Saul Bennett
untitled
The cat tongues Irish soda
crumbs off the Gerard Manley Hopkins watercolor
cover his Collected Poems.
Attired in life in black save snowy
collar slot, the poet
Jesuit trans-substantiates the cat's identical tones.
Hands crossed before him now, appearing
to nod, corresponding
with God on the eve and in the moment of composing
I
When he made his greatest poems where
On earth was he? On earth?
Those poems? Some superior space surely!
Recalled! To the Krypton of his birth! To observe
And record, to begin, a second Genesis within
"The Wreck of the Deutschland."
It's no conceit in his behalf to pose the Hopkins cosmos
Question with the imperishable Jesus
Was where between 12 and 29?
With Hopkins...
With Hopkins...
II
Scarcely hours out on the rolling
Deutschland Hopkins'
Exiled nuns
Escaping
Bismarck's
Kulturkampf
Suppressing Rome,
Safe harbor-to-be the new
Saint Louis Province of Franciscan Sisters.
III
Freshly Jesuit Hopkins preached the streets
Warned aswarm with Jews. Who's to say some dreamy Liverpool
Rebecca failed to ride his reedy tide?
IV
On the water the nuns'
Salvation dawned with unwafering trepidation. They passed,
The random Jew, or two, despised in the main saloon. A few clung to bunks
Fearing Apostleship seizure! By the disenchanting
Five Franciscans soon to drown.
(On this date, in passing, the Arizona would go down.)
V
In Manchester's Shambles on Withey Grove one's
Spit licked his collar. His black cloth summoned
Screams. Another day some Sarah's lumpy
Bag grazed him. (Not to suggest Hopkins
A Jews' mark routinely; they, his.
Nor can it be said certain his
Fluent Hebrew served
To convert?)
VI
In the London slum the summer
Cobbles puffed,
And drooped, and puffed,
As if propelled by monster bellows. The Jews
Whose station kept them running as a rule were moved
In this topography to fall into
The Gentile posture of prayer. Such Jesus-leaning
Capital Hopkins eschewed.
VII
Their streets were cloned from sabbath candle wax,
Shops, stalls shut Fridays by 4.
Envision Hopkins dripping after
Isaac-This, or Solomon-That, twisting
Cobbles underfoot.
The sun appears to slip into a distant pita
Envelope containing now a coppery shabbos nosh.
The Jesuit's reaching fingers feel for love!
His preaching lips recall
The motion of
A slowing
Coach.
These Jews uncage his skylark known to grin!
VIII
Engage Hopkins now inside
A wobbly coach, shabby, vile breath
Old teamster at the reins, yanking the trap
For intermittent peeks
In New Mexico Territory
Equatorial heat
At this slight black popish Cur-IZ-chun
Addressing with a gasping pen
Heaven speculating on his confidential Mission-to-the-Zunis
Conversion misadventure.
#
Moved! Moved so! To compose
A poem might he-one day!-impose
On old Balliol chum, Poet-Laureate to-become, his so devoted Bridges?
IX
Near Saint Louis Hopkins stopped one sunset bearing
From his Rector in a carpetbag
Flecked sage and gold
Condolences!
Amens!
For Sisters Lost.
Next morning on a supplicant
Mississippi he recited Mass, engaging there a Negro stevedore
Horde, each buck, a captain clucked, broad
Enough to lose Hopkins-Har!-in his baggy pants!
X
The Statue-its arm! Unattached! Alone! Displayed, undraped,
To raise erection funds! Near the great cross
Disclosing Broadway to Fifth Avenue-its torch heaven-
Bent the Jesuit felt to bless
Before brooding home to Stonyhurst
From a slip not distant from the Deutschland's
Phantom pier.
As he whispered cockles wept!
XI
The year before Hopkins' death Franz Kofka's
Uncle, Joseph Lowy,
Put out from Ostend on the Belgian Prince in the service of Leopold's
Genocide Congo.
A man of trade he remained
Away years at once from Europe. Would so had his nieces: one hundred years
Past Hopkins' birth; 20, their brother's death, all three,
In the camps.
XII
In Maine young Edmund Hartley's
Widower father married Martha Marsden
Months before, from the typhoid at 44,
Hopkins passed in Dublin, Joyce
Then at 7 in the early morning
Heat there of a Jesuit education.
XIII
Zanesville Ohio born three years after Hopkins'
Death, schooled there at St. Thomas'
-One Edwin Curran, two of whose
Poems once were exposed
With a mass of Hopkins'
In a canonical
Anthology.
XIV
In his tiny
Oil PORTRAIT
OF A SEA DOVE
Marsden Hartley was said to have used the dead
Dove as a figure approaching
"Christian sacrifice."
XV
In "Sailing of Columbus" an abundant Edwind Curran
Composed as in the moment
of the Deutschland
Nuns' descent
We climbed the slippery alleys of the sea.
XVI
A sister lived till 1933, outbreathing
Hopkins by his span entire. That this ancient's sibling
Rode by motor! Swayed to wax! Attended near
Her end in newsreels Hitler rallies teases-
This Sister's brother Father felt
Der Fuehrer too?
Prayed?
XVII
A Church of England nun
Assigned All Saints' Home in London,
Another Hopkins sibling
Lived to 1946, thereby surviving Hitler's
Last tattoo.
XVIII
In East London the Deutschland
Nuns are said buried.
Author's note: A portion of the serial poem touching on Gerard Manley Hopkins
was published in The Country and Abroad. It is to be stressed that a
number of occurrences advanced in this poem are an invention. However, while
history is unable to corroborate, as, for example, a visit to North America
by Father Hopkins, he served the Church at Stonyhurst College, Lancashire, and
at Liverpool, London, Manchester and Dublin. Moreover, lines addressing Hopkins'
sisters, Franz Kafka's uncle and sisters, Marsden Hartley's father, and the
Jesuit discipline of James Joyce's early childhood education, are grounded in
history. Further, in fact, a Province of Franciscan Sisters was established
near St. Louis in 1872, and the Statue of Liberty's torch-bearing arm was exhibited
in Manhattan near the present site of the Flatiron Building prior to the Statue's
dedication at Bedloe's Island in 1886.