Like a hot-fired, hand-stoked heart
Reading John M. Ford's 'Winter Solstice, Camelot Station' in the shadow of 2020
Camelot is served
By a sixteen-track stub terminal done in High Gothick Style,
The tracks covered by a single great barrel-vaulted glass roof framed upon iron,
At once looking back to the Romans and ahead to the Brunels.
I mean, what can you say against an opening line like that? The trains are coming in to Camelot, and the late John M. Ford is our master of ceremonies introducing the knights of the Table Round, the ladies of noble birth, worth questing for, and the big, iron steam-breathing beasts that will deliver them all.
Winter Solstice, Camelot Station was the first piece of writing from John M. Ford I ever encountered, to the best of my knowledge. He wrote it for insertion in a Christmas letter to his friends and colleagues in 1988. Published the next year, it won both the Rhysling Award for Best Long Poem (tied) and the World Fantasy Award for Short Fiction, back in the days when the award was daring and would fling itself into the embrace of poems, comic books, anything that shone with brilliance.
And Ford’s poem shines, in the bright armour, the brass fittings of the station pubs, and most of all, in the gleam of the trains.
The first of a line of wagons have arrived,
Spilling footmen and pages in Court livery,
And old thick Kay, stepping down from his Range Rover,
Tricked out in a bush coat from Swaine, Adeney, Brigg,
Leaning on his shooting stick as he marshalls his company,
Instructing the youngest how to behave in the station,
To help mature women that they may encounter,
Report pickpockets, gather up litter,
And of course no true Knight of the Table Round (even in training)
Would do a station porter out of Christmas tips.
When I was young, and had run through everything worthwhile of the school library’s fiction section, I would flit over to non-fiction, having discovered there were stories there, too. Greek and Norse myths, stories of Robin Hood, Baba Yaga, Anansi. And of course, there were tales of King Arthur.
These were the simplified accounts, not exactly Le Morte d’Arthur or the self-importantly archaic prose of Idylls of the King, but they were vivid enough to express to a child something of what the Welsh bards and French troubadours had sung, hundreds of years ago. (A collection with illustrations by Victor Ambrus was particularly memorable – Tristan and Iseult buried under roses, the Green Knight vivid as new moss, blood dripping from his severed head.)
My personal timeline is jumbled, but Arthur and his knights are a repeating motif from ages five to twenty-five, at least.
I must have already seen Disney’s The Sword in the Stone on it’s re-release into theatres long before I read any of the books, the lanky Bill Peet character designs finding a brain primed to receive them. At some point, I acquired from the city library the 1977 edition of T.H. White’s The Book of Merlyn – beautiful pen-and-ink renditions of Arthur transformed into a far-flying goose, into an ant – and from there was led to the full The Once and Future King. Out of all of fantasy literature, White’s Lancelot, the ill-made knight – self-hating, ugly, still striving – made the deepest impression on me.
A high-drivered engine in Northern Lines green
Draws in with a string of side-corridor coaches,
All honey-toned wood with stained glass on their windows.
Gareth steps down from a compartment, then Gaheris and Aggravaine,
All warmly tucked up in Orkney sweaters;
Gawaine comes after in Shetland tweed.
Their Gladstones and steamers are neatly arranged,
With never a worry--their Mum does the packing.
A redcap brings forth a curious bundle, a rude shape in red paper--
The boys did that one themselves, you see, and how does one wrap a unicorn's head?
They bustle down the platform, past a chap all in green.
He hasn't the look of a trainman, but only Gawaine turns to look at his eyes,
And sees written there Sir, I shall speak with you later.
Ford’s poem is densely allusive. The mythology and literature of the Arthurian stories is a bottomless pool, and he throws us in without a life preserver. White’s Arthur and Mallory’s and for all I know, Spenser’s rub shoulders with tossed-off asides to clothiers, watchmakers, photographers, business magnates, to the history of Victorian, Roman, pre-Roman Britain, to The Maltese Falcon, because why not?
There is a great deal of clever and playful why not? in the first half of the poem. The knights are coming home for Christmas, Kay must marshall them, each has his own little story, humourous or knowing, the tragedy that will meet so many members of the Round Table only lightly foreshadowed. The Green Knight nods to Gawaine. Palomides is there with a mysterious lady, but no sign of Tristan.
Galahad arrives.
He signs an autograph, he strikes a pose.
Someone says, loudly, "Gal! Who serves the Grail?"
He looks--no one he knows--and there's a silence,
A space in which he shifts like sun on water;
Look quick and you may see a different knight,
A knight who knows that meanings can be lies,
That things are done not knowing why they're done,
That bearings fail, and stainless steel corrodes.
A whistle blows. Snow shifts on the glass shed roof. That knight is gone.
This one remaining tosses his briefcase to one of Kay's pages,
And, golden, silken, careless, exits left.
And this is a kind of turning, for after Galahad, it is Mordred, arriving alone, apart from the other knights, on a private platform.
The premature lines in his face are a map of a hostile country,
The redness in his eyes a reminder that hollyberries are poison.
He goes inside to put on a look acceptable for Christmas Court;
As he slams the door it rattles like strafing jets.
This is before the ending of Camelot, but how long? Is there another season of Boys’ Own adventures, rescuing damsels and confronting bandit knights in the wild places, or has the tale passed its apex, tilting downhill and gathering speed for the crash? Have Lancelot and Guinevere begun their affair? Has the Grail Quest left its seekers shattered, unsure, too holy to remain on Earth? Is all lost?
Not yet. Not yet, but the worm is in the apple.
The final introduction dispenses with names. Two aging men arrive on the caboose of a wheezing old cargo train, riding like tramps, and find their horses, “rather plain horses, considering.”
By the roundhouse they pause,
And look at the locos, the water, the sand, and the coal,
They look for a long time at the turntable,
Until the one who is King says “It all seemed so simple, once,”
And the best knight in the world says “It is. We make it hard.”
They ride on, toward Camelot by the service road.
I don’t know much about poetry. I can barely tell an iamb from my elbow. My poetry reading has been neither frequent nor thorough nor directed – I am at best a crow who plucks up a bit of glittery word-stuff every now and then. So while I can feel the craft that was put into it, I don’t know enough about poetry to say if Camelot Station is a great poem, or even a good poem.
What I know is that for me, winters are hard.
Here on the west coast of Canada, there are Decembers where it can feel like it rains every day. Sunsets start at three o’clock and the half-light lingers like a bruise, a cruel reminder of how little daylight you’re to receive. There’s work, often busier and more intense than other months, right up until Dec. 24. (And don’t forget to shop! Put up those decorations! Don’t forget to be glad it’s the holidays, all the while!) Stress, and dark, and lack of exercise, and insufficient sleep can drop me into a mire, and climbing out sometimes takes days, a couple of weeks. Months, one awful year.
When I first found Camelot Station, in a collection of Nebula nominees, I loved it. But like a lot of short fiction I read as a teenager, I didn’t remember the author’s name. It was years later, in my twenties, that I’d discover The Dragon Waiting, and The Last Hot Time, and How Much For Just the Planet? and…
And that was all.
Around the time I rediscovered Camelot Station, in my thirties by then, Ford’s books were vanishing from libraries and long gone from bookstore shelves. He’d died far too young, his racing pen stilled by lifelong health issues. He died alone, and the tangle of his estate meant that his works were going out of print.
I’ve never read Growing Up Weightless or The Princes of the Air or The Scholars of Night. (Oh, hey, a used copy of Scholars is just $128 on Amazon right now! What a steal!)
But there was Camelot Station. Short enough and inconsequential enough (at least in the eyes of copyright holders) to exist online, here and there, in blog posts and tributes.
The last few years, I’ve returned to the poem during the long winters, running through its litany of knights and trains, teasing out new references from time to time. (This year, I’ve been reading it at least once a month since March.)
Why read it, though, in this low and dark time of year? Why a poem that moves from joy to sorrow?
Because the end is not tragedy. It is something else, beyond that.
After Arthur and Lancelot have started their ride for Camelot (still together, still shield-brothers, for now) the poem turns towards the Christmas events yet to come in the halls of Camelot, the roast goose and wassail, chess games and poker, children caroling and knights and damsels flirting.
And then, with the rhythm of piston and side-rod, Ford returns to the station.
And at the great glass station, motion goes on,
The extras, the milk trains, the varnish, the limiteds,
The Pindar of Wakefield, the Lady of the Lake,
The Broceliande Local, the Fast Flying Briton,
The nerves of the kingdom, the lines of exchange,
Running to a schedule as the world ought,
Ticking like a hot-fired hand-stoked heart,
The metal expression of the breaking of boundaries,
The boilers that turn raw fire into power,
The driving rods that put the power to use,
The turning wheels that make all places equal,
The knowledge that the train may stop but the line goes on;
The train may stop
But the line goes on.
I don’t remember my reaction to that ending when I first read it. But now it rarely fails to bring a rush of emotion.
We are at an end but not, perhaps, at the end, Ford tells us.
I am pathologically unable to tell people “It will all be okay,” because I know it might not, and I can’t lie to people I care about. I’ve been bulletproof against pure optimism for a long time. But I don’t reject hope, I just armour it with protective cynicism. In the last stanzas of Ford’s poem, there is something that speaks to me of hope beyond loss, of moving on after, or in spite of, hard times.
At the end of the year, at the turning of the season, when the light is pursued hard by night, regret and sadness and hope have to come closely bound together.
The train may stop
But the line goes on.
Ford’s work is, at long last, coming back into publication, every bit of what was in print in his life, and then some. In 2021, I’ll finally get my hands on new copies of the works I’ve never read. I’m already devouring The Dragon Waiting, a book that is rewarding and challenging, rich and evasive.
Arthur is gone and Camelot is fallen, but not forgotten. Tragedy remains tragedy, but it does not mean that there cannot still be joy.
Today is the winter solstice, and tomorrow, there will be a little more light.
Further Reading
The editor Sigrid Ellis, who wrote about this poem for many years, suggested in one of her essays that this Camelot, this time, might not fall. It has not fallen yet, and Ford leaves it up to us to decide if jealousy and hatred will win out, if war will divide the kingdom, if a knight will raise his sword to strike a serpent, and doom the last hope of peace. She’s written more eloquently about Camelot Station than I could have, and I suggest you check it out.
And of course, John M. Ford’s books are coming back into print from Tor, including a collection of his short stories and poems, including Against Entropy, and the rollicking Troy: The Movie.
No self promo corner this week. Happy holidays, and I’ll see you in the New Year.