The View from Mount Dog

by James Hamilton-Paterson

  Then he would read to the Headman in a strange and beautiful voice. And it was as if his words were so attuned to the Nature from which it seemed he had drawn them that the very leaves shivered and the twigs like silver tuning-forks responded to his pitch until the whole glade rang softly at his words. Even the insects’ mechanical clamour grew hushed. Shard and carapace ceased their husking; mandibles in mid-munch froze; locust heads with many-faceted eyes swivelled to where this music came.

  The Headman sat as if enraptured. ‘Oh, you have spoken truly’, he would say in a soft voice when the last hum had died away. ‘You have once more spoken the Truth, my great and good Friend.’

  And the forest exhaled its long-pent decaying breath, the jewelled birds dared try again their own small voices. For the Poet had spoken of things which other men cannot see but which on hearing they know to be true; and this recognition makes them inexpressibly sad yet eager to hear more as if it were a cure for unacknowledged wounds. And the Poet knew of his power and whence it came. ‘Wherefore’, he said to himself when the heaviness of night lay on the forest outside his hut and the fireflies inside tangled their shining paths in the thatch overhead, ‘I hide myself from the world and formulate medicines for its pain. I am not a Prophet in the wilderness, for I herald no one. Also I foresee nothing. Yet am I a Seer, for I see everything as it is.’

  Since he was not a stupid man, either, he saw that part of the reason for the Headman’s visits had to do with a supply of gin, the last remnants of which the Poet still had laid by him from the day of his arrival, having known of no good reason why plain living and high thinking should be any further penalised. Thus grew up between them that agreeable companionship which may be distilled from grain and words. And each was much the better for it since under its benign influence the Headman could forget he revered this foreigner as a shaman while it would quite slip the Poet’s mind that he sometimes thought of this native as marvellously dignified.

  So tireless sun and patient moon swung each other about the sky in a literary device known as tachychronia, signifying the rapid passage of time. And dawn preceded dusk and vice versa until the day came when a hardly audible sound like a memory of thunder hung breathing about the forest’s distant rim. It rose and fell on the breeze so that at times it was not there at all but then took its place once again behind the jungle cries of insect, bird and beast. Some days later it had become almost constant, and when the Headman appeared, bowed beneath trusses of viridian gourds, the Poet having bade him rest and refreshed him as usual with verses and gin asked him what it might mean. ‘I fear’, he added, ‘that dreadful disasters, storms and earthquakes such as never before must be shaking the land about us. And yet the ground whereon we sit is curiously unmoved.’

  The Headman, too, had heard the sound but was equally uncertain as to its cause. His village had spoken of the roar of floodwaters since it bore some resemblance to that caused by the river in spate with the coming of the monsoon. Days later still the noise had grown more menacing, and amid its now constant growl were to be discerned irregular pantings such as wild beasts make when rending prey. This-time the Headman was more informative.

  ‘A messenger has arrived by boat. He comes from the King. The King in his wisdom, caring only for the greater well-being of his subjects, has contrived a brilliant plan to make us all rich. Maybe you as well’ – he gave a reassuring bow to the Poet. ‘For, although you are a foreigner and a wonderful teacher not like us, yet still you sojourn in the King’s land and may receive of his benison.’

  ‘But I am already far richer than I deserve.’ The Poet looked round in bewilderment at the familiar yet ever-changing beauty of his domain. ‘I need no other wealth. The King is, of course, too good,’ he added politely. ‘But what is his brilliant plan?’

  ‘He has sold the forest’, announced the Headman, ‘to strangers like yourself from far-off lands. They have bought all the trees and now they are cutting them down. Those are their remarkable machines which you can hear even as we speak. They say they can make a field this size’ – he pointed at the clearing – ‘in the time it takes us to cook rice and banban and of it make a sweet-sap pudding. Whereas it would take my people with their axes fourteen suns to clear this ground for our slender purple cassava.’ And with that the Headman left, his head dazed with Progress and the benefits it promised to shower on his hitherto moneyless folk.

  But the Poet was filled with anguish and with rage. For a further two whole days he listened to the inexorable tide of engines encircle his beautiful world and watched in love and pity the trees put forth their young leaves, the spiders spin their sticky threads, the elvers in the crystal stream lave their slippery ribbons in the current. All was as it ever had been, and all was changed for ever. He alone of those myriad creatures to whom the clearing was the universe knew it and could mourn their end before they ended.

  Then on the third day at dawn the Poet arose and addressed his domain with bitterest tears:

  ‘Is it not I who have brought this down upon you? Is not the fault mine? For at last they have tracked me down, my cold compatriots: they pursue me and my kind even to the uttermost ends of the earth. I took upon myself an exile’s life that I might court the Muse in her natural halls, and even so did she come to me. Where before was silence we have made enduring music; we have wrought marvellous songs. Out of nothing have we spun our webs of words and hung them up to ensnare with gentlest Art the unhappy souls who chance by. We have magnified the beauty of the world whose outward sign Creation is and lo! the hearts of men grow greater in response.

  ‘Now they, those countrymen of mine whose blood is salt with the driven spume of grey and Northern seas, whose hearts are cold with Nonconformist zeal and will not be warmed except before the twin fires of self-righteousness and greed, they have tracked me here so they may lay waste my Soul.’

  And the clearing was hushed as he paused and it seemed as though the uneasy rumble of vile mills had drawn a little closer.

  ‘Is it not I who have brought this down upon you? Oh, my lovely elverines, beloved tabitabi tree, is not the fault mine? My error lay in thinking them indifferent. Yet, though many years have passed, they have not forgotten me, hidden in your midst in populous solitude. What other motive could they have, thus to track me even to Paradise itself and encompass me about with hateful engines? Even now they steadily abolish Nature who for so long has cherished me secretly in her bosom as a pearl in a precious setting. What other motive could they have but vengeance? Is not the world already full enough of Swedish furniture? Lives there a man who would not see a shaggy, ancient hardwood tree stand in living majesty rather than in the office of some executive? Who, looking at such a noble giant, thinks only of a heap of desks? No, the fault is mine, the fault is mine.’

  Thus spake the Poet; and he ceased, weeping. And the clearing heard his words and the forest trembled, for it knew that, although in matters of detail he slightly erred (the logging consortium which had gained the Royal Warrant being, in fact, Japanese), in essence he was accurate and once more spoke a Truth. So the Poet retired to his simple hut heavy-hearted and, with the world’s encroachment ringing in his ears, began his greatest work: an Elegy such as had not been before or since and written as though his very eyes had shed every one of the lacrimae rerum.

  Meanwhile by devious routes the reputation of this stranger living in the land had reached the ears of the King.

  ‘Seemingly,’ he told his Chamberlain, who had actually brought the news himself a month or two ago, ‘there lives in a distant region of Our Kingdom a Poet with the gift of Truth and Beauty. We find this hard to believe, for such parts are commonly lived in by displaced zoo populations and dreary savages. Wherefore would a Poet seek Beauty and Truth in such a place? Nevertheless, it is Our wish and Our command that a poem from this man’s pen be brought that We may judge with Our own eyes the truth of these astounding claims. Selah’ (which, being interpreted from the language of that land, means ‘Hur
ry’).

  But the Chamberlain groaned inwardly; for, although it was his pleasure and his pride to do his Monarch’s bidding, he was wont to do it comfortably at Court and had not the slightest desire for arduous travels to howling outposts. Nonetheless he went; and towards the end of quite excessive tribulations through lands which would not recognise his ebony stick of office, sumptuously inlaid as it was with rubies, onyx and the clearest amethyst, he came upon the Headman, who undertook to guide him through what remained of the forest to his final goal.

  They found the Poet deep in composition of his Song of songs beneath the cool pavilion of umbrageous sagathy. His Elegy lay in a half-completed pile and his gold nib flashed across the page as some livid jewel with a sun breaking at its heart. With what assurance, with what radiance did this slender golden monarch proceed his winding way; and behind him dressed in sombre black trailed his courtiers, his words. The Chamberlain watched in fascination. In whose kingdom moved this king? he wondered. It was of mere paper; and this mere paper lay within the greater Kingdom he himself served. And yet his King did not command it. He who reigned here was a ragged stranger with a ragged beard. Almost as if he had heard the thought, the ragged stranger raised his hand in salutation and looked up.

  ‘Greetings, Friend,’ he addressed the Headman. ‘You have brought a finely apparelled gentleman to this our ruined Paradise.’ And in truth he had to raise his voice in order to be heard above the roar of engines which seemed to encompass the glade at no great distance.

  ‘Chamberlain to His Majesty,’ the gentleman in question announced himself, striking the Poet lightly on top of his head with the ebony rod. ‘His Majesty commands:

  ‘Your as yet unsubstantiated fame has humbly crept, thanks to His serenest magnanimity, to the portals of the King’s ear, which, having deigned to hear, is graciously curious to hear still more. Give me a poem that I may bear it with swiftest steps to Him who, having once delighted, is not slow to reward.’ He rapped the Poet’s crown again. ‘His Majesty commands.’

  ‘Which poem?’ asked the Poet. ‘They are so many, my dearest children whom even now the nursery cannot contain’ – and he indicated the doorway of his little hut through which dim and shadowy piles of paper could be descried almost entirely filling that humble dwelling. ‘Which of my children will you take and introduce to the outer world?’

  ‘How do I know which poem?’ asked the Chamberlain testily. ‘The best, obviously.’

  ‘Inter pares,’ mused the Poet, ‘and with the magnificent exception of the Elegy on which I am currently at work, primus is perhaps my sonnet “In Praise of Praise”.’ He got up, went to the hut, rummaged for a while and returned with a small sheet of paper.

  ‘Read it,’ commanded the Chamberlain. ‘And it had better be good. It is ultimately for the ears of His Majesty, remember. There are no references in it to Democracy?’

  ‘None,’ said the Poet. Then he read in his strange and beautiful voice; and the leaves shivered and the twigs like silver tuning-forks sang in sympathy and the soft ringing of the glade seemed to drown the nearby bellowing of machinery and to abolish its very memory so all became once more just as it always had been. The Headman’s eyes filled with tears, so painfully did it remind him of days which were and could not come again, the more so since he had heard this poem many times before and loved its words without quite knowing why. And suddenly he was flooded with a great pity for his Friend.

  The Poet ceased; and as from far away the noise of engines gradually returned.

  ‘Take it,’ he said at last, and held the paper out. But what was this? The Chamberlain was also weeping. Down his cheeks and down his beard and even down his ebony stick the tears ran, past rubies, onyx and the clearest amethyst, down into the clearing’s very dust. His shoulders shook, his lips framed bubbling syllables. He was weeping for he knew not what: for years wasted in foolish office, for the cruelties and the pleasures of his position, for a lifetime spent denying the Beauty that Is. From the very emptiness of his heart the tears sprang; for the Chamberlain was weeping for his Soul.

  ‘Go, my friend,’ said the Poet gently. ‘Bear my humble offspring to your great and good King, and may it speak to him as it has spoken to you. And now I must complete my Elegy since I feel a strange presentiment and dark forebodings of a waning light.’

  So the Headman led the weeping Chamberlain away, who in time recovered, reached the capital and presented himself to his Monarch. ‘Sire,’ he said, ‘I have done as You commanded. I have found this Poet of whom You spake, although only after the greatest difficulties for the way to this, perhaps the remotest, part of Your Kingdom lies defended almost impregnably by the hand of Nature. All manner of rivers, deserts, swamps, mountain ranges—’

  ‘Silence,’ ordered the King. ‘We care little for your troubles. We gave you a task. Have you brought Us a poem?’

  ‘I have, Sire,’ said the Chamberlain, producing it. ‘And all that came to your August Ear concerning this Poet is true, and still more than true. He spoke this poem himself, and Nature paused to listen. The very birds were silent and my tears fell as the monsoon rains to hear him.’

  ‘You always were impressionable,’ said the King. ‘Well, read it anyway.’

  So the Chamberlain read; and something he remembered of the Poet’s own cadence must have come back with the words, for as he spoke the King stopped fidgeting with his rings and the disdainful glance he cast through the window grew misty so that to his eyes the formal gardens of the palace took on the lineaments of Eden. Even the toiling figures of his subjects became transformed and for a moment unthinkably appeared as noble as himself. When the Chamberlain finished reading there was a long silence.

  ‘I have not heard the like before,’ the King said at last, to his Chamberlain’s amazement forgoing the Royal We. ‘I feel I know things now I never knew; yet what they are cannot be said except in the very words you spoke. Truly, a kingdom within whose borders dwells a man like this is rich indeed. You say he lives in a swamp?’

  ‘More of a forest, Sire.’

  ‘A forest? A man of this greatness? It is absurd.’

  ‘Mr Ishugu’s men are cutting it down as fast as they can.’

  ‘Quite right, too. We can’t have forests. Nasty dank things; they make us look hopelessly primeval and underdeveloped. Besides, I’m told they harbour guerrillas. No; this Poet shall be brought forthwith to the palace here and housed in the utmost style and comfort for as long as he desires. I shall have a suite of rooms cleared of women immediately. You will return at once and fetch him. Meanwhile the finest engravers in the land shall copy this poem on to a slab of the purest gold and it shall be presented to him on his arrival.’

  ‘Sire, it may be he would not come with me. He is a man of the simplest tastes and perhaps Your generosity will overwhelm him so that he feels unable to appear in Court, clad as he is in rags and beard.’

  ‘Well, who would he come with, then?’ demanded the King with a slight return to his old peremptory manner.

  ‘He has a friend, it seems; a Headman of the lowest caste. Maybe the Poet would go with him.’

  ‘Very well. Let this Headman bring him. There is no need for you to go at all: you will be better employed here, organising the Reception. Send messengers to the Headman. Selah.’

  *

  But meanwhile in the clearing time had passed in which the Poet, quite possessed by his creative act, laboured to complete his Elegy before he was engulfed by Progress. His gold nib flew, the pages mounted up. Daily he sent forth the Headman as his scout to keep him informed as to the advancing tide. His friend at his bidding slipped away through jungle paths. But when he came to where the loggers were he stopped and stared with superstitious awe.

  Machines like mythic beasts on silver tracks roared and grunted, smashed down trees and tore their hides off. On all sides stretched a barren waste of splintered stumps, barkless trunks in pyramids. The undulating jungle floor which had been for ever hidden and engl
oomed now lay beneath the blazing eye of day, strangely bare and dull. Something in the Headman’s breast stirred in torment at the sight. Yet still more powerfully he felt excitement rise as in his inner mind he saw rolling acres of cassava plant, waving okra, golden maize. Never again need he wend a weary way about the forest tracks in search of food: no longer need he brave the cruel whipthorn to bring his children grubs and pods and acid fungus ears, bark and nut, berry and leaf.

  Yet well he knew he would distress his Friend by giving an exact account of this desert’s steady advance. So back he went, and the Poet said: ‘Tell me, what did you see?’

  ‘Nothing, Friend, but the shaking of leaves, the insects’ dance and the lazy shimmer of a summer noon.’

  But the Poet, gazing up at him and hearing the nearby snort of powerful exhausts, said gently: ‘Headman, you lie. My ears hear more than your eyes see. Go now therefore once again and come and tell me how it goes.’

  A second time the Headman sped away. But when he so quickly arrived at the edge of the great wound weeping its sap from uncounted broken stems his heart grew heavy. ‘I cannot tell him,’ he cried in anguish. ‘It is far better he should not know, but write until he fully makes an end.’ So back he went, and the Poet said: ‘Now, tell me truly: what did you see?’

  ‘The crested lizard on a branch, the spider in its delicate lair, the buttermoth on painted wing.’

  This time the Poet laid down his pen. ‘I had not thought that all our years of Friendship could be so easily betrayed. It surely is not much to ask a Friend to do. It seems that I was wrong.’

  And his face was so sad and stricken that the Headman turned in bitter grief and ran a third time and resolved to bear his witness true. But he now had hardly any distance to go. The topmost branches of the nearest tree were shuddering to the blade. At the edge of the clearing he turned round. At his back an ochre-yellow bulldozer poked its snout through a bush and stopped.