MAGELLAN
Poem in Four Sections
Part I
Before Setting Out
(The Captain-General's First Soliloquy)
Before Setting Out
(The Captain-General's First Soliloquy)
From high, tree-less hills racing,
The wind would rise in waves against the house,
Setting sharp currents dying
Along dim corridors
Where lamp flickered and went out;
In that mean province
Whose fields were stony, yielding little,
With fruit in orchards green and bitter,
The boy that was I,
Shivering before great Winter fires,
Despite ambition, doubt and youth's heart sickness,
Had firm hold of the elusive hand of happiness,
That have rarely found it since.
From those days life has been perpetual exile;
Whether from Lisbon's Court sailing east,
Through the swift malice of the Indian monsoon
To sultans who with smiles and friendly gestures
Summoned up sharp ambush and sharp death;
Or fighting the fanatic horsemen
Upon the border of the Sahara; hot, dusty, thirsty
And accursed with flies; even Spain where I have found
Dearest friend, and wife dearly loved,
Has been no home; now is it life's purpose
That we should find rest or happiness by seeking it,
But like the unexpected oasis to the desert traveller,
Come upon it when engaged toward some other purpose.
That other purpose having always driven me on
No sends me forth commanded by another king,
Yet always faithful to an ancient master;
Not fearing the assassin's knife
Thrust home in some dark alleyway,
Or tainted cup I may raise
All unsuspecting at a friendly tavern;
For this is but the bitter hate of kings
That wounds a man less deeply than their love
And though I sail obeying royal orders,
I do not go because Spain sends me;
I go to find God's hidden purpose in my own
Insatiable desire to know what is not known
Part 2.
In the Mid-Pacific
(The Captain-General's second soliloquy.)
If indeed we have steered out beyond time
And the bounds of earth, it seem strange
That the sun still rises and sets,
That dolphins move in the clear blue
And leap in crystal fire from the smooth deep;
It is strange that we still need to eat and sleep,
That my beard still grows a little each day,
That each morning the ship's timbers seem
A little more rotten .......
Sunday! And the bells that from steepled tower
Pealed us forth from anchor, now from peopled streets
Draw to church those who shall pray for our souls,
Judging us by now to be one with the tides
Of ocean, and our ships mere driftwood
Floating beyond landfall; the pomp of our outsetting
May perhaps linger for a while in the minds
Of those who lined the streets and crowded at the quayside,
All too soon to distance and vanish from remembrance
As vessels dropping below the horizon line.
Perhaps we have already passed beyond death
And do not know it, have become a motionless woven ship
Upon a silken ocean, fixed in the tapestry
That fingers of God wove
On creation's six days ..... and yet the salt
Is upon my lips, a breeze stirs feebly
In the idle sails and sun still draws the pitch
Bubbling from deck-boards......
Ah! Now the breeze has gone; sails subside
Into listlessness; becalmed the ship bobs
On the ocean swell. We are here
And here is no place; no use to scan
The meaningless horizon; there is no land
Where sky and sea merge in one vast shimmer
Of purgatorial heat. Men lie
Upon the blistering boards, swollen tongues
Touching parched mouths. Yesterday one leapt witless
Into the silk-smooth ocean and none stirred
To save him. What use to try?
For this is the ultimate discovery,
To be fixed within the fabric of God's mind
Hung still where no door opens
And no breeze stirs along the blue walls.
And yet these are but noon-day fantasies;
At sunset the breeze will stir again,
The ship move, and as the stars
Swing high into the black heavens,
We shall turn again to our vile mouthful,
The harness-leather and the starved ship's rats;
Hungry yet with hope that tomorrow will show
Land low upon the horizon; that this torment may have end
And our eyes look once more upon green hills,
See at evening the glowing welcome
Of bright windows, where the little seaport
Hugs itself below the great cathedral hill.
If thus we should return and speak again
With men of our own race, by the winter fireside
Or in the quiet courtyard on cool evenings of spring,
I know that what we shall say; for somewhere
Upon this long sea road
We have become as no men ever were; ice and fire
have burned into our minds scars that others cannot see
But will only marvel at without understanding;
Truly they will not know us, who no longer know ourselves,
having endured what is beyond our comprehension;
Between them and us a gulf is fixed,
Deep and unbridgeable as death.
Part 3.
The Death of Magellan.
In the racing tide
This finality of raised spears;
With spilt blood the wide
Vision fades, and disappears
Into emptiness the strange compulsion
That drew us across an empty ocean;
Lying still under clear water is the end of pride,
With the sway of the tide the only motion.
The compelling will
That drew us out from quiet home
And fireside, is still;
Whatever oceans we now storm,
Whatever sea-path tread in the sun's burning,
Hope is that some heaven-clouded morning
He may see once more horizoned, the familia hill,
While bells astound the air with our returning.
We are not of his eagle kind;
We followed, our common metal held
By the magnet of his mind,
Without will of our own, compelled;
Now have we lost purpose, the decision
To go on, no longer rings with reason
In our untuned ears, there's nothing for us to find
Since he who sought was stopped so out of season.
Part 4.
Survivor
Sitting in the shadow of this monestery wall
I tell you that of the two hundred and fifty,
But nineteen returned.
You think me lucky to be one of the nineteen?
Perhaps so.
The earth is circled with our dead;
Tn dreams I see them lie
Fathomed in clear water,
Near, and yet unreachable as reflections in a mirror;
Or crumpled on the treacherous sands of far islands
They grow hideous to look upon;
Nightly I must see them and count their number
Like sins that cannot be expiated.
In winter by great fires I shiver,
For they are between me and the flames;
They sit down first at table, devouring all,
So that I starve with plenty.
Through those three years,
That now, though finished, can never have an end,
This was the place I lingered on, with longing
To return and rest; but now rest is impossible
For I have endured too much;
The old familiar things are stained with strangeness
Like a blight, or like the rust
Upon a once bright sword;
The faces I knew, of wife and child,
Are become masks concealing the fearfully unknown;
Restless I long to start upon a second voyage
At the sound of a single bell......
The climbing sun has sought us out;
I do not like the way his golden eye
Mocks down upon us all; I must leave you
And creep into the shadow of this doorway.
NB This was written around 1960-61 while Bernard was still living in Baddeley Edge.
Copyright © Bernard Gilhooly - All Rights Reserved