ACROSTIC POEMS FROM ‘MARA, MARIETTA’

These poems are woven into the fabric of my novel, Mara, Marietta. As the words or phrases formed by a vertical reading of the initial letters of each line indicate, they all attempt to evoke a state of suspension in which silence and stillness reign. Their dramatic function in the novel is to provide the reader a rest after the intensity of the text that precedes each poem (an intensity to do with sex, for the first seven poems, and with war for the eighth). Sprague, hero and narrator of the novel, voices the first six poems on behalf of the heroine, Marietta.

Note: In the novel, the ‘titles’ of the poems are not given: trusting readers’ quality of reading, I invite them to discover the acrostic for themselves.

Contemplative ecstasy,
Humbly seeking enlightenment
In the sun:
Lizard, where do I come from?
Dream-work, night-times of dream-work.

Warden of the dark house,
Of what must I be aware? Speak, owl.
Milk binds
And restores, but not the milk of nightmares:
Nothing living is free of a shadow.

A gentle breeze or a great storm?

Concord, submission, reverence and love:
His kisses are none of the above. What then?
Artfully, his kisses take me to where I know
Not who I am. He,
Graceful and savage, makes me
Ecstatic, in a space of pure letting-go.

Onward and onward,
Falcon on the wing, onward.

Perhaps
Everything
Repeats:
Sex constantly repeats the first time.
Perhaps
Everything, to be itself, must
Combine with its opposite:
The beginning with the consummation.
Impossible aspiration,
Vexing question: Am I only
Everything I am not?

A skeleton of leaf, scorched and charred.

Mystery, where the light nests.
Only, ever, always
Mourning, thickening the darkness.
Eclipse,
Negation;
The residue of a life.

Obliterated spoors, husks of needs:
Forgotten.

Serried rows of spectators,
The public burning of a heretic.
Incessant downfall,
Landslip, scree, stones—
Lapidary torture.
Nexus of scarecrows.
Exclusion,
Surcease: no
Spital-house bed, but deliverance.

Inside a lupine rosette, a snowflake.
Saxifrage spreads a cloth of gold,
Orchids defy ice.
Look! Lichen-freckled boulders shelter fossils.
And now a new solitude overcomes you:
Trauma freezes time,
Irradiating absence with unknowing;
Only desire moves, refusing to concede
Never can two be one.

Pathways of desire elude sextant,
Abacus, gnomon, and compass;
Unencumbered,
Skeins of nerves
Earth the aerial.

Innocence, purity and secrecy,
Nostalgia for the odour of chastity:
The pearl coming to birth in the oyster
Entangles the spirit in the flesh. Hark!
Reverberation of the bell—
Visitation of the plague,
Awful, sublime, precious—
Leeched, my blood becomes flowers and metals.

Quiver, the discarded tail of a lizard.
Uninhabited here, as far as the eye can see.
Immemorial stones under endless sky:
Eerie.
Thewless vegetation,
Uncompassed fields.
Dark vessel:
Emptiness.

Abeyance, the fall of a snowflake;
New-minted world, virgin.

A face in a mirror,
The slither of a serpent,
The flow of sand in an hourglass.
Erasure, interstice, absence.
Moth’s soft smoothness,
Powder-dusted petals,
The silken web of a cellar spider.

Alabaster, an egg in moonlight;
Talcum under a wedding dress.

Shrouded furniture,
Islands from the air;
Lovemaking while children wakeful.
Ellipsis, interval, caesura.
Night summoning nakedness,
Crystal-clear sky:
Eternity, stars.

Any discussion of the structure of Lamentations must grapple with the question of the acrostic form of the poems. The individual poems of Lamentations are defined by the acrostic form of chapters 1-4, and the corresponding 22-verse length of ch. 5. Beyond this, however, it is uncertain whether the acrostic form has any significance in the internal structuring of the poems. The acrostic strophes do not coincide with other literary features of the text such as the changes of voice or shifts in content, suggesting that they may not be significant with regard to the structure of the poems. While there may be disagreement as to whether the acrostic form was original to the poems or not, the form is not used in any commentaries as the basis by which the poems are structured. What then is the significance of the acrostic form? This question has been explored at two levels: why the acrostic form was used, and the impact of the form on the flow of the poems.

There has been much speculation as to why these poems have used the acrostic form. A widely accepted theory is that in using the acrostic form, the poems were understood to have expressed a sense of totality, the aleph to taw of grief.¹ Closely related to this is that the acrostic also has the effect of containing the expression of grief: Lamentations’ alphabetic devices are deeply symbolic. They expose the depth and breadth of suffering in conflicting ways. The alphabet gives both order and shape to suffering that is otherwise inherently chaotic, formless, and out of control. It tries to force unspeakable pain into a container that is familiar and recognizable even as suffering eludes containment. It implies that suffering is infinite, for it spans the basic components of written language from beginning to end.²

1 – Aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet; taw is the last. In English, A to Z.

2 – Kathleen O’Connor, Lamentations and the Tears of the World (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2015) p. 13

The acrostic form also has a significant impact on the flow of the poems. One of the most frequently noted features of the poetry of Lamentations is its seemingly haphazard movement between ideas and images. How the acrostic form impacts on this has been variously understood. Some see the acrostic as having a fragmentary impact, an impact which is countered by other features of the text, such as the changes in voice and continuity of description: The tendency for the acrostic to break the composition into fragments is countered by skillful shifts in speaker and point of view, creating continuities of description, feeling, and thought that span several acrostic strophes in pleasingly varied ways.¹

1 – Norman Gottwald, Studies in the Book of Lamentations (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2010) p. 646

For others, the acrostic form has a more unifying impact, helping to hold together the paratactic lines, and ordering the flow from beginning to end. As such, the acrostic counteracts the impact of the otherwise disordered flow of thought and emotion. Features of the text have been identified that have both a fragmenting and a unifying impact on the book, the acrostic being one of the unifying features. Lamentations is made up of a series of separate poems, and as such is composite in nature, thus projecting a strong sense of fragmentation. Other features which suggest fragmentation include the shifts of voice within the poems, the suppression of time, place and order of events, the variable acrostic realizations and the mixture of generic forms within the poems. Against this, a sense of coherence is developed through repetitions, including the fourfold use of the acrostic, through the uniformity of the stanzas within each of the poems, and through the uniformity and repetition of theme and content across the book.

Some argue that the acrostic form has both a fragmentary and a unifying impact on the poems: The acrostical structure of four of the chapters exaggerates the sense that each verse stands as a unit unto itself—a complete thought marked by its letter of the alphabet. Yet at the same time, the acrostic structure binds the chapter into a whole, a complete alphabet. The effect of parataxis has been discussed: It acts like a magnet that repels adjacent lines or verses. Other features within the poems, such as parallelism and repetition, work against the parataxis to create cohesion. The result is an exegetical pushing and pulling as the interpreter seeks to understand the set of relationships operating in the text.¹

1 – Adele Berlin, Lamentations: A Commentary (Louisville: Presbyterian Publishing Corporation, 2004) p. 5

Alas, a woman, widowed, alone, the city sits that once was full of people and great among the nations, a princess among the provinces, now turned tributary.

Bereft, she weeps in the night, her bitter tears trailing down her cheeks. Of her many lovers none is left to console or comfort. Her friends have forsaken her now and become the friends of her foes.

Captive is Judah, in servitude sorely afflicted. A lady once, the equal of any, she is lowly now like a servant who cannot rest; her oppressor persecutes her in her time of torment.

Desolate, Zion’s roads are empty now and in mourning. No travelers come on feast days. Her gates are lonely, abandoned. Her priests groan and her maidens, sobbing, are dragged away.

Enemies prosper and foes triumph: the Lord has afflicted her for her many transgressions. Her children are carried away, her conqueror’s prizes and captives.

From the daughter of Zion all beauty is banished and glory is gone. Her princes are starving deer that are lacking in speed and strength and cannot elude their pursuers.

Gone are all the good times that Jerusalem cannot remember, those pleasant and prosperous days before her townsfolk fell into the enemy’s hands and none was there to help her. Her adversaries gloated and mocked her desolation.

How grievously has Jerusalem sinned: she is filthy, unclean, and all that did her honor have seen her naked and shamed. She groans in the grief she feels and turns away her face.

Impurity hid in the hems of her skirts, but she took no heed. Her fall is all the worse for she herself was at fault, and no one cares or comforts. ‘O Lord,’ she cries, ‘behold my woe, for my foe has triumphed.’

Jackboots have marched in the temple where barbarous hands have besmirched the sacred objects and fouled the holy places where fear and respect should have kept them away.

Keening and sighing, her people search for crusts of bread; jewels they trade for meat in their frailty and famine. ‘See, O Lord, how far I am fallen, to what I’m reduced.’

Look, all you who pass, and see if you have a sorrow that is anything like my sorrow in the day of the Lord’s great wrath.

My bones burn with the hot fire he hurled upon me. He spread a net to entangle my feet. He has checked my steps and has left me stunned and faint at the end of the dismal day.

Now is the yoke of my sins that the Lord has woven together heavy upon my neck. I stagger beneath their weight. The Lord has delivered me over into my enemies’ hands, and I cannot stand against them.

Our mighty men are trampled and trodden underfoot. The Lord has assembled foes to crush our fearless fighters. And our maidens he has ground down, all the daughters of Judah, as if they were gathered grapes dumped down into a winepress.

Piteous are these things, and I weep and my eyes stream tears; the comforter that should soothe my soul is far away. My children, in desolation, see that my enemy wins.

Quavering hands does Zion hold forth, requiring comfort, but there is none to console or offer her any aid, for the Lord has filled her neighbors’ hearts with implacable hatred: Jerusalem, once fair, is foul as a piece of filth.

Rebellion against the Lord is what I have rashly raised, and the Lord is right to chastise me. The world sees how I suffer. My maidens and my young men are banished and sent into bondage.

Seeking food for their empty bellies, my priests and my elders have perished throughout the city. I have called out to my lovers, but they have been false and have failed me.

That I am in deep distress, O Lord, you can surely see: my bowels are troubled; my heart is sore and sickens within me. I have behaved badly, and everywhere there are swords dealing death abroad, and at home, too, there is death.

Up to now, there was none to comfort me or care. My enemies heard of my trouble and delighted at what you have done. But one day, you will visit your wrath upon them, too, and they shall know your anger and be as bereft as I am.

Visit upon their transgressions the punishment you have inflicted on me in my moment of pain, for I see how they are wicked and my faith fights with despair. The sighs of my soul are many and my heavy heart is faint.