Red Land
The red earth of Herefordshire makes me long to relive my last year’s journey to see a man who was dying slowly.
(Through floods, rivers, red lakes which turned to wet slate, through darkness and tears the driver pressed on.)
From a hill in Leckhampton he saw the dawn on the Houseman hills and quoted poetry to me.
One can spend a lifetime not saying the things which are best expressed in poetry.
Disce Mori
He had prepared well for his death. He did not lie lonely – he felt poetry. Tearful, he supported me.
His companion in passing the time, I heard how he had had too much confidence, of his anger when death came to the house and passed him by.
All pleasure dead, longing for death kept him from dying till we thought him into a boat floating on a shimmering sea.
He has prepared a way for me.
Timor mortis non conturbat me.
His Death
I had prepared myself for a form on a tomb, the dignity of wax and bones, the face of a Jewish patriarch, but he lay like a child in the womb. I felt neither awe nor respect, only tenderness towards the cradle, for the darling of death.
Rebirth
Orphaned of his strength, he floated in peace as he was tended by strong hands, his daughter becoming mother to her father.
How can you not sympathise with the new child hearing a heart beating, then breathing labouring as he is pulled gasping out of the world?
His Diary
I leant against the wall and wept silently. Why give oneself up to grief when the man had longed for the end of his suffering, had written: ‘not years but months to go’.
To Orpheus
You learnt the lesson that I find so hard though I went down as far as you through all the layers to the subconscious, to where time has never been, where the image is, so primitive is this, of a foetus floating without the aid of Charon – though I bring my strings into tune, he won’t come back from where death is sovereign. If I were to see him without the grave’s black marks, after this grief, it would not seem strange, and hear his voice sounding as strong as if there had been no vile worms’ work – but as you know, O Orfeo, I have of him only the echo.
In Memoriam
Is it right to talk like this of something so private as a father’s death, portrayed as a child by one of his seed – doesn’t that prettify the picture?
How does one respond to such an event when weeping is sweet, full of comfort – an attempt to express love that is pure, poems being but an outline?
Wen der Dichter aber gerȕhmt
The man whom the poet praises, he takes on form and walks across the stage to the accompaniment of strings which declaim the intensity of his suffering and assign him to the ranks of the heroes. I move in the direction of the life of those who live.
Looking back
That was the katabasis – I would not wish to go down further. I will not again play on my lyre music of such quality – but, though my voice becomes a shadow, may I yet sing an echo?
‘Er cof am G. W. B.’
© copyright text and translation Mary Burdett-Jones 2023