RUIN

Thinking about ruin(s) came out of my last book on the Spirit of Place. This also emerged.

RUIN                                                                                                           

We played in that old ruin,

Mark, Sylvie, Dev and I,

Threading childhood dreams

Through something broken:                                        

Truncated walls, a single arch,

Lost purpose, masquerading as romance.

I led because I talked the best.

The others took direction,

Indifferent or desiring, 

Through laughter cracked by cruelty

Wrapped in nature’s greening stance.

                                                                

We grew up and unfurled.

Mark dreamt, Dev dared,

I wound up in my words,

Flirting with truth and Sylvie

More fragile than her beauty.

Nothing was settled, we only

Played for time, revolving  

In that other ruined structure    

Called the world.

Our hopes were vague,

All focused on survival,

Far too hung up to grieve

The missed stop of arrival.

Fast forward on to now -

Mark lost, Dev dead

On London streets and Afghan sand,

Sylvie, adrift in drunken dactyls,

Twice deserted (only once by me).

I still have my stories, my dissolving dream.

Thread end, dead end, back

To that eternal present

Beneath the mouldering arch,

For failure not my own,

Where grey and green rewind:

I am still living in the left behind.

Nature at least does not discriminate

Between what is and some more pristine state.

The ruin carries on, the teller tells,

Each prospering their shadow-selves.

© Wendy Mewes

Hell and healing

After three weeks of hell - total incapacity, insufferable pain, hospital in Rennes - I decided to turn to more traditional methods of healing yesterday. One of the chapters in my new book on the Breton saints is on this very theme, so some pratical research combined with the personal search for relief from pain that is preventing me from working, even reading or spending more than a few minutes on the computer, seemed a pragmatic idea. A kind friend took me to the place.
St Maudez is a specialist in skin diseases, eczema especially, but this fontaine is also associated with the cure of shingles. It sits beside a large, plain chapel in the countryside near Plouyé, with plenty of outside covered space indicating continued use for festivals and a pardon. There are two statues, one unusually incorporated in the steep-curved roof, and three basins, one shaped liked a four-leaved clover.

I made an offering and said my piece, then scooped water onto my burning face. Strangely after a couple of minutes there was a complete lull in the pain and a sudden flow of relief went through my whole body, so worn down after weeks of intense suffering. Then it was back, throbbing and stabbing around my eye and cheek-bone. For the moment, I have nothing more to say to St Maudez.