A few years ago I read Albert Schweitzer's On the Edge of the Primeval Forest and was fascinated by his obsessive approach to conservation, music, and nature. In order to celebrate his crazy love of humanity, I knew I had to write this poem. The thought of Schweitzer, a Lutheran pastor, who was also a Bach expert and organist, studying medicine at middle age in order to be a missionary doctor in the primitive African jungle captivated me.

God compels us to "madness" at times with the relentless power of his love. Schweitzer's example reminds me of this in the manner his spirit bowed down to his Creator and Saviour: a stark stranger in this consumerist, self-seeking, "perfectly insane," modern world.

Albert Schweitzer playing Bach at Lambarene

Equatorial wind rustles Palm trees on the Primeval Forest's edge.
Terrifying cries dominate the leaves' lethargic percussion:
A wild animal mortally savaged by man or beast,
Too deep in the jungle to be rescued by you.
You sigh in empathy. Your soul quietly weeps for Creation.
Then you fondly render Brahms' lullabies in acapella,
The now-soothed, orphaned litter of Red River hogs sleep.
Your unkempt, finger-combed long hair dramatically curtains
Uncompromising & intense eyes, burning with lava-like love.
Your zinc-lined French piano sings across the compound.
Unexercised fingers feel out familiar chords
& hesitantly play Bach';s beloved Fugues;
Unique chord progressions cast out demonic depression,
Declare mathematical joy in your Equatorial sitting-room.
God laughs at the surrealism: Baroque classical compositions
Echoing through the lush, Edenic, vine-tangled jungle.
Parsifal, the night-watch pelican guards your door.
Pet baboons & monkeys in the hospital yard look quizzical.
Orderly notes interweave with parrot chatter & monkey screech.
Caramba, the Labrador, warily watches that dwarf gazelle
who once chewed up a proof-chapter of your opus: CIVILIZATION.
Did your recital compete with background tribal chant & dance?
Did Bach';s melodic grace heal any broken hearts in Africa?
Did monkeys lope, chattering, through open windows
& press random notes in dissonance, provoking a generous laugh?
Did they climb your back, examine your hair for nits,
Pick your pockets for food, as you played the melodies?
Did a tree-frog hop onto the ivories & croak, halting
Your piano playing, until it leapt to the wooden windowsill?
No applause after your finale but you solemnly bow
To all your Maker's uncaged & magnificent menagerie.
This African animal audience a far cry from the glory
Of post-performance acclamation in ancient cathedrals!
A world away from that earlier career of majestic grandeur:
then you played the King of Instruments, the mighty swell
of antique, tri-tonal organs lauding your Creator in St. Sulpice.

···

It was during a family Sunday dinner that my brothers and I heard this sorry tale. I must have been about 7 years old at the time. Ronald would have been my paternal uncle. The family myth was that he had an incurable kidney disease and that my paternal grandfather decided to play God by killing (murdering?) him. I always felt it deeply ironic that all this negative psychodrama took place during the church's positive high festival: Easter. My paternal grandparents would have sung Handel's Messiah in the Pear Tree Baptist Church Choir. If only belief had been joined to the words of that oratorio.

SCENES FROM CHILDHOOD

Did you wash trembling, guilty hands
In the council-house scullery, after the fallen deed?
Did your youngest son pathetically struggle,
Hopelessly fight for life, in his nightmare sleep?
Did he cry out at your crazed unpaternal intent?
You squeezed, terribly-tightly on his slim throat.
You robbed Ronald of life. You left no marks.
You left his brother scarred for life.
What finally snapped that Easter Monday night?
What despair cankered your soul?
Such bitter contrast to the Easter Sunday sermon:
Resurrection preached in Pear Tree Baptist Church....
Did you confess to that city's post-war shadows?
Did you stammer out "Our Father who art ....."?
The incongruous flatiron hung around your neck,
A Dadaesque gravity-weighed necklace.
You leapt nervously off Harvey Road Bridge.
Your body slapped the surface. Embraced by water,
There was no great fish to swallow & save you....
Later, your trilby raised to the murky surface:
A stylish cloth bubble from your watery grave.
A policeman's torch spotlit your sartorial signature.
Did you wake in heaven?
Did your son's eyes meet your grief-stricken gaze?
Did your hell-harrowed heart finally cry: "Forgive...."?

* * * * * *
Through my father's painfully, burbling accent
This family-saga was tearfully first told.
Gasps of grief shocked the kitchen into silence.
The roast beef went cold. Angst replaced appetite.
Unwitting heirs to this pathetic denouement,
We three boys cried unmelodiously in unison.
Background music underscored our eccentric requiem.
Was it Bach's poignant, heartfelt PASSION,
Sung by grandparents in their church choir?
Or did Schuman's SCENES FROM CHILDHOOD
Trigger off my father's choked emotions,
Erupting after many dormant decades.
Sad bones lay grave-buried — but not rested in peace....
They await the final trumpet voluntary & crescendo-chorus,
Handel's MESSIAH will sing out: resurrection!

···

Louis Hemmings was born in 1957, the third child of pioneering Irish hand-weavers/fashion designers. In 1969 he went to a Quaker co-ed boarding school by choice, to escape divorcing parents. He became a convinced Christian at the age of 18 and found himself under the influence of the blind and deaf Christian poet from Cornwall, Jack Clemo. He is married with two boys (and a girl, stillborn). Ten years ago he started Samovar, a used online theological book business, which is now his principal job. He has had a number of poems published in Poetry Ireland and Hot Press (Ireland's answer to Rolling Stone).