The Keeper of Aeons by Matthew MC Smith
Published by The Broken Spine

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Review by Paul Brookes

That we were and are,
will be, so close

in moments uncounted, as we pass
through this carousel of space

from “What is Faith?”

Divided into four sections: Prologue -Astronaut, Part I- Aeons, Part II-Ancient Navigations, Part III-Heaven’s Territories. Smith’s book moves from outer space to Earth and back into space.

His book begins in “witness to stars” and ends in faith. Begins with “gravity as rare as love” and ends

with fantasies of flowers
of unfurling eternities

 First few poems constantly contrast life on earth with life in the heavens. Contrasts between where remains have been found with the cold scientific analysis of those remains and their placement in a very different surrounding.

Poems and prose broadly have the same shape as the book; heaven’s, earth, heavens. This adds considerable thematic unity which is further strengthened by recurring aspects such as the deep past, the uncovering of ancient things and the eternity of light, the sterility of museums, and humans in space.

Also, recurring images of half light, bones, skulls, burial. Recurring words, cave, bone, eternity. tombs. Journey’s of discovery where the trek is as important as the destination. These include acute descriptions of fertile nature, and how the landscape has been reshaped by our presence and use of it.

Part II-Ancient Navigations begins and ends in a cave. Begins in the past and ends in the future, it seems. Firstly,

Fissure of cave. Be in light, shade.
Starve, thirst, slip between worlds.
Tides are time’s erasure.

This appears to be a shamanic experience, a movement between worlds of time and history, as well as worlds of being. The necessary denial of food and water to reach that shamanistic state.

Lastly,

What a thing it is to be so alone
This journey is a torn map, a glitch in the programming.
I fly across flecked seas.

In the ice field I am bleached moraine, tundra,
Before the glacier. Enter the fire blue cave.

Light is all important. Between the first and the last we have memories of a childhood enjoyment of playing out of the film Star Wars with treasured toys. Of journeys to ancient Welsh sites.

The final section is Part III-Heaven’s Territories. “Heaven’s territories” first mentioned in the poem “Illumined Shape” in Part II. Again the word “illumined” takes us back to windows, the sense of seeing and sight and churches and faith. Light as bringing revelation.

The final section begins

We slice solar winds, sail orbit haloes,
watch from the cupola, window on the world;
photons to retina in brightened abyss…

We watch as sealed sentinels, dry and racing,
through perishing darkness, fearing ruin.

And ends:

What is faith?

It is knowing that nothing matters
that there is nothing else

but the dance of dust
around our bodies

and the speed
of light, impossibly fast

and far, which knows
no pain, an arrow without sentience.  

The glass behind which we place the uprooted ancient remains becomes the cupola of glass, the viewing window through which we observe our planet. It is all about seeing. How we process what we see. This is Smith’s genius to encapsulate our history in our sense of sight, our reception of light. But there is yet more to discover in each rereading. A seminal work that questions how we treat history, our sense of place, where we live and in which our world revolves and what we get from the journey from and to, how we deal with the relentlessness of time.

When I was young I have never forgotten Pablo Neruda saying that the greatest writers always have a unique sense of place, where they live and readers see their own lives and where they live through the writers intense gaze upon their home. The greatest writers become Smith’s window.

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Matthew M.C. Smith is a Welsh writer from Swansea. He is a three times-nominated ‘Best of the Net’ writer (Icefloe Press 2020, Acropolis Journal 2022 and Broken Spine 2022), a Pushcart Prize nominee (Broken Spine 2022) and R.S. Thomas prize winner (Gwyl Cybi). Matthew is widely published in presses. He published Origin: 21 Poems in 2018 and The Keeper of Aeons in Autumn 2022.

He is the editor of Black Bough poetry, a project created in 2019 to promote imagist micropoetry. He is the originator and organiser of  weekly poetry fest @TopTweetTuesday on Twitter and  the Silver Branch  that platforms amazing writers.