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Richard Berengarten



 

                                          FALLING
                                            (in a Pit)


                                                 (29)
                                                 
坎

                                         From Changing





_____________________________________________________________
 water                                                                                        
water




                                  Way down


                                 
If all ways are
                                  gifts, named or unnamed,
                                  downwards may yield

                                 dark treasure,
                                 though it is called
                                 unnameable, being

                                 so swift sweep-
                                 ing in arrival, no
                                 recognizance can

                                 prepare the heart
                                 for batterings there
                                 to be endured.

                                 From retrospects
                                 you’ll know later
                                 were no accidents,

                                 courage. What is
                                 yet indecipherable, you
                                 will mark and name.


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jeopardy                                                                       in double danger





                                   1.  Tazmamart


                                  
8 July 1973, Rabat,
                                   Morocco: Ali Bourequat and
                                   two of his five brothers

                                   Bayazid and Midhat, are
                                   arrested and interrogated
                                   blindfold in presence

                                   of Hassid, King of
                                   Morocco, who wants them
                                   out of his damn way.

                                   They get incarcerated
                                   for eighteen years, the last
                                   eleven in Tazmamart,

                                   a disused tank barracks
                                   beneath Atlas Mountains.
                                   They get holed up in

                                   adjacent underground
                                   cells, three meters by two
                                   pitch dark.



_____________________________________________________________
already in the abyss                                                 and falling into a pit





                                   2. Where four winds meet


                                 
Never allowed out,
                                  not seeing daylight for
                                  eighteen years, each

                                  has a concrete slab
                                  for bed, eighty centimetres
                                  long, two or three

                                  blankets regardless
                                  of heat or cold and one
                                  change of shirt and

                                  trousers per year. With
                                  scorpions, cockroaches
                                  and two visiting snakes

                                  as cellmates, they
                                  learn to sleep sitting.
                                  If they lie down,

                                  they’ll never get up
                                  or out of this desert hole
                                  where four winds meet.



_____________________________________________________________
deep in the abyss                                                           danger, danger





                                   3. With their whole hearts


                                  
Through ventilation-holes
                                   they call each other, chant
                                   Koranic verses, share

                                   memories of paradisal
                                   Paris streets, bars and cafés
                                   where they’d met to drink

                                   and restaurants where they’d
                                   dined. They convert chick-pea
                                   gruel to princely feasts

                                   and, together, map contours
                                   of countless remembered and
                                   imagined places, name them

                                   and take walks there, inhabiting
                                   and repossessing them with their
                                   whole hearts. ‘So long as we

                                   had nothing at all,’ says Ali,
                                   ‘our memories clothed us, who
                                   were spiritually naked.’



_____________________________________________________________
abyss                                                                                within abyss





                                   4. Torturers


                                  
They supported one another.
                                   Not knowing if they’d ever get
                                   out, they did not give up.

                                   When unseen companions
                                   in neighbouring cells died, they
                                   mourned them with prayers.
 
                                   Deaths of others, together
                                   with overhanging presences of
                                   their own, redoubled their

                                   strengths, for these were
                                   inverse to those of emperors
                                   and kings: the powers

                                   of being powerless being
                                   doubly more durable. Later
                                   Ali says, ‘Human beings

                                   possess resources they don’t
                                   know about. Torturers can’t
                                   destroy a person’s dignity.’



_____________________________________________________________
handed through the vent                                                     a bowl of rice





                                   5. An owl


                                  
Then an owl comes, bird
                                   of ill-omen for Moslems. Each
                                   nightfall seven times the

                                   creature of night cries its
                                   other cry, not the death cry.
                                   5 September 1991: release,

                                   no less mysterious and
                                   incomprehensible than first
                                   arrest and imprisonment.

                                   Each weighs half his
                                   previous body weight and
                                   has to relearn to walk

                                   and see. In this new light,
                                   things keep flickering and
                                   blurring then going out

                                   of focus and dazzling
                                   unbearably. Vision takes
                                   three months to stabilise.



_____________________________________________________________
pit full                                                              but an outside does exist





                                   6. By a Scandinavian sea


                                  
Ali walks on the beach
                                   by a Scandinavian sea
                                   and picks up pebbles.

                                   ‘I no longer know what
                                   fear is,’ he says. ‘And death
                                   doesn’t frighten me. Or

                                   violence. Or threats. I’ve
                                   been plated in an armour
                                   that isn’t known to exist

                                   and can’t be taken off.
                                   I’m sharper in awareness
                                   of injustice from knowing

                                   unbounded strength far
                                   beyond hate. We were dead
                                   and we came back. Now

                                   delivered, I savour
                                   unique moment’s breath
                                   night and morning.’




_____________________________________________________________
out                                                                                         of the pit




Copyright © Richard Berengarten 2015

poet Richard Berengarten
Richard Berengarten is a European poet who writes in English and lives in Cambridge. Born in London in 1943 into a family of musicians, he has lived in Greece, Italy, the UK, the USA and former Yugoslavia, and has travelled widely in other countries. He has published more than 20 books and his poetry has been translated into more than 90 languages. His latest book, Notness: Sonnets, was published in March 2015 by Shearsman Books, which has also brought out new editions of several of his earlier titles, originally published under the name Richard Burns. The poem here, and another which appeared in Molly Bloom 7, are taken from Changing, a book-length poem composed between 1984 and 2014, whose structure is based on the I Ching.
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