The Passing of a Hero
by Henning Koch
There were some who said this man/ does not grow old/ does he feed on honey-dew?/ is he blessed or does garlic sprout/ from his navel?/ his eyes are unwavering/ he fears no horizons/ does not give thought to/ his place of burial or/ execution/ does not tell his men in black/ to show up ten minutes late/ so his mourners have time to remember him/ never sat at night listening to the fridge singing/ or woke in a cold sweat wondering where in the garden/ he buried his life or/ how it is that words, like seeds/ must always grow into something else/ then wither?/
This man had no itch in his pouch/ the gold ran freely/ and from his stables came the whinnying of many horses/ in his kitchens the sizzling of much oil/ and wine was his very blood, you might say/ from the way he liked to drink/ Nor did he wait twenty years between children/ each year came a gentle bump as/ another child emerged with tiny hands willing/ to finish his work/ His lover, his wife, his women unknown/ in the tents/ all singing, none complaining/ all weaving, spinning, dancing, painting/ he buys them jewels, he burns frankincense for them/ he worships them in sackcloth/ cover his body in ashes/ walks with a stick to Manhattan/ to buy the finest cloth/ for them/
Yea, this man/ this man/ words fail me/ would that all could be like him/ would that all could grow one wrinkle/ as he did/ and find its beauty rivalled/ mountains/ and time came hurtling behind him, gripped his shoulder/ jumped clean over him like a buck goat/ the world aged but he did not/ he spent his afternoons in an old car with fake leather seats/ drank cold beer under the olive trees/ or lay in a hammock/ his head swimming at midnight/ listening to the midnight donkey/ tonight the fools are out/ tonight I shall sip the fruits of Nepal/ tonight let me be wild/ tonight let me make a big pyre and burn/ everything that has weighed me/ or measured me/ or led me/ or pushed me/ tonight let me watch the moths/ each one a work of greatness/ waft their pale wings at the moon and gently swarm/ till morning/ tell me, where do the moths go/ where do they sleep?/ and why do they love the light so/ yet choose the dark?/
This man did not lean on whey-faced priests/ to earn approbation in the markets/ this man chose the poor and feeble of mind/ to eat at his table/ shunning the smooth and the oozing/ whose pearls are all cultivated/ this man knew if the soil is not our home/ nothing is/
I mourn him today/ I eulogise what he gave/ no one will ever equal him/ there is no one who can emulate/ or show/ the many tiny things/ the tiny mechanism of his chronograph/ and then, rumbling from afar, the charge of his cattle/
Never again will there be one/ who buried his temples when the barbarians came/ and their feet hammered on the ground/ passing over his treasures/ to be dug up in another time/ when tourists come with cameras/ and ice cream/
This man, this man/ did not speak excessively/ said nothing/
I come to speak of him, I come to say/ no words of mine/ no words/ I have not the means/ to sing of him, his blood, his lineage/ his trees all billowing in the wind/ speaking his name.
This man had no itch in his pouch/ the gold ran freely/ and from his stables came the whinnying of many horses/ in his kitchens the sizzling of much oil/ and wine was his very blood, you might say/ from the way he liked to drink/ Nor did he wait twenty years between children/ each year came a gentle bump as/ another child emerged with tiny hands willing/ to finish his work/ His lover, his wife, his women unknown/ in the tents/ all singing, none complaining/ all weaving, spinning, dancing, painting/ he buys them jewels, he burns frankincense for them/ he worships them in sackcloth/ cover his body in ashes/ walks with a stick to Manhattan/ to buy the finest cloth/ for them/
Yea, this man/ this man/ words fail me/ would that all could be like him/ would that all could grow one wrinkle/ as he did/ and find its beauty rivalled/ mountains/ and time came hurtling behind him, gripped his shoulder/ jumped clean over him like a buck goat/ the world aged but he did not/ he spent his afternoons in an old car with fake leather seats/ drank cold beer under the olive trees/ or lay in a hammock/ his head swimming at midnight/ listening to the midnight donkey/ tonight the fools are out/ tonight I shall sip the fruits of Nepal/ tonight let me be wild/ tonight let me make a big pyre and burn/ everything that has weighed me/ or measured me/ or led me/ or pushed me/ tonight let me watch the moths/ each one a work of greatness/ waft their pale wings at the moon and gently swarm/ till morning/ tell me, where do the moths go/ where do they sleep?/ and why do they love the light so/ yet choose the dark?/
This man did not lean on whey-faced priests/ to earn approbation in the markets/ this man chose the poor and feeble of mind/ to eat at his table/ shunning the smooth and the oozing/ whose pearls are all cultivated/ this man knew if the soil is not our home/ nothing is/
I mourn him today/ I eulogise what he gave/ no one will ever equal him/ there is no one who can emulate/ or show/ the many tiny things/ the tiny mechanism of his chronograph/ and then, rumbling from afar, the charge of his cattle/
Never again will there be one/ who buried his temples when the barbarians came/ and their feet hammered on the ground/ passing over his treasures/ to be dug up in another time/ when tourists come with cameras/ and ice cream/
This man, this man/ did not speak excessively/ said nothing/
I come to speak of him, I come to say/ no words of mine/ no words/ I have not the means/ to sing of him, his blood, his lineage/ his trees all billowing in the wind/ speaking his name.
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Author's Note
I wrote this little piece while thinking, very late one night, how my modern, urban life seemed so inconsequential. I had just watched the movie, "Lawrence of Arabia", and I was moved by the childish simplicity and honesty of Auda Abi Tayi (Anthony Quinn), and on some level I wished life could be a little more like this - rather than the supermarket and the monotonous pavements and the media sucking all the poison from the world and spraying it into our atmosphere in a fine mist of hopelessness. In place of all that, I imagined a hero, a fighter, someone who won everything at once, and still, somehow, managed to preserve both a measure of humility and soul.
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"...each year came a gentle bump as/ another child emerged with tiny hands willing/ to finish his work..." touched me most in this strange eulogy which sounds as if an Assyrian wind blew it here from far away. Wonderful hero's journey. And the bard, in the end, resigns and sighs — how appropriate!
I guess this was how writers once made a living, by selling occasional poetry to Assyrians, etc. I mean, praising some ruler; or eulogies for those who had died, to be read out at burials. These days there isn't much call for it, we are much more into anti-heroes, which is probably quite a good development... but not for writers, who once had a much more stylish way of appealing to "the market" - than commercial prose, I mean. Would be interesting if more of us (maybe on Fictionaut?) could try our hand at praising heroes, just to see what comes out & if we even believe in them.
I just realised you put up "55 Superheroes" yesterday, I must have been unconsciously inspired by that...
perhaps there's hero scent in the air who knows. i've been thinking about it a lot because i so immersed myself into plotting as an art and, i'm afraid, as an obsession, that i can only see heroes and anti-heroes. i agree with your observation by the way. on another plane i totally believe in heroes especially small-scale nameless ones whose graves are forgotten.