Alistair Elliot 

Talking to Bede

'You think historians must be keen to see
What followed their escape from history?
You think we can't find out? I'd rather hear
The earth described. Remind us of the Wear,
The creatures, plants and light where I began
To look around the domicile of man,
The home I only saw till I was seven.'

You miss the handiworks of God, in heaven?

'That's what we all must go without; so when
You die, bring news of nature, not of men.
None of us saw enough: we lived too much
In the small range of feelings, taste and touch.'

What, even you?

                                         'You'd think not, but I still
Long for one walk across a field or hill.'

The Tunstall Hills, then, limestone did you know
More than two hundred million years ago
They were a barrier reef, at the equator?

'I knew God made the world; I did think later
As well as man's Last Judgement being soon.'

We still think that! . You've ... heard about the moon?

'I know you ... we ... Man ... Armstrong has been there,
Taking, as well as bait, a flask of air,
And whistled sweetly through the crystal spheres
We thought a solid mesh of ringing gears.
We got the moon wrong; but I told the tides
With some effect for sailors and their brides .'
 
Indeed you did. But how you told the tale
About the monks at sea without a sail!
Bringing down wood on rafts to Tynemouth, they
Were caught by wind and stream and borne away,
Till like a seabird swimming far from view
They hardly showed across the shifting blue.
Out rushed a squad of Brothers, with the Prior,
And knelt, and sent up prayers - like mortar fire!
I like your verse! - while the whole show was guyed
By local heathen from the South Shields side.
(For good men's fates give joy to reprobates!)
Among these Geordie rustics and their mates
Stood Cuthbert, still a boy, appalled to find
It isn't all that natural to be kind.
He tried to rouse Their Noble Savagery
To pray, and when they wouldn't, bent his knee
And pressed his face to earth. The wind backed east,
Or else turned turtle, for the future priest,
The rafts reached shore, and the embarrassed clods
Admitted Cuthbert's God outshone their gods.
         But surely the next tide, the evening breeze
Onshore, were not surprising prodigies
To you, but chance, coming out right for once.

'The eyes of sadness and of confidence
See the same world. You'll know whose eyes were sharp
Someday. Till then, keep looking, and don't carp.'

Forgive me, Bede. The old see more; the dead,
If anything, see more than can be said.
         Do you see Durham, where your leavings lie,
Translated from the J arrow cemetery?
- 'Or rather, stolen, by a sacristan -
Aelfrid - a relic-crazy Westoe man - '
Who made you share a coffin- was that nice? -
With the shy saint whose Life you'd written twice.
        I went there from Pons Aelius upon Tyne
(Where Aelliots start to draw their family line?),
And saw, inside that one majestic room,
 How blessed are the meek in Cuddy's tomb.
He's got two covers on his burial place:
One says, 'Ricardus Heswell', to his face;
The other, laid above it, back to back,
Is meant for us: CUTHBERTUS, gold on black.
They've left his pillow with him - Oswald's head -
But now you're honoured with a separate bed.
        I stood and thought of you, the Church's light,
Your only miracle that you could write
Here in the dark of Britain, stay-at-home
Doctor, Transhumbria's answer to Jerome,
Your undivided virtue ending on
The last notes of the Gospel of St. John:
'Even the world itself could not contain
The books that should be written. Aah ... Amen.'
A life of ivory, in and out of books,
Leaving no record of your wit or looks -
The little teacher's jokes in your short course
On Writing Latin Right were never yours:
'Melissus said buttocks is feminine,
But Verrius recommends the masculine .. .'
'Tibiae: human shin-bones; later, flutes . . '
'Riches is always plural - so is toots
(Darling - but only in the vocative) . . '
'Bellus (lovely) has no comparative .. .'
And so on, tags I guess as old as Latin,
That sent a groan round classes Virgil sat in.
They take our feelings back to someone young
Trying the tastes of grammar on his tongue,
But not to you, I think. We can't see you
Or those you name -you didn't mean us to? -
Except: you wore your hair cut Peter's way;
In memory of the crown of thorns, you say.
Other men show us Caesar pleased at winning
A laurel crown because his hair was thinning,
Or Cleopatra's smile as Marcus took
His only catch, her kipper, off his hook,
Or, burning cakes he was supposed to cook,
 The first translator of your History book.
You never give such details. But may I,
A disappointed customer, ask why?
I brood on how your Brothers used to make
The illuminations down by J arrow Slake:
They drew with templates, compass and a rule -
Like pattern-lessons at an infant-school -
Or copied Bibles, inch by inch. Next door
You cut up Commentaries, and made more,
Wrote Christian elegiacs for relief,
Collected folk-tales with a saint-motif,
Learned from the authors on the library shelf
And turned into a scholar by yourself.
You never left Northumbria. But, Bede hinnie,
How could you take your geography from Pliny?

'Pax. Skinchies, Elia - Aelle - What's-your-name:
Forbear to judge. It's blasphemy to blame
The inhabitants of heaven, or of earth:
I wrote, like you, for all that I was worth.'

Since Dante put you in his Paradise
You don't need praise; and who could criticise
The writer who rose earliest to walk
About our glittering language, still all talk?

'Pity my native stuff is lost. God knows
I worked on that despised vernacular prose .'

Strange to compose without a lexicon!

'And spell the passing words, before they're gone,
Like Adam's animals, never seen before -
And maybe soon extinct, or heard no more;
          'Tell me about some animals, in fact.
Forget the Wear: thanks for your silent tact
About my birthplace and my monastery,
Despoiled by bookless raiders from the sea
And then by the original filth of man.
‘Show a consoling wonder- if you can’.
 
Oh Bedel Your churches of St Paul's and Peter's
Are kindly kept, with services and heaters.
Through the same windows J arrow light still falls
On surpliced cantors in their choir stalls.
There's a Musaeum: people come for miles
To see tom straps, smashed glass, nails, broken tiles,
And not to touch, relics not even yours,
For holy curiosity, not for cures.

'Yes, yes, the leavings: when they come, they see
The horrible marks of human territory
All round, where no one wants to live. What monk
Prays in these deserts of industrious junk?'

I saw a wonder on a summer's day,
Bede: I was walking on the landward way
To Lindisfame, and found the sort of place
That puts agnostics in a state of grace,
Two rivers north of Tyne. A little breeze;
Bright ripples in the underskirts of trees;
Among the flowers on the sandy shore
Hovered an insect overlooked before
In years of scarcely looking. It was stout,
Furry and pear-shaped, with the stalk held out
To drink its nectar from a moving cup -
Two wings, so not a bee. I looked it up:
Bombylius major L. - Linnaeus too
Had seen a bee-fly in his day. Did you?
I bet, like me you'd never heard of it.
          Another first time, I watched cuckoo-spit
Nymphs blowing bubbles, and looked up at home
These things that lay their house in farts of foam:
Grown, they're the brown kind that shoot up like spray
From boots in heather or bare feet in hay:
Froghopper, typical homopteran.
          For you, Bede, dry and fresh as that dry man
Whose book connects the stages of a creature
As if there were no miracles in nature,
 I hope these views from pleasant earth can cross
The barriers of years and bodily loss,
And --
                 'Yes. They reach me; almost with the smell
Of seasons I excluded from my cell ...
Enough for now. I'll ask for a repeat
When it's your heavenly birthday.'

                                                                          --If we meet.

'Benedictus benedicat!'

                                                                  And God bless
Your abbot Ceolfrith, patron of my Press,
And Benedict Biscop, your first abbot, who
Gathered the library that nourished you :
Tell them - they may be pleased - their fame's not large
Enough (like yours) to christen a garage,
But they're remembered where their scholar is:
You all gave names to Jarrow terraces.