5 minute read
Jack's Saga: for C.S. Lewis)
Brett Jenkins
For those unfamiliar with the biography of C. S. Lewis, there are a few things it is helpful to know about him before reading the following poem. As a boy, he and his brother Warnie were obsessed with the Teutonic (Viking) myths. He attributed much of his intellectual acumen to his tutelage under a ferociously atheistic classics pedagogue whom he referred to as "the Kirk," and after matriculating at college, he entered the military service of England in World War I, being at one point left for dead on the battlefield. A key piece of his intellectual conversion happened during a late-night walk with J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, and his memoir of his emotional struggles following the death of his wife Joy was his only (initially) pseudonymously published work, entitled A Grief Observed. Those familiar with Lewis’ work will recognize themes, concepts, and phrases from his published corpus.
The gleaming of the midnight sun
Charms well the misty dreams of youth
And makes them take the shapes of tales
That gesture toward a noble truth
That draws a young boy’s yearning heart;
Here Siegfried stands to face with awe,
His courage screwed to sticking point,
Fafnir’s slavering, toothy maw.
The boy’s heart cheers, his soul elates,
Imagining the magic sword
In his own hand, implores the fates
For courage to redeem the hoard.
Beowulf, Brunnehilde, and such
Both warm and form his spring-time pomp;
In spite of staid and sheltered youth,
A soldier’s bred midst boyhood romp.
So, Wotan’s twilight setting sun
Accompanied by Valk’rie song
Illumines all his boyhood dance;
His steps are light, his shadow long.
+ + +
Still, adolescence must supplant
The tender fronds of childhood free,
While drawing from its golden form
The life-blood for the future tree.
So, on to other tales he went,
To foreign lands with ancient tongues,
The Kirk, a Virgil now to guide
Amidst the noble pagan songs.
The sun seemed high upon his brow
As on from strength to strength he went;
He did not sense as knowledge grew
The ways in which his soul was rent.
+ + +
Then boyhood unto manhood waxed
And on to battle he was called
To learn the cost of Siegfried’s deed,
The truth of tales that once enthralled.
Thus bowed and bloodied he returned
To take the scholars’ gentler garb
And now to limp where once he danced,
Outraged by fortune’s vicious barb.
As autumn sun shone down upon
The labors of his manhood’s all,
This dance he felt to be no pomp…
His eyes grew dim, his shadow small.
+ + +
For all that he believed was true
Left cold his heart and dry his soul,
While all he recked to be but myth
Would whisper, “joy,” and make him whole.
‘Til in a late-night walk with friends
Who clearer saw and gently led,
Was Virgil changed for Beatrice
And myth ‘come fact rose from the dead.
Yeah, lo, in that ascendant sun
He found that truth and peace had kissed,
And, driving Wotan from the vail,
Made clear what was obscured by mist.
Imagination now baptized,
He saw again, but saw anew,
And in the light of rising Son
His steps grew bold, his shadow grew.
+ + +
The Word of God within his grasp,
Like Malbung from his childhood dream,
He then set out the würm to slay
Within the halls of academe.
For he knew that within his guild
The dragon, unbeknownst, crept nigh,
And what the native Christian missed,
Apostate pagan might descry.
For having drunk an ocean’s draught
Of much of mankind’s finest words,
He learned to sift the wheat from chaff
And know the Dark One’s hidden swords.
‘Gainst Reich and pallid curate’s cant,
‘Gainst Biblicist and Sophist fay,
‘Gainst imbecile and philosoph
With words and Word he fought his way.
With rigorous analogy
He parried and he thrust away
With careful metaphor he struck
And sought for Lord to win the day.
Thus, as he fought, his stature grew
From nursery to hallowed hall;
Though he had long-since ceased to care,
His name was known to one and all.
So, when with grief the Enemy
Assailed his heart and struck it true,
His wound observed, he knelt to pray,
And as he did, his shadow grew.
+++
Until he left it far behind
For he had heard his Master’s call;
He knew that further up and in
Was better than Valhalla’s hall.
For shadows only rightly dwell
Within the storied shadowlands
Where flesh and spirit wrestle on
With piercing words and bloodied hands.
So, with his shadow we contend
Though we critique, we cannot tell
Who rather we would wrestle with,
Like Jacob limping at Bethel.
While he in some mid-summer pomp
Has joined the dance to angels’ song
Toward which we look while we confess
His step is light… his shadow long.
