January Flood

Due to heavy rainfall the Ouse and other Yorkshire rivers are now heavilyflooding and for the past four days the water levels have risen significantly, causing a lot of chaos in York and elsewhere. It is not unusual for the Ouse to overstep its banks - quite the contrary - but the masses of water currently sweeping through the city are extraordinary. I have myself seen the Ouse flood - and I have found some primal excitement beholding the spectacle - but from photographs put up by friends in York, I understand that this flooding exceeds everything I've experienced myself.

The principal concern in such matters is of course the individuals affected by the Yorkshire deluge and I wish them all the very best. Yet at the same time I can't help feeling a bit sad for not being there to see this for myself. To me there is something deeply fascinating about water - probably owing to my Western Norwegian upbringing - and I find few things as spellbinding as river scorning its boundaries.

When I studied in York last year I witnessed two floods myself, but - as stated - none of them so great as what is happening now. The January flood, for instance, was less of a violent affair, almost casual, but of course serious in its own sedate way. In this blogpost I'm presenting yet another poem, chiefly because I do not possess any original material on the current event, and partly because I have too little time for long, researched blogposts.

January Flood

The Ouse, January 2011

As if to take revenge the river came -
So full with earth it could not keep it in -

To repossess what man long since had claimed

With steel and stones in monetary whims.

As if to take revenge, as if to scorn

What man took pains to raise from grass and clay

The river spews out what the rain had torn

From out the fields and folds and washed away.

The river came, drunk, dull in a sluggish speed;
Like some old force grown fat from wasted years

It came, pathetic, pleased with prospective fears;
It passed and left its vestiges of greed.

- November 17-20 2011

York Elegies

 

This summer I read Joseph Brodskys Roman elegies, a set of poems invoking the minutiae of everyday life and the great shadow of history at the same time. Having been to Rome some time ago I felt the poems resonating with me and it made me think of other places I had visited, places where I had spent as much time as it appeared Joseph Brodsky had spent in Rome. My thoughts naturally fled to York, a city regular readers of this blog will know I have a special place for in my heart. The next course of action was inevitable: I decided to write my own elegies in emulation of Brodsky's, only these were to be set in the heart of Yorkshire rather than the eternal city.

York Elegies

After Joseph Brodsky

I) January

The rain in England is different. By the banks of the Ouse

there are imprints of boots in dried and sun-cracked silt:

some vagrant walked here. It was - perhaps - me,

carefully making sense of a different home

like a mendicant scouting the city's outskirts

before lining up his hospital.

The river is borne away into the twilight

while I have just arrived,

still are we both just passing through

and even in this month of beginnings the end

can be sensed far closer than I should like.

So like the silt-framed footprint will I fade

until devouring time has wiped away

all traces of my visit I had left behind me.

II) February

Vagrants find their homes in the strangest nooks.

So I, the prodigal scholar, have found

my sheltered perch among the pigeons.

Here I share the skyline with these English chimneys

that breathe their carboniferous fogs mingling

with the mists of each and all seasons. Smoke

speaks of Albion's slumber, of giants long receded

from the world's theatrics, content with the quiet moor,

the country life. I, too, am content with little:

the writing desk, the sink, the creaking wardrobe,

the bed and bookshelves begging to be stacked;

this is the detail I find most pleasing.

Here will I make my garrison, and from this outpost

must I conduct my campaigns through the books

only the fool thinks he can conquer. You, O House,

have an emperor's name and your dilapidations

become a bitter metaphor for the fall of too proud men.

III) March

The world seems at an end beyond this precinct.

Engulfed in the sunset's imperial holocaust

the earth's rim fades to ashes and go black,

and I, shielded by the guardian archer's

crenellated vantage point, can almost see

my own conclusion mirrored in the waning light.

Have you ever walked the walls of York at sundown,

seen its ghosts parade in the evening, or with your naked eye

trailed the minute stitches of their tapestry?

The sun requires no more than this:

to have its death lamented by the mirroring Ouse.

Why, then, should I demand a boisterous farewell?

Let me rather like the sun recede into enveloping darkness,

let me wind my way through the world and back

so that when I return I will be greeted

not as a prodigal but as a native, and let me once again

feel the weight of History upon my bones.

IV) April

This city has seen much blood. Here kings and queens

with royal cunning placed their sigils in the stone

to the dirge of wailing women and the crackling flame.

O heart of the harried north: what tears you may have left

spare them for the years to come: History

has not yet run its course. Once this was warrior country,

then longboats were replaced by the merchant's cogs

that brought about an empire in their golden wake.

I have no stomach for the trader's tricks, the drawn sword

or the government's orderly cartography

dividing the terrain like a knife does a hog's shank.

I much prefer the brick-walled lanes,

the domestic nooks that are Albion's heartland:

weather-beaten, plain and half-forlorn

save by the pigeon's armies. Rather than famous

battlefields I find a pleasure roaming these homely streets

and observe from a safe and objective distance

the ubiquitous ivy's recalcitrant advance.

V) May

This is a city of books. The various and time-worn

stones and bricks are pages of the city's history,

and this makes churches, walls and houses tomes

composed in a language different yet somehow quite familiar.

Select, then, a volume from this library, peruse its chapters,

illuminations, marginalia; read in the churches and gates

a history we try to be a part of. Famed men have

by their quills and pens put York to paper:

Bede, Alcuin, Auden, Joseph Brodsky.

Yet York has not been written by scribes or scholars,

but by the master mason, the architect, the carpenter,

the glazier who bound these books by their own

enduring crafts, lined on the earth's bleached parchment

the margins with their instruments, prepared the churches' quires

and stacked the streets with chronicles, shelving

the houses according to an old, time-honoured system

like librarians part serious, part playful.

 
VI) June

Can one mourn what one has not possessed?
Yes: like the eye mourns the horizons it has not seen

or the mind the books unread, so do I mourn

that I have not yet known the City of York

as it appears in June, attired for the first of summer's masques.

June, the epoch of the daffodils guarding Clifford's Tower

like sentries superannuated by the whims of time,

the epoch of strangers and vagrants,

roaming about the streets like ghosts or gods

exiled from a long-lost fabled country

so distant and so different from ours,

the epoch of sun and tired sundays broken only

by the chime of minster bells, summoning

the faithful and the faithless by the same forsaking ting.

 
VI) July

Speak not to me of love, for it has lost its touch

by taking too many forms; for precision

speak rather of longing and that aching absence

July demands from the homebound exile. Sighs

are the prodigal's tithe and all must pay.
I did not at first believe mere stone could command

such obedience, yet here I am - a wandering man -

remembering the churches, the walls, the scattered spolia

that frames the gardens and keeps the flowers at bay

in almost-monastic discipline. These were all framed by love

and in the end torn down by a different love,

a worldy love of kingship and inheritance that

plows the potter's ground. By that act it seemed

the age-old war was over, the mundane sword

cleaving the sacred stone claimed monarchy supreme,

blasphemed the mason's craft and outlawed monastic houses

for the sake of a coppiced kingdom frail in its burgeoning.

 
VIII) August

Like a road redundant yields to the willow herb,

the dandelions and the tall grass so I,

a native stranger, consider a year too long

and yield to the gnawing urges,

packing my bags and go down the westward road.

Albion rises in the mind's horizon

pressing heavenward with its spired, craggy bulk,

green-coated, wind-harrowed, arching

as in pain under the weight of its past.

And there, there is Albion's jewel:

heart of the Northern reaches,

chiming its sundry bells to a song I know.

There they received their freedom, there

they performed their plays in honour of God

and Christ, and the Holy Spirit:

Barkers, carpenters, mercers, men of all trades,

Coaxing me thither with a song of the heart-stringed lute.

So I come, heeding its beckoning whisper

Like a vagrant gyrfalcon the pipe of its falconer.

 
IX) September

Darkness is easily endured with good friends.

We make our way through evening and the air

is still, clear and the light of lamps

hints at the city's outline in the quietness.

Once light was scarce and the world wild,

the wanderer was prey to the mighty beasts

who ruled the wood of Galtres and craved tallage

in flesh of men and women. Lest a guiding flare

ablaze in the lantern of St. Helen's Church

would lead them to salvation, the children of men

might fall as sheep for wolves whose haughty sermons

pander to nothing at all but their maw's faith.

The wood is long since gone, the light remains

and even in the labyrinth of lamp-posts

the lantern shines so meekly and yet and so bright

it still may lead the wayward through the world's maze.

 
X) October

Rot is October's fragrance: decaying, brittle leaves

gather in clusters by the iron fences,

in glutted ditches, ponds of no man's dominion

and sweetly ooze through the suburbs

on the road to Micklegate Bar as once did

the spiked heads of traitors on the gate's front.

I am a traitor too: my affair with the English tongue,

old and long-standing, has proved far more than a fling.

Rot is a poignant metaphor for a human thing:

Loyalty; houses; flesh; identity.

There is a gentler scent suffused in the pubs and

the rented rooms, of oak and fungi,

beer and decomposing wood, like frail lives

growing musty in the hands of History

to fall as oblivious vestiges into marginal notes.

This is the place I love: My Albion is crumbling at the edges

and curls as a dying leaf in October days.

Such was the first encounter;

it will not do to go separate ways.

XI) November

From this point men can rule a world:

lords of the spiritual North with pious pomp

wielded their sceptred croziers

in the face of kings to have the world's sword

tarnished. Atop St. Peter's minster a priest,

guarded by grinning gargoyles

and xiphoid spires piercing the firmament,

may feel removed from the secular stain. Below

archbishops steeped themselves in the ways of flesh,

to fight or to be fought with in their chosen manner,

dying as rich men or as God's minstrels.

This is a nest of stone, a phoenix's nest

that burns and rises at quaint intervals,

making the mason mourn his lost handiwork

and weep like an angel. Sing, then, a dirge for

what Earth has lost, for King Edwin's minster,

the glazier's vitrified blood, the weather-worn woodwose

and men who abandoned their faith for the sword's work.

 
XII) December

I write this in August imagining a white world.

I hope one day to discover how the snow descends

upon these fractured ruins: history's great slumber

haunted by dreams of blood and martyrdom,

rigid justice, blank eyes staring hostless

from an iron spike. In that time

the frost will forge its finest filigree

formed like fossilised ferns on the city's flagstones,

memorials of time immemorial honouring

the earth-evicted ammonite, the raptor,

the trilobite class-caged and far removed from

primordial seas. Once this was wild country,

left to the reign of beasts, to fangs and claws.

Time has worn away that wild country,

what remains holds little semblance

while wild and tamed alike lie heavily

sleeping, white-capped and covered

waiting for sun and spring.

- June - August 2012



Notes

January

"while I have just arrived" - I arrived in York January 07 2011 ready to begin my studies at the University of York. The pictures from January are among the first I took.

February

(...) my sheltered perch - I lived on the upper floor in Constantine House and I was frequently bothered by nesting pigeons.

(...) of giants long receded - a nod to William Blake's The Emanation of the Giant Albion and a reference to York's significantly diminished importance in England's political life compared to its Medieval days.

(...) an emperor's name - the house being named after Emperor Constantine who was reportedly born in York.

March

my own conclusion - I left York 30 March 2011.

April

(...) their sigils in the stone - In the Middle Ages York was the nexus of the English king's northern politics and sometimes a thorn in the side. William the Conqueror and Henry VIII both wrought havoc on the city due to its reticence in accepting the former's accession to the throne and the latter's reformation. Other royals as well have made their mark upon York. John granted the city its liberties in 1212, Henry III refurbished the royal residence now known as Clifford's tower, Richard III established the council of the north and had his son invested as Prince of Wales here in 1483.

(...) the harried north - The Harrowing of the North was William the Conqueror's response to northern dismissal of his claim to the English throne.

then longboats were replaced - York grew to be an important mercantile centre in the Middle Ages and had ties to several European ports.

May

by their quills and pen - Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People is an important source to York's early Medieval history. York native Alcuin wrote a poem about York as did Joseph Brodsky. Auden's inclusion is primarily due to him, too, being a native of the city, hence fastening the city to paper by biographical circumstance.

July

for the sake of a coppiced kingdom - Henry VIII's divorce from the Roman Church came about primarily due to his need of a son to sustain the newly-established Tudor dynasty. St. Mary's Abbey was torn down in the 1540s.

August

there they received their freedom - John's charter of 1212 granted the city its liberties, a charter he issued to raise money for his military troubles in northern France. The octocentennial for this historical milestone is being celebrated this year.

they performed their plays - the York Mystery Plays started up in the 14th century and is one of the most important and formative cycles of mystery plays in Medieval England. The plays were discontinued in the 16th century as a part of the reformation, but started up again in the 1950s.

Barkers, carpenters, mercers - each play was performed and arranged by one of the guilds of the city. The barkers prepared hides for leather manufacture and were responsible for the The Fall of the Angels. The carpenters were responsible for The Resurrection, while the merces arranged The Last Judgement.

September

Darkness is easily endured - this entire stanza revolves around an evening out with friends in September 2011 when I was visiting my friends and former flatmates in York.

(...) Lest a guiding flare - St. Helen's Church is one of at least three churches in York whose spires are shaped like lanterns designed to guide people through darkness in a world before streetlamps. The wood of Galtres is no longer extant but it was once infested with wolves and a considerable obstacle for travellers.

(...) wolves whose haughty sermons - a reference to Archbishop Wulfstan of York's (d.1023) Sermo lupi ad anglos, a sermon admonishing Englishmen for their sins and claiming the Vikings as their just punishment from God.

October

Rot is October's fragrance - this stanza revolves around my first trip to York back in October 2009 and I remember very distinctly the smell of England.

the spiked heads of traitors - Micklegate Bar was the main gate of York in the Middle Ages and also where beheaded traitors were put on display as a warning to the people.

November

archbishops steeped themselves - Archbishops were among the most important political figures in the Middle Ages and the heart of the religious life in the North and consequently were very much engaged in secular matters, either in opposition or as partakers in the mundane affairs.

(...) a phoenix's nest - York Minster has been subject to fire and refurbishings throughout the centuries. The last fire was in 1984 and, as all Medieval cathedrals, it is perennially undergoing renovation. I owe this particular image to the tv series Pillars of the Earth based on Ken Follett's novel.

King Edwin's minster - St. Peter's minster was erected for the baptism of King Edwin of Northumbria in 627. This was a major step in the christianisation of England.

December

(...) class-caged and far removed - a nod to Charles Darwin's The Origin of the Species where Darwin rhetorically asks whether the beautiful ammonites were created so that men could put them behind glass.

haunted by dreams of blood and martyrdom - In the time following England's turn away from Catholicism York saw several martyrs of the old faith, most famously Margaret Clitherow.

formed like fossilised ferns - I have seen the frost make very fern-like patterns on the flagstone in York Exhibition Square in January.

The New Walk

If the strong Cane support thy walking Hand,
Chairmen no longer shall the Wall command

- Trivia, John Gay

In the beginning of the 18th century part of the public discourse of Britain was marked by a clash of estates over the use of the cityscape. While the members of the upper class desired to stroll the streets, the working class used the exact same space to conduct their business. In essence this was a debate with the mercantile interests on the one hand and the rising leisure culture of the gentry on the other, a struggle between producers and consumers, both of which were acknowledged as important parts of the proto-industrialist world of Britain.

 

The leisure culture of the early 18th century was made manifest in various ways. The book trade blossomed as a consequence of an increase in the spare time of the upper echelons, and throughout England parks were constructed for the pleasure of the rich. One of these parks - or what me might today call green lungs - was The New Walk of York, an elm-guarded avenue stretching from the Tower Gardens to the junction of the Foss and the Ouse. To access this pocket of peacefulness the walkers passed through an iron-gated stone arch - constructed in the Mayoralty of Jonas Thompson (1731-32) - that is no longer extant.

The New Walk was begun in the early 1730s at the behest of the York City Corporation and finished in 1733. Its purpose was to make York a social centre in Georgian England, providing an outlet for leisure to the gentry and parvenus. The Corporation also commissioned the Assembly Rooms, the Mansion House and the Racecourse for the same purpose, and the popularity of the project resulted in the construction of the original Blue Bridge in 1738, allowing the walk to extend even further along the riverbank.

In 1880-81 Skeldergate Bridge was constructed and the New Walk passed through a short tunnel that opened into St. George's Field where citizens in Medieval times were allowed to walk, practice with bows and arrows and to dry linen. Today the Field is occupied by a housing estate. Skeldergate Bridge was designed by Thomas Page (1803-77) who had also designed Westminster Bridge and Lendal Bridge in York.

 
Today the New Walk offer a completely different experience to the modern walker than to the pedestrian of ages past, partly because of the changes in the surrounding geography, and partly - but perhaps most importantly - because of the changes in local society that makes the goals of its founders redundant. Today the City of York is in itself a major attraction for pedestrians. Cars are not allowed to drive certain streets within given timeframes, the majority of tourist attractions can be found within the city walls - themselves a pedestrian attraction - and numerous walks are arranged throughout the city that allow the walker to experience the city's history in a specific way. This shift has, however, restored one of the main features of the New Walk: here one can truly escape the hustle and bustle of the city, the commotion of streets packed with tourists and enjoy some peaceful solitude along the bank of the River Ouse.

 

When I returned to York in September 2011 I took the opportunity to take a solitary stroll up the river one beautiful summer day. The water level was sufficiently low to allow walking on the embankment between the river and the trees, but to my great delight - I have become very fascinated with this particular feature of the Ouse - the vestiges of a previous flood could still be seen in the footprints perforating the dried and cracked mud.

  One day, about noon, I was walking along the shore toward my boat, when, looking down, I saw in the sand the print of a man's naked foot.

- Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe

 
After a short while I came upon the Blue Bridge, a curiously designed construction that has been rebuilt four times since 1738. The first bridge was made of wood, had a high-pitched roof and costed 100£, while the modern version is made of metal and was raised in 1929. In 1858 the Blue Bridge was flanked by two Russians cannons - spoil from the Crimean War - but these were melted down in World War II.

 In the background we see the Foss Barrier, a structure built after the severe floods of 1979 and 1982 to protect the city centre.

 
Past the Blue Bridge the scenery becomes more idyllic as the city disappears into the distance and the landscape beyond the river is dominated by a more forested landscape, allowing the walker to ignore the housing estate on his or her left-hand side. The Walk continues past Pikeing Well of which only its well-head is extant. This was commissioned by the York City Corporation in 1752 and constructed by the architect John Carr (1723-1807) at the cost of 80£. Pikeing Well was said to have curative properties and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (d. 1762) was advised to let her son bathe here to cure his rickets.

                                                                            Pikeing Well

 

The natural end point of the New Walk is Millennium Bridge, constructed by the engineering firm Whitby Bird and Partners of London and opened to the public in 2000. From here the walker can either retrace his or her steps or cross the bridge and return to the city past Rowntree Park. I chose the latter.

 

Millennium Bridge is the first permanent bridge on this location. Prior to its construction the only means of traffic was a ferry operating between the New Walk and Clementhorpe. In 1955 a temporary bridge was put in place for the York Tattoo.

 
On my way back to the city I kept a lookout for the tansy beetle, a species of coleoptera located solely by the banks of the River Ouse. Its decline owes to the reduced availability of the tansy plant, its main foodsource. Unfortunately I was unable to find the beetle, but I did come across some other examples of the local wildlife.

 

As I was taking the above pictures I was accosted by a lady who asked me if I had been taking pictures of the push-chairs. I realised that lurching by the the fence of Rowntree Parkwith a camera and a hood pulled over my head - it was a windy day - was perhaps not the smartest thing to do. I was a bit taken aback by the question, but I appreciated her concern, knowing full well that my scruffy beard justified the assumption that I was a pervert. Fortunately she was convinced of my innocence when I showed her that none of the pictures featured push-chairs or humans for that matter.

 

Rowntree Park was a gift from Rowntree & Company Ltd. to the citizens of York and the City Corporation in 1921. The park was meant as a memorial to the staff of the cocoa company who fell in the Great War, while the gates were donated in 1955 as a memorial of World War II.

The New Walk is a nice change from the cityscape of York and leads you into a very different part of the local geography. As always in York history never lets go and modernity never fully retreats or stops, so the blend of old and new so integral to this wonderful city remains a salient feature even in the farthest reaches of the Walk. This probably accounts a great deal for its charm, as does the fact that tourists do not seem to seek out this locality.