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| Andrew Macara |
Mansion
Beach
1
I count
the rays of the jellyfish:
twelve in
this one, like a clock to tell time by,
thirteen
in the next, time gone awry.
A great
wind brought them in, left them here
to die,
indifferent time measured by whirling moon
and sun,
by tides in perpetual fall and rise.
Englobed,
transparent, they litter the beach,
creatureless
creatures deprived of speech
who spawn
more like themselves before they die.
I peer
into each and see a faceless
red
center, red spokes like a star.
They are,
and are not, like what we are.
2
At noon,
in the too bright light, watchful,
looking
too hard, we saw the scene turn dark
and lost
the children for a moment, waves
crashing
around them. Shadow blended with shadow,
the sun
inside a cloud, and then the children
were
restored to us, our worst fears a hallucination.
All
afternoon their castles, poor and proud,
rose and
fell. Great civilizations were built,
came to
an end, the children mighty lords, their castles
only as
small as we are to the stars and starry structures.
The day
was infinite for them, time stretching
to the
farthest horizon, the sun their overlord.
But how
to reconcile these summer days washing away
with our
need to commemorate, to hold onto?
They
knew. And so they sang a song tuneless and true,
admitting
no fixed point, no absolute, words
overheard
and blurred by great winds blowing in,
a rhyme
or round for a time such as we live in:
The world
is made, knocked down, and made again!
3
This is
the moment of stasis: gulls stall
above the
burned-out mansion on the bluff,
gone for
thirty years, and cairns rise up,
stone
balanced on stone. By evening, the beach
is empty,
my shadow a long-legged giant leading me
past
small battlements to the day’s masterpiece:
a
dripping castle, all towers and crenellation,
tall as a
child, made by many children, flying
three-pointed
flags that wave hopefully in the wind.
Closer, I
see the moat, the courtyard’s secret
pool in
which, macabrely, red jellyfish float,
death and
potentiality entwined forever.
A crab
small as my fingernail, dead,
perfect
in every detail, with hairlike spinnerets
and
claws, guards the open castle door from entry
as night
begins to fall and shadows dark as ink
wash in
to stain the beach. Shivering, I think,
O sentry,
who would enter here?
4
Traveling
once, I stood under the open sky
inside a
great unfinished cathedral.
Stonemasons,
there for generations, clung
like ants
to thin scaffolding, carving
griffins
and saints, the rising spires and portals
dripping
like hot wax, and birds flew
freely in
and out of lacy walls, like angels
thrown
down from heaven. Gaudy and grand,
it was a
vision of eternal mind. Its maker,
dead for
a long time, had left no finished plan,
design,
but work went on, days turning
into
years, the century coming to a close.
In
disbelief, I touched each twisting vine
and leaf,
marveling at what had been done,
and what
was yet to be, and wished,
as I wish now, O let it never be
complete!
Elizabeth
Spires
I
was struck by the contrast between this and the poem “That Nature is a
Heraclitean Fire” by Gerard Manley Hopkins (my last post). They both speak of
the constant change in nature; Hopkins marks it in the clouds - “an air-built
thoroughfare”, Spires in the ocean – “tides in perpetual fall and rise”. Spires
goes on to talk of “indifferent time”, how the sandcastles of the children on
the beach “rose and fell”, “castles only as small as we are to the stars”. She
points to the lifeless bodies of the jellyfish littering the sand, “creatureless
creatures…faceless”, “they are, and are not, like what we are”. She captures
the ache of passing time exquisitely. The futility of our endeavours. “How to
reconcile these summer days washing away with our need to commemorate, to hold
onto?” Hopkins speaks of stars also, “Manshape, that shone sheer off,
disseveral, a star, death blots black out…” Both poets come up against a
horrifying sense of erasure, of extinguishment. Spires writes of how there
seems to be “no fixed point, no absolute, words overheard and blurred by great
winds blowing in”, while Hopkins asks if anything surives “but vastness blurs
and time beats level”? For him the “world’s wildfire, leave but ash”, and “all
is in an enormous dark, drowned”. It’s a moment of despair. How they both
absorb and live with their observations is facinating; Hopkins shouts “Enough!”
and turns to the arms of his Saviour who promises resurrection and immortality,
while Spires pleads that the cycle of fall and rise, the building of castles
and cathedrals never be complete, never come to an end. Is there a design to
this life? Is there a pattern that does not end in death and darkness? Both
poems ask this question vividly.
