Interesting, Janet, but for me it does get a bit to prosaic, too
sentence-involved, in 4, 5, 6, as you felt. The problem of how much of
that info you need to put in the poem....
There's a part of me that feels that the final two stanzas, all by
themselves, make a finely tuned sharp little poem....
Doug
On 5-Jun-07, at 9:56 PM, Janet Jackson wrote:
> The umpteenth draft.
> Stanzas 5 and 6 still feel a bit awkward.
>
> Warning: 'I' in use. If affected stand clear. :-)
>
> Janet
>
> Celtic knots
>
> (St Audouen's Church, Dublin, 2005)
>
> Temple of history, temple
> of short lives long
> gone, temple of hundreds
> of souls... trod
> on me hard as I trod
> on its layers
> of graves. Quiet
> spirits whispered hundreds
> of hushes
> from the eleventh-
> century walls.
>
> If I ever go to church in Dublin this is where.
> Not in St Patrick's with its souvenir stalls.
>
> If I go back to Dublin,
> if I take you there,
> let me take you to St Audouen's
> on a Sunday when the congregation
> I didn't see -- it being a Thursday
> when I was there -- when they sit,
> kneel, sing and pray
> where their people have prayed
> for a thousand years.
>
> Continuous use since the Normans built it.
> Centuries of extension. Chapels, courtyards.
> In the fourteenth century, a tower. Battlements
> bells.
>
> Centuries of loss. Roofs removed
> to avoid the roof tax. Gravestones and monuments
> weathering away. Dirt building up,
> the ground rising, the town crowding,
> singing, chattering, hanging their washing
> wall to wall in the unroofed buildings.
> Stone turning black in the tower.
> Bells ringing.
>
> Ringing bells. Re-roofing. Hanging cables. Excavating.
> Discovering a cobbled way, a metre wide.
> Leaving a section uncovered. Roped off,
> with a sign asking us to imagine the people
> who walked on the cobbles hundreds of years ago.
>
> Ghosts projected on the ancient wall
> in silverblue light, with ethereal music.
> Walking. Going, coming. Living on.
>
> Two tourists; a visiting priest; the guide.
>
> Hush, said the ghosts of St Audouen's.
> Hush. This is not St Patrick's.
> Still your chattering modern mouths.
> Listen for us and you will hear us
> in the hush.
>
> There was a lucky stone, a four-foot ovoid,
> pitted and worn with time and touch,
> Celtic symbols just visible.
> Stolen and returned, quite a story.
> (The thief had to bring it back: it got heavier
> and heavier. As it would.)
> Older than the church,
> made by people at the edge of memory.
> People who knew how to make symbols
> in the way of the land and the layers,
> in the way of the earth and her children.
>
> Writing this I touch the necklace
> I bought in a souvenir shop in O'Connell street.
> A cheap thing, but its four Celtic knots
> are enough.
>
> The other tourist touched the stone. For luck.
> I didn't. Couldn't.
>
> I am too new, too full of dirty salt,
> not clean enough.
>
> Old eyes look at me from my wall.
> A print: a painting
> in which a face appears like a vision
> in a stone.
> - What are you writing now? the eyes say.
> - I'm writing about St Audouen's.
> Have you been there? Did you hear the hush?
> Did you touch the lucky stone?
> - Do a good job of it then, the eyes say.
> - It's only a sketch for now. Getting it down -- you know.
> - That's the way.
>
> I didn't touch the stone. But my luck was in.
> Arms held me, eyes met me, streets
> and stones and the river spoke to me.
> I was knotted into the strands of Dublin.
> Raw ends joined, a pattern completed,
> and the rough, the narrow, the cobbled path
> took me home.
>
> --------------------------------------------------------
> Janet Jackson <[log in to unmask]>
> Poems at Proximity: www dot proximity dot webhop dot net
>
> Life's a jigsaw puzzle...
> Some do it in reverse
> They take a pretty picture
> And make it all diverse
> ...Michael Leunig
> --------------------------------------------------------
>
>
Douglas Barbour
11655 - 72 Avenue NW
Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
(780) 436 3320
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
Latest book: Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
Art has to be forgotten: Beauty must be realized.
Piet Mondrian
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