THE WAKE
by John Caselberg
This astonishing poem might have been lost were it not for the fact that
it became the subject of a series of paintings by Colin McCahon, one of New
Zealand's best-known modern artists. McCahon, in his usual fashion
at this period, used the words in their entirety, painting them onto a series
of nine tall, narrow canvases.
Apart from its original publication as the only poem in a pocket-sized book, copies of which are now rare, the poem appears never to have been published in any anthology or other collection. Yet it's an extremely well-crafted poem, making full use of the language with its aural resonances, its varied rhythms, its inner rhyming, its broad vocabulary and complex sentence structures. More than that, it takes the death of a beloved animal, a family pet, and extends this into a ringing wake for the tragedy of the deaths of all beloved ones, including humans. It isn't an easy poem - a casual reading will elicit few of its subtleties, and in fact, it may appear in parts somewhat incomprehensible. However, I've found as I've memorized it that its depths have come alive and the more I speak it the more I appreciate it. I've made a couple of notes that may help the reader. Recently the author wrote to me. Here is what he has to say as to the background of the piece. "The Great Dane dog I had was bred by my father at his home in Fairymeadow, then a rural hamlet a few miles north of Woollongong. The latter has become a city encompassing the smaller places. Bulli is - I think - about 15 miles further north. D H Lawrence, the English writer stayed there once. When young I was deeply impressed by Lawrence's writings. The Shorter Oxford Dictionary gives 'vates' as an 'alien' - still Latin? - word: defined as: 1. A poet or bard, especially one who is divinely inspired, a prophet-poet. 2. Plural - one of the classes of Gaulish Druids " So it's in the first sense I suppose that the reference was made to D H Lawrence."
|
I
Your going maims God: God Let it be sung and wept for forever; Echoing the savagery of your loss like that of the dread Avalanche or Adelie land's boiling winter Of terror; like the oceanward flight of the river
II
Sirius, Dog-Star, stab night-long your dissembling Lights as if the blind uprooting of his flesh From the fond-wombed throat-hurt trembling- Hearted earth who grieves his death as harsh As Dante's Hell were not real; Were unimaginable. Stop your processional And weep, you cold stars. Weep Antares, Fomalhaut, Vega, Cross and Centaur, Whom yesterday he honoured by his ways, Rain down your scalding tears of stellar Lamentation on his going where he lies; Where he is; where his breath was That now is mixed with chaos. Chaos and doom Tear up the templates now obliterating him.
III And you, trees, mute-cypress-hooded kauris, Bend your brows for him whose steadfastness proclaimed You kin, whose gentle mien and goodness named Him scion of the same heroic generations as Your own sweet sap has been distilled from. Clench tighter, roots, where you have felt your sires After their hushed bird-lovely thousand years Of succouring beauty, murdered, bellowing, boom Upon the subterranean gloom and wet that you were plumbing then - And mourn again. Stand aeons for him. Allow your stems' Immobile masts the imaging of his limbs; Letting their alchemy of ever-green-blue-mercury enshrine His lost being. He gazed like you. His ways like yours will light The future dark. Like you he did no hurt.
IV
Though they have earthed through me their brands and those Six lighting years have guttered out and flown Since first you ran quick-silvering on the apple-green At Fairymeadow, learning nostril-wise, Below her smoking brows, obeisance to a sun- Stroked continent's ravishment of scents, being Sea-strung, in earshot of the ocean's shattering Her orange sands and rocks, the harbourers of a man Once (our world's vates) whose rapt heart as vast And shaking-portalled as your own nor yet composed For dissolution there had rung the diapason Of such a storm as you are drowned in, And it's after-calm of sepulture, the wrecked, foundering, Nightfall hurtle home - they echo thundering.
V
Orion strides the firmament, The great dog at his heel. Scorpio's red heart Is inextinguishable. But stars explode Here. His death is irrevocable.
VI
That all the daedal physics of the flesh, The chemistry of glacier teeth, the fresh Snow-splashed basalt body, The brow like regal Taranaki Albatrossing oceans and the hot Reverbatory engines of his heart With their concomitant Jonquil eyes and our tomorrow's Star-stabbed tui-throated Open-artery-and-sea-engendered- Rainbow-swimming days Should halt, dry, freeze, Corrupt, rot.
VII
Grief, thee I'll wive In the midnight hours Since his departure Disallows
That eyes again Expectantly Will ever start with His-and-my joy.
VIII
But time cannot corrupt The beauty you have brought Burgeoning our rock, Precipice, peak, Ice, emerald, Sapphire, gold, Abyss-born, Empyrean - High-hurled Ocean-shrouded world.
IX
Your tempering is done Now, Dane, Fled (as you came) Galloping stallion-sprung From a sea-plucked harpstring Headland, Icarus-brave in To the dazzlement of oblivion.
Beyond the lash of the world's whip and the sun's gaze, Blaze. |
Notes....
Kauris - of the same family as the monkey puzzle and the Norfolk pine, this is one of the great timber trees of the world, as well as being one of the largest. The long, straight, branchless trunk produces durable straight-grained timber, and a resin once greatly prized for the manufacture of high quality paints, varnishes and polishes. The largest recorded kauri grew in Mercury Bay (New Zealand) and in 1850 had a girth of 23.43 metres and a height of 21.8 metres to the first branch. (source Bateman's Illustrated Encyclopedia of New Zealand) [back]
The continent is Australia. [back]
The man is the writer, D H Lawrence, who spent some time in Australia. [back]
Taranaki - the Maori name for what was called Mount Egmont; it has now reverted to its former name. It's also the name of the North Island province in which the mountain stands. [back]
Tasman - in this case, the Tasman Sea, between Australia's east coast, and New Zealand's west coast. [back]
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