It is true to say that I read a fair bit of poetry. And it seems to me that a recurring theme that many poets have in common, is a fear of dying. Psychoanalysts would agree that this is a primitive unconscious drive that ensures that we survive. In the last few years, I have been exposed to quite a few family and friends dying, not just through or because of the covid times, but because it is a fact of ageing, that the births and marriages in my personal social column have reduced and been replaced by more in the death column, a reminder of my own mortality. Finally getting to state pensionable age brought me closer to the reality that the Grim Reaper is no longer lurking in the shadows, but grimly out in open, my soul in his sights, ready for a spot of reaping.
So I am beginning to understand more why poets are so preoccupied with the fear of death. It is a recurring theme, dating back eons, like this anonymous lament from the thirteenth century, telling of the poet’s three worst fears and worries - that he must die; that he does not know when this will happen; and that he does not know where he will go after death. Eight hundred years later we still ask the same questions. It may not look it – but it is still English – try reading out ‘out loud’ and starts to make sense:
Ech day me comëth tydinges thre,
For wel swithë sore ben he:
The on is that Ich shal hennë,
That other that Ich not whennë,
The thriddë is my mestë carë,
That Ich not whider Ich shal farë.
Death itself doesn’t scare me, other than time is running out for all the places I want to still see and things I still want to do. What really scares me, apart from mundane worries about growing old, having enough money to live on and what the future holds for the next generations, is ‘the dark’ and horrors from my own imagination. These tend to come with the dark, a reminder of feeling scared of the darkness when, aged 6, on my first visit to my grandmother’s house in rural Poland, I was left alone to go to sleep - with no street lighting and no moon. And I woke to pitch black.
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| My grandmother's house |
Too scared to cry out, every stick of the furniture in the shadows assumed a life and potential hiding place for some sort of monster to lurk behind. When dawn finally came, I had slept very little, Finally telling my father of my fears, a cousin was dispatched to share the bed with me the next night – when neither of us got much sleep due to my incessant talking.
My grandmother passed away over fifty years ago, but last summer when we revisited her village in Poland, and saw her house, the memory resurfaced and with it a residual fear of the dark.
It is paradoxical that I should have been be so afraid of the dark, because darkness brought me so many pleasures. My parents were never too strict with a “lights out” policy so loved by the parents of my school friends. My mother was, by nature, a lark not an owl and often in bed before I was. My father, when not at work because of his shift patterns, would stay downstairs with the television on, retiring only when the small dot appeared to close viewing for the night.
I was regretfully spared the secret illicit delight of using a torch under the bedclothes to finish the chapter of a book. I tried it a few times, but found the claustrophobic experience uncomfortable. In any case, it was unnecessary. If my father, on finally coming upstairs to bed, if he happened to see I still had my light on, would poke his head around the door and merely tell me not to be too much longer.
Bedtime was the time I was left, safe in bed, to my own devices, when I could escape into other lands and lives opened by books and stories. Sometimes I would work on my homework – we were given a page a day of some 20 mathematical problems to do, so I would polish off a month’s worth in one go. Sometimes this strategy would backfire when my teacher, Miss P would announce that instead of the next page being that day’s homework task, it would be two or three pages on. But I liked the problems, so other than a mild feeling of being ‘cheated,’ I did not really mind. My copious amount of indiscriminate reading of anything in print, included “the Gambols” in my father’s Daily Express, the Readers Digest and The National Geographical Magazines, which took care of spelling and most other subjects.
After that, I could always look out of the window, at the dark skies and the stars, until sleep finally overtook me. I would stare at the moon, looking for the fabled man there. Although I never saw him, I was convinced that, with the help of slightly stronger binoculars than those I had temporarily purloined from my father, I would be able to spot people whizzing in their spacecraft between the stars and the moon. In those days, they were not called aliens though, but “little green men.”
Perhaps this is where my fascination with the stars first started, encouraged when I was awarded a £5 book token for English when I was 10 years old, I bought three books – all on the planets and stars. This culminating 35 years ago when, despite a failed Physics ‘O’ level and only the remnants of long forgotten maths ‘O’ level to my name, I undertook to read for a part time degree in Astronomy. I do not know what possessed me.
Much to my husband’s amusement my mother kept referring to this as “Yvonne’s Astrology studies,” and while I became known in class for asking sometimes very stupid questions, some of which turned out to be relevant, I never stooped to asking about star signs. However, I was somewhat disappointed when I found out that there was plenty of maths, equations and staring at computers, but precious little of looking at the stars. None the less, I knuckled down, and some 7 years later managed a not very credible result – to this day convinced I was allowed a pass simply to get rid of me and my stupid questions.
Now, my astronomical studies are back where they belong, preferably at the end of a day at my brother’s beautiful home in Spain, when we sit on the terrace, spending the evening chatting with friends, over a glass or three of the local wine. As the sun goes down, it will turn the distant mountains into golden reds and orange, the crickets will come out to play, trying to compete to be heard over our perusing and laughter. As the sun finally disappears, followed by ever changing shades of twilight that darken into ink black skies devoid of any light pollution, we are reluctant for the night to end.
This is especially so when there is no moon, because we are loathe to miss out on more entertainment by picking out the planets and the various constellations amid the streak of what appears to the cloud – and that is actually the Milky Way. It is incredible to think that what we are seeing is already in the past. The light coming from the stars started its journey to us thousands, perhaps even millions of years ago. Indeed, as we look at them now, they may no longer even exist.
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| Constellation of Orion |
I always look out for the three bright stars that make up Orion’s belt, as this is where my rudimentary attempts for my final year Astronomy degree project focussed. Through a telescopic it is possible to see that this area is home to what is known as a “stellar nursery” where stars right this very minute may be bursting into life. Some stars will never be seen, because they are so far away their light will only reach earth a long, long time in the future.
When we look at the stars of the night sky, we see them not as they are now, but as they were thousands, perhaps even millions of years ago. We are peering into the past. Our planet, and the sun will eventually die and our entire species will go the way of the dinosaurs and the dodo. After eons of time as measured by our life span, the sun, our home star will live out its final moments in a wild spin before collapsing into a white dwarf, taking with it everything we have ever known. All the beauty, all the cruelties and even the perfect Fibonacci sequence of the pine cone will be as if they had never existed.
The world
Staring up at the black heavens,
At the myriad of flickering stars,
Our world circles but one average star.
Hanging delicately by a force
We cannot comprehend,
We are an infinitesimal speck of life.
You and I are here,
Our existence formed by the dust of atoms
In the furnace of a dying star.
That is everything.
One day we too will die,
In the universe of time, becoming our star’s dust.
Yvonne S.
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