The dark undazzle

In the Kingdom of the Past, the Brown-Eyed Man is King

It's all so pitiful, really, the little photographs
Around the room of places I've been,
And me in them, the half-read books, the fetishes, this
Tiny arithmetic against the dark undazzle.
Who do we think we're kidding?

Certainly not our selves, those hardy perennials
We take such care of, and feed, who keep on keeping on
Each year, their knotty egos like bulbs
Safe in the damp and dreamy soil of their self-regard.
No way we bamboozle them with these

Shrines to the woebegone, ex votos and reliquary sites
One comes in on one's knees to,
The country of what was, the country of what we pretended to be,
Cruxes and intersections of all we'd thought was fixed.
There is no guilt like the love of guilt.

Charles Wright

This reminds so much not only of rooms, and the little shrines to our own egos that we set up in our rooms, but of blogs . . . . virtual rooms filled with photographs and fetishes and self-regard in their own way, and "tiny arithmetic against the dark undazzle."

Littlefoot

Cobalt and undulant rocking of lake swells and waves,
Long runners and smooth slatch of the seas,
Creek hiss and pond sway,
Landfall and landrise
Like Compostela at land’s end.

From Charles Wright’s Littlefoot

I could spend a surprising amount of time thinking about these few lines, part of the book-length poem Littlefoot, described on the dust jacket flap as “an extended meditation on mortality.”

For one thing, the first line quoted above, “Cobalt and undulant rocking of lake swells and waves” is as musically perfect as a line from Milton. Then, the surprise of “smooth slatch of the seas.” I thought at first that Wright might have coined the sword slatch just for this poem, but it turns out that slatch is “a momentary lull between breaking waves, favorable for launching a boat.” So now I envision those long waves and the smooth slatch between them.

I’ll just mention here that the alternation between all the sibilants and the percussives in these lines is very reminiscent of the sounds of waves alternately running smoothly up to the shore and then smacking it sharply.

Next we move inland, to consider the less dramatic movement of creeks and ponds (Creek hiss and pond sway), and back to sea again to consider landfall and landrise. Landfall is a common enough term, meaning the first sighting of land from sea, but I think Wright has coined a complementary term in landrise, and both are compared to “Compostela at land’s end.”

So we have landfall, landrise, and land’s end – a cycle of setting out and coming home? Or, being at home and then setting out past land’s end, for unknown parts?

What is Compostela? It turns out that it is the capital city of Galicia, in western Spain, and has been a city of pilgrimage for hundreds of years. The folk etymology of the name is “field of stars” – this might be incorrect etymology, but it’s very evocative in terms of Wright’s poem, in which he constantly searches the starry skies for meaning as he contemplates death. The likely true etymology of the name is even more apropos – “burial ground.”

Compostela is famous as one of the oldest sites of Christian pilgrimage; for over a thousand years pilgrims have traveled there to visit the supposed bones of St. James. And in Celtic legend, Compostela is the place where the souls of the dead gather to follow the sun across the sea.

Apparently the speaker is thinking about launching into the smooth slatch, following the route of all the souls who have gone before him.

Normally I’m not willing to look up words and references while reading a poem – but I love the poetry of Charles Wright so much, and I know the results will be rewarding. It’s very nice when every word and every syllable work together.

Photo courtesy Flickr user Tony George