Thanked for kindness, I said
you’re welcome, and welcome
spun back to what it meant,
before. Welcome, come
in, in accord with my will.
Come into warmth, you
are wanted, were waited
for. Welcome to these
arms, spread out, exposing
the bearer’s heart.
You are well come, it is well
you have come for me.
And if night swallows
us, it will be well, we
will be welcome –
the gates swing wide,
the bridge arcs tenderly
up over the river.
I laid a path, pruned
trees for your body
to pass through.
My bread, your bread.
My rafters, yours, timber
above our heads, or
to float on.
I fell asleep by the fire
near a bag of barley,
sweet smoke, and the kettle’s
belly, rounded iron
forged on a day no sharpness
cut the mind of its maker.
There were other days
for sharpness, edges.
It is important to know
the difference of days,
and this was not one.
Concern with the integral art of naming often surfaces in the poems in The Unstill Ones, Miller Oberman’s first collection. In fact, words may be among the possible categories suggested by that evocative adjective “unstill”. An Old English scholar and translator, Oberman is the sort of poet who hears in the tree of poetry not only the leaves rustling and the branches creaking, but the roots drinking and eating.
In this week’s poem, hearing himself say the word welcome in the casually polite idiom, “you’re welcome”, the speaker finds it has “spun back to what it meant, / before”. The word reverts to a psychologically richer meaning. How far back “before” takes us is the crucial question.
Earlier in the history of the language, “welcome” was the child of two parents, willa, meaning “pleasure, desire, choice”, and cuma, meaning “guest”. “Wilcuma!” expressed the host’s pleasure at the visitor’s arrival, meaning literally, as the poem says, “come / in, in accord with my will.”
But because this is a poem in the vocative, implying intimacy with an addressed listener, “before” seems to refer at the same time to a period in the speaker’s relationship with the addressee. “Before” suggests that something in the relationship has changed. There’s a sense of reconciliation about the welcome.
The object of the unknown “kindness” of the first line might well have been the poem’s addressee, and the thanking might have sealed the transformation. Perhaps there was some awkwardness or uncertainty offstage, but the words, like a spell, have dissolved it. Gently the language proclaims restored harmony. The repeated slow-paced consonant “w” (welcome, warmth, wanted, waited) enact the guest’s slow entrance, smiles dawning, arms opening. It might be that “these arms” belong to both figures, “spread out, exposing / the bearer’s heart”. The perfect mutuality of offering is summed up in the grammatical reversal: “You are well come, it is well / you have come for me.” The vowels themselves, like the buds on Philip Larkin’s trees, continue to “relax and spread” – but without the grief, of course.
Grief, though adumbrated, is averted: “And if night swallows / us, it will be well, we / will be welcome.” Another harmonious echo comes to mind – from Julian of Norwich via TS Eliot in Little Gidding: “All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” Oberman’s lineation continues to step its way through enjambment and caesura, not to suggest hesitant anxiety, but the conscious refusal to rush, the quiet savouring of the moment.
The narrative works on literal and metaphorical levels: gates, bridge, specially laid path and pruned trees, form a landscape of welcome that may also be that of the welcoming body. At the same time, the welcomed one seems to glide towards the threshold like a ghost, and the phrase “pass through” suggests a certain disembodiment. Now the simple staples of existence become sacramental, symbols of the equality of hospitality shared between host and guest: “My bread, your bread. / My rafters, yours, timber / above our heads, or / to float on.” The branching images of roof and raft, rest and dreamy travel, suggest experiences that need not be separate and that will not separate the participants, but unite them.
Further images of domestic transformation – the “bag of barley”, “sweet smoke” and the kettle with its “belly” of “rounded iron” – suggest nutrition and peace. Barley, the vital grain for traditional baking and brewing, had additional ritualistic uses in classical Greece: the name of the goddess Demeter is sometimes associated etymologically with “barley-mother”.
If the harvest also provokes a thought of the underworld, it seems appropriate in a poem where the host and, implicitly, his guest proclaim the darkness welcoming even as it swallows them.
Each of the three sections of Oberman’s collection is headed by an Anglo-Saxon rune. The one heading the section containing Words Were Changing is Dæg. (“Day is a dispatch of the divine,” Oberman writes, in his translation of The Old English Rune Poem.) The whole atmosphere and soundscape of Words Were Changing seems calm and joyful, like a day fully welcomed, and full of welcome. Yet, at the end, there’s a hint of ambiguity. We might assume that when the poet says “It is important to know / the difference of days, / and this was not one”, he may be referring to the difference of this day from those “other days / for sharpness, edges”. But the immediately preceding noun is “days” and the proximity of the qualifier, “and this was not one”, hints at another layer of meaning. Perhaps “this” was a period more mysterious than the earthly day, not part of the usual diurnal cycle at all, but an out-of-time day, opened up in the night – and no less fully experienced as curative.
• The Unstill Ones is published by Princeton University Press in the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets.
