sw00636sem-1.aerual

Seminary           1                                                       

     Written in 1961, this is the first of three elegies on spiritual life
     for which revisions exist into November of 1965.  One day perhaps.
     I was a novice in a Jesuit Seminary in Minnesota at that time.
     These elegies are passing strange.  I know not how to premise them.
     - - -


 Aerual


Three years my life in essence lost
When mortal hate my senses took,
And darkness hid a once pure soul
That slipped and fell--the bridge not crossed.
As pages from a sacred book
      Were ripped,
These raven powers, April grasses, stole.

Thus Aerual my spirit left;
My angel wept new unborn tears.

What Hates loomed above the shell
As Pluto stole the happy maid.
A markèd black so quickly spread
Throughout the fort where she did dwell
It fell corrupt, all life bereft.
The added thrust to twisted thought
Which fed upon Satanic bread
Entangled spring, though barren dead.

O Aerual, O Aerual,
I've cast thee from thy only home,
I've battered down your humble wall;
I've sent you sand on which to roam.
What deed more dark?  What deed more dark?
No longer can my pencil move.
(The heavy cloud that hides me now
 Will not a further thought allow,
 Till quiet rest the zephyr prove.)

How lost, awaited zephyr, was my life:
A soul in death, the fort of flesh
Sand-slaved by sand-enslaving airs.
(How sad: how sad the very thought
 Of loss, the loss of Aerual,
 The thought of loss, the loss of Aerual.)

Such repetitious sorrow;
And yet, such sorrow does repeat.

Harken then, thou joyous zephyr, rest;
To you I elegize my life,
My Aerual, the donum dat.

I lived, a man, a child in Christ;
My ways were children's ways--
Abundant tears, imagined fears,
Excited smiles, and happy whiles.
My play was children's play--
Mud pies, and castles formed from sand.
My joys were children's joys--
A festive time, the trees, the wind.
In dreams; in acts, I was a boy.

A member, one, but lastly, none:
From living town,
Love-freed by free and loving grace,
To desert fort,
Sand-slaved by sand-enslaving airs,
My being clothed in night did fall
Away, a nomad all alone.

O Aerual, O Aerual,
I've castthee from thy only home.

To rest among the April grass,
To move with men of life and light,
To work beneath the vernal sun;
To live where spring eternal grew
Were all alone an innocent's delight.
But now delight by newer path
Has satisfaction found--
A path of death and burning ground.

But first, before this path it took,
"Twas Aerual that led the way--
The way of free and loving grace,
The narrow path, the open way.

How quickly life did fall away!

A soul; a body maketh man.
The first by grace, his being, vivifies;
The last by dust, his being, fortifies.
This last was then the home, the fort
Wherein my Aerual within
The first did find abode and made
Alive the whole, the total man.

From this abode the maiden Aerual,
While leading me across the bridge,
Was forced to flee, and I to drown withal.
In Pluto's arms was she, and I in desert-sea.

An innocent, a child of God,
Impeded self in growth to grow.
A child of God, when spring was full,
Impeded self, his growth to know.

Emblazoned now upon his heart
Were Pluto's glossy, raven words.
And thus he trudged the Stygian trail
Enfolding night around his home;
Expelling light from its abode.

An empty shell, the home of flesh,
A fort corrupt, on sand appeared.
No mere mirage, this fort bereft
Of all released by spring.
Reality besmeared with grime--
A monument of dust to time,
To time ephemeral.
A passing night enjoins the whole
And empty is the dawning's role.
But yesterday a splendid fort;
Today a dune protects the site--
A monument of sand to night,
To night unchangeable.

Within the body reigns a soul,
Abode of Aerual, but/
The soul is dead; the body dust,
For Aerual from home was thrust.

O Aerual, O Aerual,
I've battered down your humble wall.

The fort, a stronghold physical,
A stronghold true, and yet a fort
Surmountable, was overcome,
Because its life interred
Exposed a vapid, empty 'hold
To desert's bold, relentless dust.

The mystery of midnight airs
Across the barren wastes insued;
Its weird and wild cacophonies,
Charged perplexities of demented joy,
Caught sands and dashed the wall
With Vandalic force, levelling all.

Unmeasured miles the eerie storm
Expressed a power ominous.
With morbid moans and strident screams
Implanting fears within my heart,
It raged and razed the ramparts strong,
Unleashed wrath of Satan's art.

Amid the primal blooms of spring:
Anemone and daffodils,
My Aerual, that maiden pure,
Was wont to live; to be with God.

Upon the ivied garden wall
She rested still, unrestinggrace.
In her repose/ the action/ did abound;
Her quietude is one/ of love/ unbound;
'Though still, is ne'er inactive found.
Within this tranquil state of act,
I also sat with Aerual.
Together we enjoyed the view
Which spoke of God's exceeding love:
The flowers fair, the gentle wafts
Of balmy spring's Aeolian air,
The olive meads bedecked with dew,
Each nascent blade in beauty born
And silver-spanned by spider webs;
The faithful trees that burgeon new
In wooded vales, on wind-swept wolds.

Above this peace serene,
Apollo's flaming chariot
Made hot the wall which she did grace.

As Aerual's companion true,
I also/ sat upon the ivied stone
Enthralled by spring; engrossed in spring,
The wonderment that filled the earth
With multitudes of living things.

The heat of day intense became
Upon the humble wall,
So Aerual, and I for shame,
Were forced to leap.

                               Forsaken rock,
A rampart built of flesh for man,
In solitude you wait for death.

Prevailing westerlies arise
And all the air, a turbulence, foretells.
The reigning sun, a common pact
With Vulcan, now decrees;
Incarcerates the hapless realm
By sending rays of whitened heat.
Portentous calm engenders fear,
While darkness, the horizon, hides.

Then massive clouds of whirling dust
Appear above the western plain.
They muster force from angered winds,
They roll and toss in frenzied ire,
They ebonize the occident
In every part that strikes the eyes;
They tumble towards the noon-day fire.
Tempestuous groans from distant dark
Obtrude upon my fearful ears
And louder, louder, louder grow,
Resounding kettledrums
Of monstrous clouds in thunderous roll.

A whipping wind invades the place
Where Aerual and I remain.
It snaps the limbs of stately elms
And twists the willows' tender boughs.
Beneath the/ burning heat and drying wind,
The vernal season's verdant vigour wans.
Behold, the umbered ivy dies!

Ironic laughs of dirging dust's
Blackened bowls inurn my soul
And lacerate the garden wall,
The fort of flesh, the desert dune.

Apollo's oft triumphant car
Is lost behind Satanic clouds
Of hellish rage.

Enslaving all the rites of spring,
The savage tempest roars and whines;
It claws and gnaws; it reigns as king,
A tyrant wrought in dire designs.
He rules the depths of mortal death,
"Tis Pluto; and the ebon bowls, his robes.

To dust the garden wall descends
Beneath the/ grinding sand,
The jewels on the robes of Dis.
A worthless dune the wall becomes
Beneath the black abyss of hate,
The rising storm of lethal fate.

Unearthly cries transpierce the night
When witches mouth theirwailings weird
As oracles of 'pending blight--

A moment's madness, eternal loss.

In trembling and timidity
I shuddered; torn between myself,
Retreated from the crumbled wall.
And running far from Aerual,
To her disclosed my pavid state.
I hid my face, abashèd thing;
In shame I veiled my countenance.
Within my veins a heated hate
Arose against the Source/ of Aerual,
And as the roiling haze,
The color and the aspect of despair,
Whipped and wheeled 'round about,
My life, my Aerual, in sorrow fled.

So battered is the humble wall.

O Aerual, O Aerual,
I've sent you sand on which to roam.

Depravèd wretch was I, my bowels wrung
By bitter gall.  My only food
Was rank, Satanic bread, the storm
Of boiling ire and all the waste
Abounding in its sordid wake.
An adamantine land of stark aridity
Deposing vital spring's enrobed viridity
Alone remains, a masticated realm
New-ground by teeth imbibed with hate.

Thus Aerual, the highest grace,
By thieving cast from soul, the fort
In wasting storms became a/ desert dune;
I/ fell, and falling, died.    



Seminary book intro / links to poems
-------------------------
Elegy


-
Brian A. J. Salchert