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Some
Portraits Of Early Ideas Leonard
Feeney, S. J. (Sheed and Ward, 1941) XIII. THE
EXILE On any day but
Saturday — and for our sakes not on Sunday — but with haunting regularity on
five days of the week you could hear his call in our street. He was whiskered
and hunchbacked and wore a long-tailed coat and an over-sized hat that slid
over his ears. He drove a loose-wheeled wagon that seemed to be rolling all
ways at once and was drawn by a horse that had not been currycombed for
months. The horse looked more stuffed than real, and there were times when so
did the driver. Taken together they seemed an epitome of lazy motion, yet
they were models of persistence in faithfully returning for the errand which
brought them to our street. The boys pelted the man with bad fruit and called
him vile names. He never answered them, except to go on shouting in a
monosyllable the purpose for which he had come. I
was eleven years old when there suddenly dawned on me the tragedy of this
poor vagabond’s existence. True, I had never joined with the hoodlums in
stoning or abusing him, but I had failed to appreciate the extent to which he
was a victim rather than an enemy. When this realization came to me, I decided
to let him know how I felt toward him by offering a few cheery words of
sympathy. These he disdained as something suspicious. He merely rubbed his
long beard and drove on. His refusal to be pitied made me all the more
interested in his desolation, so I determined to follow him, discover his
origins, find out where he lived. This I did during one of the summer
holidays. I shadowed him for a whole day, even going without lunch at noon. I
trailed him to the waterfront, and under the bridge, and down several side
streets, and into a slum of sorts. I saw him unhitch his wagon and leave it
standing in a yard. I saw him put his horse to feed in a shed, and then mop
his brow wearily, and enter his house for supper. It was just at the hour of
sunset. The insults of the day were over. He had a wife, so I discovered, and
she was preparing his evening meal. And he had a daughter. There
she sat on the door-step, in the midst of her own, a dark Madonna of
seventeen, waiting for the waters of Baptism to fulfill in her eyes the New
Testament promised by the Old, and to which she had far more title than any
of us Irish and Italian interlopers who mingle the Faith with fun. She
was reading a book when I first saw her. Eyes are never so lovely as when
they are avoiding your own. Later I saw her rise and carry a basket on her
head, and move among her kind as one destined for election and sacrifice. Her
tribe sensed this in her, and that is why she dared not, save in ambush, talk
to a Christian, even to a Christian child. The
incident left me speechless, and it was not until years later that I knew
what I had wanted to say — not on my own account, for such loves are purely
literary — but as hostage for someone who would be songless in her
bereavement. Here is what I wrote, finally: In
your dark eyes I see is so, Something
I needed lots to know. Something
Isaiah said I find Now
makes a meaning in my mind. What
Judith, Ruth and Esther were, For
the first time I now infer. Our
Lady’s voice unto my ear Becomes
more definite and dear. Rarest,
the world is all awry, But
father, mother, you and I Will
quadrilaterally allied Defeat
the death we shall have died When
. . . and I dared not add the last
line, which would be prophetic of her destiny. “But
where shall I go?” she said after her Christening, which was undertaken at
peril of her life, even over attempts to poison her food. “For
contemplation, warm countries are best,” she was told. “Will
South America do?” “It
will do.” “Is
it far enough?” “Not
quite far enough, but it will do.” “And
there can be no attachments?” “In
your case, none. For you the price of God is everything else. You must make a
supernatural equivalent of what is native in you: ‘an eye for an eye, and a
tooth for a tooth.’” “What
about my prayers?” “It were better to
be free even in your prayers. Let Christ choose your favorites. Remember, you
are of His blood, even before it was poured on the Cross. There are cheap
attachments one can make to creatures under guise of offering novenas in
their behalf. Yours must be a sword renouncement, like Abraham’s with Isaac!” “Can’t
you put it more gently than that?” “There
is no way of putting it more gently than that.” But
there was, and I was determined to find it, even though it might take me
years. For it is the business of the poets to be the servants of the mystics,
to catch their cast-off thoughts, and to phrase their farewells. Even a
martyrdom is softened when it is set forth in song. That a strong song was
needed, I could clearly see, one equal to the mettle of the maid. Because of the
girl in the Gospel who lost her groat, Because of the
little boy by the fountain who lost his boat, Because of the
nervous piccolo player who lost his note — Because there
are partings on Earth too hard to be had: The waving wench
on the dock and the land-loosed lad, The widow, the
warden, the jail, and the son gone mad — We two who were
sentenced on Earth to be braver far Than any except
what Our Lord and Our Lady are, Shall singly
shine henceforth, as a star and a star; And not
interfere any more with each other’s light, No matter how
murky the mist, how dismal the night, Or whether the
clouds conceal or reveal us right. Now, mind you, I
do not want you even to pray for me. Let our
dismissal be done in a downright way for me, And neither be
sad about it, and neither be gay for me. For nothing can
grieve for nothing, is that not true? And nothing plus
nothing is nothing, not one nor two, And you willed
to know me as nothing, and I willed you. And God will be
pleased, if God can be pleased at all, As we raise
between us the sky and the high sea-wall, So to slake our
souls in the wastes where His pities fall. She
sailed to South America on a small boat. The boat weighed only five thousand
tons. I was on the dock, pretending to be one of the baggage boys, looking
among the visitors for him who would miss her most. But I could find no one
bidding her farewell. I
watched the ship till it reached the crest of the horizon, and sank in the
far southeast. Only two corollaries on this subject remain in my notes, a sestet and a double quatrain, on an identical theme. It is a difficult theme to handle, and I often laugh at my efforts, for they are perfectly contradictory. The
first: I must regret my
partings more, Renounce, not
just refuse, And make a face,
and pace the floor, And burst into
boo-hoos, When someone
ambles out the door, I am so pleased
to lose. The
last: What soared into
the sun Will return one
day, Remolded and
respun In a rarer ray; Identical, yet
different, Indeed, Divine; And what was
never, never meant For me, will be
mine! |