I’m the last wild wolf in England
And my habitat is cold
Describe the deepest depth of hell
It fits me well
I’m the last wild wolf in England
In England’s damned woodlands
No eyes to see me
No worries to perceive me
They’re using torches to hunt for me
Between existence and memory.
Thoughts bristle in my eyes
Switching personalities from Jekyll to Hyde
Some humans fear me,
Some worship me
Embodied in their minds
Living rent free, our company.
I’m the last wild wolf in England
And my habitat is cold
Describe the deepest depth of hell
It fits me well
Red Rose group poem
February 2023
Singer Simon, with Red Rose group; sound treatments Phil, with guitarist Ric Lord (engineered by Steve Allen)
In Europe, fear of the wolf peaked in the 16th and 17th centuries with many werewolf trials, the victims were frequently exorcised to the point of death. The last such werewolf trial was in 1802, in Slovakia.
Fear of nature is always present in these adversarial Wolf encounters between the “Civilised” and “Nature”, because civilisation, especially modernity, has separated us from the outside. Creatures in the forest, the vagabonds, the green man, the banished, the warnings about the world beyond human enclosures, are passed on through myths and fairytale. The wolf is at the back of them, the antecedent of outsiders, often depicted in lurid horror, the stalker that’s coming for us.
Ironically as the wolf is erased in England, it rises up again. The more you ignore fear the more it builds. Building a wall to keep the other out also builds fear. Trump’s wall has already failed before it’s finished, or even begun.
The Last Wolf project explores contemporary fear, particularly fears around homelessness and poverty and the cost of living — like German theatre director Falk Richter making his play titled Fear about the rise of the New Right. How real is the fear? In the Wolf project, some people on the edge of society — rough sleepers, people with experience of homelessness and other vulnerable people — are invited to reflect on the roles of the wolf. Is it powerful, is it a victim? What is to be learned from it, what is to be avoided? What is our understanding of “wolf” — a fragment the brokenness of which has now been perceived as a new whole.
This ambivalent metaphor is extended to include two poems about humans acting violently because of fear, and instrumentalising fear. The Drina Wolves were a military unit associated with the Srebrenica massacre; my poem of that name is based on my notes when attending the war crime trial of some of the perpetrators. September Wolves is a poem based on two moments of violence, both of which happened on September 11th – the 1973 takeover coup by the dictator Pinochet in Chile and the 2001 Twin Towers attack in New York.
We’ve not noticed the wolves are circling again, the international capitalists, the price hikers, the predators. The poor are being hunted.
And yet…
“Maybe we should make everyone homeless and then they’ll learn humility. There was a philosopher who said you aren’t born with a soul, but a soul comes to you from suffering. When you’re homeless, suffering is what you learn. And suffering is what the Economist lacks. People like that feel pity, but a soul is what gives you empathy.
“When I was younger I was a bit of an arsehole, I’m still an arsehole but I’ve got got a bit of soul now
“When there’s a wolf at the door it destabilises you. When you are homeless you don’t have a plan, don’t have stuff to nick, so what’s a wolf gonna take? The wolf makes you feel edgy, aggressive and scared. You don’t want to run cos you look a coward and you don’t want to stay because you’ll get your head kicked.
“But the wolves are scared too. We live in a world that has a life and we don’t control it, that applies to homeless man, or the king of England. There is no control, only the laws of life. In some ways I’m more secure than the king. I’ve not got anything to lose, sleeping bag and a passport that’s all. I’m a socialist, everything belongs to the universe and we pass it on, we all own nothing.
“I think we have a shadow government, I genuinely believe it. Boris Johnson – I liked the guy, he was charismatic, but he was ruled by chaos. Whoever gets in power, it doesn’t matter who we are ruled by shadows.
“Night has a mood to it, an edge. I love the colours, the blues of the moon, the serenity. At night you don’t see what’s coming to you. One of the good things about being homeless is you see the stars. I sleep on a gravestone at the moment, I live with stars. I’ve seen Jupiter, and Saturn too, they put you in a perfect perspective. You understand the real, tiny size of you.
“Your senses are dumbed down by the blackness and yet sharpened. When I do my physics thinking it’s always at night, that’s when I do my best contemplation. My area is relativity – time and space – it’s a benign subject to fill my mind. Like the ladder paradox, at one speed of light the ladder sits in your garden shed, and it another speed it doesn’t even get into the door.
“When I lived in a flat, I lived on my PC, on my GameBoy. If you don’t have those things, it frees your mind and you have processing time and you draw insights from those maturing ideas…”
Anonymous
The wolf can teach us, just as pack helps one another. Look into the fear and we’ll find benefits, insights that can help and maybe even save us. A wolf knows how to live outside our cities, is the other side of the mirror to our favourite domesticated pet, the dog.
Wolf myths that can bring understanding of the human condition cross centuries and civilisations. The poems in this project bring in old German wolf sayings, and myths of itinerants from the cold.
The Norse God Odin had wolves for companionship and as guards against giants. In Japan the Okami wolf protects souls and spirits in Shinto temples. The Celtic werewolf protects and guides, it brings you to the path you’ve lost and it’s a comforter in the wild places. First Nations in America have a creator god who is a wolf; traditionally tribespeople were co-dependent with wolves, hunting together. The Slavic wolf-headed creator god is a symbol of strength and unity. In Turkey, the spirit of ancestors is gathered in the wolves. In Greece, Apollo was raised by wolves, and wolves run messengs between gods. In Mongolia the wolf is good luck, as is the Nordic wolf, especially good luck on the battlefield where the wolf chooses souls for the afterlife. And of course Romulus and Remus were raised by another wolf and in turn founded the city of Rome and the Roman Empire.
But we can learn more from wolves than just our own myths about them. Wolfpacks are a highly functional social mechanism. From them we can learn effective group behaviours. We can learn group problem-solving, how to go through trauma together, how to equally value different social roles rather than hierarchy, how to raise our young with clearly-defined and attentive parenting and nurturing skills.
An inverted predator— humans are the ultimate planetary threat but we still fear wolves. Demonising nature, we project ourselves onto animals.
These layers of meaning and threat circle each other. Feet padding in circles, closing in, traces in snow.
[Italicised lines inserted throughout this account are fragments drawn from Jeffrey Robinson’s original text Romantic Manifestos Manifest]
