'The Advent House' by Michael Symmons Roberts
I read this poem back during the summer and made a note on my smartphone to publish it, today, the first day of Advent.
Mr Roberts is my poetry find of the year.
Although the poet has his own very distinct style and subjects he is clearly steeped in TS Eliot's metaphysics and concerns with mystery and the hidden.
The 'wounded king on the forest floor' has to be the reappearance of Eliot's 'broken king' who appears in 'Little Gidding' the last of the 'Four Quartets'.
From 'Little Gidding', line 20:
If you came this way,
Taking the route you would be likely to take,
From the place you were likely to come from,
If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges
White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.
It would be the same at the end of the journey,
If you came at night like a broken king.......
Eliot's king is of course Charles I, who visited the church at Little Gidding three times.
The second correspondence between the poems is that 'Little Gidding' begins with the line:
'Midwinter spring is its own season'
In 2000, I made a sort of pilgrimage cycling 200 miles from East Coker (the second of the 'Quartets') to end up at the church at Little Gidding, numb bum and raw hands, at a perfect dusk and with the place unfortunately locked up!
Maybe a return visit should be on the old bucket list. I will have to consult Eleanor on this - she told me that I should male a bucket list - 'as long as everything on it costs less than a fiver'...
THE ADVENT HOUSE
We come in midwinter to a door
locked since August. Cold
has clenched the chair bones,
wall marrow. No firelighters,
logs damp and green. They spit
but will not catch. We breathe
on one strong spark, cosset it
with paper fists and kindling.
So much waits on it -
bluebottles and moths chilled
into stasis, a wounded king
in agony on the forest floor.
And if the fire fails: rain rot,
and weed spores -
the patient seeds of wilderness.
Michael Symmons Roberts
POSTSCRIPT
I can't resist including the final lines of 'Little Gidding', which move me further on every reading including that evening on the steps of the church:
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident or ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word, exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See they depart and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.
With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the appletree.
Not known because not looked for
But heard, half heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always -
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of things shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
Mr Roberts is my poetry find of the year.
Although the poet has his own very distinct style and subjects he is clearly steeped in TS Eliot's metaphysics and concerns with mystery and the hidden.
The 'wounded king on the forest floor' has to be the reappearance of Eliot's 'broken king' who appears in 'Little Gidding' the last of the 'Four Quartets'.
From 'Little Gidding', line 20:
If you came this way,
Taking the route you would be likely to take,
From the place you were likely to come from,
If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges
White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.
It would be the same at the end of the journey,
If you came at night like a broken king.......
Eliot's king is of course Charles I, who visited the church at Little Gidding three times.
The second correspondence between the poems is that 'Little Gidding' begins with the line:
'Midwinter spring is its own season'
In 2000, I made a sort of pilgrimage cycling 200 miles from East Coker (the second of the 'Quartets') to end up at the church at Little Gidding, numb bum and raw hands, at a perfect dusk and with the place unfortunately locked up!
Maybe a return visit should be on the old bucket list. I will have to consult Eleanor on this - she told me that I should male a bucket list - 'as long as everything on it costs less than a fiver'...
THE ADVENT HOUSE
We come in midwinter to a door
locked since August. Cold
has clenched the chair bones,
wall marrow. No firelighters,
logs damp and green. They spit
but will not catch. We breathe
on one strong spark, cosset it
with paper fists and kindling.
So much waits on it -
bluebottles and moths chilled
into stasis, a wounded king
in agony on the forest floor.
And if the fire fails: rain rot,
and weed spores -
the patient seeds of wilderness.
Michael Symmons Roberts
POSTSCRIPT
I can't resist including the final lines of 'Little Gidding', which move me further on every reading including that evening on the steps of the church:
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident or ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word, exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See they depart and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.
With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the appletree.
Not known because not looked for
But heard, half heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always -
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of things shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
 |
| Des sent me this photograph an hour or so ago, titled 'The First Day of Advent' And look....... just behind them .... their own Advent House!!!!! So, what is the difference between a 'synchronicity' and an 'over-blown coincidence' like the receipt of this picture on this particular day? Quite simply, the perspective one chooses to take. Take care of them in all of their different Advents. comings and goings. |
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