Barefoot by the Ocean: Midnight in Bretagne, France
by Robert M. Katzman © October 30, 2022
So dark a night
Only a single star
Can break through the clouds
Winds here so cool and damp
Waters gently lapping
Coming toward me
Leaving me behind
The white foam a subtle necklace
Offered to me by the Sea
The North Atlantic Sea
***
“Come to me”
It seems to whisper
Barely a hush as the small waves recede
As the small waves approach
“I will embrace you with my waters
My necklace soft around your body
Come closer to me
Do not fear me, Stranger
My enveloping arms
Will keep you forever
Come sleep in my Sea”
***
I listen in my mind
The sensuous invitation
The cold sand under my toes
Shells cast-off by seagulls
Sink under my heels
I do not respond to temptation
Imaginary or actual
Danger, evil, seduction
All my old adversaries
My decades on Earth
Sometimes…
Perhaps too often
I’ve surrendered to you
***
But the Tidal sounds
The Tidal sounds so constant
An ever-repeating anthem
The Musician never wearies
I close my eyes
Listening
To the music of the Tide
To think about where I am
***
This distinct part of the world
Projecting off of massive France
West toward nearby tiny Britain
Once a mighty empire itself
Now a small island
The world has passed by
***
Beautiful Celtic Bretagne
Tiny as Massachusetts
Brittany to strangers
A world unto itself
A land for the Bretons
I see their unfamiliar names
On every street sign
Under the French names
***
Subordinate in present history
Subordinate in culture
Subordinate in present status
More tolerated than embraced
As the Sea offered to me
The choice to disappear within it
I see the hypnotic
Swirling of their Celtic art
I see their massive stone Megaliths
Vertically stoically standing
In their ancient patterns
***
I see their tall beautiful women
Smiling their Celtic Smiles
Piercing dark eyes
Seeming to say:
We descendants
Our unconquered genes
Demanding you look
Insisting you see us, Stranger
We, the Bretons
Our music
Our language
Our art
Our bodies
We, are still here
***
The Moon peeks through the
Clouds above me
Kissing the water
With weightless lips
The light seeks me out
Finds my small Silver Star
My Judean Star
Responding to the moonlight
Shining brightly at Midnight
Saying, I too remain
And you Distant Moon
You still remember me
From thousands of years past
My neck only the current
Possessor of this endlessly
Pursued Silver Star
***
I am in Bretagne
A land filled with
Medieval Churches
Sunlight pouring through
Christian stained-glass art
Magnificent ports
Land rising and falling
Toward Finisterre
The ends of the Earth
Giant wave after wave
Crashing! Crashing!! Crashing!!!
Against sullen tumbled
Masses of ebony stone
***
Winds blowing from every direction
My greying hair
Responding freely
My face battered by spray
My body, my emotions
Encapsulated by
The magnificence of the moment
Wind, Sea, Rocks, Sky
My brief fundamental
Place in Time
And I wantonly absorb them
Cool my mind, I plead
I don’t want to remember
But I do
***
In the 13thCentury
People like me
Dark-eyed
Dark-Haired
Olive-skinned
Members of the Tribes
Carriers of our ancient Order
Chosen, then Commanded to tell
Whomever they encountered:
Destroy your idols!
There is but one God
We, detested Messengers
Emptied from so many lands
Waiting, waiting, waiting
For our next Upheaval
Our next Apocalypse
***
A land powerfully beautiful
Tall stone Cathedrals
In every old stone town center
Cemeteries rolling over
Quiet landscapes
Their beloved Savior
Mounted over every grave
In rusting metal
Carved in stone
Sometimes their Sainted Mary
Etched in marble
Were banished from Bretagne
900 years ago
Bretagne remains emptied of Jews
***
I have looked everywhere
Seeking a single Synagogue
But we as a people
Don’t exist anywhere here
Bringing to me
A desolate loneliness
***
Oh Bretons!
I feel something powerful here
My slight enduring
Judean Star
Responding to the Moonlight
Shining fiercely
Seemingly saying, in response:
***
I too remain
Do you still remember me?
From thousands of years past
My neck only the current
Possessor of that Silver Star
Bretons, my Brothers
My Sisters from lands past
***
We both remain
Battered by Time
You and I are still here
I wish my Tribes
Like you
From across a churning Sea
Would return here
Return to Bretagne
Shalom, Bretagne
Now I leave as well
Shalom and Farewell
Beautiful Land
***
So dark a night
Only a single star
Can break through the clouds
Winds here so cool and damp
Waters gently lapping
Coming toward me
Leaving me behind
The white foam a subtle necklace
Offered to me by the Sea
The North Atlantic Sea
***
“Come to me”
It seems to whisper
Barely a hush as the small waves recede
As the small waves approach
“I will embrace you with my waters
My necklace soft around your body
Come closer to me
Do not fear me, Stranger
My enveloping arms
Will keep you forever
Come sleep in my Sea”
***
Some thoughts I want to pass on about how this difficult-to-write poem came to be:
I wrote that “Barefoot” poem slowly, first in my mind for three weeks, all in October 10 thru 31, 2022, later on paper. Then rewritten after that when back home in my own small quiet town, Racine, in eastern Wisconsin.
Racine was founded in 1834 as Port Gilbert by Gilbert Knapp, a lake captain, it adopted its present name, which was derived from the French word for “root,” in 1841.
The brown Root River winds through the town today.
The French name has intrigued me. I looked up the history of the area: In 1634 French explorer Jean Nicolet was most likely the first European to enter what would become the state of Wisconsin. The area remained under French control until 1763, when it was acquired by the British. It was subsequently ceded to the United States by the Peace of Paris treaties in 1783.
So, I left a historically French place for my honeymoon to go to visit the original owner of the land, then returned to it, in a haze of French-ness. A here and there feeling, but also a now and then feeling as well. I am of course aware that the Native Americans were here for thousands of years before the Europeans arrived in North America.
There were two stories I wanted to tell, because to me, they were intertwined, but not necessarily understood that way by other people.
To me, it wasn’t the Bretons who were the oppressors of the Jews, because they, too, were also severely, culturally and linguistically oppressed by the majority population of French Catholics.
So, my complicated feelings of cultural/ethnic/religious isolation in Brittany, were more vaguely historic than current.
These emotions were also colored by my long ago, six decades ago, awareness of official French complicity with the Nazis in rounding up and deporting 77,000 Parisian Jews in World War Two, including 12,000 children. 72,000 Jews were murdered in concentration camps. About 400,000 Jews still live in France today.
At the same time, I was awed by the beauty of Brittany, the friendliness of its people and also its small villages, sometimes enormous Cathedrals rising among small ancient stone buildings, the art and present day customs.
So, that’s the swirl of emotion I felt on the beach at midnight.
I didn’t want to write a story, but to try to express it poetically in word-images and sounds.
It became 20 stanzas of different lengths, about 220 lines and 832 words. I wanted the emotion, my despair, to flow down through it vertically, as if to Hell.
And the emotional confusion of experiencing a never-before-seen geographic place on different levels while at the same place, and also through time, 900 years at one point.
Maybe other people haven’t felt what I did those first nights in Brittany, but what does that matter? This poem is my experience.
It was my desire to capture my vivid emotions, and also the “why” of them to people with no connection at all to any of it:
France, Brittany, Bretons, Jews, geography, Celtic religion and music, the North Atlantic Ocean sounds of Tidewater at Midnight and my seeking what wasn’t to be found.
I hope my poem works as an ethereal mixture of all of these things, and that strangers who never met me will become involved with the words and images, if they can.
I am not seeking to please anyone. That seems to be impossible.
Rather, I wanted to create a record of the invisible.
Robert M. Katzman
November 3, 2022
***************
Publishing News!
(Currently seeking representation as a speaker/poet for hire)
Bob Katzman’s two new true Chicago books are now for sale, from him!
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