Note by JRW: The
following is an extract from a handwritten letter by Myatt, sent to me. He dated it
Early December and gave it the title Preco preheminencie.
Preco preheminencie
These are the tears that I have cried, that I should have cried - tears
which unbidden fall as I listen to Preco
preheminencie by Dunstable; and tears which express my longing
for that beauty, that love, that ineffable goodness which sometimes
someone somewhere has presenced on this grieving Earth.
This is what I am - these tears, born of both suffering and joy, and
bearing as they do in memories of light and dark the life which was,
is, mine. This is what I am - that quiet look of love; that desire to
transcend beyond the moment to where exists a purity of being.
Why has the learning not been learnt? Am I with my life an analogy, an
answer? Seeking, questing, plunging often without any thought, reason
or plan, into life, knowing thus that exhilaration of existence as when
one early Winter's morning I fastly cycled on roads of snow newly iced
by a night of bright moon to give to she whom I then loved just one
letter of love - one hour, one moment of existence, of perfect bliss,
of
perfect union of body, thought, spirit, soul, as when I stubborn beyond
myself grimly bore my complaining body on through the stark deathly
heat of the desert to reach just one more goal in two weeks of tortured
goals whose ending left me briefly suspended between life and death, my
being then transcending out as if I had become the desert, the Sun, the
water that saved me, the people who in their simple act of kindness
took me in and brought me even then to an insight of understanding of
their culture, their Prophet, their God.
Seeking, questing, as when I gently cared for a patient, dying, and
listened as he told of how he had endured years in those Trenches of
stalemate war. There, in a bedside drawer were his medals, brought by
his wife - and that last night I stood watching, unseen, as she briefly
took them out as he rasped, to breathe his last breath of life.
Seeking, questing - as when I sat on the edge of the bed of she whom I
loved who loved me, and held her as she drifted into that last and
never-ending sleep. Seeking, questing., forgetting as when, less than a
year later I was travelling, writing, speaking words of chaos and of
hate, as if hoping such words might change what-was for what I hoped
might-be, forgetting, forgetting the pain, the anger, the suffering,
even the deaths, caused. Had she, my love, died in my arms in vain?
Seeking, questing, as when years later I, grieving, sorrowed as my then
wife became troubled, ill, and I knew my blame; forgetting - as when,
less than six months later, in a land of hot Sun I was again preaching
death, destruction, as if it might again change what-was to what I in
arrogance believed should-be...
So much known, seen, felt - so many tears, insights along the Way, and
so many times when those tears, insights, were lost. It was as if I had
to start all over again, and re-learn what life, myself, in-between,
had forced me to forget. As if my questing life each year had to shed
its slowly learnt wisdom to vigourously grow, up, upwards to where the
pain of remembering merged with the joy of passion; upward, ever upward
beyond and between the light and the dark. And I am, was, like them -
those who for thousands of years
acted to strive to change what-was to what they believed should-be, who
experienced, who learned, who forgot and who so acted again. I - the
deed; the redemption and the blame. I, they, we - in our tears, our
understanding a beginning of what we should and can be.
Seeking, questing, forgetting until I finally distilled the essence
- which is of empathy and honour.
Yesterday - as I myself was held, touched, kissed by a woman - I was
blessed through her, with her, by her, with another intimation of the
divine, another presencing of the numinous, and all I can do to force
myself to remember is create these words, only these words, born by
tears; born of divine music, presencing: such a poor recompense for
five thousand years of suffering, seeking, questing, forgetting, pain,
and toil.
DW Myatt