Shadow of God

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The Tughra or "Official Signature" of Suleyman the Magnificant (1520-1566).



THE SHADOW OF GOD


I am Suleyman, sultan of sultans, sovereign of sovereigns, distributor of crowns to the lords
of the surface of the globe.

I am Suleyman, the Shadow of God on earth, Commander of the Faithful, Servant and
Protector of the Holy Places.

I am Suleyman, ruler of the two lands and the two seas, sultan and padishah of the White
Sea and of the Black, of Rumelia, of Anatolia, of Karamania, and of the land of Rum I am
Rum Kayseri.

I am lord of Damascus, of Aleppo, lord of Cairo, lord of Mecca, of Medina, of Jerusalem, of
all Arabia, of Yemen and of many other lands which my noble forefathers and illustrious
ancestors (may God brighten their tombs) conquered by the force of their arms and which
my august majesty has subdued with my flaming sword and my victorious blade.


I am Sultan Suleyman Han, son of Sultan Selim Han, son of Sultan Bayezid Han.
I am Suleyman. To the east I am the Lawgiver. To the west I am the Magnificent.


Suleyman. In his dream the far world
is a basket of heads at his saddlebow,
sunlight's flash on the edges of blades
raised in his name to the dim horizon:
I am Suleyman. At the end of Ramadan,
in the spring of the year that will send
his quarrelsome soldiery north again
Suleyman rises from sleep, consults maps,
glancing up glimpsing the evening star
low in the cobalt canopy of the day's end
caught in the thicket of the new moon's
upturned horns, and takes that for his omen.
That year as every year war is a season,
war is a fetva, a jihad waged on all
the unreconciled world of the unbelievers
beyond the gaze of the Magnificent.

That year his beard points west again
to the domain of war: glimpse of far hills,
country scoured flat by the rivers, the beasts
are deer and wild pig leaving their tracks
on the soggy waterlands, on the scrubland
thistles, milkweed, juniper, vines,
the eyes of the tall white birches
glimpsed through pines. The birds
are swift, hawk, crow and kingfisher,
the little seedeaters, the buzzards
sentinels on his way, the storks
from their round high nests in the wind
glance after him, the pheasant's stutter,
the owl's stare in his tracks, the woodpecker
tapping in the dark light of the woods,
the shrike pinning his dinner to a thorn.


The Lawgiver, Suleyman, whom the Prophet
favour and posterity long remembers,
goes out of the city to his war camp.
He hoists the six black horsetails of his flag,
unwraps the forty silk shawls from the black
sacred banner of Mohammed and raises it,
and from all the heaven protected empire
of dur ul Islam come the levies, sipahiler.
akincilar, seômenler, tüfekçiler, azaplar,
\topçular\

topçular, yeni çeriler, tribesmen and the wild
bowmen of the steppes, the half naked dervish
not counted into the muster, one hundred thousand
dreaming of loot, calling his name, Suleyman,
taking the roads north, Constantinople to Belgrade
and the rough tracks beyond into the wastes
of the unbelievers, the mire of the infidel.


In his journal there is rain, endless rain,
day after day the grey slanting downpour,
vague cloudy horizons and the sky's flood.
And bitter winds. 80 days on the march
in the downpour on no road that is a road
driving the great train north, 80 nights
pitched in the sheeted rain, slithering
with horses and camels and weaponry
in the black Balkan mud of the flood plains,
left of the river between the rivers
in that year of the rain. The beasts
are deer and boar and wolf, the birds
hawk and butcher bird, black cormorant
low over his black shadow on the river,
crows in a black storm overhead, or perched
on a stump, watching the way God watches.

Ropes split, the big guns sink in the bogs,
the cries of horses and men no one hears,
merely the dead born to die in the muck
for the enlargement of empire and the word
of the Prophet, may God's smile ever rest on him,
for the enrichment of some, enslavement of some,
somewhere in the mapless country of the rain,
crushed by the wheels, some lost in sinkholes,
the ropes falling away from their hands
and last of them the O of their upturned
mouths calling his name: Suleyman, Suleyman.
The names of the days are rain and wind,
the names of the rivers run into each other.
Up the Danube day after day 800 boats
weigh upwind upstream on the downcoming
agua contradictionis beyond which the barbarians.

Under the six black horsetail standard,
under the sacred banner the horse army
lugs its stores and its guns northward
into the oncoming rain and the clutter of mud
and the wind in their faces: cavalry, artillery,
sharpshooters, musketmen, soldiers, raiders,
shaggy Tatar horsemen, all dreaming of rape.
300 cannon through the marshes, some lost,
the horses straining, the whips, no roads,
no bridges in all this nowhere of mud,
tracks that run to dead ends, watery graves,
roads running off into water, marsh paths
learned at a blade's edge and goodbye
the quick blood, always eager to be off,
goodbye the names hawk and buzzard and heron,
the names Sava and Drava mean nothing now.

Suleyman. The bared teeth of the horses,
their necks rear from the reeds, screaming
as horses scream, men scream, the rain falls.
Imprint of reeds on the sky lances on the wind,
lancemen and horsemen. The birds are shrike,
buzzard, crow, the owl falling on its shadow,
the harrier's underspread wingspan two skulls
on the grey light rising from the sky, the rivers
Sava and Drava and Danube though the names
mean nothing to him. Problems with stores,
problems with water, questions of powder,
fuel for the cooking pots, meat, some warmth
in the long shivering rain, shaving the rust
from their blades, sword, knife, sabre, spear,
matchlock and carbine, guns lugged down roads
built of reeds, the stores rotting away.

The sodden saddlesore army of divine light,
fractious and lice-ridden and chilled to the bone,
crying Suleyman Suleyman, those running before
crying Suleyman Suleyman, the Magnificent.
He is crossing the Drava on a golden throne
from the domain of peace to the domain of war.

To Mohács
in the marshlands, still in the pouring rain,
August 29th, 1526, where those summoned
and hastily gathered died in thousands
in the space of a moment the chronicler
scribbles, in the safety of distance,
cruel panthers in a moment to hell's pit.


That day the guns chained wheel to wheel,
smoke and the cries of men and horses,
the knights shot from their saddles, armour
dragging them into the mire, the hooves
stamping them in, the infantry butchered,
in the space of a moment the swift
routine of retreat, slaughter and rout,
the space of a moment. No prisoners,
the wails of the wounded, the dying, becks
brimmed with blood, and the young king
thrown from his horse, drowned in his breastplate.
Thereafter Suleyman recalls he sat on the field
in the pouring rain on his glittering throne
to the long applause of his army: I am
Sultan Suleyman Han, son of Sultan Selim Han,
son of Sultan Bayezid Han. The shadow of God.

And they butcher the captives, dig the pits
to bury their own brave dead, horses and men,
30 thousand whose last rainy day was this,
and the other dead lie in the rain, or scatter
their bones in the wetlands and the reedgrass.
Whatever birds pecked out their eyes
their names are no matter nor the stream
they drowned in nor the name of the planet
whose soft brown body they shovelled in after.
Thereafter the land burns and the churches,
thereafter women and slaves and silver.
And thereafter, pronounces the historian,
his quill's tip brushing his cheek, his point
squeaking over the page, the lamp's glint
on his inkhorn: the long Turkish night,
the tomb of the nation, dug in the rain.


In the space of a moment, in the centuries
moments pile into, leaf over leaf,
season by season as the winters pass
and the wars roll over and the borders shift
it is ploughland, old bones surfacing
at the hoe's edge and the plough's iron,
scapulae and vertebrae rising in a flat
wide fenced country laid open to the wind,
prowled by the tractors of the collectives
and the same wandering birds, black earth
through white snow, wind beaten scarecrow
and the white silence of another winter.
It is a museum of bones in the thick boney
stew of each other, where some bird sings
in the evergreens and a boy rings a bell
in the long white silence that follows.

It is a field of poles upright at a pit's rim,
carved into cruel faces, chiselled in grimaces,
spiked, helmeted, horned, a ragged line of posts
that are totems of men straggling off into trees,
some aslant, the long necks of horses
rearing from snow. They are flail and bludgeon
and battleaxe, calvaries of yokes and the bows
of the swift horsemen, the trailed arms
of the willow tree. They are the crescent moon
and the star, the cross, the crown, the turban
and the tarboosh, gnarled glances of soldiers,
the figures of dead men rising from the earth,
Suleyman with a basket of heads at his pommel
and the dead king Lajos in his blue bonnet.

Overhead the high jets in the clear blue
corridor of cloudless sky above Serbia,
flying the line of the great rivers
whose names are the same though the names
of the empires and the nations shift
on the maps. South of here, not far,
in the debateable lands of the warring states
the bones are again rising in the mud.

The wooden cock crows from his wooden post.
In the clear dry air a bell rings.

**



A bell rings. In the town the dogs bark
and all night again the banging of boats
on the river and the thud of drifting ice
on their hulls and the slapping of waves.

Always dogs, beyond gates, over walls,
loose on the streets, howling to the far
flat ring of the world's edge of woods,
rivers, barns, border posts.

Wolfhounds, manhounds, pit bulls,
mutts, mastiffs and mongrels bawling
at cats, cars, bells, footsteps, wind
in the winter trees, the yellow moon.

Each with his patch to scratch, each
his yard to guard, each with his own
view of the world, his own particular opinion
he will not give up easily.

Wars begin with this and end whimpering.
They begin with the squabbles of neighbours
and end in the baying of men: what's mine
is mine. And yours is mine also.

And someone has backed into the lampost again,
contemplate drowning himself at last
someone has knocked over the empty bottles,
someone has burst into drunken tuneless song
on the late street and set all the dogs off.

Someone has been beating his wife again,
broken all the crockery in the kitchen,
woken the kids and the curs and the old wounds,
slammed the door shut, kicked the gatepost.

And gone off to the river to think it all out,
contemplate drowning himself at last
as all round in his reeling skull
in the great dark the dogs bark.

**


Very fast very slow this music
a lament from the villages
a music come down from the mountains
called across rivers across plains:
ah no joking and no joking
a gift from the kolo, bridegroom
the thieves they are singing
dance my love dance faster
faster till we fall down.

The reedgrass that will be thatch
first snowy fields turned in the plough
a line of trucks in a white field
waiting for grain not yet sown:
end of the winter quarter
end of the season of craving
the river's ice drifting south
snow collapsing from the buildings:
the days of the death of King Winter.

Busójárás.

Time to take to the streets
wearing the skins of beasts
masks years in the making offspring
of the old whisperers in the hearth
kin to the devotees of trees
and certain stones and all rivers
lord of the vines and beasts
our lady of the wild things the old gods
who never made it into heaven.

Busós.

They step out of the unwritten
the unremembered out of Illyria
out of the south the dark and the flight
and the distant remembrance of panic
the horned hoof footed hard drinking
god of the shepherds. They step out
through the winter streets in masks
horns in sheepskins and old bandoliers
with their bells and their rattles.

Busós.

With their antlers tall in the skins
of beasts belled shaggy moustache men
huge with their clubs and horns
wild in their tall wooden masks
coming on from the distance
all the years they have travelled
out of the unlettered the agrapha
the history of the forgotten
the long shadows of the lost gods.

At noon they have crossed the river
they have taken the streets
filled with organised riot
the ruckus of men in the male dance
the clatter and rattle of flails
the interminable clanging of bells
rain clanking into buckets
in mockery taking their ways
through the orders of anarchy.

Busós.

Fierce and yet not fierce
joking and yet not joking
this is the management of chaos:
the war of the great ratchets
the battle of the bells upright animals
striding through the streets
through the cold falling sunlight
in a wild skirling music
bearing the skulls of animals.

Busós.

Others come as veiled hooded women
a brown friar another the devil
a joker in a Russian tank mask
a Groucho Marx an Austrian helmet.
And these others ghosts in dirty sheets
rags sackcloth and ashes and stocking masks
bunched in knots of impudent silence
young men scattering the girls
the dead risen from the dead.

Centuries ago the traveller
Evliya Çelebi warned his far flung
wandering countrymen of the masked
madmen of Mohács in the marshland
in their shaggy jackets and bells
and their faceless faces:
they are devils devils
in the place of devils
no-one should go there.

In their own legend of themselves
they chased the Turks out of town
in terror. In the ill-disciplined
shaggy masked half drunk ranks
among pitchforks and whirling clubs
the carved severed head on a stick
of a janissary, moustache topknot skull
goes round and around in the racket
and the gathering fire and the dusk.

How years ago they were fearless
in the place of defeat and rose again
how years ago a pig's blood painted
a cross in the town square and how
the masks stained in animal blood
and the wild cries and the kolo
was their resistance. How once
they were one with the beasts
one with men one with the gods.

Rutting and butting as beasts
sticks for pricks bells balls
and under the mask is another
and another they are Busós
three days of the year Busós
parading their ragged squads
to the square where the cannon
from that year of the rain
thunders mud and rags and smoke.

Busós.

Come nightfall on the third day
of marching and mayhem and music
that is Shrovetide the fire's lit
in the square. King Winter is dead
carted off in a coffin and burned.
On the coffin in flowery
Hungarian script: it's sold,
our country, it's sold, we have
nothing left but our father's pricks.

Where does this music come from?
an old woman asks. From all round her
from everywhere from earth
from the wind from the long turned
furrows of defeat the old sorrow
the old joy the songs
of the long gone into the dark.
It's sold, our country,
and all the thieves are laughing.

Time to march one last time
on the town and burn winter
with bells and cannon and fire
round and around the tottering square
masked men and horses and music
round and round the kolo
the dancing of the hairy men
and winter goes up in the flames
the tall smoke climbing the sky.

Busós.

The sliver of moon the first star
on the pale blue flag of the sky
as the sparks fade and die. At the edge
of the embers of memory the borders
of hearing: bells laughter a child
a cough girls singing the swift music
in the ashes of the evening
whisps of voices at a distance
in that far off language.

**
- Ken Smith

Ken Smith was born in Yorkshire and lives in London. This poem was first published in The Hungarian Quarterly, Summer 1996, as well as by Bloodaxe Books (Wild Root) in the UK. Ken Smith also read the poem on BBC radio 3&4 in 1998. It will also be included in his collection of poems, written in Hungary and the surrounding (mostly Hungarian language) area titled, Wire Through the Heart. "The Shadow of God" commemorates the defeat of the Hungarian Royal Army in 1526 by the Ottoman Turks, lead by Suleyman the Magnificant and juxtaposes that event with the annual Spring Carnival, Busósjárás, in Mochács, Hungary. It is held in late February and combines an ancient ritual of "Chasing out Winter" with "Chasing out the Turks." Participants don wood-carved animal masks and costumes, sing, beat drums and fire cannons. The three-day festivities end with the burning of "Winter's Coffin." Today it functions primarily as a tourist attraction. It even has its own web site, see: http://www.mochacs.hu/esem98.htm

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