This elegy is written in my simplified version of classical elegiac metre, i.e. alternating dactylic hexameters with dactylic pentameters. The metre of Longfellow's 'Evangeline' is similar - although Longfellow, following common practice, replaced the final dactyl with a spondee, whereas I have kept the final dactyl.
Note: Wherry Town is a seafront area of Penzance; Penwith is the wider administrative area which includes Penzance.
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Years ago, bunkered in granite, those misted and rain-shallied alleys of
Wind-hit Penzance, giving shelter to fishermen’s families,
Mingled with self-doubting artists and awkward Joannas from whom the world
Turned away, Barrington – God-sunk announcer of spiritual
Terrors – we met, and with wine and the mind’s busy raids on the Absolute
Firmly were pals until death showed its teeth and so snatched you off.
Friend, you knew well your advantage in looks, pliant charm and authority –
Spirited ladies were limply susceptible! Worldliness
Gifted you, youth no objection, with status and money, executive
Power which arched over continents – plane travel, meetings to
Settle expenditure, marketing targets and fire up the laggardly.
God intervened – call it Fate if you wish – throwing down from that
Height careless pride; tumbling soul to a valley of horrors where satyrs and
Beelzebub rummaged in guts, twisting spirit so only a
Vague simulacrum survived, to be thrust back at life barely able to
Manage as visions and voices enthralled you with secrets – those
Riddles from God which, unwrapped like a codex, but hinted at more and yet
More shrouded knowledge until weary-eyed, become shriven of
Flesh, you erupted in anguished revolt, spinning hard from, yet seeking out,
God’s unresponding, sustaining, emotionless majesty –
Merciful, merciless, seemingly one and the same. And so, broils upon
Broils overwhelmed you – the insight that only by breasting the
Absolute’s merciless absence and hopelessly clutching it, fevered and
Retching in pain, might one flush out the merciful Presence which
Maybe is but to collapse, bone and skin, on Its breast and to sink without
Stain into Being’s eternity. Barrington, who can cross
Chasms like that? All position, respect and your place at the tables of
Influence, home and possessions, were lost, and good-manneredly –
Suavely, perhaps, for unable by code to be vulgar – you took to the
Lanes and the mudways of England and Wales, even sleeping in
Snow-drifts in fields, and avoiding a soaking by dodging in barns, ever
Loath to see people, so stirring those torments you bore in your
Heart, until foot-hurt and blighted in brain, seeking solace in salty-aired
Cornwall’s far west, you dropped anchor in old Penzance town, soothed by
Scurrying winds and the howling insurgency gulls frankly flung at their
Maker – such Nietzschean graspers of life! In your bedsit I
Found you engaged in deciphering messages hushed in the Gospels by
Formulae shown you in dreams though each fragment of insight but
Pointed to further conundrums. Blind writings and sortilege offered no
Breakthrough and day after day you entreated your neatly kept
Musings to flare to transparency, showing at last the lost reason why
God had destroyed you, abandoned to ridicule, penniless.
Charming on good days and hag-ridden others, you surged into friendliness:
Intellect, far-vaunting reading and canny enquiry in
Mind and the soul’s magisteriums forged, for me, riveting company.
Friend, how we coursed after truths philosophical, logical,
Seeking a route to the ground of all thought – theological certainties
Guarded from men by the dizzying depths upon depths of the
Absent-in-Presence. Augustine, Aquinas and fount Aristotle, all
Fell under question; the Greek Fathers also – their “negative
Way” your especial delight. Oh, those spring afternoons of good talk and wine,
Laughter and irony easing the morning’s reft struggles with
Adamant Deity, evening’s pricked sweats and the night’s blood-illumed writhings
Watched over often by Satan’s ice eyes, floating yellowly
Corner to corner and back. Afternoons though were sanative, Penzance’s
Breezes like fingers caressing the window sill’s cushion of
Purple aubrieta, the sky creamy blue, lotos air tickling senses like
Odour of wine-must and always the gulls, the curt gulls giggling,
Screaming in mockery, hurling their bodies in blatant grammatical
Counterpoint, querying claims and exploding pretensions, like
Censors impatiently blunt through the window pane spluttering, “No,” and then
“No,” and then... Blackouts, forgetfulness, word loss intruded and
Shockingly fast brutal Alzheimer’s wrecked you – unruly as wave surges
Falling on Wherry Town beach and disordering shingle and
Sand to a scum-frothed and seaweed-strewn chaos, quite voided of meaning and
Form. In a hasty four years, my dear friend, you were gone from us –
Crammed into self like inscrutable stone, and conformable blankly to
Prompts and exhortings from carers, your smile wanly empty as
Hours long as days puddled round you, besieging your chair, and your eyes dribbled
Being. And so, sixty-five, you were felled by infection. What
Loss, ah what loss! The prompt Church gave you quittance though dodging uncomfortable
Questions – your commerce with Creeds and Professions was fraught since the
Absolute stung you in mind, making desert of tissue and synapse where
Sifting for knowledge those years in the wilderness wearied your
Brain, become victim, therefore, of dry Alzheimers’ parching of cells, cozened,
Helpless, to sterile moraine. What’s to say of the possible
Point of this? Only the dead know the truth of unjustified suffering.
Barrington, grimly you’d state that with death undergone drearly,
Rather than Judgement, you’d judge, so indignant you waxed at those undeserved
Sorrows which blasted insouciant youth, mothers torn from their
Young or the active transfixed in their prime, the innumerable nameless
Who by disease or disaster were taken, the chalice hard
Struck from their lips. You confided a dream: many thousands of children, mute,
Robed all in white and reproachfully staring in Deity’s
Eyes; in a movement they turned and, their backs to the Absolute’s wondering
Gaze, walked away, not forgiving the pitiless traumas which
Brought them there, winked at by Yahweh’s unsearchable justice. Ah, terrible
Thought – that in death there is no supersession of anger, no
Ceasing of motion, both mental and moral, replete with the goodwill of
Gladness: I pray you’ve found otherwise. How will my own parting
Come, the lone wolf and unbending? Do all make their journey with curses yet
Blessing? And after what shrivings, what burnings, will you, my dear
Questioner, welcome your glib though insistent confrère with the good wine kept
Last and choice apophthegms plucked from those Penwith days roared at by
War-dancing waves on the rock-shouldered cliff-line? – superfluous now in the
Rapt anoesis of bliss become thrillingly compassing.
February 2014
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© February 2014
