“Oedipus at Colonus” and “Cape Ann”

Ce qui me suffit cependant, car mes misères,

le long temps et ma grandeur d'âme

me font trouver que tout est bien.

Tout est bien? Is it? Is all well?

Is it well in this translation?

"Well" instead of "endurance" or "submission,"

"resignation" or some such.

Greek stergein carrying that ambiguous load

and not for the first time

gilding or guiding the translator's vision.

Camus went with it,

tagging it in Sisyphe

and why not?

Maybe something

comporting with a soupçon

of French hauteur, morgue, je m'en fous,

endowing the suffering conquering

Sisyphus, stronger than his rock,

with disdain for his fate,

making Camus' point

on man absurdly abiding his woeful lot

when the gate to salvation is forever closed;

"no fate that cannot be conquered by scorn"

coming in as a closer.

All is well, said Oedipus the king, early on,

all is well, in his false relief

jumping the gun at the messenger's news

and where did it get him?

Precipitate fall from misled safety

to horror after horror of the terrible truth.

his will to fight his fate

becomes a makeweight, a false friend.

Later on, blind and old at Colonus

before a sacred grove with his daughter,

sitting peacefully on a stone,

a stranger tells him to quit his seat,

move on, holy ground of the Erinyes;

straight off, Oedipus' recognition,

Apollo's prophecy rings true.

Meanwhile Sophocles beautiful music distracts,

catches us unaware in its magic.

Oedipus, you have come,

led along in your hesitant steps

to the land of best horses, best men,

white-ankled women,

kempt groves and vineyards,

sharp-cut shade and bright light;

waylaid by your past acts

and future prophecy

you have rightly come

to the iron-minded Furies,

to their home in this grove

you have come,

Furies unrelenting, merciless,

rathe to act, rathe to punish.

As you learned, Oedipus, as you said,

no trust in soothsayers, the birds, the gods;

the only truth is the compulsion of fate,

the Furies hunting from the blind dark

of unyielding necessity,

following those who heed them

and those who don't.

To live as life may run, a pretty thought,

but your way was marked

before you were born.

Bear your fate and neither contend with it,

nor contemn it in your pride.

Camus dead wrong, dead wrong,

presenting Sisyphus toiling on through eternity

with curled lip and Gallic disdain.

Oedipus learned the horrors of his unwitting crimes,

learned in a long life to accept the inequity of his fate,

the price to be paid and finally, that all is well,

tout est bien

and now it is time to depart.

After a thunderclap at Colonus,

the libations;

Oedipus sets out.

At the steep cleft, the bronze stairway,

called by an impatient god,

disappearing from the sight of all,

save Theseus,

to the hidden fields of the dead.

By the will of the gods

for the weal

of Athens and Theseus,

why not?

Oedipus, guardian spirit, abides.

Despite Antigone's entreaties to see his tomb

Theseus is unmoved,

explains to Oedipus' daughters

the reason this is forbidden:

accept the wishes of your father,

his obedience to the gods,

honor my oath to him.

Oedipus lies hidden from all.

This, his last wish, preordained.

Heed the lesson Oedipus

learned long ago;

kick not against the goads,

give way, give way,

the fates cannot be conquered or restrained;

accept the mystery and obey.

Always a dutiful son,

Prince Charles of England

honors his mother, Queen Anne,

naming a New World cape after her.

Cape Ann embraces Gloucester

in its rocky arms,

"America's Oldest Seaport," so called,

Champlain's le Beau Port

and with John Smith's

barbarous naming out of the way,

Cape Ann aborning with new colonists

fresh from the Old World.

After knocking off in a few decades

the autochthonous Algonquian Agawam,

infected and killed by European diseases

or one way or another erased,

dispossessed, robbed of their land,

colonists cobbled up a permanent settlement

in Fisherman's Field, now called Stage Fort Park.

Bad ground for crops they soon found out,

but with the teeming sea at their doorstep

they took stock of the generous seaport

and soon learned to fish for the abundant cod.

Centuries later, in two separate waves,

Portuguese from the Azores,

Italians from Sicily emigrate,

enhancing the city's fishing fleet

with their home-grown fishing skill.

Down to the sea they go,

newcomers and latecomers all to this land,

nets, iron-strapped otter boards, harpoons,

hooks, baits, gaffs, gurry knives,

catching fish on Georges and the Grand Banks

from schooners and dories

to diesel trawlers and draggers,

harvesting fish hand over fist.

Gloucester becomes what it was meant to be.

Olson's PLACE, Ferrini's KNOW FISH.

Heart and soul, this city belonged to fishermen.

On the sea and inbound after the catch,

seen from leagues out

the city is there,

a mere eyelash thick,

then looming low on the sea rim,

then nearer yet, steaming in the harbor

past Ten Pound Island,

Gorton-Pew, Tarr & Wonson,

brick and clapboard buildings in a row

and there Our Lady of Good Voyage church,

copied after Pico's in the Azores,

twin serene blue-domed towers

and the blessed Virgin between

cradling a schooner in her left hand.

In the inner harbor

the smell of tar, long defunct fish

come to a savor,

low tide brings sharper smells,

barnacles, scabrous stones, old timbers exposed;

high tide brims with loose seaweed

and wandering debris;

the harbor and wharfs and surround

a work of decay and rebirth in progress

a breathing in and out

with every tide.

This was a real polis, a fishing city that was;

at least part way through the 1960s

and then Dagwood and Blondied up

in leaps and bounds

with the coming of Route 128,

a varicose vein, oedematic overnight,

making it easy for heavy traffic

Boston and its banlieues,

towns strung out along the coast,

these hordes from the southwest

reaching Gloucester in a hurry,

bent on making a day-tripper

and commuter paradise

from a fishing city that was.

Politicking of Ferrini and Olson

over the years,

Peter Anastas too,

their beloved selflessness

for the preservation of

this old fishing city,

by a quirk of location

caught in time's bottle;

lonely and safe back in the day,

end of the well-nigh unreachable line

northeast of Boston.

Their useful self-indulgence and pride,

these three littérateurs

I mentioned above,

righteous and Waldenesque,

not enough to save

the PLACE, the PLACE

from relentless Walmart and Mickey D's,

from sleazy commerce and decline

from PLACE to anyplace

in a couple of decades.

Don't get me wrong;

it's still nice but...

So what, you say.

Tell that to the Indians

or better yet,

give it back to the Indians

from whom you stole it,

get nostalgic and eloquent

about that rape and exploitation

while you're at it,

add that to your swarming passion

for a lost Gloucester.

Well, well.

Eventually, Olson left in a huff

disgusted by failure to achieve

his honest city on the model

of a Greek polis.

Heavy-handed all his life

with booze and smokes,

burning up with cancer

he dies in New York Hospital,

buried in Gloucester.

Vincent stayed on to the end,

valorously fighting the good fight

with City Hall and the forces of evil

as a poet fights.

Peter, too, in his own way,

a walker in the city,

a prolific writer in the local press.

What's the end of it all?

Or the beginning?

The discontent with change?

The squabble over

this legacy, that legacy,

the hard fact

that most people

don't give a shit

for history, old brick,

old roads, old ways,

sentimental cobblestones

of times long past.

Nothing is real to them but now;

shut up and pay the rent

make the car payments

get the kid into a decent school.

Is there a hallowed past?

A footprint?

And whose past is hallowed anyway?

Best to forget it, let go

of this contest of preservation.

The past is the past

and you will save nothing back there

that you can really bring forward.

At the end of the day

all of it

and us along with it

go into the final sidereal chill

because time in itself cannot

confer preservation, stability

or hallowing of a beloved past.

What we see and know for sure

is only the countenance

we put on the affairs of our own times,

the shape of the day, the passing hours

of our desperately present

and rudely incidental lives.