Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

I, Gerald, Archdeacon of St David’s,
in my youth I was handsome and fearless.
Now I confess my sins
in dim recesses.
I am eighty years old;
I am what I remember.

I, Gerald, all my life
I have struggled to restore the dignity
of the Archbishopric of St David’s,
the power which it had from David,
as prophesied by Merlin,
before Samson fled to Brittany in time of plague,
and the mother church was subject to Canterbury.
I, Gerald, born in Wales,
I have known London, Paris, Rome.
I have been scholar, teacher, churchman, author,
courtier, pilgrim.
I have known everyone,
popes, kings, princes, archbishops.
When I preached through Wales
thousands took the Cross to fight the Saracens.
And those who journeyed with me,
where are they now?
That old bore Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury,
with his feeble jokes,
who died in misery and disillusion in the Holy Land;
and Geoffrey, false Bishop of St David’s,
palsied, paralysed and exiled from his see
before he too died.
I am eighty years old;
I am what I remember.

I, Gerald, Archdeacon of St David’s,
I have seen the marvellous
and I have seen the miraculous.
I have heard of a bitch mate with a monkey.
I have seen the lips of soothsayers
smeared in honey;
you have to give these people a good shake
before they regain control of themselves,
and when they do return to their senses
they can remember nothing of their prophecies.
I too have had prophetic dreams,
but dreams are like rumours -
you must accept some, and reject others.

I have written seventeen books, and planned many more.
I have wasted my words on illiterate princes
and tight-fisted bishops.
Writing books just makes you unpopular.
I have pursued my researches into the works of nature
farther than most of my contemporaries.
What is written down is never lost.
My name and my skills will live for ever.
Once dead I shall be honoured.
But life here below lasts a brief moment
and is always in a state of flux.
I am eighty years old;
I am what I remember.

I remember when I was a boy
my uncle David Fitzgerald, Bishop of St David’s,
said to me, “Would you like to meet a man
who has lived with the fairies?”
And he took me to see the priest Elidorus
who was born in the province of Gower.
(I remember that place
on my journey through Wales;
I remember crossing the River Neath,
the water sucking at the ground underfoot,
the pack-horse loaded with my books and papers
struggling in the quicksands.
It is a terrifying place.)
Elidorus sat by a miserable fire
in the clutter and filth of an old man’s room
hidden in a tent of blankets.

“Tell us your story,” said my uncle -
but you all know the story, for it is in my book,
how when he was an innocent of twelve,
just learning to read,
Elidorus ran away from the beatings of his teacher
and hid under the hollow bank of the river.
Two tiny men appeared, and took him
through an underground tunnel, to a country
where the people rode on horses the size of greyhounds,
and had nothing but contempt
for our world of ambitions and lies.
The boy returned frequently to our hemisphere,
but his mother would not believe his tale
unless he brought her back a present of gold.
So he stole a golden ball from the fairy-king’s son
and ran back to his mother with it;
but just as he got there, he tripped,
and dropped the ball.
Two little men who were at his heels
snatched it away, and ran off with it;
and after that the boy could never find
the underground passage again.
“But you still remember some of their language,
don’t you, Elidorus?” said my uncle;
and as the old man repeated their words for ‘water’ and ‘salt’
I saw that he was crying.

Whatever the truth of this story,
I put it in my book. But don’t ask me
if I believe it, for in truth I can neither accept
nor reject it. If I say it’s false,
I place a limit on God’s power,
which I cannot do. But if I say it’s true,
I an moving beyond the bounds of credibility,
and that I cannot do either.

However, what I did not record in my book
was that my uncle then asked Elidorus
if he had ever encountered the little folk again,
and he replied, “Maybe. Yes, maybe”.
After going back to school, and learning to read,
he went to train as a priest at St David’s.
One night he was praying in his cell
when he suddenly saw the golden ball
appear right in front of him. It shone bright,
but as he went to pick it up
it rolled away from him. He followed it,
but the closer he got to it, the faster
it rolled away from him.
It went out the door, down the stairs,
and out into the garden,
with Elidorus pursuing it.
He just had to hold it in his hands.
When he had nearly caught it,
it suddenly jumped up a big tree
and Elidorus shinned up the tree after it.
Half way up, it rolled onto a branch,
and Elidorus followed, fascinated.
Then it rolled along a smaller branch,
and a smaller one still, with Elidorus
still pursuing it. Then it vanished.
Elidorus found himself swaying on the end
of a very thin branch, all alone, high above the ground.
He looked down, terrified.
It was dark and cold, and he couldn’t climb down,
for he dared not move.
It was then that, above the wind,
he thought he heard a few words
of a strange, half-remembered language;
or maybe it was only laughter.