Peace Talks
ANDREW MOTION
for Kyeong-Soo
Affectus, qui passio est, desinit esse passio simulatque eius claram et distinctam formamus ideam.
SPINOZA, Ethics
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
1 MY OWN BLUE EYE
The Discoveries of Geography
The Conclusion of Joseph Turrill
An Echidna for Chris Wallace-Crabbe
A Meeting of Minds with Henry David Thoreau
The Death of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine
The Concern: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth
Before the Court
Two Late Portraits
The Realms of Gold
Three Witnesses
A Fight in Poland
The Fish in Australia
Swim
The Burning Car
The Notary
The Mill
Wait
Felling a Tree
Laying the Fire
The Lych Gate
2 LAURELS AND DONKEYS
A Moment of Reflection
In the Stacks
The Camp
A Pine Cone
Finis
A Tile from Hiroshima
The Fence
Peace Talks
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by the Author
Copyright
1 MY OWN BLUE EYE
The Discoveries of Geography
If only the stories were not so tempting –
but from day one I started to embroider,
and in no time was suggesting a country
far to the north
where fish are as large as dragons,
and even minor administrators
eat off gold plates,
and sleep on gold beds.
This is why I have packed in my birch canoe
a robe
made of the feathers
of more than a hundred different species of bird.
So that when I have finally crossed the ocean
I will have a ceremonial costume
rich enough
to impress in my encounter with the Great Khan.
*
We have an excellent long boat with outriggers
and therefore travel dozens of miles in a day.
Furthermore, and speaking as a navigator,
I can predict every fickleness of weather
and also the change in direction of currents,
sometimes dipping my elbow into the water
and sometimes my scrotum
to feel the slightest change in temperature.
These are the reasons
I shall be considered a saviour by my people
and die in peace.
In my own mind I am a simple man
who threw his spear at the stars
and landed there himself.
*
I now have in my possession
a map:
two handfuls of mud
scraped from the bank of our sacred river,
flattened into a tablet,
baked,
then pierced with the blunt point of my compass
while I spun the other sharper leg
to produce the edge of the world as I knew it,
and beyond
the salt sea on which I am now perfectly at home.
In this way I look down at myself.
I think: I am here.
*
Astonishing, how many horizons are open to me:
at one time mountainous heaps of smashed slate,
at others a vast delta of green and crimson light.
And every day a different shoreline ripples past
bearing its cargo of white sand and dark palms.
Very beguiling they appear, but all encumbered.
All spoiled by the tantrums of their local gods.
Out here there are storms too,
but in the religion I have now devised for myself,
I am convinced
the shaping hands have pulled away from us at last,
so the Earth hangs with no support at the centre of –
what?
That is the question I have in mind to answer.
*
You might suppose better charts would help me,
but despite their much greater accuracy
in terms of coastlines and interiors,
and the intricate detail
guaranteed by developments in printing,
not to mention the understanding of perspective,
empires still lie about their extent and stability.
These are the simple deceptions.
More difficult,
as I continue north to my final encounter,
and wave-crests flicking my face grow colder
and daylight a more persistently dull dove-grey,
is how to manage my desire to live in the present
for all eternity,
as though I had never left my home.
*
It transpires the last part of my journey
requires me to abandon everything I once knew,
even the gorgeous costume
made of the feathers of more than a hundred different species of bird.
No matter, though.
It is delicious among the constellations,
as the planets begin to display their gas-clouds
and the beautiful nebulae their first attempts at stars,
When I look over my shoulder
to see my own blue eye staring back at me,
I realise before I disappear
I still accept what it means to be lost.
The Conclusion of Joseph Turrill
Garsington, Oxfordshire, 1867
I suppose I was cut out for a quiet life;
whether I have managed any such thing
is another matter,
what with larks to shoot,
and harvesting, gooseberries, and whatnot.
Then there was all that with Netty:
would she or wouldn’t she;
did I or didn’t I?
It is my belief
I spent more hours kicking my heels at her gate
than happy the other side.
Be that as it may.
Anno Domini drives out stern matters of fact,
and faults that appear to us
when we compare the lives we have
with those we imagine …
There’s nothing a gentle stroll
in the woods by moonlight can’t put right.
I tried that just now.
I saw swallows on the branches like clothes pegs,
which put me in such good humour
I brought home one of their nests and also four chicks.
An Echidna for Chris Wallace-Crabbe
Whatever kind of determination a creature needs
to enjoy one state of existence before confronting the next,
the echidna has a-plenty.
Look how the legs which once upon a time were fins,
then paddles,
and now are covered with spines as delicate as fur,
shunt this specimen up the barren mound
that forms the one significant feature of his pen,
still hampered by the excessive weight of his body
but clearly not enough
to feel distracted from his main ambition.
Which is to reach this particular point
by the concrete wall that marks the limit of his freedom,
where he shovels the earth aside with his rubber snout
b
efore giving up when roughly half submerged.
He has no idea
anyone is waiting for him at the end of history.
But he obviously understands
that to start again at the beginning
and change faster
would only mean taking the straight road to extinction.
A Meeting of Minds with Henry David Thoreau
1 Into the Wood
When I arrived in that new country for the first time
I came by boat
by canoe in fact
and completely alone
so the pines and conifers
stepping down to the river
some with their roots
as pink as pigs’ tails
in the dark current swirling around them
were my only company.
It was for this reason I found myself
striking my double-ended paddle
hard against the side of my canoe
to frighten them away
if such a thing were possible.
and have those echoes
multiply
and fill the woods
with circles of dilating sound
awakening the trees.
Stirring up I call it
as might be done
to animals and people.
To make all melodies a replica
of the things they give a voice
and the places where I find them.
2 Finds
Their spears are very serviceable
the pointed part a hemlock knot
and the side-spring
pieces of hickory
for use on salmon
pickerel
trout
chub
etc.
unless
by the light of birch-fires after sunset
it is converted into a pole or club.
These were my first discoveries.
After that
a sled or jebongon
carved from thin wood
turned up at the front
and drawn by a strong bark rope.
A cradle.
A canoe
much more convenient than my own.
A vessel for water
or for boiling meat with hot stones.
And arrow-heads
that lie through the woods like expectation
over the whole face of America.
Stone fruit I thought
but soon afterwards
frost flowers
that still appear to my eye
and are cold to my touch
when the frost itself wears off
and the ground is bare.
3 Travellers
I planted out the first potatoes today
when I was not reading
F. A. Michaux
the younger Michaux that is
describing himself on the shore of the Monongahela
as five or six bateaux filled with horses
cattle
pigs
poultry
dismounted carts
ploughs
harnesses and beds
presented in turn their ends
their sides
their burrowing prows
to the current that swept them on
towards their destination.
To think of so many arriving
put me in mind of a friend
who recently broke into the grasslands
and was impeded for a day
by a herd of bison
fifty miles long
and three miles wide.
When he followed them to a ford
the gravel underfoot
was covered with moulted hair
to a depth of
six inches.
4 The Axe
I threw my axe behind me
towards the lake
and being filled with the involuntary life of things
it skimmed some twenty yards across the ice
and then dropped in
through a hole I had recently made there myself.
I crawled back out
and saw it twenty-five feet down
the handle upright
swaying in the bright clear water
as if the water or the axe itself
had discovered a pulse.
Which decided me.
I made a device of birch and rope
hooked the axe after several attempts
raised it
seized it
and brought it home.
In my absence
I had missed two visitors
or so their footprints told me.
One left me nothing I could know them by.
might have been a woman
judging by the gift
of wood-shavings and pale grasses
picked before the snow
and twisted now
in a bouquet that lingered on my table.
5 Cobwebs
Because I had already chosen
the hawk who would not leave her nest
and the snapping turtle whose head is big as a child
but terrible as a crocodile
and the owl who turned to stone
when I paddled under the hemlock bank
and the baskets of wild cranberry and huckleberry
I crept out this morning to see the gossamer webs
extending from my clear ground
towards a stand of black willows
they had completely covered up
with lines in parallel
not taut
but curving downwards in the middle
like the rigging of tall ships
that swoops from mast to mast
as if a thousand nations had collected
but were going nowhere
and content with that.
6 The River
Although I have heard
or could not help myself imagining
in quieter times
the railway with its clink and flutter
not to mention the lanes and highways
I always planned to leave these woods
by following the river as I came.
Today
the geese that rise to see me off
will also take its course
but only roughly
cutting short the twists and turns.
I confine myself
and choose the slow meander of the current
the long reflections of the trees
the trees themselves
beech and pine and conifer
the echoes which
as they die out behind me
sound like water running
backwards to its source
to start again.
The Death of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine
When the time came to see them off
I dressed laboriously in a wool vest and long drawers,
a shirt and two sweaters,
comfortable knickerbockers made of windproof gabardine,
a pair of soft elastic Kashmir putties,
ankle-boots soled with English leather
and nailed with Alpine nails,
a fur-lined cycling helmet, goggles,
and a leather mask covering every part of my face
not protected by my beard.
A thick grey hand-knitted muffler completed the costume.
*
After we had shaken hands
I can only imagine the two of them left at their usual quick pace
and soon vanished among the monstrous snow-humps
and ice-crevasses that led towards the peak.
I do not remember seeing this.
I can say, however,
that when I abandoned the Northeast Shoulder
and drifted over the North Face,
where I noticed a var
iety of highly altered limestones
and also the igneous intrusions of lighter granitic rocks,
I found a crag standing one hundred feet tall
and decided to test my condition by climbing to the top.
As I reached my goal the sky lifted,
the mist blew away,
and I glimpsed the Northeast Ridge and the Summit itself.
My eyes became fixed on a minute black speck
silhouetted against a smooth snow-crest
beneath a rock-step on the ridge.
Then this vision disappeared from view
in typically heavy white clouds.
*
Shortly afterwards the weather closed in,
a pressure-drop so severe
it squeezed the breath from my body.
It was late afternoon,
and I knew that even if they managed
to conquer the six hundred and fifty feet they needed
to reach the Summit,
returning would be another matter.
I therefore decided to help them
when they began their descent,
climbing until I encountered their camp
as visibility shrank to zero.