Visiting Star
I woke at sunrise,
fed my dogs, Honie and Margie –
to the east a wall of books and windows,
a lawn, the trees in my family,
the donkeys and forest behind the hill.
Sunlight showed itself in,
passed the China butterflies on the window
so birds watch out, don’t break their necks.
On the back of a green leather chair for guests
facing me in sunlight and shadow, a sunlit Star of David,
two large hand spans square.
I call my wife to see the star
she first thinks I painted on the chair.
Soon she catches on -- no falling star.
We searched the room and outside.
How did the star come to be?
Without explanation. None.
The star visited a few minutes, disappeared,
or became invisible. Why?
I wondered if it was le bel aujourd’hui
or a holiday some Jews celebrate.
Playing fair, I told myself: watch out for
a crucifix anywhere before which
contrition saves condemned souls –
watch in the forest for portraits of the Virgin,
the wheel of Dharma down the road,
that teaches ‘save all living beings’,
when the moon is full a crescent moon
reflected on a wall or lake.
Watch for flying horses!
I read the news of commandments broken.
Thou shalt not kill.
I write between the lines
Thou shalt not steal
seventy-five years from the life of a child.
Next day, I found my Star of David
was a glass sun and star reflection of
a tinkling shimmering wind chime made in China.
A pleasing, godless today fills my study.
STANLEY MOSS
****
“I’m a psalmist with a Miss-directed penis,” declares the mischievous, now-octogenarian poet in another poem in his new collection, It’s About Time. Moss may or may not be accurately termed a religious poet: if he’s a religious poet, he’s one of the too-few irreligious kind, firmly of this world in his vivid pleasures and sorrows, joyfully harrying God from myth to unsatisfactory myth, denomination to denomination, fascinated by the whole subject of deity, but hardly expecting a catch or kill. He views the gods of the monotheist religions, as this poem will make clear, with some cynicism, at least towards their exegetes. Although he quotes Auden with approval that “all poets, as such / are polytheists”, even that degree of mysticism is one that his poetry subverts.
The narrative manner in Visiting Star is one of its engaging qualities, typical of the rangy, idiomatic “thinking aloud” style that imbues so much of Moss’s work with its particular charm, even in the midst of lamentation. In some respects an oral poem, Visiting Star is casual about commas – in fact the grammar in general is non-literary, speech-led. Moss is the talking psalmist rather than the all-singing, all-preaching kind.
This poem is “on location”, and nicely amplifies the collection’s dedication to departed friends, human, canine, arboreal, avian. The author-speaker appears relaxed at the hub of an extended, inter-species network: his dogs have homely names, the trees, no less, are “the trees in my family”. Civilised domesticity, with its books and picture windows, is framed by the wider prospect of decreasingly tamed “nature”. He has adjusted things to accommodate the untamable: this we learn from the reference to “the China butterflies on the window / so birds watch out, don’t break their necks”. It’s a carefully engineered, almost prelapsarian setting, where the sunlight is like a long-familiar neighbour who has “showed itself in”. The trompe l’oeil, the visiting Star of David, significantly, appears on “the back of a green leather chair for guests”.
At its first narrative climax, the poem shifts from leisurely past tense to the active engagement of the present: “I call my wife.” Her reaction tells us that the Star of David is so clearly depicted she thinks it must be painted (happy thought that this is a household where husbands may paint pictures on expensive chairs and wives approve). But: “Soon she catches on – no falling star.” The poem reverts to the past historic, but continues to express the surprise and sense of a logical impasse; its urgent questions seem to have no answers. Religion, of course, is in the business of supplying answers: perhaps the poem is reminding us that “negative capability” beats dogmatic interpretation any day. It’s not a major loss, though still intriguing, when the star is discovered shortly to have mysteriously “disappeared, / or become invisible”.
So far, there’s no logical explanation, but the speaker is happy to think up illogical, mock-mystical ones. The tone is more playful than reverent when, after considering that the Star might have appeared because of some Jewish holiday, the observer reminds himself to watch out for manifestations from other religions, ranging from Christianity (the crucifix and the virgin Mary) to Islam (the crescent moon). He jokes that he’s “playing fair” and, yes, in reminding us of the human aura round the miraculous symbols, he is fairly apportioning blame and perhaps disappointment. “Watch out for flying horses,” he wryly concludes.
Before solving the mystery, the narrative expands to consider religion’s least soluble problem: the evil existent in a universe ordained by an omnipotent, all-loving God. For the beautiful, visiting stars of imagination and connection co-exist with, might sometimes condone, the destruction of life: in Judaeo-Christian terms, the breaking of the sixth commandment. Moss re-phrases it, and renews its force, in terms of appalling theft: “Thou shalt not steal / seventy-five years from the life of a child.” If the Star’s symbolism is to be taken seriously, how does the epiphany square with the reality of bloodshed? This is an unexpected and powerful turn in the poem, carefully positioned before the denouement when, in the last four lines, the Star’s origins are explained as the reflection cast by “a tinkling, shimmering wind-chime made in China”. The poem rediscovers its earlier amused poise and delight, while the fiercely double-edged, Mallarmean concept of the “beautiful today” alluded to in line 20, is gently echoed in the phrase “pleasing, godless today”. Some of the pleasing-ness no doubt derives from the godlessness, though Moss is careful not to describe the day as “pleasingly godless”. So atheism, as Made in China, enters and somehow guarantees the poem’s attempt at a sacred synthesis. (China, we may remember, was mentioned earlier in describing the bird-protecting butterflies.) If it demolishes the miraculous, the joke of a “communist” Star of David replenishes the idea of theologically open, ideology-free beatitude.
Visiting Star demonstrates that, without sentimentality or banality, old sacred stories can still be retold, or their symbolism reframed, with vitality, worldly realism and wit. Moss himself may be in the poem – a magus whose east comprises birds, trees, and animals seen through clear glass and, of course, books. If God exists, the poem seems to suggest, “he”, too, might be both of, and in, the world more vividly than believers or atheists imagine. Moss rewrites the received ideas of religion and the religious poet: his psalms may be exactly the new songs needed to illuminate sombre new times.