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"A 19th-Century Friend" is a book written by Bruce Craig in the form of a narrative, using a classical sonnet form. The first chapter is given below in its entirety:
Chapter 1 Meeting
A nineteenth-century friend of mine,
Whose life had long since passed to prayer,
Came through some strangely laid design
To make myself of him aware.
For reasons I could not suspect
Although, perhaps, his choice was driven
By want of what to him was given.
In any case, however meant,
I came, in time, with him to share
A bond which, balanced by our care,
Replaced suspicion with consent.
The history that I now recount
Holds parts of each in like amount.
How does one sense that life has changed,
When old from new begins to part?
In ways that now seem quite deranged,
A subtle change made known its start.
Through long-years' use I'd sleep rehearse
By means of oft-repeated verse.
A calmness from the words descends
Which sleep confers before it ends.
But then, during some familiar line,
A transformation would take place
In which the horizontal space
A new direction would define.
Both rhyme and metered sense would change,
The meaning slowly grow more strange.
Thus was by him a shadow cast,
Through which his spirit entered mine.
The verse I knew from habit past
Became reshaped to his incline.
The words dissolved to show a place
In which his time had formed the space.
A manor in my mind took shape
Which for his life had been escape.
The images took on a strength
To which the old lines now subserved.
The sleep which I had thought reserved
Would fade in ever-shrinking length.
The path down which the verse once led
In thought and power left my head.
At times, strange voices insecure
Would leave me haunted by their calls:
The sounds of presences impure
And spirits in those manored walls.
A woman's cry would alternate
With music played in measured gait;
A sudden burst of unmet wrath
Would turn to madness in its path.
The ways in which he made this known
Would sometimes leave me quite unnerved:
That sense which for his value served
Could often be to malice prone.
When peace in him I'd think to see,
More often followed enmity.
The images took on such force,
I started to mistrust my head;
And in my search for some recourse,
My fascination turned to dread.
The mind I once had occupied
Now shared a presence from outside.
I learned to fear the subtle ways
By which his hold my mind could daze.
At first, his visits paid at night
Left each new day quite undisturbed;
The images my mind perturbed
Were quickly gone, left out of sight.
But then each night, I came to learn,
His form and presence would return.
I questioned now his whole intent,
Of how and why he sought my ear.
I asked from where he had been sent,
And had I cause from him to fear.
I worried now to what degree
His will could be imposed on me,
And if I still retained a choice
In that which I had thought my voice.
I knew no more where lay the wall
Which separated him from me,
Or if I could, without some key,
The peace I'd known again recall.
His answer came quite undismayed,
As though surprised I'd be afraid.
"The way in which our minds converse
Is not by my intrusion.
That I'd myself in you immerse
Is but your own delusion.
Existence is a sort of mime
By which we think to measure time.
The door through which I find egress
Is keyed by means that you possess.
That part of history I have known
Includes no times since that I left.
The crack in time that you have cleft
Is but a slit through walls of stone.
Your fears that I on you could feed
Ignores by whom the door is keyed.
"Or has your fear a different source
Than that I could yourself replace?
Perhaps my presence has a force
Through memories you cannot erase.
Is that which leads into your head
A gate through which you've others led,
Its ponderous swing a mindless task
Whose exercise may boredom mask?
Although I suffer not from haste,
If it's a call to me you've made
With consequences not yet weighed,
Do not my chance to exit waste.
You have the means at your employ
My presence quickly to destroy."
The thought appeared to me absurd
That he would think me devious,
When all that had as yet occurred
Seemed linked to nothing previous.
When voices from within control,
Theirs is no weak impassive role.
The question then is who's being taught,
And on whose side is formed the thought.
I weighed the strangeness of his speech,
While asking what might well be lost,
Or if there were some hidden cost
To place myself beyond his reach.
The doubt my silence thus implied
He countered from a different side.
"The world from which I took my leave
Precedes yours by a lifetime's span.
Within that time man could achieve
The dreams that during my life began.
Although for that I've little mind,
There is one lesser thing in kind:
My life played out before its end
With little left it to commend;
My restlessness transcends the grave
In ways perhaps somewhat unearned.
I would through future memories learned
Regain the peace which now I crave.
I seek a future long since past,
Which frozen in its time is cast.
"Could we through trust a means create
By which each shows his inner side?
My history I'll to you relate,
Such that your fears of me subside.
You would in turn impart to me
That portion of your history
Which has a bearing on my own,
And which I could not learn alone.
Through such could we our trust exchange
And thereby give us each the means
To penetrate those inner screens
Which work our purpose to estrange.
The knowledge of my life I'd gain
Would in its history yours contain.
"But where in you exists such worth
That drives me from the grave to climb?
Our paths have met upon this earth,
But intersect in place, not time.
That settled spot where I my days
Played out in their accustomed ways
Is, quite remarkably, the same
As that from which your forebears came.
The threads of mine are somehow lost,
But seem to yours to be quite near.
In ways as yet not fully clear
Our family ties are mixed and crossed.
The narrative whose thread I seek
Holds strands which from our two worlds speak."
By bits and pieces we arrived
At times and places somehow shared,
Although his knowledge was derived
From sources which he'd not declared.
The place was Russia's northern clime;
The nineteenth century was the time.
Through circumstances inexact
Our families' pasts had briefly tracked.
The roots, which we at length debated,
Seemed from a forebear to derive,
Who had in eighteen-ninety-five
From Russia westwards emigrated.
My mother's father, long since dead,
From czarist Russia's heart had fled.
This narrative whose lines I sketch
I sometimes doubt I should relate.
How does one's hand, indeed, outstretch
With spirits to negotiate?
Or have words power to create
The image I'd articulate?
Between awakedness and sleep
Exists the region spirits keep;
The journey through its hazy veil
Can quickly pass or slowly creep,
The passage either mild or steep,
And of direction knows no trail.
The language of its brief domain
Is one which we from birth retain.
The path by which recited verse
Led now into my family tree,
As though to dredge up some lost curse,
Was one that deeply puzzled me.
But strangeness soon takes on a feel
By which it seems no less than real;
And so I simply stumbled on,
By fascination made a pawn.
Our minds were of a separate part
How best our stories to relate;
To keep the flow of history straight,
I thought that he as first should start.
This logic, which I felt quite sound,
He chose, however, to confound.
"A story read from start to end
Makes use of time's familiar flow.
Its subtleties of plot depend
On characters who live and grow.
But no such history marks the place
Of such as us, whose plots unlace
The order in which time intends
That life progresses and ascends.
The climax of the plot I seek
Is twisted from its normal state.
The sequence I would re-create
Is scattered through the words we speak.
The links that form its inner part
Might well progress from end to start."
Confusion functions as a screen
To save what logic treats as lost;
The doubled strength two minds convene
Can even these remains exhaust.
Our conversation stumbled on
As though all logic's use was gone,
Until the time had finally come
Of what we knew to form a sum.
Fatigued by senseless argument,
I, with regret, my thoughts forsook
And so the project undertook
My Russian past to document.
What follows is, from family lore,
That glimpse through history's long-closed door...
Copies of this book may obtained for $10. each (including postage and handling) by using the Order Form. A billing invoice will be sent along with the book. ISBN is 0-966-56140-6. LCCN is 98-090570.