In memory of Tom Ormesher, who loved Autumn, and, every October, became for all of us, "Mr. Moundshroud."1
I. Someone has described Ray Bradbury as “having one foot on
Mars and the other on his grandparents' shady front porch in Illinois”—a
wonderfully apt picture of this imaginative and humane man, who died last year.
His Mars (The Martian Chronicles)has
something of the homey porch, and his novels of midwestern boyhood (Dandelion Wine, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Halloween Tree) are always dreamily adrift in the fantastic. 2
Bradbury's poem, Byzantium I
Come Not From is both dreamy and rooted. It is like a psalmic prelude to the charmed stories of childhood noted above. (It is, in fact, part of the preface to Dandelion Wine.) The poem can be read in its own
light, but it may be instructive to note that it is written with both homage and ironic
reference to Yeat’s poems, The Lake Isle
of Innisfree and Sailing to Byzantium.
“Byzantium I Come
Not From" (Ray Bradbury)
Byzantium, I come
not from,
But from another
time and place
Whose race was
simple, tried and true;
As boy
I dropped me forth
in Illinois.
A name with neither
love nor grace
Was Waukegan, there
I came from
And not, good
friends, Byzantium.
And yet in looking
back I see
From topmost part
of farthest tree
A land as bright,
beloved and blue
As any Yeats found
to be true.
The house I lived
in, hewn of gold
And on the highest
market sold
Was
dandelion-minted, made
By spendthrift bees
in bee-loud glade.
And then of course
our finest wine
Came forth from
that same dandelion,
While dandelion was
my hair
As bright as all
the summer air;
I dipped in
rainbarrels for my eyes
And cherries
stained my lips, my cries,
My shouts of purest
exaltation:
Byzantium? No. That
Indian nation
Which made of
Indian girls and boys
Spelled forth
itself as Illinois.
Yet all the Indian
bees did hum:
Byzantium.
Byzantium.
So we grew up with
mythic dead
To spoon upon
midwestern bread
And spread old
gods' bright marmalade
To slake in
peanut-butter shade,
Pretending there beneath
our sky
That it was
Aphrodite's thigh...
While by the
porch-rail calm and bold
His words pure
wisdom, stare pure gold
My grandfather, a
myth indeed,
Did all of Plato
supersede
While Grandmama in
rockingchair
Sewed up the
raveled sleeve of care
Crocheted cool
snowflakes rare and bright
To winter us on
summer night.
And uncles,
gathered with their smokes
Emitted wisdoms
masked as jokes,
And aunts as wise
as Delphic maids
Dispensed prophetic
lemonades
To boys knelt there
as acolytes
To Grecian porch on
summer nights;
Then went to bed,
there to repent
The evils of the
innocent;
The gnat-sins
sizzling in their ears
Said, through the
nights and through the years
Not Illinois nor
Waukegan
But blither sky and
blither sun.
Though mediocre all
our Fates
And Mayor not as
bright as Yeats
Yet still we knew
ourselves. The sum?
Byzantium.
Byzantium.
II. John Stewart (not to be confused with the comedian, Jon Stewart), who died in 2008 at age 68, was as much a folk artist as Grandma Moses (though slightly hipper). He painted with his guitar and his heart, his pictures tinged with both the golden sunlight of a California boyhood and the earthier tones of the midwest. His folk-rock style influenced many whose names are known
better than his own, and his songs were steeped in an “Americana” that evoked a
love of country through images of waving wheat rather than waving flags. His
Bradbury-like reminiscence in “Pirates of Stone County Road” (which he described as being set "in Nebraska or Kansas or Oklahoma") makes us see a
particular scene that also manages to depict a sort of universal childhood.
“The Pirates of
Stone County Road” (a song)
~John Stewart
Henry! It's getting t'wards suppertime you know.
Henry?…
There she calls
from her second floor room,
the end of a back
porch afternoon,
where we'd stand on
the bow of our own man-of-war,
no longer the back
porch any more.
And we'd sail, pulling
for China,
the pirates of
Stone County Road
all weathered and
blown.
And we'd sail ever
in glory—
'till hungry and
tired,
the pirates of
Stone County Road
were turning for
home.
Henry! You better be getting on up to bed now, don't ya
know…
Henry?...
There she calls
from her high wicker chair,
as I climb to my
room up the stair,
where the wind
through the shutters
sends the mainsail
to fall
from the shadow of
the bedpost on the wall.
And we'd sail,
pulling for China,
the pirates of
Stone County Road
weathered and
blown.
And we'd sail ever
in glory,
'till hungry and
tired,
the pirates of
Stone County Road
were turning for
home.
Henry! Can you hear me, Henry
Are you up there
Henry? Henry?... 3
III. I’m no poet,
but occasionally the muse gives me a nudge anyway, and I try my hand. My muse
in this early attempt was obviously Ray Bradbury.
"943 Colorado Southwest"
The big white house
that once held me
I now hold in
memory.
It had no ghosts
then,
though fifty years
old--
sixty years ago.
We are the ghosts
now,
wandering through
rooms of light
Slamming doors to
meet in front
for games of autumn
nights.
Spirea-lined and
lilac-hedged,
front steps were
base, but
back yard
stretching into dark
was the place to
hide,
to
crouch—unbreathing—
Till the seeker
passed,
Then to breathe
again!
And leap, and run….
I’d hide forever
now,
till sounds the "all-in-free!"
And mother, apron
aflutter
at the front-door
confluence
of darkness and
light,
calls me in,
then up
the tall
staircase,
to that high
bedroom,
to sleep,
a ghost, exhausted.
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1. "Mr. Moundshroud" is the spirit of Halloween in Bradbury's "The Halloween Tree." Tom put on a fantastic Halloween party every October.
2. It's October! Find a copy of Bradbury's "The Halloween Tree" and read it with a child 6-12 years old.
3. Here is a Youtube audio of John Stewart singing "The Pirates of Stone County Road." (I think the producer's slide show gets in the way, but it's all I could find. I suggest you turn around and just let the words paint the picture.)
4. Thanks to my friend Warren Hanson for the sketch of my boyhood home.
