Martin Burke
(Ireland-Belgium)
A PRINCE OF ACQUATAIN
Suggested by Gérard de Nerval’s sonnet “El Desdichado”
And remember, you shall suffer all things and again suffer, until you have sufficient sufferance to accept all things
1
To the point of irreparable beyond any consolation
Like some second-rate prince abandoned in a tower
Above which the stars are dead and within which
All instruments are tuned to melancholia
Grave-dark, yet no grave will console me
Nor memories of mountains facing the beloved sea
Nor can flowers offer the merest healing
And the rose upon the trellis displeases me
Give me one of four names –I don’t care which
For none of them matter –only that she….
There, in the grotto, where the mermaids swim
As for death’s river –well, I’ve crossed it
A second-rate Orpheus imitating songs learned from the dead
That the living might live on in my heart
2
Ah, so this is the much-vaunted freedom.
Endlessly reading the same book only the bees have questions about
My answers as if they were answers
Words meant to block out words and invite others words in
And time laughing take as much as you want
Take what the flowers take and be as they are-
Open to the winds of a speechless moment
That has so much to say.
3
Howl?
I do nothing else
The living, the dead, the thousand details which are only the beginning of existence
The days of love and the days of loss
Latitudes crossing into longitudes
Something about a white hat on a certain beach on a hot, very hot day
The jovial women, the jocular boys, the laughter of the sexes at their inter-play
Then the ambulance speeding by with siren and flashing blue lights
The quick interpretations of such details, assigning them categories of good or bad, or evil
Death entering because there is no way it can be excluded
Death
Intractable, implacable, and not even the refuge of a cliché allowed
Praising and cursing coming out of the one mouth
That mouth open with an animal cry
That mouth open with an unending howl.
4
Nor have I given the world anything to remember me by nor even to regret not knowing me.
Sociable to an excellent point so that even those who know me frequently scratch their chins and ask each other who was that fellow I was just talking to?
5
Fire and darkness have gathered against me
See - life’s’ conspirators are on more than speaking terms!
Venom has entered the race
Even the sun has proved itself to be false when most needed
First the promise then the betrayal of that promise –why should I be surprised?
Fire and darkness have achieved what they set out to
A dark moment germinated in their dark hearts and this is it
From a stone-slit in a tower of stone I see the fire and hear the gathered thunder
6
Yet for a
living utterance like a meteorite, bright but not inherited, I’d scuttle every
province under my command
I’d throw my cities and possessions into the assault against darkness
And if there only remained one moment fit for a troubadour song
I’d insist I’d got the better of the bargain
This is as close to prayer as I’m likely to come
A form of understanding not dependent on knowledge but only on being exactly what it is without wanting to be something else
Where even to say this is to achieve a passive lucidity
Ah yes, to live in the moment so as to live beyond it –the universe like a paternoster endlessly passed over by fingers counting the beads to their certain conclusion of acquired grace even if not felt nor understood
Ah yes, my homeland –constructing its borders but leaving a gap in its stone wall, the bleeding tree at the center, not a word of which I’ll interpret for you but allow you to enter or leave as you please
At the most one or two cryptic citations will mark the route for you –words not my own but words like shards or shrapnel from the sky
So walk but walk slowly because wherever it is you started from you cannot say where you’ll arrive
7
Yet as irreparable as this world is what else can I love with any certainty?
And if creation is no more than a deity’s best dream of itself
I’ll none the less release all the caged birds of this tower
As if from an impure dream I might waken to shards and blobs of the sky
Falling like meteorites of fire upon my lips.
_______________________________________
Martin Burke is Irish but has lived in Belgium for over twenty years. His work has appeared in World Order, Analysands, The Lilliput Review, Drunken Boat, Snakeskin, Poetry about Poetry, Other Poetry, Transference, Arts Dialogue, Virtual Writer, and others. This year he has published two books: The Other Life and The Weave That Binds Us.
www.terrain.org/poetry/15/burke.htm
http://www.dublinquarterly.ie/04/p_mburke.html
http://www.tryst3.com/issue6/burke.html