Forests of the Medieval World

Forests of the Medieval World

                    by Don Coles

Forests of the medieval world, that's

where the mind will wander

the three dissertation years, lucky girl --

Forest of Bleu, which crowded around

the walls of Paris and stretched 10,000 leagues

in every direction' the great Hercynian forest

of East Prussia, from which each year

334 drovers bore the logs for the fires

in the Grand Duke's castles of Rostock,

of Danzig, and furthest east of all, buarding

the borders towards the Polish marshes,

Greifswald and Wolgast. I'm so sad

I could die, you said as you left, but

my children, how could I bear it --

and I know, I know there are ways

of losing children, of seeing them stray off

among the trees even now, especially now!

Every fleet needed for its construction

the razing of an entire forest --

lost forests meeting on the tilting hills

of the Caspian, the Baltic, the Black Sea,

over the mountains of water the file of forests

comes. You face is a mobile mischief,

do you know? Your eyes mocked before

they entreated, your lips rendered

both comedy and its dark twin

in microseconds, and your tongue

harried my mouth's bays and inlets.

The Oberförstmeister of Kurland promised

the King 'at least half-fabulous' beasts

for the hunt, his forest measured

140,000 arpents and even on the swiftest mounts

horsemen could not traverse it

in a month. My mind runs fast

down its arpents and heavy corridors,

seeing no one, I should slash

tree-trunks to procure my safe return

but I can't stop. My mind is running

on pure grief and pure love, I want you

to know this. The Forest of Othe

was so still you could hear a shadow

cross a face at 60 leagues distance --

it had linked the Lyons Massif with

the Woods of Gisors but after a hurricane

levelled a million trees in 1519 the diligent

peasants moved in with ploughs and those forests

were never reunited. And

the forests of Finland, have you thought of those?

All the way to Archangel and the White Sea?

They can show you how you were

before these excuses. What can you do

about this, your exigent look said

in the dorway, I am going do you realise

I am going? And that both of us will survive this?

When the Swedes needed cash they cut down

the forests of Pomerania, the result in

many cases is sand-dunes. This for day-trippers

is nice, in your rented Strandkorb there is room

for everybody, also for dressing and undressing

when the beach is crowded. In the forests of Morois

Tristan lies with Iseult, they are waiting

for the King her husband who will tell history

they were only sleeping. In

the Black Forest dwarf trees and greenheart

still flourish -- as for the Rominter Heide

it was so huge that most of its lakes

and forests were 'held in reserve',

not listed or even mentioned, so for generations

all that those lakes and forests could do was

grow uncontrollably in the imagination. I

would take you with me into the Rominter Heide

if you would come; there

each child we must not hurt will

wear a rose in sign of her ardent, forbearing

heart, in sign of his calm-eyed ascent through

our extreme, necessary years.

From the London Review of Books, 10 August 1990.