POEM: IF I SHOULD DIE BENEATH ASTRID SKY

 If I Should Die  

Beneath Astrid Sky

The newly-clad path led past the hill.

It turned I turned, for want of will.

And through a scrub and hawthorn glade

I came beneath its dusty shade.

In scale it rose on mighty limb,

some giant children’s giant sim

of steel, cement and  buttressed iron.

It echoed back the all-clear siren.

Over water and sloping land,

in century last it came to stand.

A gateway to our once fair city,

it rose for love; it rose for pity.

(Some say by pride a mountain bowed

and rainbows split, disturbing cloud.

I say the sky seemed lower then;

the past seemed then a simpler when.)

It took its name from a distant world

as skyward rose, its road unfurled.

Pylon to ribbon, the time it flew

till oldest old was made anew.

Like most I rode this mighty way

where steel licked cloud upon the day.

Like most I feathered and grew wing

to soar the sky, with birds to sing.

And like a ribbon topped a gift

that God had given—our eyes lift

at dawn, as sun’s rays set to gleaming;

at night, when car lights set to streaming.

The Astrid Sky did welcome all.

And all who came here heard its call.

By such a bridge we were to say:

How rich a life is here today!

And to our city came the grandest grands

along Astrid’s way from far-way lands.

And ring-tipped fingers drove cars of air,

along fair Astrid’s golden stair.

And all was is, and as it would,

till chilling wind and ancient Should

brought cracks to tar and gave steel fires,

ending ways of our desires.

O, it’s not so much so much went wrong,

it’s just so much that went along.

And Time—in time—it came around

to dead our time, without a sound.

Our city cracked, the lands grew bare.

And seas did slime and stale the air.

And things unwound beneath a sun

too hot to glade our rabbit run.

...

Now here by a rusted paint-flecked post,

a giant’s finger, an iron ghost

of a bridge shorn of land and water;

a bridge once made of a muted matter.

The final curtain draws to its close,

and a final roaring—such like!—rose...

And if I die beneath the Astrid Sky,

bury me where the rough stars lie!

 OKAY, I WROTE THIS SEVERAL YEARS AGO, and I must have been tripping or something. I think there was an astronomical event going on—perhaps meteor showers from the Astrid belt region of our solar system. It was a few years ago, so I’m not sure. The name is from Old Norse meaning “divine strength, or divine beauty”. Reading through it, I’m struck by the sense of hubris evident in the building and use of this giant causeway or bridge that is the showpiece for the unnamed city (Every City, I suppose). I think I capture this dangerous sense of pride with such images as “ring-tipped fingers drove cars of air” and the bridge as “God’s gift” with ribbons—like it was some giant birthday present or something, or when the speaker says they “grew wings to soar the sky”. (Icarus, anyone?) The bridge’s name suggests a sense of overweening pride on the part of the builders, like bragging the Titanic is ‘unsinkable’ or something (“Near, far, wherever you are/I believe that the heart does, go on/ Once more you open the door…” ugh! Stop! My gag reflex kicks in about here. Sorry if there are any Celine Dion fans in the audience.) The builders fail to consider that asteroids fall to Earth from time to time, in the form of meteor showers; falling being the operative word.

     I was a little surprised at the harsh environmental imagery that comes upon the scene in the later stanzas. And though the bridge itself was made some time ago in the “the century last”, I almost get a ‘Buck Rogers’ futuristic vibe to the whole scene, or something out of the classic 1936 SiFi movie, Things to Come, with all those giant, glass towers and elevated roadways, and 'flying cars' and things. [Actually, the movie is a horrible, and frankly totalitarian, imagined future of so-called technological 'progress', and one I want no part of!] So, is this a bridge from today, or one that is yet to be built?

     I like the fact the speaker has seen the rise and fall of the bridge (along with the city, the region, perhaps the whole world) and now reflects on the folly of its construction and the blind, mad lives they once led. The speaker has returned, over a landscape that is gradually re-wilding, to die amid the bridge's ruins, though he says he has followed the path there “…for want of will”. Has he come there reluctantly? Was he forced to return for some reason? He may die there, but he says he wants to be buried where “the rough stars lie.” He does not to want to be buried under the bridge. Then where? And what are "rough stars", and where do they lie, anyway? These are questions I’ll leave for the one or two readers who chance upon this poem, perhaps beneath their own bridge of dreams.

      Finally, the impending war or disaster (a “final roaring”) that the speaker hints at echoes the introductory stanza with its “all-clear siren”. It tells us this is a time when conflict and chaos are never far from the lives of people, at least as imagined in this strange little world I seemed to have made up out of shooting stars.

Cheers, Jake.