Peonies Series #3, Pastel, by John Cummings
Solzhenitsyn’s Ashes
Something heroic I did once
Carried around a book by Solzhenitsyn
His suffering, his war, his gulag
I among the tall trees of the Northwest
Buried in ashes, the pages of the paperback
Streaked, powdered, marked for decades
I would occasionally, as an older man,
Find the ash-stained paperback and
Remember reading Solzhenitsyn
While the other firefighters counted the minutes
Waiting for orders to move farther up the mountain, I
Ignored their ignorance of what I read
They were already in the cathedral of the forest
Did not need a Bible, nor a Solzhenitsyn
But I needed the ashes to be marked
Upon my pages, though I did not know it
Did not know the pages would bring
The ashes forward twenty, thirty years.
_____________
Zeke Sanchez
Review by Massimo Fantuzzi
This is the time of tension between dying and birth (From T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday)
Scars settling upon scars; sediments of dust tattooing the rock becoming rock; snow falling asleep onto a glacier, waking up as a glacier; bruises adding to bruised skin becoming skin: how life and death can play together, how death can lay its mantle and once absorbed, fermenting into new life. The miracle is once again in front of our very eyes, reminding us that we do not need stories from holy or banned texts to reach inspiration, to fulfill our mission. Formation, creation, re-creation, personal growth: how many fires have we put out? And where have we kept the ashes, and what has managed to regrow from those charred deserts? Again, in this issue, we are faced with the mysterious ways and currents underpinning the evolution of an ecosystem, our ecosystem – what needs to get consumed in order to create the conditions for the existence of what – how life thrives from the wildfires we will leave behind. Where will our struggles root their charred fruits of love and heroism?
Review by J. S. Absher
I enjoyed all of Sanchez’s poems. I’m commenting on this one because I don’t understand it. I’ve chosen to share my thoughts with the poet, who may well find them laughably incompetent.
I begin here: What has the speaker done that he understands as heroic? The poem suggests that there was heroism in (1) carrying the book around, or (2) burying it marked with ashes, or (3) finding it again twenty years and thirty years later: the speaker does not reread, but he “Remember[s] reading.” He is a firefighter—that seems quite heroic to me, but it doesn’t seem to be the heroism of the poem.
As a young man, he carried about “a book by Solzhenitsyn” that contained “His suffering, his war, his gulag.” Presumably we are to understand that the speaker also suffered (see “The Three Houses”), also experienced war (see “Be Strong”: “You are strong and have come back whole, / One of the lucky ones”), and perhaps, in some sense, was also in a gulag.
He buried the book “in ashes, the pages … / Streaked, powdered, marked for decades.” Then, older, he would occasionally find it and “Remember Solzhenitsyn” as the other firefighters waited for their orders. The poem posits three sources of meaning (or solace or inspiration or the divine)—“the cathedral of the forest,” the Bible, and a book by Solzhenitsyn.
Again, where is the heroism? I assumed at first that the book was buried in the ashes of a forest fire, but perhaps the ashes were from a cremated body. This could explain why the speaker knows where the book is buried. Presumably there was a connection between the dead and the book, and all this the speaker has unexpectedly brought “forward twenty, thirty years” in memory.
Whether or not that dubious reading is right, the poem suggests the heroism of memory, of remembering pain for years, of occasionally revisiting it. The speaker “needed the ashes to be marked / Upon my pages,” though at the time he was not aware of the need. I take “my pages” to imply in part “my memory.”
I keep thinking about how Aeneas carried his father from burning home, while his father was bearing the household gods. The heroism is survival and remembrance in defeat, small acts enabling the revival of Troy in the new civilization of Rome.