Sauna – An Epic Poem
by
James Bramwell 1949
You Roman Lords and Perfumed Turks,
You greasy, fat and favored few
Whose double chins are carnal sins,
The Sauna is no place to stew
And turn your sipping into dripping.
Hell is too hot for you!
And you, Companions of the Bath,
Seeking some patent sudorific,
Though you exude where you protrude,
This is not your specific!
Here men are wet with honest sweat
Like pearls in the Pacific.
You whiskered men with glowing noses
That bloom like sops-in-wine – Alas!
The issues of your florid tissues
Cannot make your souls less crass.
Not for the blotto is this motto:
In Sauna Sanitas!
The Sauna hut was open, its rough-hewn logs
Bare as the chapel of some fierce reform
Breathing the clean austerity and peace
Of the dripping forest purged by an autumn storm.
Upon the threshold timbers our blunted clumsy
Ski-boots trod, and the iron echo ripped
The silence of the bath-house. Metal-shod
They struck the sounding boards, till we had stripped
And hung our clothes, still dusty with the stars,
On pegs of rusted iron. Then barefoot, free,
We ran on tip-toe, shivering and keen
As bathers to confront the breaking sea
Into the Steam-Room . . .
Then the soul of Paavo’s hardy race arose
To the narrow threshold of his lighted gaze,
Defiant, sniffing destiny, like those
First Finns who drove their shaggy beasts to graze
Westwards across the tawny-bladed plains
Of Muscovy: then ceased their wandering
In a land of lakes where the vowel-sound of rains
Turned language green and bards discovered Spring.
Blood the returning
Stranger to the vein
Burning burning
Fire and frost
Sends mercury to warn the brain
of tissue kindled in its train
With a glow long lost . . .
At last the reddened filament
Makes aching limbs forget. Content
The shrivelled salamander – mind –
Awakening uncurls to find
It slept in fire, oblivious of pain.
Damp as a fever jungle, steaming hot,
The spirit of the Sauna rushed to sear
My brimming eyes and draw a tight garrotte
With unseen noose spun out of atmosphere,
And spite touched off a fuse of memory:
ALL HOPE ABANDON YE WHO ENTER HERE!
But growing greater I breathed it into me
Till through the mist the dim Inferno stood
In pallid light that flickered fitfully
From a ragged wick: four wavy walls of wood:
A ceiling of rough logs to catch the vapours
And make the cloud of wingless insects brood
Upon the ledge erected for the bather:
A stove, heaped up with stones, heated below:
Four washing tubs and a copper scoop to slake the
Burning ledge and goad the stones to throw
The stings of steam their rising temper bred:
This was Paavo’s Purgatorio.
And Paavo leapt up from his bed:
“Satan! It’s growing cold” he said.
Six times he filled the copper scoop
And flung more water on the stones:
Six times they hissed as if dry bones
Joined up again to form a loop
And raised bleached vertebrae and spat
Forked tongues of steam . . .
Then over me a tidal wave
Of heat broke suddenly. I lay
And let my flesh dissolve
And the burning substance of my thighs
Turned to rivers as I closed my eyes . . .
The world revolved.
Flushed with the chastening of Purgatorial fire
We departed, clean as souls that have shed their
mortal sin . . .
Skorpisto65 