I concur also, sharp eye Doug.
again, I felt the prosaicness was somehow fitting. recounting an experience..
janet I only learend paratactic a few weeks ago; I have an entrance
exam tomorrow that I have to learn it for. ;)
KS
On 06/06/07, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 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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