This is the 16th of 42 posts about the poems that carried me along the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route in Aug-Sep 2016.
Today began the Meseta, a 200km stretch between Burgos and Astorga that is known for being flat, hot and shadeless. Vast wheat fields open to the horizon.
For me, it was very peaceful. By chance, the weather was becoming much cooler.
I finished my walking with the daily poem, chosen by two pilgrims who stayed to hear me read it. The words felt dense - 'the air bears the dust of decayed hopes'. We discussed it afterwards.
One pilgrim was thinking of Syria, and how he felt his country (Tunisia) was partially responsible for what happened there (because, he said, the Arab Spring began in Tunisia, and started the chain that led to the war in Syria). The other pilgrim had just come back from working in Cambodia, where she had visited the killing fields. She was reflecting on how it is one thing to know that an atrocity is happening, but quite another thing to be able to really conceive of what is taking place.
This poem would have us believe that we can not only face the horrors of this world, but find beauty in their midst.
City Psalm - Denise Levertov (1923-1970)
Today began the Meseta, a 200km stretch between Burgos and Astorga that is known for being flat, hot and shadeless. Vast wheat fields open to the horizon.
For me, it was very peaceful. By chance, the weather was becoming much cooler.
I finished my walking with the daily poem, chosen by two pilgrims who stayed to hear me read it. The words felt dense - 'the air bears the dust of decayed hopes'. We discussed it afterwards.
One pilgrim was thinking of Syria, and how he felt his country (Tunisia) was partially responsible for what happened there (because, he said, the Arab Spring began in Tunisia, and started the chain that led to the war in Syria). The other pilgrim had just come back from working in Cambodia, where she had visited the killing fields. She was reflecting on how it is one thing to know that an atrocity is happening, but quite another thing to be able to really conceive of what is taking place.
This poem would have us believe that we can not only face the horrors of this world, but find beauty in their midst.
City Psalm - Denise Levertov (1923-1970)
The
killings continue, each second
pain and misfortune extend themselves
in the genetic chain, injustice is done knowingly, and the air
bears the dust of decayed hopes,
yet breathing those fumes, walking the thronged
pavements among crippled lives, jackhammers
raging, a parking lot painfully agleam
in the May sun, I have seen
not behind but within, within the
dull grief, blown grit, hideous
concrete façades, another grief, a gleam
as of dew, an abode of mercy,
have heard not behind but within noise
a humming that drifted into a quiet smile.
Nothing was changed, all was revealed otherwise;
not that horror was not, not that the killings did not continue;
not that I thought there was to be no more despair,
but that as if transparent all disclosed
an otherness that was blesséd, that was bliss,
I saw Paradise in the dust of the street.
pain and misfortune extend themselves
in the genetic chain, injustice is done knowingly, and the air
bears the dust of decayed hopes,
yet breathing those fumes, walking the thronged
pavements among crippled lives, jackhammers
raging, a parking lot painfully agleam
in the May sun, I have seen
not behind but within, within the
dull grief, blown grit, hideous
concrete façades, another grief, a gleam
as of dew, an abode of mercy,
have heard not behind but within noise
a humming that drifted into a quiet smile.
Nothing was changed, all was revealed otherwise;
not that horror was not, not that the killings did not continue;
not that I thought there was to be no more despair,
but that as if transparent all disclosed
an otherness that was blesséd, that was bliss,
I saw Paradise in the dust of the street.
Today, I walked 21km from Burgos to Hornillos.
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