Joan Metelerkamp

Side by side

Body of Work

As coming upon
a puff-adder coiled on the carpet
under the desk

or a boomslang
slithered off out of its tracks
then its skin and later even
its bones . . .

perhaps they didn’t even know it
was done when it was done,
those alchemists,

perhaps it felt too easy –
like waking drugged out of sleep still
sloughing it off –

maybe they didn’t even feel better
for a while, if at all
after all

they didn’t know what they were doing
when they started
nor how terrible they’d feel
nor for how long –

they were dead scared
was it the fear itself or was it the fear
of mercury poisoning or the poisoning itself

god’s truth they must have got sick of it –
right arms aching down to the little ﬁnger
right side of the head aching
right down the back aching

sick of it sick of that vocation that exhaustion that compulsion
to make something of something as nothing
as love making matter what mattered
so little to anyone else if at all –

ridicule, poverty, social ostracism
they weren’t worried about those they worried
about their work
not working their fear not resolving

what they knew: what they were
working on
their material, their metal, to make
come like the mysterious body

they didn’t want to end up with
the same stuff they started with
the residue of the time before

all they knew they were
burning thickening melting
into air ﬁnding wanting
all they could ever hope for

As the ancient Alchemists intuited, and as depth psychology recognises, all work is both work in or on material – the \'material world\' – as well as work upon the individual psyche. The work of artists is close to play, and poets, who play with words, work on, or with, psyche’s language. What the soul has to say is often out of tune with its time and place. At such times and places, other poets, alive or dead, are the ones who bring comfort and inspiration. Throughout Burnt Offering I quote or refer to the poets, psychologists and philosophers whose work has made mine possible.