Friday, July 22, 2011

Two unnamed sonnets, about which I am sorta meh...

Faith is the evidence of things not seen,
Veiled face of the prophet who spoke to God,
By Spirit’s power uncovered, eyes keen,
Ground once unwilling to bear him now trod.
The voice that shook the desert of Kadesh
To Elijah’s ears was a gentle breeze,
Christ wept, then called forth Lazarus afresh,
So faith’s true action is strength, we must seize,
Hear the voice! This is faith, that brings before
The heart a world more true than our poor sight,
No work of ours, but unveiling, restore
To us in darkness what’s only seen in light.
A promise, faith must have a promise too,
He is the Amen, faith’s surety and true.


Can anger inspire the heart to song?
Can wrath bring joy and expectation sweet?
Abel’s blood spoke, Stephen declaimed “Too long!”
A better word was Christ’s, yet this surfeit
Fury stored in books and ‘neath which earth groaned
Suffered by his patience and these bold men
Accuse him who ‘pon the cross love’s proof moaned,
See here the balance of each fallen wren,
Man from man though weak heart may take love’s mold
And passions flow mixed with self-deception
Convinced of some injustice his God scold,
A foolish child unused to correction.
Let God destroy and avenge as he will,
Your love is nothing, this pride you must kill.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

If we are to trust...

If we are to trust the fire that cleanses,
The holy pain that meets all saints in turn,
Then through foreign covenanted lenses
Must be seen the flames that heaven's joys earn.
These glasses quite strangely do not make clear,
But e'en obscure still more the cause from view.
'Stead brings before the heart a greater fear,
The God whose word alone preserves the few.
What is this? cries the heart without this gift,
You promised good, yet now abandon me?
But God when seen, our selves entrust to sift,
Treasure costs, clear-eyed men will pay the fee.
And shouldn't Him whose essence makes good good
Define for us what it is? Who else could?

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

The Crimean War, Part 3

Perhaps we should go back and see the dawn,
When Cassocks swept through janissary horde,
Towards Silestra, unlock quick the Danube!
They stalled and though fanatic flames the tsar
He cannot feed the elect on passion.
And they were elect, in number at least,
Heaven’s number camped there stretched thin
Beat by the merciless logic of war.
And they withdrew.
See in how few words we have sketched this noble start!

But here it did not end. Why?
Through Dardanelles the queen’s fleet flew
Near land which in sixty short years
Bloodstained would be past all compare
To this rehearsal.
Through gaps they passed the Golden Horn
Blue spires and fragile minarets
Sacked twice, eternally despoiled,
This symbol of a misplaced hope,
Coiled smoke and icon lamps all lit,
Now represented man is gone
Just words and space and prayer and power.
Would you, O prying man, see through
And find the war at last in full?
History has ne’er judged full right yet,
Confined since Thucydides’ book
To simple human cause alone.
Yet here you’ll find it, human heart,
In Eastern city, Byzantium.
Out! You who see, you cannot see!
Whose landedness abuts their name,
Whose cunning Euclidean mind
Can see each part but miss the whole.
What caused it? Who sent men to die?
I did.

No, not I!

But you did, I did too, we all!

Friday, July 08, 2011

The Crimean War, Part 2

He was Wellington’s man, he was Raglan,
He had watched the hope of Corsican dreams
In Spain, where bitter was the battle cry,
Our ground, they said, we’ll bleed for every inch.
Though Pavel’s son had burned Muscovy down
He rode in Paris streets not two years past.
Yet Raglan shipped them to that foreign soil
And Tatar land they felt beneath their feet.
Strange ground it is whose grass can never die,
Where fit between the means and end
Proportion strong and right will not apply
A world where one to all will send
A world created by a single word
Not bloody from the blood all spent
Crimea’s souls at last will be interred
And goats from sheep to each is sent

But who fought for this place, whose was the ground?
Not Rus, nor Turk, nor Kievan Khanate,
And how can ground be owned and who owns it?
Where does he put it? Whose pocket has it?
Raglan! Was it yours? You blund’ring, weeping fool,
They hated you. What writ could give you space,
Who spared you, Aberdeen and Palmerston,
Or French-backed Rome and Third Jerusalem?
They shove in Nativity’s sacred hall
And blooded, empty rites enact,
Before an idol, virgin saint they crawl
A mutual ignorant pact.
Greek and Latin, Bishopric robes and all,
For this the limbs of men are gone,
What cannot stand must certainly soon fall,
And Sevastopol meets no dawn.

Bestride the horse, his sword, his gun, his teeth,
The rifle, the shot, spread artillery,
Fist and nail, bayonet, all Raglan’s men.
A dog pitch black once crept into his tent,
It tore the flap and chewed his gleaming boots
He broke it back with lunging feet to head
And brains spilled forth on Raglan’s sparkling toes,
Towards French-backed Rome and Third Jerusalem

Thursday, July 07, 2011

The Crimean War, Part 1

O Sevastopol! Crimea’s bright jewel!
Where serf and sailor nation came apart!
Where Turk and befeathered Zouve met fire cruel!
Where triage came and lamp’s bright light brought heart!

Where are you now? In Little Russia’s grasp,
Giv’n ‘way by bureaucratic oversight.
Your graves filled with forgotten, still we clasp
Your dreams and fears to twice fooled hearts too tight.

To war we went, for all man’s deeds belong
To him, and we are men, and so we went,
For reasons placed upon a map and strong,
Pride, piety, patriotism all sent.

Both high churchmen and dissenters with them
Spoke words which linked earth’s kingdom to the sky,
While French-backed Rome and Third Jerusalem
Bound here already, protected each eye.

Red severance bought for purpose vague, obscure,
But all war drags its men about like this.
The passions, aggressions, at home felt pure,
But Balaklavan dirt ends with a kiss.

Flesh is flesh and tears and burns and furrows,
Like trenched men’s choleric water filled bed,
And harsh peninsular winter wind stows
In stacks and heaps and unmarked graves the dead.

Dead. A man from steppe or Manchester yard,
Story-less now, lost to time. Who is he?
A number now, twenty years old, all hard.
Less in Peter, where Tsar fears the angry.

What can we say of these poor vorloen hoop?
These souls with names and fears and father’s too?
Who on the fields of Inkermen did grope
For life amidst the fog and fatal stew?

We are these men! We fought their fight of hate.
Each story told is ours, and we hate them
And hate ourselves, against ourselves conflate
With French-backed Rome and Third Jerusalem.

---------------

Here are some explanations which might help comprehension:

1. The Crimean peninsula is located in the Black Sea. In 1854-55 a conflict was centered here between Russia and the combined forces of Turkey, England and France. The cause of the conflict is complex and not relevant to the poem.

2. Sevestopol is the largest city on the peninsula and was the home of the Russian Black Sea fleet. The 354-day siege of the city was the main action of the war. Despite being mainly populated by ethnic Russians, it is currently a part of the Ukraine after Khruschev (himself Ukrainian) switched it to the Ukraine department in 1954, when Ukraine was part of the USSR.

3. The Zouves were a French regiment known for their bravery and fancy dress.

4. Florence Nightingale (known as "the lady of the lamp") became famous for her work during the Crimean War, although the main development in medicine was the "triage" system, developed by a Russian physician. It saved the lives of countless Russian soldiers (thought their casualties were still shockingly high).

5. "Little Russia" was a common 19th century name for the Ukraine.

6. The Slavophile nationalists saw the Russian people as the defenders of the true Orthodox faith, and Moscow as the "third Jerusalem" (the second being Constantinople) which was destined to be the center of true Christian religion.

7. Balaklava and Inkerman were both sites of major conflicts.

8. Vorloen hoop is dutch for "lost troops" although it was widely mis-translated as "forlorn hope."

Saturday, July 02, 2011

Love is like a badger

Heart's charge is to itself 'fore the heart's charge
Into someone else's heart and enlarge
the scope for destruction and anger, hurt
Her eyes and his met once, she was so curt
He liked it that way, liked her that way too
Is not love this taking her curt and new?
Delighting as she is, a neutral thing
Love is natural, his dad said, a ring
Will fit any finger if you wake it.
Desire plays with lives, the fire once lit
Burns, and will cost you dearly to put out,
From the dyke the water bursts with no spout,
A badger sleeps deep, but woken is fierce
So love will never harm you but only pierce
And crush and maim and break the one you love
and loved she will return this same above,
Though loving, hurt is loving, He must be hurt
She must hurt him, and only then assert
His love. O daughters of Zion, my charge!
Do not awaken love, do not enlarge,
Until it so desires. Then hurt him,
Meaning, love him, 'til all life at last dim.