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from Laminated in Booktown, Marie's Mail Box, 4 May 2013
Where those woods were I think I know. My house stands in the village though; I've been promised these things don't change. The woods were lovely, dark, and deep; They were just over there a moment ago; I've been assured they can't have gone far. Still there are promises no one keeps And suddenly everything looks strange: Can woods be moved while someone sleeps? To find those woods now I must seek A passerby from another place To ask if there's not been some mistake.
This post dedicated to Marie
A story goes with this one, naturally.
ReplyDeleteAs is well known, Marie, aka The Maid of Mulhouse, was taken prisoner by the Tokyo Burgundians in 1430 at the famous Battle of Booktown.
History is writ by the winners. Few are the praises sung in our blunt language of the defeated at Agincourt and Booktown. The losers are always left spoiling for the next fight -- unless that is, they have decided, like Charles d'Orléans, to put their twenty-four years in the lockup at Pontefract to pacific uses, for example by perfecting those noble forms the ballade and the rondeau.
As for our brave heroine, she lived to fight another day, and in the end the laminated spoils of battle were all to her.
Her famous victory over the Booktown Xenophobe is still told in song and story.
Indeed her achievements are too innumerable to properly enumerate here.
Suffice to say her three surviving letters -- dictated perhaps, but nonetheless veritably autographed -- make it plain that, under her Nom de Guerre, she was the originator of Mail Art.
Wearing his hat and about to go out for the daily promenade beyond the pale, what a surprise when the earnest woodsman found his forrest to be gone, and instead by some kind of magic someone left a poem where there used to be trees! Oh my... Tom! You must be a kind of magician. It's a wonderful poem, and now it's going to be my favourite poem ever. It's about the fear of losing something we know is very precious and fragile, about how fragile ties are. Trees should be strong and well rooted, and yet even forests are moved while we are asleep. But the woodsman is now richer of a poem, it's his poem and he will find his forest again.
ReplyDeleteEyes are a bit wet...
Eyes are wet but the story of The Maid of Mulhouse and the Battle of Booktown made me laugh no end :-)))) <---- sorry for the ridiculous smiley but that's me now. You are a mighty story teller.
Thank you will never be enough, but all I can say is thank you, Tom.
That's as fine a house as I've ever come across.
ReplyDeleteIt's been a long sleep here; the woods have all but disappeared and what's left is not deep enough.
the wide spread of instant melancholia stemming from this poem had to have deeper roots, which you touched on in the comment, Tom. Thank you.
ReplyDeletejust two blocks away from my place there are different birds hanging around. A version of micro-climates?
"too innumerable to properly enumerate here" --that's the way of it usually
"Trees should be strong and well rooted, and yet even forests are moved while we are asleep."
ReplyDeleteYes, what's left to be trusted anymore.
brilliant blend of playful form and repurposed appropriations. it reads like a palimpsest of the forest, while my mind links this sylvan hypertext back to the cloud of poets past, present and futile. even when the wood is gone, the poem remains :)
ReplyDeleteWelcome, David.
ReplyDeleteFollowing the intriguing trail of sonic crumbs through your Green Wood and Western Wood and Wildwood Cantata, I think it may now be possible to begin to make out the door to the forest (or anyway the forest for the trees).