#361 The Armada Song

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It’s hard at first to figure what to make of the first line of this poem in light of the history of the Spanish Armada’s incursion into Ireland. Defeated in battle, blown off course, they had sailed around the north of Scotland and were just desperately trying to make it back to Spain, heading back south off the west coast of Ireland. Many of the ships were blown onto the rocks onshore. The sailors left were sick and starving anyway and were slaughtered pretty ruthlessly as soon as they landed. Perhaps B. knew more of the history than I do, but I doubt it. Maybe the poem was from a dream, but it doesn’t seem like a dream. Best is to not take it too literally on either count. The poem is a waking fantasy, all these warm and welcoming Irish maidens who just can’t wait to sleep with a “vile & virile” Spaniard the second he washes ashore.

It’s a bunch of malarkey, so it’s best to let all that overheated Henryesque brain-steam dissipate as quickly as possible. What matters more is this:

History after all is a matter of fumbles.

Man’s derelictions, man’s fate,

is a matter of sorry record. Somehow the prizes

come at the wrong times to the proper people

& vice versa.

There is a certain profundity to this as a statement on the vicissitudes of world history, though most people are aware of it if they study much history at all. Napoleon’s most trusted general screws up and loses Waterloo for him, and off heads Europe in a totally different direction. The election count is screwed up, the whole mess goes to the Supreme Court, and George W. Bush winds up president. There are countless like fumbles in history that affected the course of events on and on and on. The really interesting line in this poem is the vice versa one—somehow the prizes come at the right times to the improper people. Is this a hint at B.’s assessment of his whole career? All those prizes lavished on the lost victim of such a disastrous parental fumble? I wonder. The whole rest of the poem has something so ridiculous and non-historical about it: an international fumble and a military disaster, leading for a time, before being cut in half by some rampaging English pikeman with free license to murder foundered Spaniards, to where a Spanish sailor has a last blissful episode or two with some “fragrant” Irish girl lining up with a bevy of others along the pebbly Irish strand, waiting for his ship to founder so she can whisk him straight into her bed. It’s funny in a way, but there is such an undertone of pathos to it that I’m not laughing. Take this poem literally and it comes apart almost immediately, because it’s ridiculous. But it can’t be meant to be taken literally. I can only read it as a sad and telling metaphor, with more substance lurking below the surface than I expected when I first read this poem and sneered at it. B. had his moment(s), foundering on the rocks all the while, with a lot of women. The poem might simply be referring to his Irish wife, the maiden who happened to have found him when he washed ashore and took him home. Now—to the consternation of this vile & virile Spaniard—the pikemen are approaching.