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by Gregory Norminton

  “It was six years ago. Six years. I’ve forgotten about it, why can’t you? You’re like a dog with its bone.”

  “And you’re a conceited ape. Women in parturition. You should listen to yourself. You’re so pompous. And so wrong. What the hell would you know about childbearing? The largest thing you’ll ever have to pass is a kidney stone.”

  “Imaginative sympathy, my darling. It is my profession. And more to the point, now that we’ve strayed into dreary literalism… much more to our purpose, ever since you decided to leap all tongues blazing on my innocent use of an everyday word… let me ask you, my beloved companion, after all our years together, what the hell would you know about bearing children?”

  The bard’s last words

  What was he doing, the old man, so far from his hearth and kinsmen? Flinching from the wind’s talons, ploughing a field of snow, he thought of Eadwin who should inherit his verses. The boy was covetous of his word-hoard but the old man had given him nothing, only harsh phrases and scolding looks. A greying head in the wilderness, he was not a warrior, no feeder of ravens, but a teller of tales with a question on his back.

  He had borne it since the wedding feast when, under the banner of the golden dragon, he had plucked his harp and conjured the hot breath of battle. The poem had taken him three seasons to compose: hard nights weaving on the loom of memory. In the mead hall the warriors heard again the spear-din and their scars ached with remembrance. When it was finished and his harp had quivered to stillness, they bellowed and belched: yes, it was even thus, a glorious victory, their greatest since they wrested from the Britons their Paradise of Powys.

  In Eadwin the old man saw the triumph that ought to have been his. Outside of battle, to add to the songs of Mercia was most glorious. Yet he did not feel exalted. One pair of eyes, among all the brow-stars shining in the hall, had looked at him dully. Even as he tasted glory, one face turned away and, turning, made the poet’s heart a stone. He was in pursuit of that dissenting head.

  Yet now the fangs of winter closed about his chest. He feared that he would leave his bones on the hillside, to be bleached of questions by the sun and rain. Only the tinkling of a sheep’s bell roused him from a final slumber. Strong hands wrenched him from the glaze ice. There were smells of dung and wood smoke. He lay beside a fire in the black womb of a hut.

  “It’s you,” he said. “You turned away from my recitation.”

  “The tale was told.”

  “Our eye-paths crossed and you left the hall.”

  “I’ve no one left to guard my sheep.”

  The shepherd was not of the lord’s hall. Rank and ceremony were as legends to him, who understood the fire that is locked in gorse, the juice that rises in new heather. He was a churl, unworthy of remembrance in a scop’s verses, yet permitted at the wedding feast.

  The old man asked him about his song.

  When the shepherd had spoken, he gave the visitor broth and left him to sleep beside the embers of the fire.

  In the morning the snow began to melt and the teller of tales walked home. His pupil looked for him on the battlements and ran through the ice meal to greet him.

  Eadwin asked many questions and, with eager eyes, hounded the old man for answers. But his master would not speak of his encounter on the hillside. He retired to his bed and slept for a day and a night.

  When the poet awoke, his pupil greeted him with bread and broth. The old man regained some strength and soon he was pestered for his battle song. “Let me hear it,” the boy said. “Let me keep it alive for hearers yet unborn.” But the old man would teach him only the former songs of Mercia: those he had inherited from his forebears. After many weeks, Eadwin’s eyes filled with tears, yet still the poet would not unlock his word-hoard.

  Age caught up with him. Heavily he lifted his bones and the world contracted to the dark womb of his hut. When the next feast came, his lord became angry, for he was denied a performance of the battle song. The scop pleaded infirmity and waited, with munching gums, as if for an unknown guest.

  A monk was sent from Worcester to trap the poet’s song in a cage of vellum. Eadwin received him with hollow eyes. Twice the monk was admitted to the poet’s bedside; twice he left with a weary refusal.

  Neither pupil nor scribe would ever understand. The battle with the Welsh, which had united Mercia and Wessex and furnished the old man with his subject, had robbed the shepherd of his three sons. All but one in the world had praised the poet’s song. Yet the poet knew his song’s worth and he let it die within him.

  The translation of Archie Gloag

  These fragments are the poet’s last words, written in August 2005.

  In August 2005, the famous Scottish poet wrote these final fragments.

  Here are the master’s ultimate fragments, composed in August 2005.

  – Between the bewilderment of pain and the morphine fog, a few moments of clarity. As if a window were opened in the closed room of my dying.

  Between the bafflement of pain and the fog of morphine, I experience a few moments of clarity. As if one had opened a window in the shut bedroom where I am dying.

  For a few moments, between the wilderness of pain and the mist of morphine, I know clearness. As if a window had been thrown open in my death-chamber.

  – This taking leave of life is hard work. I dream that I am sitting my Finals again, though I have not prepared and the questions hide from me like silverfish under the stapled fold. I know I shall pass this final examination. I fear to do so and fear the labour of it. The fear and the labour, and the drugs they use to ease both, occupy me entirely. Dying is a consuming present. Only briefly can the commonplace questions be entertained.

  It is hard work, this departing from life. I have a dream that I am taking my final university examinations, although I have not revised for them and the questions seem to hide from me, like silverfish, under the folded and stapled paper. I know I shall pass this final examination. I am afraid, both of doing so and of the work that doing so will involve. This fear, and the drugs they use to allay it, entirely occupies me. One dies consumed by the present moment. Only briefly can one ask oneself the ordinary questions.

  What hard work this dying is. I have dreams that I am sitting my final examination, for which I have not revised. Under the creases and staples of the paper, silvery fish conceal themselves like questions. I know I will pass this last examination. I am afraid of doing so and of the effort of it. The fear and the effort, and the drugs they use to put me at ease, occupy me completely. Dying is a gift that consumes us. It is possible to amuse oneself with everyday questions only for brief moments.

  – Has it been worth it? Do those slim volumes on the shelf I can no longer see speak in defence of the life I was given? Were they worth the pain I inflicted, the self-importance that cut me off from my fellow beings?

  Has it been worth the trouble? Do those slender books on the shelf – a shelf I can no longer see – plead for me at the tribunal of life? Do they justify the pain I caused, the sense of grandeur that divorced me from my fellow beings?

  Has it been worth it? Do those thin volumes on the now invisible shelf speak up to defend the life that was given to me? Are they worth the pain I inflicted, my ego that cut me off from other people?

  – I devoted myself to writing and translating. In the latter I experienced perhaps my most intense engagement with other minds.

  But what, truly, did I connect with? Was I chasing a chimera: the hope that essence can be carried across from one language to another?

  Traduttore traditore. How fitting that I, too, shall soon be trans latus – translated into another idiom: perhaps the silence of that chasm into which we cast our poems, never knowing where they might land.

  I have dedicated myself to literature and translation. I have experienced, in the latter, perhaps my most ardent connection with other minds. Yet in truth, with what did I connect? Was it a mythical beast that I pursued: the hope that essence can be transported fr
om one language to another?

  Traduttore traditore. How just it seems that, soon, I too shall be trans latus – translated into another idiom: the silence, perhaps, of that chasm into which we cast our verses, never knowing where they might land.

  I have devoted my life to writing and translating. Perhaps I was never more intensely affianced to other minds than in the second of these. But what, in truth, did I connect with? Was I chasing a chimera [a monster in Greek myth – tr.] in the hope that what is essential can be carried over from one language into another? Traduttore traditore [Italian: “translator, traitor” -tr.]. How appropriate that I too shall soon be trans latus [Latin: “brought across”- tr.] into another dialect, like the silence in that trench where we moulded our poems, never knowing where they might end up.

  Flow

  It was, Elaine Crowder considered on her flight south, a good thing there were no living relatives to complicate matters. The Savoyards would be obliging: she was, after all, the foremost authority; they could rely on her to manage the world’s attention. Scanning the press release on her laptop, it occurred to her that this final act in the Life would put her, its author, centre stage. She had become her subject’s contemporary.

  The plane landed in Turin where the heat was oppressive, and she was glad of the taxi’s air conditioning as it sped her, through Alpine splendour, to Chamonix and the goal of her pilgrimage.

  Time was of the essence. For eighty years it had, in the bonds of glacial ice, preserved the body of Alice Purdue, but now the poet was returned to the laws of decay, and her most devoted acolyte had only a few hours to observe the corpse in situ before the authorities transferred it to the cold of a mortuary cabinet.

  Elaine was greeted by Yvan, the mountaineer who had made the discovery. She was sure he noticed the way her clothes clung to her in the heat, the sweat that beaded her forehead.

  Yvan drove them to the village of Argentiere. On the way he talked about the retreat of the glaciers. One kilometre last century; over two hundred metres in the last five years. For archeologists the disaster had its advantages. Ancient ice was giving up its dead. Hunters, metal prospectors, milkmaids, escaped convicts – the past disgorged in the meltwaters of the present.

  “Her body is damaged, you said.”

  Yvan frowned. “The movement of the ice is destructive. But we are lucky it never fell…”

  “She,” said Elaine. “She fell.”

  “Into the accumulation zone. Lower, in the ablation zone, she would have been dismembered.”

  From the village it was necessary to walk to the crevassed foot of the glacier. She had not expected its surface to look so dirty. Morainic debris, Yvan said. The dark matter was a problem: it reduced the glacier’s albedo and hastened its retreat. Elaine heard him talk about negative mass balance and equilibrium but could not concentrate for the physical effort of the climb. Would she dare to search the rucksack for the notebook? What if the flow of ice had destroyed it, or separated it from its owner?

  “La morte,” said Yvan. “She was a great poet?”

  “Good. A very good poet. And unique.” She remembered the photograph taken at Garsington: a society beauty, friend of the Lawrences and Robert Graves, who called her Artemis of Bedford Square, the Mistress of Animals. For she had a wildness that called her to the lonely places of Europe, where she hiked and composed strange poems. “It must be possible,” Alice had written in that last letter home, “to find a new language, one not of conquest but of surrender to the world. I want to pitch my tent in the mouth of the wild, to hear in my sleep and in my waking the language of nature.”

  Elaine tried to steel herself for the encounter. To come so close to a revenant! Had Alice heard that wild language? Had she managed to consign it to paper?

  “It will make,” Yvan said, “the perfect ending for your book.”

  Elaine felt her cheeks burn. There was a knowingness in his grin that displeased her, and she said nothing until they reached the terminus. There, she was surprised to find a gendarme sunning himself. Behind him stood a tent of reflective material. All about the meltwater there were shreds of cloth and scattered bone.

  “Vous êtes prête?”

  “Just a minute.” Elaine was having difficulty catching her breath. “Can I have a moment with her?”

  Later, in the bar of the auberge, Yvan would describe the encounter to his colleagues. He would praise the anglaise for her sangfroid: how she gazed in silence at the distorted face, at the teeth exposed like a snarl and the eroded nose. He would tell how he and the gendarme retreated a little way and watched her kneel beside the body. How she could not get her fingers inside the frozen clothes. How she searched inside the rucksack and found a carnet. And then began to cry. Like that, in front of perfect strangers.

  “What was in this notebook?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No writing?”

  “No pages. Only the leather binding. I didn’t say anything, but the poet had spent two weeks on her own in the mountains. She would have had better uses for paper than writing verses.”

  With that, Yvan made the gesture of wiping himself between the legs, lady fashion.

  At the top of the auberge, in the shuttered darkness of her room, Elaine heard the laughter of the mountaineers.

  At prayer in the madhouse with Kit Smart

  “I’d as lief pray with Kit Smart as anyone else.”

  Dr Samuel Johnson

  You do me a kindness, sir, to visit me in my dejection. I must receive you in this parlour – it is a fine place is it not? (Do not let it deceive you: within, our condition is not so happy.) Thank you, I believe they are in health. My two boys continue in Latin – I borrowed money of my keeper to pay for it. (Is he gone? Are you quite certain? Then forgive me, I am more comfortable on the floor.) I understand from Gentleman’s Magazine that my poems live on without me and, indeed, that Mr Arne has set my pastoral hymn to music, alas I shall not profit from it, it is as though I were dead already and no more to be acknowledged for my labours than the cow that furnishes the dinner table. Pray do not, if it please you, rub your foot against the carpet, it upsets the grain and must be rubbed back into contentment. Now tell, does the tongue of slander still wag against me? Slander, sir! I do not use the word loosely. My enemies accuse me of false piety; call me one of Mother Needham’s favoured clients. You know I abhorred a bawdy house – except on occasion, when drink had the better of me. But that was in the past, before my illness and second birth. The Lord saved me that I might sing His praises. Oh, I wasted time making enemies with my pen! I was like your namesake the playwright who would rather lose his friend than lose a jest. They did the same to poor Will Preston: he railed against the magistrates’ courts and the King’s Bench had him confined. A very convenient disturbance of wits. But forgive me: isolation makes me harp too much on myself. How goes Mrs Thrale? A most excellent woman – I know you love her – as she does you. In all propriety! Nay, do not leave so soon! My tongue runs away from me, it has so little occasion of exercise. Pray forgive me. Sit a while. You have not brought a little, ah, rum? No matter, no matter. I am so parched I dream of fountains. Ah, we shall drink some day in the light of the sun – just as soon as I am forgiven, though what sin I have committed I know not, they say I am mad, it is not so, for I am composing. They shall be like the songs of David! They will bless and be inquisitive of the Lord! All things that breathe praise God, Mr Johnson. Did He not create the world by speaking it? So a lion that roars himself from head to tail speaks God’s word for lion. And a snail is God’s word in the shape of his shell – do you see? It is God’s work that speaks of God. How else can we speak Him save through His creatures? For I have translated the Psalm:

  The earth is God’s, with all she bears

  On fertile dale or woody hill;

  The compass of the world declares

  His all efficient skill.

  What think you of it? I shall so punch my words that the mind will take up the i
mage from the mould which I have made. Slow down, yes. I must slow down. Do not think these ravings, sir. I have been deprived of the world that I may comprehend it better. For I bless God that I am not in a dungeon and may see the light of day. Yet even here, the fiend has his agents that will keep me from praising. They lock me in the dark till I am silent. But what may a man do in darkness save people it with his voice? Or else they strap me in my cell to keep me from falling to my knees, but that is not so cruel, for I commune with my own heart and am still. Does this strike you as madness? Though I have a greater compass of mirth and melancholy than another – is that a reason to strap a man to his bed, to chain him in darkness and force harp, harp, harping-irons in his mouth? I would be as a dog, of no consequence. Then perhaps they will not torment me. Men will feed a dog, will they not; they will pat it on the head? No dog is treated as I am. Ah, I shall not weep. I shall not. I am sorry that I roused you from your sleep that time. But I felt the glory of God – we prayed and blessed the Lord, did we not, Mr Johnson, till day broke? I beg you, bring me paper. No, it is not forbidden. But they will not furnish me at my request. Bring me paper. For jubilation to travel it must have transport. How else can my blessings escape these walls? Do me this kindness, sir. And we shall pray, as my cat prays when he licks his paws. Lord, be merciful unto Your creatures. Bless my subscribers. As Your son cured the lunatic, be merciful to all my brethren and sisters in these houses. Bless above all this Your servant, who has agreed to furnish me with the means of spreading my song that will be to Your glory and the praise of all Creation. So be it, Lord. Hallelujah and amen.

  Endnotes

  1. The Grainger family history was commissioned by Sir Peter Grainger in 1988. Its author remains unknown.

  2. Both enquiries into the fire at the ancestral family home proved inconclusive.

  3. Virgil Grainger, A Childhood in Hell, Harper Collins, London, 2009. The incest chapter was omitted in subsequent editions.