[Tim Murphy]

Charlemagne's Vision


Remembering his father's last campaign
To purge the south of Saracen and Moor
And how Grandfather stopped the tide from Spain,
Driving the Muslims from the fields of Tours,
King Charlemagne surveyed the scattered dead
At Roncesvalles, where Roland's ivory horn
Lay shattered on the ground beneath his head,
Then left his slaughtered Paladins, to mourn,

And saw, in troubled sleep, a second Rome
Encoiled by hydra heads--a living net
Encircling London, Paris, Amsterdam,
Each serpent-head poised like a minaret
Above the drowsy heart of Christendom--
Loud cries, bright shafts, red flames, a streaking jet,
Then bodies bowed down in a vast salaam.

[Roger Slater]

If forced to guess, I might very tentatively say Len Krisak. Initial caps, knowledge of history, very regular but not sing-songy meter, a crisp polish, and the knowledge that the poem is likely by a name familiar to Spherians are the reasons I'd offer.

At any rate, I enjoyed this. For some reason, it put me in mind of Yeats (not the meter, but the subject matter and the perspective).

[Rhina P. Espaillat]

What an ambush this poem sets up! It sets out in the reassuringly safe past of what Charlemagne knows but did not experience, then on to his own exploits, and then, after that brief warning--"to mourn"--we're into the future, which is our present. Scary poem, with a last line I would kill to have written.

But I doubt that it's by my buddy Len, because it has 15 lines. How do you 'Sphereans like the rhyme scheme of the septet? I find it interesting that the Rome/Christendom and Amsterdam/salaam rhymes are so near being rhymes too.

Note that, like Frost's "The Silken Tent," this beauty consists of a single sentence.

[Joseph Bottum]

I saw this poem at its first creation, and loved it then as almost Chestertonian in its unapologetic understanding of Christendom.

I still hesitate on the word "Grandfather." While "father" had a "his" in front of it and a lower-case "f," "Grandfather" lacks the pronoun and has a capital "G"--which seems to indicate that we've moved inside Charlemagne's head in tracing back from Pepin the Short to Charles Martel, since only Charlemagne would use a semi-vocative like that. But the next line proves that we haven't moved into Charlemagne's voice. Besides, I think most Americans say the word as GRANDfather, rather than grandFAther, as this line seems to demand. I think I'd rather see this line recast to say "his grandfather."

My second hesitation is the "his" in "his head" and "his paladins." Thinking about it, you can see that the first "his" is Roland's and the second Charlemagne's. But they look to be in parallel, and we haven't had a name between them to make the distinction clear.

What an ending this poem has!

Jody

[Tim Murphy]

What this recalls most to my mind is A.D. Hope's great poem "Romancero," which so keeps alive Roland and Roncesvalles for me. If Hope were alive today, I think he would highly regard this high-flown sonnet by one of our most accomplished members. But I would be very surprised if Len Krisak had written it.

[Alan Sullivan]

Tim told me I had to look at this. Now I know why. It's the best 9/11 poem I've seen (by far).

I like the metrical uncertainty of grandfather. Works as a trochaic substitution, or as a slightly rising iamb.

I would prefer a semicolon at the turn. That's my only nit.

Alan

[Terese Coe]

I enormously admire the lucidity of this, the miniature history lesson in a sonnet. Still, must agree with Joseph that L3's "Grandfather" trips me up (though I don't know that adding "his" would be the best fix). I was in denial about the "streaking jet" till Alan clued me in: amazing poem, and thanks Alan.

Terese

[Michael Cantor]

I'm more uncomfortable than most here with the political message, but as poetry this is magic - the rhymes are enviable, and the slide from Roncesvalles and Tours to London and Amsterdam is effortless. As is the single sentence, which I didn't even notice until Rhina pointed it out. When the flashy look-ma-no-hands stuff is done without drama and heavy breathing, the result is a poem as elegant as this.

That elegance, and the resonant use of "Christendom", lead me to ascribe this to Mike Juster.

Michael Cantor

[Alder Ellis]

I'm with Michael in not being totally happy with the political implication of this. To frame the present matter in such terms seems not altogether unlike bin Laden's anti-Crusader rhetoric.

However, I wanted to raise a question about "salaam." The last line of the poem is remarkably evocative on first reading, but a bit puzzling if you think about it. "Salaam" is Arabic for "peace" (related, ironically, to Hebrew "shalom"); it is used as a greeting, "peace be upon you," and so, metonymically, for the ceremonious bow that sometimes accompanies the greeting. I don't see how this meaning might apply to the usage here, except in the most external possible way, as "a bow performed by Muslim people." Not a bow of greeting, just a bow of some sort, into which meanings may be read.

Whose bodies are bowed down in the last line? Of course I don't know the poet's intentions, but the line seems to me superbly ambiguous. The bodies could be those of the victims or those of the victors. As victims, the bodies bow down in death, and in a "salaam" insofar as they are subjected, in death, to the power of Islam. As victors, the bodies bow down in a gesture of thanksgiving & "praise the Lord." That's how I read it, anyway. It's a brilliant ambiguity, but both senses require the very external sense of "salaam" as "Muslim bow" without preexisting inner significance. And that seems to me a crude usage of the word.

[Kevin Andrew Murphy]

This is very elegant, for all the reasons mentioned. I'm slightly troubled by "streaking jet," since "jet" is something Charlemagne would associate with a stone, not our modern association, but I'm willing to let it fly because of all the other good imagery.

My guess, based on little slight flourishes, and a masterful twist at the end, is Wakefield.