01-26-2014, 07:33 AM
In Europe - Lawrence Durrell (this poem is sparking me into writing)
IN EUROPE
recitative for a radio play
Three voices to an accompaniment of a drum and bells, and the faint grunt and thud of a dancing bear.
MAN
The frontiers at last, I am feeling so tired.
We are getting the refugee habit,
WOMAN
moving from island to island
where the boundaries are clouds
where the frontiers of the land are water.
OLD MAN
We are getting the refugee habit,
WOMAN
we are only anonymous feet moving
without friends any more, without books
or companionship any more. We are getting -
MAN
the refugee habit. There’s no end
to the forest, and no end to the moors:
between the just and the unjust
there is little distinction.
OLD MAN
Bodies like houses, without windows and doors:
the children have become so brown,
their skins have become dark with sunlight,
MAN
they have learned to eat standing.
OLD MAN
When we come upon men crucified
or women hanging downward from the trees
they no longer understand
WOMAN
how merciful is memory with its fantasies.
They are getting the refugee habit ...
OLD MAN
how weary are the roads of the blood.
Walking forwards towards death in my mind
I am walking backwards again into my youth;
a mother, a father and a house.
One street, a certain town, a particular place:
and the feeling of belonging somewhere
of being appropriate to certain fields and trees.
WOMAN
Now our address is the world. Walls
constrain us. O do you remember
the peninsula where we so nearly died
and the way the trees looked owned
human and domestic like a group of horses?
They said it was Greece.
MAN
Through Prussia into Russia,
through Holland into Poland,
through Rumania into Albania.
WOMAN
Following the rotation of the seasons.
OLD MAN
We are getting the refugee habit:
the past and the future are not enough,
are two walls only between which to die;
who can live in a house with two walls?
MAN
The present is an eternal journey;
in one country winter, in another spring.
OLD MAN
I am sick of the general deaths:
we have seen them impersonally dying:
everything I had hoped for, fireside and hearth,
and death by compromise some summer evening.
MAN
You are getting the refugee habit:
you are carrying the past in you
like a precious vessel, remembering
in essence, ownership and ordinary loving.
WOMAN
We are too young to remember.
OLD MAN
Nothing disturbed such life as I remember
but telephone or telegram
such death-bringers to the man among the roses
in the garden of his house, smoking a pipe.
WOMAN
We are the dispossessed, sharing
with gulls and flowers our lives of accident:
no time for love, no room for love:
if only the children -
MAN
were less wild and unkempt, belonged
to the human family, not speechless
OLD MAN
and shy as the squirrels in the trees;
WOMAN
if only the children
OLD MAN
recognized their father, smiled once more.
OLD MAN + WOMAN
They have got the refugee habit
walking about in the rain for food
looking at their faces in the bottom of wells:
OLD MAN
they are living the popular life.
All Europe is moving out of winter
into spring with all boundaries being
broken down, dissolving, vanishing.
Migrations are beginning, a new habit
from where the icebergs rise in the sky
to valleys where corn is spread like butter ...
WOMAN
So many men and women - each one a soul.
MAN
So many souls, crossing the world
OLD MAN
so many bridges to the end of the world.
Frontiers mean nothing any more ...
WOMAN
peoples and possessions,
lands, rights,
titles, holdings,
trusts, bonds ...
OLD MAN
mean nothing any more, nothing.
A whistle, a box, a shawl, a cup,
a broken sword wrapped in newspaper.
WOMAN
All we have left us, out of context,
OLD MAN
a jar, a mousetrap, a broken umbrella,
a coin, a pipe, a pressed flower
WOMAN
to make an alphabet for our children.
OLD MAN
A chain, a whip, a lock,
a drum and a dancing bear ...
WOMAN
We have got the refugee habit.
Beyond tears at last, into some sort of safety
from fear of wanting, fear of hoping,
fear of everything but dying.
We can die now.
OLD MAN
Frontiers mean nothing any more. Dear Greece!
MAN
Yes. We can die now.
IN EUROPE
recitative for a radio play
Three voices to an accompaniment of a drum and bells, and the faint grunt and thud of a dancing bear.
MAN
The frontiers at last, I am feeling so tired.
We are getting the refugee habit,
WOMAN
moving from island to island
where the boundaries are clouds
where the frontiers of the land are water.
OLD MAN
We are getting the refugee habit,
WOMAN
we are only anonymous feet moving
without friends any more, without books
or companionship any more. We are getting -
MAN
the refugee habit. There’s no end
to the forest, and no end to the moors:
between the just and the unjust
there is little distinction.
OLD MAN
Bodies like houses, without windows and doors:
the children have become so brown,
their skins have become dark with sunlight,
MAN
they have learned to eat standing.
OLD MAN
When we come upon men crucified
or women hanging downward from the trees
they no longer understand
WOMAN
how merciful is memory with its fantasies.
They are getting the refugee habit ...
OLD MAN
how weary are the roads of the blood.
Walking forwards towards death in my mind
I am walking backwards again into my youth;
a mother, a father and a house.
One street, a certain town, a particular place:
and the feeling of belonging somewhere
of being appropriate to certain fields and trees.
WOMAN
Now our address is the world. Walls
constrain us. O do you remember
the peninsula where we so nearly died
and the way the trees looked owned
human and domestic like a group of horses?
They said it was Greece.
MAN
Through Prussia into Russia,
through Holland into Poland,
through Rumania into Albania.
WOMAN
Following the rotation of the seasons.
OLD MAN
We are getting the refugee habit:
the past and the future are not enough,
are two walls only between which to die;
who can live in a house with two walls?
MAN
The present is an eternal journey;
in one country winter, in another spring.
OLD MAN
I am sick of the general deaths:
we have seen them impersonally dying:
everything I had hoped for, fireside and hearth,
and death by compromise some summer evening.
MAN
You are getting the refugee habit:
you are carrying the past in you
like a precious vessel, remembering
in essence, ownership and ordinary loving.
WOMAN
We are too young to remember.
OLD MAN
Nothing disturbed such life as I remember
but telephone or telegram
such death-bringers to the man among the roses
in the garden of his house, smoking a pipe.
WOMAN
We are the dispossessed, sharing
with gulls and flowers our lives of accident:
no time for love, no room for love:
if only the children -
MAN
were less wild and unkempt, belonged
to the human family, not speechless
OLD MAN
and shy as the squirrels in the trees;
WOMAN
if only the children
OLD MAN
recognized their father, smiled once more.
OLD MAN + WOMAN
They have got the refugee habit
walking about in the rain for food
looking at their faces in the bottom of wells:
OLD MAN
they are living the popular life.
All Europe is moving out of winter
into spring with all boundaries being
broken down, dissolving, vanishing.
Migrations are beginning, a new habit
from where the icebergs rise in the sky
to valleys where corn is spread like butter ...
WOMAN
So many men and women - each one a soul.
MAN
So many souls, crossing the world
OLD MAN
so many bridges to the end of the world.
Frontiers mean nothing any more ...
WOMAN
peoples and possessions,
lands, rights,
titles, holdings,
trusts, bonds ...
OLD MAN
mean nothing any more, nothing.
A whistle, a box, a shawl, a cup,
a broken sword wrapped in newspaper.
WOMAN
All we have left us, out of context,
OLD MAN
a jar, a mousetrap, a broken umbrella,
a coin, a pipe, a pressed flower
WOMAN
to make an alphabet for our children.
OLD MAN
A chain, a whip, a lock,
a drum and a dancing bear ...
WOMAN
We have got the refugee habit.
Beyond tears at last, into some sort of safety
from fear of wanting, fear of hoping,
fear of everything but dying.
We can die now.
OLD MAN
Frontiers mean nothing any more. Dear Greece!
MAN
Yes. We can die now.