D
DL82
Guest
(a poem: some background - Ewan Tavendale is a character in the ‘Sunset Song’ trilogy of novels by Lewis Grassic Gibbon. The novels are set in the North of Scotland 1st quarter of the 20th century, and the final one, Grey Granite, ends with Ewan, the son of a Presbyterian Minister, leaving to take up a position with the Communist Party. The poem imagines him contemplating the body of a hanged priest during the Spanish Civil War).
Crack-creaking in the quiet, louder than the guns
He craned his neck, left off his watch and wondered
No older than his father, this, and he
Swung, bulged-eyed, stole enfolded, chalice wine poured out upon it
In this silence old and new stood still.
And the men in their slumbers, still quiet
Sandstone spire cracking from the weight of strain
All the men, who told tales of times in England
Coarse women, softer in Spain, nor Stalin
Their hate, imperfect of an age, hates
Not for she was wrong, but for she’s orra.
Marx and chapel both alike sat silent
This, not the stronger creed of Christ
And in the strange and other gloaming, not the call
Those older men sang out, but this strange knell
Of beads on robes, so noose on white hot stone
And his creed - a martyr of Spain.
Crack-creaking in the quiet, louder than the guns
He craned his neck, left off his watch and wondered
No older than his father, this, and he
Swung, bulged-eyed, stole enfolded, chalice wine poured out upon it
In this silence old and new stood still.
And the men in their slumbers, still quiet
Sandstone spire cracking from the weight of strain
All the men, who told tales of times in England
Coarse women, softer in Spain, nor Stalin
Their hate, imperfect of an age, hates
Not for she was wrong, but for she’s orra.
Marx and chapel both alike sat silent
This, not the stronger creed of Christ
And in the strange and other gloaming, not the call
Those older men sang out, but this strange knell
Of beads on robes, so noose on white hot stone
And his creed - a martyr of Spain.