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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781847779410 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Carcanet Press, Limited |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2011 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 80 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
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The Glacial Stairway
By Peter Riley
Carcanet Press Ltd
Copyright © 2011 Peter RileyAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84777-941-0
CHAPTER 1
The Glacial Stairway
In the summer of 1956 John Stanley, the art master of Stockport Grammar School, led a group of boys, including myself, then aged 15, over a mountain pass in the Pyrenees, from Tarascon-sur-Ariège in France into Andorra, by a little used route which he had somehow discovered. The distance walked was about fifty kilometres horizontally and one kilometre vertically. The vertical part was done in one hard day-long slog near the beginning, to get over the pass known as Port de Siguet and into Andorra. It was the first time I had ever left Britain. In June 2004 we repeated as much of this walk as we could manage, given more difficult weather conditions with a lot of snow still lying on the upper slopes, and streams which had to be crossed badly swollen by meltwater. Partly by subterfuge, we did gain the upper slopes on the Andorran side and I was again descending the great valley through El Serrat, Llorts, Ordino, to Andorra la Vella, places well remembered but changed in the intervening 48 years in ways that echoed from the entire Western world.
* * *
Part One
This is me 48 years ago, this is 48 of my years, the same valley
the same sky's water crashing down the gully the same
striving uphill, taking the strain, bearing the weight.
48 years, something happened in the world, what was it?
Intentions conjoined and dispersed, soldiers died.
Then I was young and in company, now we tread the steep paths together,
two experiences conjoined. And we note as we did not then
the flowers all around and the valley full of the sound of falling water,
the closing hopes as the air opens before us. We form from this air
the names that stand behind us: birds, flowers, insects, villages,
everything we know, and the dead of seven wars.
To walk with thought in the very muscle, of answering, thought of
Un mundo mejor es posible, taking the strain of disappointment by the
[ thrush's
peal of pain in the dark wood. From which we emerge into the open valley
and thought of a possible speech, one that must be true, and open, and must
do good, where good can be done, and where's that? So rarely here.
Clear river shooting over stones, where is our power zone?
All of the present and all of the past, goodbye. Ahead of us
our strength is trailing away. My eyes hurt, and legs and back,
and the news places a sciatica across my frontal dream, a burning thing,
a mask. We look up to the conciling seeds, the invisible day stars
as the ground plunders our energy and the path vanishes into a stream.
Vanish with it into 48 years, excavate the air for signs of hope.
There are such: the behaviour of a beetle, the communal will
when it is free to breathe. Grass, stones, help me will you – think!
What's the answer, what are we going to do with the world?
We're going to forget it. And it us.
Had I brain and courage, I would chuck all this poetry into the skip
wouldn't you? If you thought you could actually do something to the good
that would last. Beauty may last, that stands in the space between
stone and hawk, sheer persistence on the painful routes,
where the land turns thought into its own substance, of rock,
of rhododendron bushes, of pouring water, of heart beats.
And the turning dance on each step, of modernity, the search
for inhabitable centres.
Guided by the mountain's shadow, the rock planes, the lines
of the hibiscus leaf, sight breathes a defiant longing for peace at large
in the emblem of two linked arms, spray driven off waterfalls pencil thin
on the far slope as the leaves wave from side to side and the wounds
do the couple dance, sharing their blood. The defiance and the love
bleeding into each other, over a dark stone.
A neglected track over the mountains from Ariège to Andorra by Port de Siguer. Muleteers' route, smugglers' route, escape route for Cathars fleeing the Inquisition, and for Jews and Resistance during the Occupation. Merchant caravans, wide-ranging professional shepherds with flocks of thousands, seasonal labour from the French villages to the mines and forges at Llorts and Ordino, summer wood-gathering in the high Andorran valleys I have trodden these paths, special goods to and from the al-Andalus courts, manuscripts in astronomy and music, slaves, dancing girls bringing treatises of ecstasis to militarist citadels and kick-starting European poetry I have not trodden alone, bread daily in season from Tarascon and Siguer because of Andorra's lack of cereals. Bread and Troubadors. Also a minor variant of the pilgrimage route to Compostella. All these high passes considered dangerous and only used late spring to early autumn and I have now trodden twice.
Some place in these mountains made Baudelaire think we are innately
[ virtuous, at first.
'... en parfaite paix avec moi-même et avec l'universe je crois même que,
dans ma parfaite béatitude et dans mon total oubli de tout le mal terrestre,
j'en étais venu à ne plus trouver si ridicules les journaux qui prétendent
que l'homme est né bon [hiatus] et un morceau de gâteau ... suffit
pour engendrer une guerre.' You could step into the hiatus and break your leg.
Far below us are cave systems where people have inscribed the meaning
of death many times over, how it gathers us up among our objects
into the dream funnel, the last focus, every hope and every gain
converging on the sides of the vault. That route is with us up here,
we feel it through the soles of our boots from far under, patience
and persistence, further and further from anywhere until
you meet the earth, and cast your being out from your hand
onto the wall, the closure, the surface, where it hovers and howls.
Stones and gravel underfoot to the bright music of streams
taking human weight on the turning heel. Who is this elderly gent
struggling up a Pyrenean valley, how many more years
has he got of draining strength not 48 for sure. Who are you?
And the bright water turns round the granite base as it will and it will.
Je suis le veilleur du Pont-au-Change, I am the watchman
of the stone bridge in the heart of the city I hear the enemy
creeping through the streets at night uttering the words of a binding
that I can't untie an enclosure I can't break. I am trying to cross
a swollen stream in the Pyrenees by leaping from clod to clod
wrapped in the surround, wrapped in privilege, daring to hope
for victims of power by trust in human resource under limitation
tears flying over the stream, curses mobilised into the sky Je suis
le veilleur du Point de Jour.
Water banks above glacial step. Fear and sorrow, creeping
towards the death void, the death ignorance. Loneliness, failure,
inadequacy. The world destroying all the work we've done.
The music stilled, the music wrecked, the company dispersed.
Ibn Arabi turns his back and heads for Anatolia.
Alienation from reality, disappointment, voicelessness:
unmediated, unmitigated, and largely unmeditated.
Considerable possibilities for expansion in this section.
Luchar contra lo imposible y vencer!
Overworked muscles, mounting the stairs determined beyond
any possible doubt. A good is possible. I am entitled to make elisions
between geological and moral structures. The good is where the bond serves,
between thee and me, wealth and labour, care and desire. Denying voices
in the wind, accusative hungers grasping at collective advantage.
Perhaps they are right, perhaps the world is a pit of gains.
Violets, anemones, and narcissi living in small enclaves. It's terrible
what happens to people's brains. Blame and hatred by category,
confirmation of own safety and progress by hurt and halt to other.
Water banks above glacial step to a curved lake
with floating reed beds, the mountains dip their feet in.
On up, tired, lacking sociality, forgetting how they sing together a common
melancholy, harmonies not easily replicated in modernity. Forgetting
how they warn against these heroic ventures. Fair knight setting
out to war, cowboy angel, what will you do so far from home? Bèth chivalièr
qui partitz tà la guèrra, T'on vatz enqüèra Tan luenhe d'ací? Non vedetz
[ pas que
la neuit ei pregonda, E que lo monde N'ei que chepic? don't you know,
that the night is deep, and the world a load of pain. Thus they sing
in small bars far behind us. And in palaces of contradiction they construct
thrones of difference. But difference is only one of two things.
Pick the little leaf and whistle.
The water runs down the hillsides and strolls among stones and grass,
dropping into the stream. So easily down, like a market-led culture
down into nothing, nobody interested, nothing matters, let it all fall.
Uphill struggles are for the pre-defeated. That's us, you and me,
we shall be eagles and crows.
Agents of war also trod this track, and their blind servants. Alpenroses
thick among pale scree and boulders, with their bloody flowers.
We used to live in a land but it was denied. We live
where the crow chokes and the world has gone wrong and betrayed us.
So shout at it: Sun! Sun! where are you? Come out and shine
on those who have nothing to eat. It's your duty, it's your job,
come and shine on the betrayed. Nesci nesci suli suli, ppe la luna
e ppe li stiddi, ppe le povari picciriddi ca non d'annu di mangiari
for the moon and the stars and the poor little ones with nothing to eat,
children of war, masses of anemones and valerian and stars concealed in light.
Which war? In 1943 they never got this far, they were stopped at Siguer
and shot against a wall (there is a plaque) Mamma, la luna come gura
e camina trapassa i monti lu mare e la marina And the moon turns
and travels over the sea and the mountains like a hawk
singing, I shan't change, though the rock breaks and the earth changes I
shan't. Though reduced to dust and clay and the brown leaf turns to
ash in my hand, I shan't quit this body ti 'vo e' tton affino 'utt'òrion soma.
And George W. Bush will not mould my soul nor uglify my poetry.
* * *
At night the stars occupy their river, blazed along the skystrip,
stars pulsing like babies' mouths in the night like something calling
and calling. What does it want? Desires and thoughts mate
in the darkness around us, shadows of the things we live by
moving among the dark bushes, creating new terms while
the beautiful replete stars throb over the grey mountains
and ceaseless streams, guarding our clear eyes, that see through
the darkness beyond the shapes of night to the world's progress,
tomorrow's necessary demand.
Sitting on yellow plastic outside the tent. A night creature coughs
and heaven marshals itself over the peaks, over and above their snow streaks.
Beyond the mountains the usurpers' fingers reach to the edge
of the culture zone. On distant plains armies clash in the night,
and not a single one of them represents or in any way defends,
the human reality. On this we sleep, amid a continuous crashing.
And in the morning on and up, the final stretch
to the summit, Port de Siguer, a slight dip in a high ridge.
The planet turning, water spilling on stone, the earth
'suspended in its canticle', gathering a circuitry of light around the victims,
exalting the humble which is a thought, to stuff in the rucksack,
a thought to carry up the mountain packed between the toothbrush
and the tablets. On the paths of love and war the poor heart hesitates,
beating double, begging the earth to relent. And the prince of all my pals
is the goodwilled citizen who doesn't count.
Steady work, like carrying a child on your back in a sling, coming up
to another glacial step, a mass of pale stone blocking the valley.
There are ways up it, and streams coming down it. Age carries youth.
The child remembers: Look, father, this was where we camped in 1956!
Above the third step, grassy humps on the edge of a mountain lake.
Where is that goodness we were seeking? Is it in the height and the labour,
does it trickle out and back down to the town, is it like a clear water arriving
in people's homes? Or is it more like a living creature and if you
raise your thumb on the long road will it give you a lift? Is it an agreement?
not to take advantage of poverty, and not to jump the death queue.
We'll stop here for a while and refresh ourselves for the final strike,
it's beautiful here, a fine place to be, good. Youth carries age.
No one has ever lived here. The lake fills the valley floor,
early morning darkness lies under the eastern flanks, first sunlight
picks out raised knolls and brightens all the western slope,
that the water comes to touch. It looks as if there is no possible way
but a narrow path skirts the water's edge and will take us over rock piles
and scree slopes along the side, round the corner, out at the feeder.
Often it seems there is no possible way. Into the top valley. Every
defeated move is a step forward, a message passed on.
Up here the river divides into three or four and drapes itself across
the valley base, rattling on stones. From all sides
a constant rustling of water in motion, like thought
forming in the throat from an inner event conditioned by knowledge
and 'riddled with the sensible' and that could be a form of love
or the only form. The not-yet programmed voice, the clearing.
Up here the river divides and rattles through spaces. A sky of small clouds
moves over, a fresh wind comes down the valley in the morning.
The river to be crossed, three times, wading on the stones, the path mounting
the fellside towards the col and fading away among boulders. Stop and
[ look back.
This is Nowhere, where No Name lives, in all the weathers of altitude.
A private person intrudes here, awkwardly attempting
to dry socks on a boulder in the sun. Slipping and falling against a rock,
cutting a lip open. So bright so deep the red show, like the flowers
of the alpenrose bushes all over the hillside among the pale scree
and shattered rocks an announcement of vulnerability,
A wreath to wear, of common fate, you blood red roses.
Umbrella and walking stick, rucksack and tent. Bags under the eyes.
Muttering under breath, I can't go on. Soaked ground between granite
[ boulders,
and snow banks ahead. Looks like time to stop. World, wherever you are,
it is time to stop. I know you won't stop. Reaching a far point towards
[ the summit
beyond which you cannot go, like the far depths of an underground river
[ system,
a rock shelter, the pilgrim's goal, a logical conclusion
at which the accusers walk out of the meeting, a show of result.
A small office in the suburbs, a seat in a quiet library. Stop there,
and think, and watch the forms of earth clenching into images,
forming a crust of language at the surface of experience, where virtue coheres,
the threshold, of death as of act. And eat Alpen bars and drink melted snow.
The violins of the wind praise our slowness in double stopping, our equality
of exhaustion, the flashing, equitable whiteness of our teeth
and the red rose within them. Fruit of slow growth.
'I saw a man writing on his bones.'
48 years. It's good when things don't change too much. The world is a
[ false place.
There are other places. A mountain valley crammed with knowables, a
[ library of them,
descending back down towards the shops and factories out of sight.
Can we bear its knowledge on with us, can we work on the earth's table?
The parts of the world are truer than the whole. There are other wholes,
and up above everything the dancing slippers shine silver
over the grey folds of earth. And one day to join that dance
at the incorruptible bound. Forwards and upwards to life in the crystal blocks!
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Glacial Stairway by Peter Riley. Copyright © 2011 Peter Riley. Excerpted by permission of Carcanet Press Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Acknowledgement,
1,
The Glacial Stairway,
Aria with Small Lights,
Shining Cliff,
Best at Night Alone,
Bits and Pieces Picked Up in April 2007,
The Twelve Moons,
2,
Airs at Furthest Accord,
The Road ...,
The Road (remix),
The Road (carol),
Cuban Nights,
Dreaming in La Habana,
To the Memory of Frank Cassidy,
Weddings of the Gypsy Flower Sellers,
This House ...,
The Lark in the Clear Air,
Essex Skies,
3,
Kings Cross to SOAS,
Western States (1),
Western States (2),
Notes,
About the Author,
Also by Peter Riley from Carcanet Press,
Copyright,