CSI Münster

[brianedwards]

CSI Münster

Seventy miles away the booms
are heard: the Devil and His Mother
demanding entry. The women plug

the holes with mud and ribbons
of flesh, chocks of bone,
the starved and slain more valuable

in death. Beyond the wall,
another, built to trap the banished,
the unbaptized and turncoats;

a no-man's land of human waste
where families, festooned with maladies
get to watch each other die. This fate

a mercy that a chain of brides
might crave, escape
from what the nearing Landsknechts brings.

Carpeted in blood, the marketplace
where the King of Zion removed
the heads of those who dared refuse

his chambers, will soon host the fall
of New Jerusalem,
symbolised in cages that still hang.

Though it's too late to dust for prints, the hand
that nailed the theses to the church
has left its mark on Münster's streets.







~

[Suzanne]

Hi B.,

A history lesson mixed with a future view.
There is so much eluded to that i am not really sure what you are trying to say but the vivid tapestry of action is conveyed.
I did look up Münster and there are indeed three cages hung.

I am poor at these types of poems and i always look forward to what other people say.

I like the idea of CSI-ing history.


Suzanne

[David]

I like this. I've read about it, I think. I couldn't think who the Devil's Mother could be, but those must be the names of cannon? (Cannons? Don't know.)

It's a vivid picture, Brian. Are Luther's fingerprints on this? I can see how he might be implicated, but I'm not sure it's an open and shut case. Could be wrong, though. Bit vague on the religious history here.

The title really drew me in. It's very good, but the only CSI bits I can really see are in the last verse. Funny, I've been to Münster, but I don't remember the cages.

I think you capture that sense of impending doom, within a confined space, really well. Claustrophobic.

Cheers

David

[brianedwards]

Where can't Luther's prints be found David? Münster is one of the more obvious places I'd have thought.

Anyway, many thanks to both of you. It's a dull piece, poetically speaking, but still trying to loosen up those muscles. For the record, my colleagues in the history department think it's shite.

B.

[Ros]

I wondered about Luther, but couldn't recall this level of brutality. It is curiously flat for such a series of dramatic events. Glad you're flexing the muscles again.

Ros

[brianedwards]

Thanks Ros. The siege of Münster was arguably the most brutal event of the reformation.
The poem is drivel I know, but thanks for the encouragement.

B.

[Ros]

No, never drivel.

[ChrisGeorge]

Thanks Ros. The siege of Münster was arguably the most brutal event of the reformation.
The poem is drivel I know, but thanks for the encouragement.

B.

Hello Brian

No not drivel. All old wrongs need to be revisited and discussed. That's what you are doing here. The other thing to be said is that the deaths in the name of religion that are taking place today are very much presaged by what happened back then. So this is an important topic for poetry. Carry on with the good work.

All the best

Chris

[brianedwards]

Thanks Chris, good points. And thanks again Ros.

B.

[ray miller]

I like it, has a deal of contemporary resonance, as they don't say. Nice title, great final verse.

the unbaptized and would-be turncoats; - I don't like that would-be, makes the line clumsy, I think. Why not just turncoats, everybody's under suspicion.

from what the nearing Landsknecht heralds - brings instead of heralds?

[dedalus]

Well, there's good drivel and there's bad drivel; there's the interesting and then there's the boring. I've lately been assured by two angels, one with his head smashed in by hammer blows and the other hanging on to the cathedral door by nailed-in tendons, that this account was authentic and definitely one or the other.

[brianedwards]

Ray, right on both counts, will revise in due course.
Bren, a pint over the summer? Ffs it's long overdue.

B.

[David]

Where can't Luther's prints be found David? Münster is one of the more obvious places I'd have thought.

Mmm. Well. It's a bit like saying John Lennon's prints were on the Manson murders. You can say it - at a push - but it will raise more eyebrows than mine.

And re:

escape
from what the nearing Landsknecht heralds

- just the one? You seem to be using it as a collective noun, but I don't think it is.

I still like this, though.

Cheers

David

[brianedwards]

Ok, maybe his prints aren't everywhere but what occurred in Münster, it cannot be denied, has its roots in Luther's protests.

Feel free to correct my German David. How should it be rendered?

B.

[David]

I think Landsknecht is the singular, so Landsknechte would do you fine. Right as rain.

They are / were frightening figures, right enough.

Tschüss!

David

[brianedwards]

Thanks. Does that add an extra syllable when spoken?
I'm meeting a German pal on Sunday but feel too ashamed to ask him...

B.

[David]

Actually, thinking about it, Landsknechte is just too German. We're not speaking German here.

Landsknecht is a German word that we now use colloquially in English - like Panzer - so just Landsknechts is better. And it retains your original rhythm too, which is good. (Landsknechte would add an extra syllable, as you say.)

[brianedwards]

That was my original thinking David, but I'm always cautious around such thinks. Keep as is?

B.

[Antcliff]

I rather liked this, Brian. I liked the combination of the grim and the somewhat comic title. Grim event indeed.

With David, I am not quite so sure why Luther is picked out above others particularly.

has its roots in Luther's protests

Well, yes, but I think a CSI team might want a tighter connection if looking for the guilty? By stressing the CSI aspect doesn't the poem rather invite the query? But no matter, because I am calling by mainly to say...

The poem is drivel I know

is surely wrong?


Seth

[David]

That was my original thinking David, but I'm always cautious around such thinks. Keep as is?

Yes. But with the s.

Just to come back to Luther's fingerprints, though, I don't think they're really on Münster. The anti-Catholicism is there, of course, but that didn't exactly come from him. It's more that he expressed it more pungently than anyone else at that time. And what was so special about Münster, which I think he would have decried, was that potent mixture of millennialism (pretty good for 1534) and a sort of proto-communism. He really wasn't in favour of the Peasants' Revolt, for instance.

But I'm coming to the end of my meagre knowledge of Luther now. I should read a bit more first.

It - the poem - is, as Seth says, really not drivel, though.

Cheers

David

[brianedwards]

Thanks chaps.

B.