Wallace McKitrick
Wollin (1)
It emerges again and again
from the ocean bed of his dreams
- gorgeous cathedral, arches inlaid
with lapis lazuli; long-drowned saints
benign in the loss of their martyrs’ purpose;
altar, tapestries and crucifix in luminous
communion; the human flock absent
and unneeded.
And the full-throated
chaotic bells, bearing fragments
of old lives and languages
he’s never known.
By day, in the red desert,
he labours with care and intuition
to make things of no utility. Unbidden,
his hands carve pagumes - crossed Lettish
timbers, ancient rooftop emblem of the Tree of Life,
coiled self-feeding universe. How to be worthy
of its protection?
First, scorch all guilt away.
From the arid fruitful ranges, the sun’s full
span, he conjures Aelred’s three loves (2)
(of self, of others and of God), wiltja (3)
of ironwood and wonder.
She, land-kept, land-keeping, among fir and birch,
a frozen shore, writes, This is the country which
stirs my heart and tells me things I did not know
I knew, and tells me them anew. Overlooking
zinc-grey sea, where her namesake city
lies submerged, she conspires
with the fractured past,
inarticulate loss, to make
flawless carillon. She dreams of hot
November rain, wild ducks hooting their arc
across the hemispheres, an island rising from vast
salt wastes pink with flood; a tremulous cathedral of light.
(1) The island of Wollin is said to have been in the Baltic Sea, north of Germany. On it stood the rich trading city of Vineta. Both island and city disappeared into the see. On nights of the full moon, the bells of Vineta can still be heard, according to local legend.
(2) Aelred of Rievaulx, in the 12th Century, suggested these three loves are mutually dependent, and that all need to be present in proper interplay if human wholeness is to be achieved.
(3) wiltja: shelter, shade or windbreak made from natural ‘bush’ materials - in Pitjantjatjara, a central Australian language.
Page(s) 181
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