For Paul the Deacon: Monte Cassino AD 790

AND was it then so dark, your age,
did the lamp burn so low
then but eight centuries after
that strange death on the lonely hill-top—
death of a vanquished man but
birth of a conquering godhead?
Was it then so slow,
the quickening spirit of grace,
did the foe
show his barbarian face
so terribly, so unrelentingly,
then as now?
We have turned to a sad smirched page
of civilization’s manuscript—the scribe
falters, his unclean quill
is plucked from the vulture,
writes with the blood of carnage,
stinks of battlefield sepulture,
and yet still,
still over the long destructive centuries
echo Alcuin’s words to you at Monte Cassino:
est nam certa quies fessis venientibus illuc,
hic olus hospitibus, piscis hic panis abundans—
Christ’s peace and the loaves and the fishes,
rest for the weary and food
for the burdened and heavy laden
and the love of man for all men:
so was it then.
But now the guns roar and spit across the ravished vineyards,
now is the age most dark:
the well-loved roof-tree of Benedict desecrated,
our time's unlovely skeleton stripped stark.
The sky clouds to the twilight of mankind,
pity's eclipse, and the terrifying kingdom of the blind.

18 February 1944

NOTES

• the Latin quotation was used by Kenneth Jackson (Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson 1909–1991, Celtic languages scholar) in his Studies in Early Celtic Nature Poetry (1935), 103. Then when he took up the professorship in Edinburgh, SP became a firm friend of Jackson; but he may have seen his book before this date
• a probable MS first draft of this poem is composed on a 'Notice to passengers' card of BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation; identified from the logo) at Basrah (sic) airport, the card dated 22 February 1942. In archive: Captain Piggott to leave on the launch from the pontoon, flying to Bahrein (sic) for breakfast; then lunch in-flight to Karachi (where tea and dinner to be served).
• From British Airways website: it's likely that this would have been a Sunderland aircraft (a 'flying-boat') in use.