our image, which I like.
A man's choice, yes--but a cabin-passenger's-- The man made for the special life o' the world-- Do you forget him? I remember though! Consult our ship's conditions and you find One and but one choice suitable to all; The choice, that you unluckily prefer, Turning things topsy-turvy--they or it Going to the ground. Belief or unbelief Bears upon life, determines its whole course, Begins at its beginning. See the world Such as it is,--you made it not, nor I; I mean to take it as it is,--and you, Not so you'll take it,--though you get nought else. I know the special kind of life I like, What suits the most my idiosyncrasy, Brings out the best of me and bears me fruit In power, peace, pleasantness and length of days. I find that positive belief does this For me, and unbelief, no whit of this. --For you, it does, however?--that, we'll try! 'T is clear, I cannot lead my life, at least,
Induce the world to let me peaceably, Without declaring at the outset, "Friends, "I absolutely and peremptorily "Believe!"--I say, faith is my waking life: One sleeps, indeed, and dreams at intervals, We know, but waking's the main point with us And my provision's for life's waking part. Accordingly, I use heart, head and hand All day, I build, scheme, study, and make friends; And when night overtakes me, down I lie, Sleep, dream a little, and get done with it, The sooner the better, to begin afresh. What's midnight doubt before the dayspring's faith? You, the philosopher, that disbelieve, That recognize the night, give dreams their weight-- To be consistent you should keep your bed, Abstain from healthy acts that prove you man, For fear you drowse perhaps at unawares! And certainly at night you'll sleep and dream, Live through the day and bustle as you please. And so you live to sleep as I to wake, To unbelieve as I to still believe? Well, and the common sense o' the world calls you Bed-ridden,--and its good things come to me. Its estimation, which is half the fight, That's the first-cabin comfort I secure:
The next . . . but you perceive with half an eye! Come, come, it's best believing, if we may; You can't but own that!
Next, concede again, If once we choose belief, on all accounts We can't be too decisive in our faith, Conclusive and exclusive in its terms, To suit the world which gives us the good things. In every man's career are certain points Whereon he dares not be indifferent; The world detects him clearly, if he dare, As baffled at the game, and losing life. He may care little or he may care much For riches, honour, pleasure, work, repose, Since various theories of life and life's Success are extant which might easily Comport with either estimate of these; And whoso chooses wealth or poverty, Labour or quiet, is not judged a fool Because his fellow would choose otherwise: We let him choose upon his own account So long as he's consistent with his choice. But certain points, left wholly to himself, When once a man has arbitrated on, We say he must succeed there or go hang.
Thus, he should wed the woman he loves most Or needs most, whatsoe'er the love or need-- For he can't wed twice. Then, he must avouch, Or follow, at the least, sufficiently, The form of faith his conscience holds the best, Whate'er the process of conviction was: For nothing can compensate his mistake On such a point, the man himself being judge: He cannot wed twice, nor twice lose his soul.
Well now, there's one great form of Christian faith I happened to be born in--which to teach Was given me as I grew up, on all hands, As best and readiest means of living by; The same on examination being proved The most pronounced moreover, fixed, precise And absolute form of faith in the whole world-- Accordingly, most potent of all forms For working on the world. Observe, my friend! Such as you know me, I am free to say, In these hard latter days which hamper one, Myself--by no immoderate exercise Of intellect and learning, but the tact To let external forces work for me, --Bid the street's stones be bread and they are bread;
Bid Peter's creed, or rather, Hildebrand's, Exalt me o'er my fellows in the world And make my life an ease and joy and pride; It does so,--which for me's a great point gained, Who have a soul and body that exact A comfortable care in many ways. There's power in me and will to dominate Which I must exercise, they hurt me else: In many ways I need mankind's respect, Obedience, and the love that's born of fear: While at the same time, there's a taste I have, A toy of soul, a titillating thing, Refuses to digest these dainties crude. The naked life is gross till clothed upon: I must take what men offer, with a grace As though I would not, could I help it, take! An uniform I wear though over-rich-- Something imposed on me, no choice of mine; No fancy-dress worn for pure fancy's sake And despicable therefore! now folk kneel And kiss my hand--of course the Church's hand. Thus I am made, thus life is best for me, And thus that it should be I have procured; And thus it could not be another way, I venture to imagine.
You'll reply, So far my choice, no doubt, is a success; But were I made of better elements, With nobler instincts, purer tastes, like you, I hardly would account the thing success Though it did all for me I say.
But, friend, We speak of what is; not of what might be, And how't were better if't were otherwise. I am the man you see here plain enough: Grant I'm a beast, why, beasts must lead beasts' lives! Suppose I own at once to tail and claws; The tailless man exceeds me: but being tailed I'll lash out lion fashion, and leave apes To dock their stump and dress their haunches up. My business is not to remake myself, But make the absolute best of what God made. Or--our first simile--though you prove me doomed To a viler berth still, to the steerage-hole, The sheep-pen or the pig-stye, I should strive To make what use of each were possible; And as this cabin gets upholstery, That hutch should rustle with sufficient straw.
But, friend, I don't acknowledge quite so fast I fail of all your manhood's lofty tastes
Enumerated so complacently, On the mere ground that you forsooth can find In this particular life I choose to lead No fit provision for them. Can you not? Say you, my fault is I address myself To grosser estimators than should judge? And that's no way of holding up the soul, Which, nobler, needs men's praise perhaps, yet knows One wise man's verdict outweighs all the fools'-- Would like the two, but, forced to choose, takes that. I pine among my million imbeciles (You think) aware some dozen men of sense Eye me and know me, whether I believe In the last winking Virgin, as I vow, And am a fool, or disbelieve in her And am a knave,--approve in neither case, Withhold their voices though I look their way: Like Verdi when, at his worst opera's end (The thing they gave at Florence,--what's its name?) While the mad houseful's plaudits near out-bang His orchestra of salt-box, tongs and bones, He looks through all the roaring and the wreaths Where sits Rossini patient in his stall.
Nay, friend, I meet you with an answer here-- That even your prime men who appraise their kind
Are men still, catch a wheel within a wheel, See more in a truth than the truth's simple self, Confuse themselves. You see lads walk the street Sixty the minute; what's to note in that? You see one lad o'erstride a chimney-stack; Him you must watch--he's sure to fall, yet stands! Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things. The honest thief, the tender murderer, The superstitious atheist, demirep That loves and saves her soul in new French books-- We watch while these in equilibrium keep The giddy line midway: one step aside, They're classed and done with. I, then, keep the line Before your sages,--just the men to shrink From the gross weights, coarse scales and labels broad You offer their refinement. Fool or knave? Why needs a bishop be a fool or knave When there's a thousand diamond weights between? So, I enlist them. Your picked twelve, you'll find, Profess themselves indignant, scandalized At thus being held unable to explain How a superior man who disbelieves May not believe as well: that's Schelling's way! It's through my coming in the tail of time, Nicking the minute with a happy tact. Had I been born three hundred years ago
They'd say, "What's strange? Blougram of course believes;" And, seventy years since, "disbelieves of course." But now, "He may believe; and yet, and yet "How can he?" All eyes turn with interest. Whereas, step off the line on either side-- You, for example, clever to a fault, The rough and ready man who write apace, Read somewhat seldomer, think perhaps even less-- You disbelieve! Who wonders and who cares? Lord So-and-so--his coat bedropped with wax, All Peter's chains about his waist, his back Brave with the needlework of Noodledom-- Believes! Again, who wonders and who cares? But I, the man of sense and learning too, The able to think yet act, the this, the that, I, to believe at this late time of day! Enough; you see, I need not fear contempt.
--Except it's yours! Admire me as these may, You don't. But whom at least do you admire? Present your own perfection, your ideal, Your pattern man for a minute--oh, make haste Is it Napoleon you would have us grow? Concede the means; allow his head and hand, (A large concession, clever as you are)
Good! In our common primal element Of unbelief (we can't believe, you know-- We're still at that admission, recollect!) Where do you find--apart from, towering o'er The secondary temporary aims Which satisfy the gross taste you despise-- Where do you find his star?--his crazy trust God knows through what or in what? it's alive And shines and leads him, and that's all we want. Have we aught in our sober night shall point Such ends as his were, and direct the means Of working out our purpose straight as his, Nor bring a moment's trouble on success With after-care to justify the same? --Be a Napoleon, and yet disbelieve-- Why, the man's mad, friend, take his light away! What's the vague good o' the world, for which you dare With comfort to yourself blow millions up? We neither of us see it! we do see The blown-up millions--spatter of their brains And writhing of their bowels and so forth, In that bewildering entanglement Of horrible eventualities Past calculation to the end of time! Can I mistake for some clear word of God (Which were my ample warrant for it all)
His puff of hazy instinct, idle talk, "The State, that's I," quack-nonsense about crowns, And (when one beats the man to his last hold) A vague idea of setting things to rights, Policing people efficaciously, More to their profit, most of all to his own; The whole to end that dismallest of ends By an Austrian marriage, cant to us the Church, And resurrection of the old régime ? Would I, who hope to live a dozen years, Fight Austerlitz for reasons such and such? No: for, concede me but the merest chance Doubt may be wrong--there's judgment, life to come! With just that chance, I dare not. Doubt proves right? This present life is all?--you offer me Its dozen noisy years, without a chance That wedding an archduchess, wearing lace, And getting called by divers new-coined names, Will drive off ugly thoughts and let me dine, Sleep, read and chat in quiet as I like! Therefore I will not.
Take another case; Fit up the cabin yet another way. What say you to the poets? shall we write Hamlet, Othello--make the world our own,
Without a risk to run of either sort? I can't--to put the strongest reason first. "But try," you urge, "the trying shall suffice; "The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life: "Try to be Shakespeare, leave the rest to fate!" Spare my self-knowledge--there's no fooling me! If I prefer remaining my poor self, I say so not in self-dispraise but praise. If I'm a Shakespeare, let the well alone; Why should I try to be what now I am? If I'm no Shakespeare, as too probable,-- His power and consciousness and self-delight And all we want in common, shall I find-- Trying for ever? while on points of taste Wherewith, to speak it humbly, he and I Are dowered alike--I'll ask you, I or he, Which in our two lives realizes most? Much, he imagined--somewhat, I possess. He had the imagination; stick to that! Let him say, "In the face of my soul's works "Your world is worthless and I touch it not "Lest I should wrong them"--I'll withdraw my plea. But does he say so? look upon his life! Himself, who only can, gives judgment there. He leaves his towers and gorgeous palaces To build the trimmest house in Stratford town;
Saves money, spends it, owns the worth of things, Giulio Romano's pictures, Dowland's lute; Enjoys a show, respects the puppets, too, And none more, had he seen its entry once, Than "Pandulph, of fair Milan cardinal." Why then should I who play that personage, The very Pandulph Shakespeare's fancy made, Be told that had the poet chanced to start From where I stand now (some degree like mine Being just the goal he ran his race to reach) He would have run the whole race back, forsooth, And left being Pandulph, to begin write plays? Ah, the earth's best can be but the earth's best! Did Shakespeare live, he could but sit at home And get himself in dreams the Vatican, Greek busts, Venetian paintings, Roman walls, And English books, none equal to his own, Which I read, bound in gold (he never did). --Terni's fall, Naples' bay and Gothard's top-- Eh, friend? I could not fancy one of these; But, as I pour this claret, there they are: I've gained them--crossed St. Gothard last July With ten mules to the carriage and a bed Slung inside; is my hap the worse for that? We want the same things, Shakespeare and myself, And what I want, I have: he, gifted more,
Could fancy he too had them when he liked, But not so thoroughly that, if fate allowed, He would not have them also in my sense. We play one game; I send the ball aloft No less adroitly that of fifty strokes Scarce five go o'er the wall so wide and high Which sends them back to me: I wish and get He struck balls higher and with better skill, But at a poor fence level with his head, And hit--his Stratford house, a coat of arms, Successful dealings in his grain and wool,-- While I receive heaven's incense in my nose And style myself the cousin of Queen Bess. Ask him, if this life's all, who wins the game?
Believe--and our whole argument breaks up. Enthusiasm's the best thing, I repeat; Only, we can't command it; fire and life Are all, dead matter's nothing, we agree: And be it a mad dream or God's very breath, The fact's the same,--belief's fire, once in us, Makes of all else mere stuff to show itself: We penetrate our life with such a glow As fire lends wood and iron--this turns steel, That burns to ash--all's one, fire proves its power For good or ill, since men call flare success.
But paint a fire, it will not therefore burn. Light one in me, I'll find it food enough! Why, to be Luther--that's a life to lead, Incomparably better than my own. He comes, reclaims God's earth for God, he says, Sets up God's rule again by simple means, Re-opens a shut book, and all is done. He flared out in the flaring of mankind; Such Luther's luck was: how shall such be mine? If he succeeded, nothing's left to do: And if he did not altogether--well, Strauss is the next advance. All Strauss should be I might be also. But to what result? He looks upon no future: Luther did. What can I gain on the denying side? Ice makes no conflagration. State the facts, Read the text right, emancipate the world-- The emancipated world enjoys itself With scarce a thank-you: Blougram told it first It could not owe a farthing,--not to him More than Saint Paul! 't would press its pay, you think? Then add there's still that plaguy hundredth chance Strauss may be wrong. And so a risk is run-- For what gain? not for Luther's, who secured A real heaven in his heart throughout his life, Supposing death a little altered things.
"Ay, but since really you lack faith," you cry, "You run the same risk really on all sides, "In cool indifference as bold unbelief. "As well be Strauss as swing 'twixt Paul and him. "It's not worth having, such imperfect faith, "No more available to do faith's work "Than unbelief like mine. Whole faith, or none!"
Softly, my friend! I must dispute that point Once own the use of faith, I'll find you faith. We're back on Christian ground. You call for faith: I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists. The more of doubt, the stronger faith, I say, If faith o'ercomes doubt. How I know it does? By life and man's free will, God gave for that! To mould life as we choose it, shows our choice: That's our one act, the previous work's his own. You criticize the soul? it reared this tree-- This broad life and whatever fruit it bears! What matter though I doubt at every pore, Head-doubts, heart-doubts, doubts at my fingers' ends, Doubts in the trivial work of every day, Doubts at the very bases of my soul In the grand moments when she probes herself-- If finally I have a life to show, The thing I did, brought out in evidence
Against the thing done to me underground By hell and all its brood, for aught I know? I say, whence sprang this? shows it faith or doubt? All's doubt in me; where's break of faith in this? It is the idea, the feeling and the love, God means mankind should strive for and show forth Whatever be the process to that end,-- And not historic knowledge, logic sound, And metaphysical acumen, sure! "What think ye of Christ," friend? when all's done and said, Like you this Christianity or not? It may be false, but will you wish it true? Has it your vote to be so if it can? Trust you an instinct silenced long ago That will break silence and enjoin you love What mortified philosophy is hoarse, And all in vain, with bidding you despise? If you desire faith--then you've faith enough: What else seeks God--nay, what else seek ourselves? You form a notion of me, we'll suppose, On hearsay; it's a favourable one: "But still" (you add), "there was no such good man, "Because of contradiction in the facts. "One proves, for instance, he was born in Rome, "This Blougram; yet throughout the tales of him
"I see he figures as an Englishman." Well, the two things are reconcileable. But would I rather you discovered that, Subjoining--"Still, what matter though they be? "Blougram concerns me nought, born here or there."
Pure faith indeed--you know not what you ask! Naked belief in God the Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent, sears too much The sense of conscious creatures to be borne. It were the seeing him, no flesh shall dare Some think, Creation's meant to show him forth: I say it's meant to hide him all it can, And that's what all the blessed evil's for. Its use in Time is to environ us, Our breath, our drop of dew, with shield enough Against that sight till we can bear its stress. Under a vertical sun, the exposed brain And lidless eye and disemprisoned heart Less certainly would wither up at once Than mind, confronted with the truth of him. But time and earth case-harden us to live; The feeblest sense is trusted most; the child Feels God a moment, ichors o'er the place, Plays on and grows to be a man like us.
With me, faith means perpetual unbelief Kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe. Or, if that's too ambitious,--here's my box-- I need the excitation of a pinch Threatening the torpor of the inside-nose Nigh on the imminent sneeze that never comes. "Leave it in peace" advise the simple folk: Make it aware of peace by itching-fits, Say I--let doubt occasion still more faith!
You'll say, once all believed, man, woman, child, In that dear middle-age these noodles praise. How you'd exult if I could put you back Six hundred years, blot out cosmogony, Geology, ethnology, what not (Greek endings, each the little passing-bell That signifies some faith's about to die), And set you square with Genesis again,-- When such a traveller told you his last news, He saw the ark a-top of Ararat But did not climb there since 't was getting dusk And robber-bands infest the mountain's foot! How should you feel, I ask, in such an age, How act? As other people felt and did; With soul more blank than this decanter's knob,
Believe--and yet lie, kill, rob, fornicate Full in belief's face, like the beast you'd be!
No, when the fight begins within himself, A man's worth something. God stoops o'er his head, Satan looks up between his feet--both tug-- He's left, himself, i' the middle: the soul wakes And grows. Prolong that battle through his life! Never leave growing till the life to come! Here, we've got callous to the Virgin's winks That used to puzzle people wholesomely: Men have outgrown the shame of being fools. What are the laws of nature, not to bend If the Church bid them?--brother Newman asks. Up with the Immaculate Conception, then-- On to the rack with faith!--is my advice. Will not that hurry us upon our knees, Knocking our breasts, "It can't be--yet it shall! "Who am I, the worm, to argue with my Pope? "Low things confound the high things!" and so forth. That's better than acquitting God with grace As some folk do. He's tried--no case is proved, Philosophy is lenient--he may go!
You'll say, the old system's not so obsolete But men believe still: ay, but who and where?
King Bomba's lazzaroni foster yet The sacred flame, so Antonelli writes; But even of these, what ragamuffin-saint Believes God watches him continually, As he believes in fire that it will burn, Or rain that it will drench him? Break fire's law, Sin against rain, although the penalty Be just a singe or soaking? "No," he smiles; "Those laws are laws that can enforce themselves."
The sum of all is--yes, my doubt is great, My faith's still greater, then my faith's enough. I have read much, thought much, experienced much, Yet would die rather than avow my fear The Naples' liquefaction may be false, When set to happen by the palace-clock According to the clouds or dinner-time. I hear you recommend, I might at least Eliminate, decrassify my faith Since I adopt it; keeping what I must And leaving what I can--such points as this. I won't--that is, I can't throw one away. Supposing there's no truth in what I hold About the need of trial to man's faith, Still, when you bid me purify the same, To such a process I discern no end.
Clearing off one excrescence to see two, There's ever a next in size, now grown as big, That meets the knife: I cut and cut again! First cut the Liquefaction, what comes last But Fichte's clever cut at God himself? Experimentalize on sacred things! I trust nor hand nor eye nor heart nor brain To stop betimes: they all get drunk alike. The first step, I am master not to take.
You'd find the cutting-process to your taste As much as leaving growths of lies unpruned, Nor see more danger in it,--you retort. Your taste's worth mine; but my taste proves more wise When we consider that the steadfast hold On the extreme end of the chain of faith Gives all the advantage, makes the difference With the rough purblind mass we seek to rule: We are their lords, or they are free of us, Just as we tighten or relax our hold. So, others matters equal, we'll revert To the first problem--which, if solved my way And thrown into the balance, turns the scale-- How we may lead a comfortable life, How suit our luggage to the cabin's size.
Of course you are remarking all this time How narrowly and grossly I view life, Respect the creature-comforts, care to rule The masses, and regard complacently "The cabin," in our old phrase. Well, I do. I act for, talk for, live for this world now, As this world prizes action, life and talk: No prejudice to what next world may prove, Whose new laws and requirements, my best pledge To observe then, is that I observe these now, Shall do hereafter what I do meanwhile. Let us concede (gratuitously though) Next life relieves the soul of body, yields Pure spiritual enjoyment: well, my friend, Why lose this life i' the meantime, since its use May be to make the next life more intense?
Do you know, I have often had a dream (Work it up in your next month's article) Of man's poor spirit in its progress, still Losing true life for ever and a day Through ever trying to be and ever being-- In the evolution of successive spheres-- Before its actual sphere and place of life, Halfway into the next, which having reached, It shoots with corresponding foolery
Halfway into the next still, on and off! As when a traveller, bound from North to South, Scouts fur in Russia: what's its use in France? In France spurns flannel: where's its need in Spain? In Spain drops cloth, too cumbrous for Algiers! Linen goes next, and last the skin itself, A superfluity at Timbuctoo. When, through his journey, was the fool at ease? I'm at ease now, friend; worldly in this world, I take and like its way of life; I think My brothers, who administer the means, Live better for my comfort--that's good too; And God, if he pronounce upon such life, Approves my service, which is better still. If he keep silence,--why, for you or me Or that brute beast pulled-up in to-day's "Times," What odds is't, save to ourselves, what life we lead?
You meet me at this issue: you declare,-- All special-pleading done with--truth is truth, And justifies itself by undreamed ways. You don't fear but it's better, if we doubt, To say so, act up to our truth perceived However feebly. Do then,--act away! 'T is there I'm on the watch for you. How one acts Is, both of us agree, our chief concern:
And how you'll act is what I fain would see If, like the candid person you appear, You dare to make the most of your life's scheme As I of mine, live up to its full law Since there's no higher law that counterchecks. Put natural religion to the test You've just demolished the revealed with--quick, Down to the root of all that checks your will, All prohibition to lie, kill and thieve, Or even to be an atheistic priest! Suppose a pricking to incontinence-- Philosophers deduce you chastity Or shame, from just the fact that at the first Whoso embraced a woman in the field, Threw club down and forewent his brains beside, So, stood a ready victim in the reach Of any brother savage, club in hand; Hence saw the use of going out of sight In wood or cave to prosecute his loves: I read this in a French book t' other day. Does law so analysed coerce you much? Oh, men spin clouds of fuzz where matters end, But you who reach where the first thread begins, You'll soon cut that!--which means you can, but won't, Through certain instincts, blind, unreasoned-out,
You dare not set aside, you can't tell why, But there they are, and so you let them rule. Then, friend, you seem as much a slave as I, A liar, conscious coward and hypocrite, Without the good the slave expects to get, In case he has a master after all! You own your instincts? why, what else do I, Who want, am made for, and must have a God Ere I can be aught, do aught?--no mere name Want, but the true thing with what proves its truth, To wit, a relation from that thing to me, Touching from head to foot--which touch I feel, And with it take the rest, this life of ours! I live my life here; yours you dare not live.
--Not as I state it, who (you please subjoin) Disfigure such a life and call it names, While, to your mind, remains another way For simple men: knowledge and power have rights, But ignorance and weakness have rights too. There needs no crucial effort to find truth If here or there or anywhere about: We ought to turn each side, try hard and see, And if we can't, be glad we've earned at least The right, by one laborious proof the more, To graze in peace earth's pleasant pasturage.
Men are not angels, neither are they brutes: Something we may see, all we cannot see. What need of lying? I say, I see all, And swear to each detail the most minute In what I think a Pan's face--you, mere cloud: I swear I hear him speak and see him wink, For fear, if once I drop the emphasis, Mankind may doubt there's any cloud at all. You take the simple life--ready to see, Willing to see (for no cloud's worth a face)-- And leaving quiet what no strength can move, And which, who bids you move? who has the right? I bid you; but you are God's sheep, not mine: " Pastor est tui Dominus ." You find In this the pleasant pasture of our life Much you may eat without the least offence, Much you don't eat because your maw objects, Much you would eat but that your fellow-flock Open great eyes at you and even butt, And thereupon you like your mates so well You cannot please yourself, offending them; Though when they seem exorbitantly sheep, You weigh your pleasure with their butts and bleats And strike the balance. Sometimes certain fears Restrain you, real checks since you find them so; Sometimes you please yourself and nothing checks:
And thus you graze through life with not one lie, And like it best.
But do you, in truth's name? If so, you beat--which means you are not I-- Who needs must make earth mine and feed my fill Not simply unbutted at, unbickered with, But motioned to the velvet of the sward By those obsequious wethers' very selves. Look at me, sir; my age is double yours: At yours, I knew beforehand, so enjoyed, What now I should be--as, permit the word, I pretty well imagine your whole range And stretch of tether twenty years to come. We both have minds and bodies much alike: In truth's name, don't you want my bishopric, My daily bread, my influence and my state? You're young. I'm old; you must be old one day; Will you find then, as I do hour by hour, Women their lovers kneel to, who cut curls From your fat lap-dog's ear to grace a brooch-- Dukes, who petition just to kiss your ring-- With much beside you know or may conceive? Suppose we die to-night: well, here am I, Such were my gains, life bore this fruit to me, While writing all the same my articles
On music, poetry, the fictile vase Found at Albano, chess, Anacreon's Greek. But you--the highest honour in your life, The thing you'll crown yourself with, all your days, Is--dining here and drinking this last glass I pour you out in sign of amity Before we part for ever. Of your power And social influence, worldly worth in short, Judge what's my estimation by the fact, I do not condescend to enjoin, beseech, Hint secrecy on one of all these words! You're shrewd and know that should you publish one The world would brand the lie--my enemies first, Who'd sneer--"the bishop's an arch-hypocrite "And knave perhaps, but not so frank a fool." Whereas I should not dare for both my ears Breathe one such syllable, smile one such smile, Before the chaplain who reflects myself-- My shade's so much more potent than your flesh. What's your reward, self-abnegating friend? Stood you confessed of those exceptional And privileged great natures that dwarf mine-- A zealot with a mad ideal in reach, A poet just about to print his ode, A statesman with a scheme to stop this war, An artist whose religion is his art--
I should have nothing to object: such men Carry the fire, all things grow warm to them, Their drugget's worth my purple, they beat me. But you,--you're just as little those as I-- You, Gigadibs, who, thirty years of age, Write statedly for Blackwood's Magazine, Believe you see two points in Hamlet's soul Unseized by the Germans yet--which view you'll print-- Meantime the best you have to show being still That lively lightsome article we took Almost for the true Dickens,--what's its name? "The Slum and Cellar, or Whitechapel life "Limned after dark!" it made me laugh, I know, And pleased a month, and brought you in ten pounds. --Success I recognize and compliment, And therefore give you, if you choose, three words (The card and pencil-scratch is quite enough) Which whether here, in Dublin or New York, Will get you, prompt as at my eyebrow's wink, Such terms as never you aspired to get In all our own reviews and some not ours. Go write your lively sketches! be the first "Blougram, or The Eccentric Confidence"-- Or better simply say, "The Outward-bound." Why, men as soon would throw it in my teeth As copy and quote the infamy chalked broad About me on the church-door opposite.
You will not wait for that experience though, I fancy, howsoever you decide, To discontinue--not detesting, not Defaming, but at least--despising me!
Over his wine so smiled and talked his hour Sylvester Blougram, styled in partibus Episcopus, nec non --(the deuce knows what It's changed to by our novel hierarchy) With Gigadibs the literary man, Who played with spoons, explored his plate's design, And ranged the olive-stones about its edge, While the great bishop rolled him out a mind Long crumpled, till creased consciousness lay smooth.
For Blougram, he believed, say, half he spoke. The other portion, as he shaped it thus For argumentatory purposes, He felt his foe was foolish to dispute. Some arbitrary accidental thoughts That crossed his mind, amusing because new, He chose to represent as fixtures there, Invariable convictions (such they seemed Beside his interlocutor's loose cards Flung daily down, and not the same way twice)
While certain hell deep instincts, man's weak tongue Is never bold to utter in their truth Because styled hell-deep ('t is an old mistake To place hell at the bottom of the earth) He ignored these,--not having in readiness Their nomenclature and philosophy: He said true things, but called them by wrong names. "On the whole," he thought, "I justify myself "On every point where cavillers like this "Oppugn my life: he tries one kind of fence, "I close, he's worsted, that's enough for him. "He's on the ground: if ground should break away "I take my stand on, there's a firmer yet "Beneath it, both of us may sink and reach. "His ground was over mine and broke the first: "So, let him sit with me this many a year!"
He did not sit five minutes. Just a week Sufficed his sudden healthy vehemence. Something had struck him in the "Outward-bound" Another way than Blougram's purpose was: And having bought, not cabin-furniture But settler's-implements (enough for three) And started for Australia--there, I hope, By this time he has tested his first plough, And studied his last chapter of St. John.
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Post by gyro on Sept 16, 2009 16:46:32 GMT
'My father still reads the dictionary every day. He says your life depends on your power to master words.'
Arthur Scargill Sunday Times, 10 January 1982
Next millennium you'll have to search quite hard to find my slab behind the family dead, butcher, publican, and baker, now me, bard adding poetry to their beef, beer and bread.
With Byron three graves on I'll not go short of company, and Wordsworth's opposite. That's two peers already, of a sort, and we'll all be thrown together if the pit,
whose galleries once ran beneath this plot, causes the distinguished dead to drop into the rabblement of bone and rot, shored slack, crushed shale, smashed prop.
Wordsworth built church organs, Byron tanned luggage cowhide in the age of steam, and knew their place of rest before the land caves in on the lowest worked-out seam.
This graveyard on the brink of Beeston Hill's the place I may well rest if there's a spot under the rose roots and the daffodils by which dad dignified the family plot.
If buried ashes saw then I'd survey the places I learned Latin, and learned Greek, and left, the ground where Leeds United play but disappoint their fans week after week,
which makes them lose their sense of self-esteem and taking a short cut home through these graves here they reassert the glory of their team by spraying words on tombstones, pissed on beer.
This graveyard stands above a worked-out pit. Subsidence makes the obelisks all list. One leaning left's marked FUCK, one right's marked SHIT sprayed by some peeved supporter who was pissed.
Far-sighted for his family's future dead, but for his wife, this banker's still alone on his long obelisk, and doomed to head a blackened dynasty of unclaimed stone,
now graffitied with a crude four-letter word. His children and grandchildren went away and never came back home to be interred, so left a lot of space for skins to spray.
The language of this graveyard ranges from a bit of Latin for a former Mayor or those who laid their lives down at the Somme, the hymnal fragments and the gilded prayer,
how people 'fell asleep in the Good Lord', brief chisellable bits from the good book and rhymes whatever length they could afford, to CUNT, PISS, SHIT and (mostly) FUCK!
Or, more expansively, there's LEEDS v. the opponent of last week, this week, or next, and a repertoire of blunt four-letter curses on the team or race that makes the sprayer vexed.
Then, pushed for time, or fleeing some observer, dodging between tall family vaults and trees like his team's best ever winger, dribbler, swerver, fills every space he finds with versus Vs.
Vs sprayed on the run at such a lick, the sprayer master of his flourished tool, get short-armed on the left like that red tick they never marked his work with much at school.
Half this skinhead's age but with approval I helped whitewash a V on a brick wall. No one clamoured in the press for its removal or thought the sign, in wartime, rude at all.
These Vs are all the versuses of life From LEEDS v. DERBY, Black/White and (as I've known to my cost) man v. wife, Communist v. Fascist, Left v. Right,
Class v. class as bitter as before, the unending violence of US and THEM, personified in 1984 by Coal Board MacGregor and the NUM,
Hindu/Sikh, soul/body, heart v. mind, East/West, male/female, and the ground these fixtures are fought on's Man, resigned to hope from his future what his past never found.
The prospects for the present aren't too grand when a swastika with NF (National Front)'s sprayed on a grave, to which another hand has added, in a reddish colour, CUNTS.
Which is, I grant, the word that springs to mind, when going to clear the weeds and rubbish thrown on the family plot by football fans, I find UNITED graffitied on my parents' stone.
How many British graveyards now this May are strewn with rubbish and choked up with weeds since families and friends have gone away for work or fuller lives, like me from Leeds?
When I first came here 40 years ago with my dad to 'see my grandma' I was 7. I helped dad with the flowers. He let me know she'd gone to join my grandad up in Heaven.
My dad who came each week to bring fresh flowers came home with clay stains on his trouser knees. Since my parents' deaths I've spent 2 hours made up of odd 10 minutes such as these.
Flying visits once or twice a year, And though I'm horrified just who's to blame that I find instead of flowers cans of beer and more than one grave sprayed with some skin's name?
Where there were flower urns and troughs of water And mesh receptacles for withered flowers are the HARP tins of some skinhead Leeds supporter. It isn't all his fault though. Much is ours.
5 kids, with one in goal, play 2-a-side. When the ball bangs on the hawthorn that's one post and petals fall they hum Here Comes the Bride though not so loud they'd want to rouse a ghost.
They boot the ball on purpose at the trunk and make the tree shed showers of shrivelled may. I look at this word graffitied by some drunk and I'm in half a mind to let it stay.
(Though honesty demands that I say if I'd wanted to take the necessary pains to scrub the skin's inscription off I only had an hour between trains.
So the feelings that I had as I stood gazing and the significance I saw could be a sham, mere excuses for not patiently erasing the word sprayed on the grave of dad and mam.)
This pen's all I have of magic wand. I know this world's so torn but want no other except for dad who'd hoped from 'the beyond' a better life than this one, with my mother.
Though I don't believe in afterlife at all and know it's cheating it's hard not to make a sort of furtive prayer from this skin's scrawl, his UNITED mean 'in Heaven' for their sake,
an accident of meaning to redeem an act intended as mere desecration and make the thoughtless spraying of his team apply to higher things, and to the nation.
Some, where kids use aerosols, use giant signs to let the people know who's forged their fetters Like PRI CE O WALES above West Yorkshire mines (no prizes for who nicked the missing letters!)
The big blue star for booze, tobacco ads, the magnet's monogram, the royal crest, insignia in neon dwarf the lads who spray a few odd FUCKS when they're depressed.
Letters of transparent tubes and gas in Düsseldorf are blue and flash out KRUPP. Arms are hoisted for the British ruling class and clandestine, genteel aggro keeps them up.
And there's HARRISON on some Leeds building sites I've taken in fun as blazoning my name, which I've also seen on books, in Broadway lights, so why can't skins with spraycans do the same?
But why inscribe these graves with CUNT and SHIT? Why choose neglected tombstones to disfigure? This pitman's of last century daubed PAKI GIT, this grocer Broadbent's aerosolled with NIGGER?
They're there to shock the living, not arouse the dead from their deep peace to lend support for the causes skinhead spraycans could espouse. The dead would want their desecrators caught!
Jobless though they are how can these kids, even though their team's lost one more game, believe that the 'Pakis', 'Niggers', even 'Yids' sprayed on the tombstones here should bear the blame?
What is it that these crude words are revealing? What is it that this aggro act implies? Giving the dead their xenophobic feeling or just a cri-de-coeur because man dies?
So what's a cri-de-coeur, cunt? Can't you speak the language that yer mam spoke. Think of 'er! Can yer only get yer tongue round fucking Greek? Go and fuck yourself with cri-de-coeur!
'She didn't talk like you do for a start!' I shouted, turning where I thought the voice had been. She didn't understand yer fucking 'art'! She thought yer fucking poetry obscene!
I wish on this skin's words deep aspirations, first the prayer for my parents I can't make, then a call to Britain and to all nations made in the name of love for peace's sake.
Aspirations, cunt! Folk on t'fucking dole 'ave got about as much scope to aspire above the shit they're dumped in, cunt, as coal aspires to be chucked on t'fucking fire.
'OK, forget the aspirations. Look, I know United's losing gets you fans incensed and how far the HARP inside you makes you go but all these Vs: against! against! against!
Ah'll tell yer then what really riles a bloke. It's reading on their graves the jobs they did – Butcher, publican and baker. Me, I'll croak doing t'same nowt ah do now as a kid.
'ard birth ah wor, mi mam says, almost killed 'er. Death after life on t'dole won't seem as 'ard! Look at this cunt, Wordsworth, organ builder, This fucking 'aberdasher Appleyard!
If mi mam's up there, don't want to meet 'er listening to me list mi dirty deeds, and 'ave to pipe up to St fucking Peter ah've been on t'dole all mi life in fucking Leeds!
Then t'Alleluias stick in t'angels' gobs. When dole-wallahs fuck off to the void What'll t'mason carve up for their jobs? The cunts who lieth 'ere wor unemployed?
This lot worked at one job all life through. Byron, 'Tanner', 'Lieth 'ere interred'. They'll chisel fucking poet when they do you and that, yer cunt, 's a crude four-letter word.
'Listen, cunt!' I said, 'before you start your jeering the reason why I want this in a book 's to give ungrateful cunts like you a hearing!' A book, yer stupid cunt, 's not worth a fuck!
'The only reason why I write this poem at all on yobs like you who do the dirt on death 's to give some higher meaning to your scrawl.' Don't fucking bother, cunt! Don't waste your breath!
'You piss-artist skinhead cunt, you wouldn't know and it doesn't fucking matter if you do, the skin and poet united fucking Rimbaud but the autre that je est is fucking you.'
Ah've told yer, no more Greek...That's yer last warning! Ah'll boot yer fucking balls to Kingdom Come. They'll find yer cold on t'grave tomorrer morning. So don't speak Greek. Don't treat me like I'm dumb.
'I've done my bits of mindless aggro too not half a mile from where we're standing now.' Yeah, ah bet yer wrote a poem, yer wanker you! 'No, shut yer gob a while. Ah'll tell yer 'ow...'
'Herman Darewski's band played operetta with a wobbly soprano warbling. Just why I made my mind up that I'd got to get her with the fire hose I can't say, but I'll try.
It wasn't just the singing angered me. At the same time half a crowd was jeering as the smooth Hugh Gaitskill, our MP, made promises the other half were cheering.
What I hated in those high soprano ranges was uplift beyond all reason and control and in a world where you say nothing changes it seemed a sort of prick-tease of the soul.
I tell you when I heard high notes that rose above Hugh Gaitskill's cool electioneering straight from the warbling throat right up my nose I had all your aggro in my jeering.
And I hit the fire extinguisher ON knob and covered orchestra and audience with spray. I could run as fast as you then. A good job! They yelled 'damned vandal' after me that day...'
And then yer saw the light and up 'eavy! And knew a man's not how much he can sup... Yer reward for growing up's this super-bevvy, a meths and champagne punch ini t'FA Cup.
Ah've 'eard all that from old farts past their prime. 'ow now yer live wi' all yer once detested... Old farts with not much left'll give me time. Fuckers like that get folk like me arrested.
Covet not thy neighbour's wife, thy neighbour's riches. Vicar and cop who say, to save our souls, Get thee beHind me, Satan, drop their breeches and get the Devil's dick right up their 'oles!
It was more a working marriage that I'd meant, a blend of masculine and feminine. Ignoring me, he started looking, bent on some more aerosolling, for his tin.
'It was more a working marriage that I mean!' Fuck, and save mi soul, eh? That suits me. Then as if I'd egged him on to be obscene he added a middle slit to one daubed V.
Don't talk to me of fucking representing the class yer were born into any more. Yer going to get 'urt and start resenting it's not poetry we need in this class war.
Yer've given yerself toffee, cunt. Who needs yer fucking poufy words. Ah write mi own. Ah've got mi work on show all ovver Leeds like this UNITED 'ere on some sod's stone.
'OK!' (thinking I had him trapped) 'OK!' 'If you're so proud of it, then sign your name when next you're full of HARP and armed with spray, next time you take this short cut from the game.'
He took the can, contemptuous, unhurried and cleared the nozzle and prepared to sign the UNITED sprayed where mam and dad were buried. He aerosolled his name. And it was mine.
The boy footballers bawl Here Comes the Bride and drifting blossoms fall onto my head. One half of me's alive but one half died when the skin half sprayed my name among the dead.
Half versus half, the enemies within the heart that can't be whole till they unite. As I stoop to grab the crushed HARP lager tin the day's already dusk, half dark, half light.
That UNITED that I'd wished onto the nation or as reunion for dead parents soon recedes. The word's once more a mindless desecration by some HARPoholic yob supporting Leeds.
Almost the time for ghosts I'd better scram. Though not given much to fears of spooky scaring I don't fancy an encounter with mi mam playing Hamlet with me for this swearing.
Though I've a train to catch my step is slow. I walk on the grass and graves with wary tread over these subsidences, these shifts below the life of Leeds supported by the dead.
Further underneath's that cavernous hollow that makes the gravestones lean towards the town. A matter of mere time and it will swallow this place of rest and all the resters down.
I tell myself I've got, say, 30 years. At 75 this place will suit me fine. I've never feared the grave but what I fear's that great worked-out black hollow under mine.
Not train departure time, and not Town Hall with the great white clock face I can see, coal, that began, with no man here at all, as 300 million-year-old plant debris.
5 kids still play at making blossoms fall and humming as they do Here Comes the Bride. They never seem to tire of their ball though I hear a woman's voice call one inside.
2 larking boys play bawdy bride and groom. 3 boys in Leeds strip la-la Lohengrin. I hear them as I go through growing gloom still years away from being skald or skin.
The ground's carpeted with petals as I throw the aerosol, the HARP can, the cleared weeds on top of dad's dead daffodils, then go, with not one glance behind, away from Leeds.
The bus to the station's still the No. 1 but goes by routes that I don't recognise. I look out for known landmarks as the sun reddens the swabs of cloud in darkening skies.
Home, home, home, to my woman as the red darkens from a fresh blood to a dried. Home, home to my woman, home to bed where opposites seem sometimes unified.
A pensioner in turban taps his stick along the pavement past the corner shop, that sells samosas now, not beer on tick, to the Kashmir Muslim Club that was the Co-op.
House after house FOR SALE where we'd played cricket with white roses cut from flour-sacks on our caps, with stumps chalked on the coal-grate for our wicket, and every one bought now by 'coloured chaps',
dad's most liberal label as he felt squeezed by the unfamiliar, and fear of foreign food and faces, when he smelt curry in the shop where he'd bought beer.
And growing frailer, 'wobbly on his pins', the shops he felt familiar with withdrew which meant much longer tiring treks for tins that had a label on them that he knew.
And as the shops that stocked his favourites receded whereas he'd fancied beans and popped next door, he found that four long treks a week were needed till he wondered what he bothered eating for.
The supermarket made him feel embarrassed. Where people bought whole lambs for family freezers he bought baked beans from check-out girls too harassed to smile or swap a joke with sad old geezers.
But when he bought his cigs he'd have a chat, his week's one conversation, truth to tell, but time also came and put a stop to that when old Wattsy got bought out by M. Patel.
And there, 'Time like an ever rolling stream''s What I once trilled behind that boarded front. A 1000 ages made coal-bearing seams and even more the hand that sprayed this CUNT
on both Methodist and C of E billboards once divided in their fight for local souls. Whichever house more truly was the Lord's both's pews are filled with cut-price toilet rolls.
Home, home to my woman, never to return till sexton or survivor has to cram the bits of clinker scooped out of my urn down through the rose-roots to my dad and mam.
Home, home to my woman, where the fire's lit these still chilly mid-May evenings, home to you, and perished vegetation from the pit escaping insubstantial up the flue.
Listening to Lulu, in our hearth we burn, As we hear the high Cs rise in stereo, what was lush swamp club-moss and tree-fern at least 300 million years ago.
Shilbottle cobbles, Alban Berg high D lifted from a source that bears your name, the one we hear decay, the one we see, the fern from the foetid forest, as brief flame.
This world, with far too many people in, starts on the TV logo as a taw, then ping-pong, tennis, football; then one spin to show us all, then shots of the Gulf War.
As the coal with reddish dust cools in the grate on the late-night national news we see police v. pickets at a coke-plant grate, old violence and old disunity.
The map that's colour-coded Ulster/Eire's flashed on again as almost every night. Behind a tiny coffin with two bearers men in masks with arms show off their might.
The day's last images recede to first a glow and then a ball that shrinks back to a blank screen. Turning to love, and sleep's oblivion, I know what the UNITED that the skin sprayed has to mean.
Hanging my clothes up, from my parka hood may and apple petals, browned and creased, fall onto the carpet and bring back the flood of feelings their first falling had released.
I hear like ghosts from all Leeds matches humming with one concerted voice the bride, the bride I feel united to, my bride is coming into the bedroom, naked, to my side.
The ones we choose to love become our anchor when the hawser of the blood-tie's hacked, or frays. But a voice that scorns chorales is yelling: Wanker! It's the aerosolling skin I met today's.
My alter ego wouldn't want to know it, His aerosol vocab would baulk at LOVE, the skin's UNITED underwrites the poet, the measures carved below the ones above.
I doubt if 30 years of bleak Leeds weather and 30 falls of apple and of may will erode the UNITED binding us together. And now it's your decision: does it stay?
Next millennium you'll have to search quite hard to find out where I'm buried but I'm near the grave of haberdasher Appleyard, the pile of HARPs, or some new neonned beer.
Find Byron, Wordsworth, or turn left between one grave marked Broadbent, one marked Richardson. Bring some solution with you that can clean whatever new crude words have been sprayed on.
If love of art, or love, gives you affront that the grave I'm in 's graffitied then, maybe, erase the more offensive FUCK and CUNT but leave, with the worn UNITED, one small v.
Victory? For vast, slow, coal-creating forces that hew the body's seams to get the soul. Will earth run out of her 'diurnal courses' before repeating her creation of black coal?
If, having come this far, somebody reads these verses, and he/she wants to understand, face this grave on Beeston Hill, your back to Leeds, and read the chiselled epitaph I've planned:
Beneath your feet's a poet, then a pit. Poetry supporter, if you're here to find How poems can grow from (beat you to it!) SHIT find the beef, the beer, the bread, then look behind.
- Tony Harrison
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