To start the world all over, come then to the sea…
A hundred years ago, Robert Frost made a decision, to sail to England…
Changing himself, changing the world of Poetry. For him then, these lines…
‘Tis the gratitude poets have for Robert Frost
Weirding words on the world’s soul wistfully tossed
A gift not common enough for our times of crudeness
To alleviate the sadness, to dress –
…up the wounds we have suffered from the current age
To take away the noise of the pain, to quiet the rage…
Wondering soul, haunting the wide world
I feel the wind again, I feel the burning cold
The distance my eyes can cross when I do not look
Are vaster than the Galaxy is wide, swifter than a mountain brook
I feel the smiting of my cheek on the bow of the ship
I turn my face to the Moon, I feel the blueness of my lip
But I will not stop to look blindly banally on
I know not why Frost is on my mind, I do not miss the Sun
But some strange stirring beneath me subtly sings
A flame of water, a hollowness of forgotten rings…
It comes as quickly as it fades
That feeling of the dance of words on a page
A few quick strokes of the pen
And it is all over, the words that were so clear
Gone, gone into the void never to return…
The sea beckons those of us who dream of the White Ship
It asks of us to deposit that coin for a safe trip
To spare us the time of troubles, to start the world all over
To climb one’s own Ararat, to look up and see the cliffs of Dover
The sea is our Anglo-Saxon soul, our English paradise
It asks of us to stand in the wind and roll the dice
This is an age that imposes itself on poets, demanding our care
An age full of fire and brimstone, an age for magic to dare
To rise from the depths of one’s lungs and conjure
Like Merlin in days of old, when the Dragon he wished to lure
The sea is his home, where the Leviathan dives
In depths as murky as the Kraken’s many lives…
Here then the waters break
A window to the memory of some forgotten stone
Cast aside for no reason anyone can know
Lifted from the depths of despair
Hold it to your chest, it makes no sense
Beneath the mists, below the white foam, where Adelin’s skull lies
And should you dive into that otchłań, the abyssal sighs
Know that in far distant lands, others too take a lesson from the sea
A Baltic realm where amber stones float on flotsam and debris
I know not why these thoughts come now, perhaps they have to
Perhaps they must, to speak of truth hidden in the final places – few
That have not yet… been photographed and tabulated
Haven’t been… filed in computers…or for which a market has been created
Hidden gems, from the bottom of the old seas that England made
Light like frozen calcified sap, for which Polish children wade
I sing tonight, a tale for my own heart, before the dreams
The sea is roaring inside my head, all illusion seems…
Harsh like the desert wind
It grabs the flesh from within
Turns skin inside and out
Penetrates the essence of being
Till only shards of the self remain
And when it returns, this feeling of solace
This gentle wind on a meadow far from the Polis
Far from the zgiełk i trzask , din and crash
Of the gears of our existence, our home atop the trash
When it comes back again at the close of time
I credit his verse, I credit his words in rhyme…
Maybe it is my Polish blood within my Anglo-Saxon soul
That makes me half alive, and half a burning coal
Maybe it is the time I spent looking past the Baltic waves
Or when I walked gently beside my relative’s graves
Maybe it is the Castle at Marlbork in Old Prussia, that lives in my heart
That brings me full circle in the dreams I wish to impart
But I cannot question the Muse, she does her thing
Her hands guide my pen, I hang on barely by her wing
This then cannot be explained, it can only be felt from within
A roar of the sea, an immensity of ancient kith and kin.
July 31, 2012
Konrad Tademar