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Annals of a square inch
circa 1853 through to 2005
In one inch squared, eyes open and close;
blink at sunshine, a toy cow or two,
at fragmented grass and far far hills.
They are briefly there and gone.
All has happened in a flicker.
Lids tremble
and open again, at stone
in near focus. They built a wall
around 1854; roofed it in late winter
and painted it pale.
Chip and chip;
hack away stone for a pinch of light.
By 1914, murmurs of war in distant towns
grope through the barricade,
repeated louder and louder
until
stone
finally
breaks.
Oh my God.
What have they done?
Torn up and down grass and trees,
murdered herds, shattered sunshine.
Where green hung, in supposed eternal
shimmer, machines edge into and out of vision.
Monsters to move, to suck and gobble
an idyll dream. Bristle teeth sweeping
rain-stained and teary roads clean.
Question: Where are my hills?
Answer: In one inch square of memory.
© Berenice Dunford 2005 |
Rembrandt's "The Prophet Jeremiah Mourning over the Destruction of Jerusalem".
Grant me an old man's frenzy,
Myself must I remake
Till I am Timon and Lear
Or that William Blake
Who beat upon the wall
Till Truth obeyed his call;
A mind Michael Angelo knew
That can pierce the clouds,
Or inspired by frenzy
Shake the dead in their shrouds;
Forgotten else by mankind,
An old man's eagle mind.
William Butler Yeats, An Acre Of Grass.
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