Home of Mercy. Gwen Harwood remains an unquestionably devout member of her faith, and yet there is a strange ambivalence to the Church within selected poems of hers. For those familiar with
Home of Mercy By two and two the ruined girls are walking at the neat margin of the convent grass into the chapel, counted as they pass by an old nun who silences their talking. They smooth with roughened hands the clumsy dress that hides their ripening bodies. Memories burn like incense as towards plaster saints they turn faces of mischievous children in distress. They kneel: time for the spirit to begin with prayer its sad recourse to dream and flight from their intolerable weekday rigour. Each morning they will launder, for their sin, sheets soiled by other bodies, and at night angels will wrestle them with brutish vigour. Home of Mercy By two and two the ruined girls are walking at the neat margin of the convent grass into the chapel, counted as they pass by an old nun who silences their talking. They smooth with roughened hands the clumsy dress that hides their ripening bodies. Memories burn like incense as towards plaster saints they turn faces of mischievous children in distress. They kneel: time for the spirit to begin with prayer its sad recourse to dream and flight from their intolerable weekday rigour. Each morning they will launder, for their sin, sheets soiled by other bodies, and at night angels will wrestle them with brutish vigour. Gwen Harwood remains an unquestionably devout member of her faith, and yet there is a strange ambivalence to the Church within selected poems of hers. For those familiar with his work, this can also be seen with Seamus Heaney: certain poems would seem to condemn the Church's exercise of power. However, getting back Harwood, the poem "Home of Mercy" can be seen to attack the values of the Church and their un-Christian-like treatment of so called 'fallen women'. For those perhaps not familiar with the Sisters Of Mercy, they are a group of nuns who, among other charity work, take in females who have become pregnant outside marriage. This of course was an enormous taboo 'back in the old days' where society as a whole conformed more to the Church's teachings. Harwood herself spent time at a convent experimenting with the idea of taking up the veil, but abandoned this idea and would almost seem to mock the values she learned in some interviews. The poem starts with a biblical reference to Noah's Ark; the "ruined girls" walk "two by two" into a chapel. Harwood is playing around with the idea that the pregnant, or 'ruined' girls as they would have been referred to by society's values at the time, are escaping a 'flood' of sorts by entering the protective 'ark' of
the Home of Mercy. The image of an ark is furthered by the lines "walking / at the neat margin of the convent grass," the clean, straight lines of a boat's gangway are replicated in the neat margin of where the grass meets pavement. The aforementioned 'flood', we can try to imagine, would be the suffering and shame endured by a woman who had committed fornication and would now bear the bastard child that would stand as the evidence of such an immoral act. It is worthwhile here to note that Harwood does not mention the involvement of the male ...
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the Home of Mercy. The image of an ark is furthered by the lines "walking / at the neat margin of the convent grass," the clean, straight lines of a boat's gangway are replicated in the neat margin of where the grass meets pavement. The aforementioned 'flood', we can try to imagine, would be the suffering and shame endured by a woman who had committed fornication and would now bear the bastard child that would stand as the evidence of such an immoral act. It is worthwhile here to note that Harwood does not mention the involvement of the male partner... perhaps this is a deliberate 'gap and silence' - an attempt to affirm the values of the contemporary reader in the popular view of a woman bearing the sole responsibility of an illicit sexual union. He would seem to escape scot free in light of the poor women who face this exile into a convent. Moving on, we encounter the girls being "counted as they pass / by an old nun who silences their talking." The act of being counted implies they are property, an object to be owned and accounted for by the owner - their individuality and humanity is reduced. It also suggests that perhaps the girls may be prone to running away (a sign of unhappiness or futility), and therefore tabs must be kept on their whereabouts. The nun is described as not merely being a nun, but old as well. Harwood is not frivolous with her wording, and the inclusion of this adjective would be quite deliberate. Perhaps by old she means outdated, out of touch with the world. It may refer to the fact that new generations are slowly rejecting more and more of the Church's ingrained values, whereas the old generations still stick to the values devoutly. Finally, the girls are seen to have their talking silenced. This is a metaphor for how they are prohibited from sharing their experiences with one another... and indeed with the rest of the world locked up as they are in the convent. To communicate and sympathise is human, the girls are denied their humanity by being silenced. The next stanza moves on to events inside the chapel. The girls "smooth with roughened hands" (what a delicious use of words - to smooth something with nothing other than hands that are rough!) the "clumsy dress / that hides their ripening bodies." This is an obvious reference to their pregnancy, and one that can be viewed as rather derogatory - they are compared with fruit of all things! These poor girls suffer the loss of their humanity yet again at the hands of Harwood (yes I'm being quite facetious!). In any case, the girls have their pregnancy hidden... human nature dictates that we should hide what we are ashamed of or that which is repulsive. Out of sight out of mind after all - the girls seem to be encouraged to think of their pregnancy as shameful... yet the Church celebrates life. This polarity of opinion by the Church towards pregnancy is made to look un-Christian by Harwood's portrayal of the girls within the Home of Mercy. Events continue inside the chapel. "Memories burn / like incense as towards plaster saints they turn," The memories of the girls are seen to 'burn' - suggesting that they cause harm or pain. Memories of what you ask? Without looked at the other lines, perhaps they are memories of the circumstances from which landed them in this very place. Looking at the following lines however, I got the impression that perhaps they were remembering their entry into the Church (remembering that more people in these days would have belonged to the Church), and their transgressions cause them pain, especially being within the chapel where the pervasive religious atmosphere would have exacerbated any guilty feelings they may harbour. This is supported in part by the fact that the 'Memories burn... as towards plaster saints they turn," seeing the saints of their religion could invoke those memories which caused them to be in the chapel in the first place. Memory is described as what makes us human (an idea also explored by Heaney) and the fact that the girls undergo a kind of ritualistic and religious suffering for their memory implies a kind of penance for their humanity. Indeed, it would seem that their whole existence at the convent is penance for their crime of fornication, something I myself blanch at but in the days when the Church had much more influence, something people would have accepted without much thought. Another curious and deliberate use of phrases by Harwood is evident in the use of the "plaster saints," which is phrase that means something that perhaps looks genuine, but despite its decoration is really false. Its inclusion into the poem in the context I am using suggests Harwood is commenting on the fact that the Church has many rules regulating human life (decoration) over the top of what is essentially Christianity (the plaster base), yet the 'decoration' is in conflict with the 'plaster,' rendering the 'decoration' false. This idea is exemplified by the un-Christian and uncompassionate attitude of the Church towards these girls who bear life. The girls are described as having faces of 'mischievous children in distress.' To me, this signified the profound innocence of the poor things... the word 'mischievous' implies a kind of child-like impishness from which no great harm can come, and the fact that they showed distress suggests that they didn't have proper knowledge of what they had committed. They are portrayed as children, as beings with no perspicacity for matters as grave or as complicated as pregnancy, love and religion. They seem to be innocent and entirely deserving of pity by the reader. Their innocence, when juxtaposed with their treatment at the convent and by society, makes the Church's view of Christianity almost beastly. The final stanza concentrates on how the girls pay for their transgressions. They are seen to "launder, for their sin / sheets soiled by other bodies," Superficially, they are forced to wash sheets from both the convent and the community, which ties in with the previous line on their roughened hands. Beneath the surface however, swarms a myriad of allusions. To purify themselves they must wash the filth of others. What is ironic is that the word 'soiled' has sexual connotations - the girls wash the secretions of others while they themselves must suffer for the very same act. Harwood seemingly questions the means to the end: what does it matter that an extra step is involved between the sexual intercourse of those who sol the sheets, and those who wash them? They must tolerate the "intolerable weekday rigour" of the convent. We can use our imaginations and gander that the girls would undergo physical and mental torment from both the nuns and themselves. While it isn't a pretty subject, institutionalized abuse does occur, and Harwood may be alluding to that fact with the aforementioned line. As a final cap to their sufferings, at night "angels will wrestle [the girls] with brutish vigour.' The angels can be seen to be the sparks of life each holds within. They wrestle their mothers with brutish vigour, a metaphor for how each girl wrestles with the biologically inbuilt instinct to nurture, protect and love their baby, while they are systematically punished, tormented and debased by their religion, society and the institution to which they belong for this very spark of life they feel compelled to defend. It is a powerful and extremely effective finish to the poem. As a final comment, Harwood is often described as a poet of dichotomies. I believe she lives up to this in "Home of Mercy" as she can be seen to create a dichotomy of spirit/mental versus mundane/physical. Prayer for the girls is seen as an escape: "time for the spirit to begin / with prayer its sad recourse to dream and flight / from their intolerable weekday rigour." It is the true core of Christianity... the 'plaster' I described earlier, without any of the 'decoration.' The mundane and physical is seen by these girls as intolerable and a punishment - they must scrub, wash and suffer physically the effects of pregnancy. Yet they gain relief from the spirit and mentally - prayer allows the girls to 'dream and flight,' and they can enjoy their pregnancy mentally to any degree they like without being punished by society. The Barn Owl I. Daybreak: the household slept.I rose, blessed by the sun.A horny fiend, I creptout with my father's gun.Let him dream of a childobedient, angel-mild-- old No-Sayer, robbed of powerby sleep. I knew my prizewho swooped home at this hourwith daylight-riddled eyesto his place on a high beamin our old stables, to dream light's useless time away.I stood, holding my breath,in urine-scented hay,master of life and death,a wisp-haired judge whose lawwould punish beak and claw. My first shot struck. He swayed,ruined, beating his onlywing, as I watched, afraidby the fallen gun, a lonelychild who believed death cleanand final, not this obscene bundle of stuff that dropped,and dribbled through loose strawtangling in bowels, and hoppedblindly closer. I sawthose eyes that did not seemirror my cruelty while the wrecked thing that couldnot bear the light nor hidehobbled in its own blood.My father reached my side, gave me the fallen gun."End what you have begun." I fired. The blank eyes shoneonce into mine and slept.I leaned my head uponmy father's arm and wept,owl-blind in early sunfor what I had begun. II Nightfall Forty years, lived or dreamed:what memories pack them home.Now the season that seemedincredible is come.Father and child, we standin time's long-promised land. Since there's no more to tasteripeness is plainly all.Father, we pick our lastfruits of the temporal.Eighty years old, you takethis late walk for my sake. Who can be what you were?Link your dry hand in mine,my stick-thin comforter.Far distant suburbs shinewith great simplicities.Birds crowd in flowering trees, sunset exalts its knownsymbols of transience.Your passionate face is grownto ancient innocence.Let us walk this houras if death had no power. or were no more than sleep.Things truly named can nevervanish from earth. You keepa child's delight for everin birds, flowers, shivery-grass -I name them as we pass. "Be your tears wet?" You speakas if air touched a stringnear-breaking point. Your cheekbrushes on mine. Old kingyour marvellous journey's done.Your night and day are one as you find with your white stickthe path on which you turnhome with the child once quickto mischief, grown to learnwhat sorrows, in the end,no words, no tears can mend.
