The Old Man Said

The old man said:

It is no myth, but remains as said,

That the place is known where the people began,

Being known they came into being of their own accord,

From the root which grew the bole which grew

The branch to the point where I am now,

Sitting, waiting for a voice, growing my beard

Like a man who knows little else, whether storm

Or calm, dying or health, whether noise

Or silence in the movement of breath.

A crow flies heavy with thunder,

And thunderclouds weigh the tree with rain;

The young tease being new and footlight

In the change, experiencing that place now,

Without root or bole or branch-grown leaf;

Caught between two stores of food, they allow

Themselves all but themselves in the choice,

They have tasted an altered world, and tasting

Do nothing but eat their own voice.

And what is left is left mute, unwhole,

A spider's web beneath a silent canopy,

Broken by hand, abandoned as a thread,

Without beginning or end or bond

To the leaf of the branch of the root made bole.

Antoni Szadziewski was born on the 1st of September 1966 in Kettering, England. Our parents are refugees from Poland and we grew up in a working-class neighbourhood of Wellingborough, an industrial town of the Midlands area in England. As a kid Antoni walked the countryside around Wellingborough fuelled with the imagination of his reading. It was at this time he started his writing life.

Antoni received a BA in English and American Studies which put him at odds with the working class background he grew up in. The sense of isolation and exile in his work can be traced to a lack of belonging to either his country or class. My brother and I were inseperable and his influence on me was profound. He introduced me to important ideas and books. He read the French symbolists, Blake, Hart Crane, John Donne among many others. He had a strong sense of mysticism.

My brother and I travelled as much as we could between jobs. We visited Central America, North and West Africa, Europe and Asia together. The need for movement was important to him and he felt that it was a way of healing the tedium and laziness of English life. The works of Bruce Chatwin were influential at this point.

My brother was an alcoholic and depressive. He and I struggled to keep him from drinking and I was involved in scenes hard for me now to even imagine. It is not how I want to remember him. The happiest I ever saw him was on New Britain Island in Papua New Guinea. He was teaching in a remote school on a Pacific Island. The area provided for him the space within which he could write. I think that he was always trying to get back to Papua New Guinea in a way. Physically and spiritually. Papuan life offered an alternative mysticism and there was much he tapped into about the religions of New Britain Island. The choice of island is somewhat ironic as he was disillusioned with old Britain and I think his home in New Britain was where he felt at "home".

On his return from New Britain in 1994 he found it difficult to live in England. His illnesses really started at this time and grew worse and in a bid to "keep moving" we went to teach in China. However, the drinking was uncontrollable at this point and he died in a hotel room in Beijing on 7th May 1999. This is not the last impression I want to leave you with, I hope his poems will prove a positive legacy.

Henryk Szadziewski.