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Dante/Gent/Jerusalem
Martin Burke

City and city –but which is which and who am I in this twilight?
Night-time, night-time, echo and song –the world sleeps and dreams
Night-time in the cities of the heart –but which is Gent and which is Jerusalem?
O Jerusalem you are as beautiful as Blake described -as beautiful and as bitter
The exile sings at your gate
The stones are covered in blood
The lanes of Gent and Jerusalem converge and I cannot tell one from the other
It was always so and it always will be
Mirror-image or converse
Where language roots and where it stems from in words that are holy and profane
The shadows uniting and telling a story
The one I unravel in this fashion
Gent and that Other and the one walking there –the one who knows their singing
As I would know and be him unravelling the knots of confusion and silence
Singing also
In these lines and in whatever can be sung and no end, no end to it
Dante, Dante –teach me those verbs
Let the words of winter bow to those of the spring and may it be spring in the city
And let these also be the verbs of April
April and spring
Hope in the heart and hope in the world and voices raised in singing
Yes, all things for this
Hope and whatever the heart endures
Like music outlasting the notes on the page
The heart singing wildly and wildly
Twilight –yet with clarity for whatever the heart endures –and singing, singing for that
It was always so and it always will be
Music and no end to it –not to the longing it gives voice to
Longing that names the heart in its endurance
Longing that says ‘Remember me, remember me'
Those words a motif and motive
Here and now in the world

And will you walk beside me as I go?
Will you also sing down the alabaster halls of silence and night?
And there will be no end to it
No point at the which the song will finish though it will hesitate
No word be it holy or profane that cannot be used and uttered
So walk with me down the lanes of this town and tell me where we walk

Jerusalem, Jerusalem –the heart's legacy, Dante the singer, and Gent in the twilight of evening
Evening of the world
Evening in which these psalms rise and are offered to beauty, to beauty wherever it is found and celebrated
Here and now, there and then, and Dante at the tiller of the little skiff of verse
Yes, to beauty, to beauty, all things for beauty
Walking these streets –but walking where?
The streets of affirmation turning into the streets of passion
Blood on the stones
House after house
And a bitter wailing rising over the roofs of the world
This is also the heart's legacy
This is what it sings through winter ‘till April
Enduring and wailing –even to the beauty of the world and complaints raised against it
And there seems no resurrection for the crushed heart
All seems bitter and empty and only Dante could sing it
And I cry for the pain of Jerusalem
Yet beauty remains –this is also the heart's legacy
Wailing and beauty commingling on these streets
But Gent or Jerusalem –I cannot say
And there is much that I cannot say yet the heart will attempt all things
So whose is that hand upon the tiller and who does the singing here?
Where do I walk and what does it matter?
These streets merge into those small lanes and those forms assume their shadows here
therefore Dante teach me the difference or teach me how they are one and the same as
twilight closes about the streets and I do not know their names
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the heart longs and longs
It sings for beauty at twilight –at twilight and the coming dark
For beauty, all things for beauty
Psalm after psalm
In whatever language of the heart that it is sung
In Gent or in Jerusalem
In the city they merge into and form
In the uncalm longings of the heart

Dante-Gent-Jerusalem –this is the triad of night
Shadows weave a language I must speak
Darkness that could be the auroral darkness of God -whose hand now upon the tiller?-
and the splendid darkness of the river
Flow river, flow, out of forgetfulness into remembrance
Flow river, flow
The world is uneasy and no bird flies
Silence and silence and then the ringing of a bell
It is midnight in Gent and Jerusalem
Midnight on all the cities of the world and the exile cries in his longing
Who will not cry with the exile?
Who will not sing what he sings and weep what he weeps?
I sing with herbs and honey in my mouth
I am also that exile, I am also that song, I am also his lostness in the world
Exile and music
Exile no matter where the heart walks and music no matter the silence
And it is this that the heart endures –exile and music and whatever can be sung and
calling on Dante to sing it
In Gent as in Jerusalem
In gracious and intricate verse
In the perfect modulations of the heart
Teach me that music
Let me sing Jerusalem and let me sing Gent
Let me walk in this darkness to a known destination
Call it the core, or the heart's verb, or something that is neither and both
The fire in the mind that burns all names and leaves only the unsinged core
Burned like the heart is
Burned to scattered ash and perfect silence
There where all names merge
Where the exile can truly sing
Where the blood is washed from the stones
Where two cities merge to form a third –or expose the one at the core
Where perfect silence is
Where words form the perfect alliance
Words that can be sung from midnight ‘till April and which the exile can respond to

Yes, for this and no less
For this and all things in the dark
For this and exile and music
There where all the shadows bow down
There where the stars go on and on, there where the stars go on

Martin Burke is a poet and playwright, born in Ireland, but living now in Brugge, Belgium.
He has had poem published in UK: Stride, Shearsman, Scriberazone, The Richmond Review, Aesthetica, Proof, The Surface, Peer Poetry Magazine, Other Poetry, Projected Letters, Transference, etc
USA : Verse, Drunken Boat, off course, Tryst, Slow Trains, Terrain, the muse apprentice guild, Kookamonga Square , Poetry Magazine.com, The Aurora Review, Free Verse, Gypsy etc
Ireland : Virtual Writer, Crannog, Electric Acorn, The Dublin Quarterly, Dead Drunk in Dublin
Austria: Poetry Salsburg Review
Sweden : Ars Interpres
Recent Publications The Other Life -FootHills Publishing, NY (2004) The Weave That Binds Us - Inner Circle Publishing , Iowa (2004)
Forthcoming: The Lighthouse -FootHills Publishing, NY Psalms -Default Press , Ireland
E-books Triptych -Scare Publications Go -Slow Trains Publications Winter Journal - Tamafyhe Mountain Poetry A Leaping Spark - Tamafyhe Mountain Poetry
Plays Six Scenes From A War -New Theatre Publications, UK (2004) The Rose -a short play performed by the Manhattan Playwrights Group (2004) The Oresteia, a play reading, Brussels , Belgium , (2005)
Forthcoming Thebes Trilogy, Gent , Belgium (2006)
"Burke is the eloquent essayist of the sublime" Projected Letters