naufragio is used in such an angry, sorrowful way it becomes almost a verb. The poem itself is so full of blazing lighthouses and wharfs, islands and shorelines, departures and abandonment, it defines both our family and the geography of that night for me so precisely, that it tore into me and remained inside me, fully memorized almost the first time that I read it in English. I know, also, the dark, inevitability of that truthful line: “Todo en ti fue naufragio” In the book on Mandy’s shelf it is translated as “In you everything sank.” But I prefer my own translation: “In you everything shipwrecked.”
Our uncle told us stories of shipwrecks and other nautical miracles and disasters; tales of drowned sailors, men turning into seals, and mermaids emerging from the sea. He told these stories over and over on this farm until we half believed that all of these tragedies and transformations had taken place at the end of the lawn in the great lake water that shone there. The landscape of childhood is so limited and, in our case, was so beautiful we could think of no better combination of water and land where these tales should unfold. He told us stories of howling gales during which the courageous Butler keepers would successfully light the thousands of candles in the huge glass jewel-like lamp on the top of their towers. He told us about treasures coming in with the tide after such gales: diamonds anddubloons, leg irons minus the legs, a complete guillotine, intact, ballgowns without the dancers, canisters filled with tea, the leaves still dry, a cat and her kittens (alive!), and barrels of rum, whiskey, sherry, absinthe, port, Madeira, red, white, and rosé wine. After these sessions we would scramble down to the beach, returning later with pails of lake-worn glass, so colourful, but, like his stories, in the end so useless. Yet we instinctively knew, I suspect, that they were all that remained, years later, after an event where everything shatters: harmless, softened shards of cargo smashed and then smoothed by storms, they were forgotten evidence of a spectacular series of wrecks.
But there was one seminal Butler story, which was dark and seldom told and all the more fascinating to us. My uncle was adamant in his refusal to tell the tale on demand, yet could not be dissuaded from insisting that we all listen when he felt the moment was right for the telling, that moment almost always occurring at a Butler funeral after which he had consumed a fair quantity of alcohol. The older Butler relatives, you see, were scattered like wildflowers all over the fields on both sides of the lake, living out their declining years in frame houses that, like the elders themselves, were in various states of dignified decay. After their funerals, all of the Butlers would gather either at this farm or at its double across the water, depending on the citizenship of the deceased. I don’t remember hearing the tale on the American farm, however, so it musthave only occurred to my uncle in the wake of Canadian Butler deaths.
It was the kind of story that moved steadily toward its conclusion, then paused and circled back to begin again in the manner of certain gloomy sonatas. And it was a story that, because of its references to steep rocks and ancient history and magnificent weather and strange architecture, we were unable to place in our own calm landscape. It seemed therefore quite reasonable to us that the setting for the narrative should be Ireland, the country the Butlers had abandoned. Also, it involved the death of children. Not one of us believed that a young life could be violently severed in a place as safe and settled as ours. Though our graveyards were filled with nineteenth-century girls and boys, we in the twentieth were, or at least we thought we were, exempt from catastrophic surprises. The Butlers we were familiar with aged quietly along with their houses, then died sedately and politely just before harvest.
“Do you
Our uncle told us stories of shipwrecks and other nautical miracles and disasters; tales of drowned sailors, men turning into seals, and mermaids emerging from the sea. He told these stories over and over on this farm until we half believed that all of these tragedies and transformations had taken place at the end of the lawn in the great lake water that shone there. The landscape of childhood is so limited and, in our case, was so beautiful we could think of no better combination of water and land where these tales should unfold. He told us stories of howling gales during which the courageous Butler keepers would successfully light the thousands of candles in the huge glass jewel-like lamp on the top of their towers. He told us about treasures coming in with the tide after such gales: diamonds anddubloons, leg irons minus the legs, a complete guillotine, intact, ballgowns without the dancers, canisters filled with tea, the leaves still dry, a cat and her kittens (alive!), and barrels of rum, whiskey, sherry, absinthe, port, Madeira, red, white, and rosé wine. After these sessions we would scramble down to the beach, returning later with pails of lake-worn glass, so colourful, but, like his stories, in the end so useless. Yet we instinctively knew, I suspect, that they were all that remained, years later, after an event where everything shatters: harmless, softened shards of cargo smashed and then smoothed by storms, they were forgotten evidence of a spectacular series of wrecks.
But there was one seminal Butler story, which was dark and seldom told and all the more fascinating to us. My uncle was adamant in his refusal to tell the tale on demand, yet could not be dissuaded from insisting that we all listen when he felt the moment was right for the telling, that moment almost always occurring at a Butler funeral after which he had consumed a fair quantity of alcohol. The older Butler relatives, you see, were scattered like wildflowers all over the fields on both sides of the lake, living out their declining years in frame houses that, like the elders themselves, were in various states of dignified decay. After their funerals, all of the Butlers would gather either at this farm or at its double across the water, depending on the citizenship of the deceased. I don’t remember hearing the tale on the American farm, however, so it musthave only occurred to my uncle in the wake of Canadian Butler deaths.
It was the kind of story that moved steadily toward its conclusion, then paused and circled back to begin again in the manner of certain gloomy sonatas. And it was a story that, because of its references to steep rocks and ancient history and magnificent weather and strange architecture, we were unable to place in our own calm landscape. It seemed therefore quite reasonable to us that the setting for the narrative should be Ireland, the country the Butlers had abandoned. Also, it involved the death of children. Not one of us believed that a young life could be violently severed in a place as safe and settled as ours. Though our graveyards were filled with nineteenth-century girls and boys, we in the twentieth were, or at least we thought we were, exempt from catastrophic surprises. The Butlers we were familiar with aged quietly along with their houses, then died sedately and politely just before harvest.
“Do you
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