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    In the Wake of the Day
    In the Wake of the Day
    In the Wake of the Day
    Ebook101 pages55 minutes

    In the Wake of the Day

    By John Ash

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    About this ebook

    Istanbul—a place that is both exotic and familiar,spanning west and east, past and present—is fully explored in thiscollection of poetry that sketches out its many faces. Memories, cultures, and histories intersect in these poemsthat arch from imaginings of contemporary Turkey and trace back along a journey to Antioch. With characteristic playfulness, sophistication, and savage wit, thissojourn delves into what it means to be a part of a culture and to celebrate what is loved and ultimately unknowable.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIndependent Publishers Group
    Release dateApr 1, 2010
    ISBN9781847779175
    In the Wake of the Day

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      Book preview

      In the Wake of the Day - John Ash

      Part 1

      The Women of Kars

      The Couple

      When evening came on

      The Great Wind started up,

      And a knife flashed in the kitchen.

      The old women were cowled

      In white, sitting before doors so

      Weathered their colour could not

      Be determined. Black water thrashed.

      Rain spattered down like bolts.

      A vile stench issued from

      The topiary bushes. The couple

      On the far side of the wall spent

      Whole evenings reciting numbers,

      Then sealed themselves in their room.

      Asphyxiation appeared

      Inevitable, but they woke

      Unharmed, and, in the calm

      Of dawn, washed their clothes.

      Olives

      In the lands to the west of the Jordan

      Olive groves were guarded by the soldiers of the kings

      By night and day, and the destruction

      Of a single tree was punishable by death

      Or mutilation. This is no longer the case,

      But I am not convinced of the improvement.

      Unasked For

      A white cloud came to the City,

      Mouthing platitudes, contradictions,

      And everything stopped,

      Avenues silent as canals.

      Lines of black statues carrying pistols

      Appeared on the edges of the pavements.

      I liked the embroidery and the gold,

      But that was all. I placed flowers

      In chapels (lilacs, peonies), but that

      Was only because I didn’t know what

      I was doing, worshipping a tyranny.

      Cloud of my childhood

      And my mother’s lukewarm prayers,

      I do not understand this visitation.

      You should be shut safely

      In a nursery decorated by

      A Renaissance master, one of the

      More aimless ones, torn between

      Faith and the apprehensible world

      According to your dicta, which the day rejects.

      I was an idiot like everyone else,

      Neither ducking nor exceeding

      The average level of malfeasance, I would

      Have worshipped a cube, like the Nabataeans.

      This might have been the more rational choice.

      The late light on the sweet waters

      Of this millennial harbour is a refutation

      Worth a thousand volumes, a ton of inert icons.

      I don’t know what’s happening, never have,

      And what, in the words of the opera, what

      Shall I do? The colours and the accents

      Will change irrevocably. I have friends,

      I think, but want no one beside me

      Like a scented flank: that would be a disaster,

      A paroxysm, lasting a lifetime and more.

      This is precisely how it is.

      You will learn nothing, absorbed as you are

      By your white thoughts and the drowsing swans

      Of your order. O emblems and symbols, return

      At once to the absurd oval from which you came!

      Finding Prostanna

      for Bronwyn

      On the way back

      From the Canyon of Inscriptions,

      I glimpsed for a second a sign that said

      Prostanna, which I knew at once to be

      A city of ‘the wild Pisidians’,

      But there was no time that day

      For further exploration, and we sped

      Along the causeway to the island

      (Weathered houses, metal-clad,

      Plane trees, a boat builder hard at work,

      Pensions, poppies, a small church like a barn).

      As the light faded a fierce south wind sprang up,

      And the white tablecloths were agitated

      Like the wings of limed birds. We made

      Enquires, and, yes, the waiters all agreed,

      There was an ancient city called Prostanna.

      It was easy to find. It was only five kilometres

      Away, but they had told us what they thought

      We wanted to hear, not anything they knew.

      So, benignly misinformed, we set out

      For Prostanna in the late afternoon

      Of the following day, when, we reasoned,

      The light would be at its most alchemical,

      Turning stones to ingots. But what awaited us?

      There might be a theatre perhaps? An agora,

      Or a library, houses, towers, tombs, fine ashlar

      Of the Hellenistic Period, when states quarrelled

      Continually, but trade and cities flourished. All those

      Antiochs, Alexandrias, Apameas and Seleucias…

      The road wound up from the lake shore

      Aslant a near-vertical mountainside.

      Bronwyn winced, and moaned in the back seat,

      Head down, and I said, perhaps a little callously:

      ‘Well, dear, you wanted to see the Taurus Mountains…

      And did you know that somewhere, I forget where,

      Shakespeare alludes to the snows of the Taurus?’

      We arrived, at last, on the edge of a natural terrace,

      Suspended above the glass of the lake, and here

      There was a village full of dark, wooden houses,

      And a second sign proclaiming Prostanna.

      This gave us hope, but the road ended, and the track

      Branched and branched again, but signs remained,

      Giving us further hope that the place could be

      Reached, although our books were silent on the subject.

      Tabula Rasa. Thus, it became inscribed and coloured

      With images of which we had no knowledge or

      True understanding. We walked for

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