Unearthly Toys

by Ned Denny

  to the land’s brink, that tangled footpath to the stars

  you climb with closed eyes through the sky’s briars,

  the returning track of which the sure bird sings

  when its plain song summons inexpressible things

  perched on the border of your nights and days.

  Such ones will seem odd to all whose sense

  of what is and isn’t real is hijacked by events

  narrated on the airwaves, each new fearfest

  drumming home the point that home’s where you’re safest;

  in the room’s corner, where a live fire should inform,

  a digital flicker keeps nobody warm.

  But now my warbling heart (wirbil, ‘whirlwind’)

  spins beyond its case to remotely view

  that open prison I have left, the whale-psalmed blue,

  the great curving routes of the migratory spheres

  and the turbulence of their atmospheres,

  then comes back with a vast screech of admonition:

  forget your readings and forget your mission,

  keep on and don’t look back until you find

  joys holier than that pen where life means death

  can give you, that paradise where a dragon’s breath

  rusts the fruit on the branch and the coin in your hand,

  that demon-sucked and pestilential land

  where disease is a business and health is a loss,

  where youth is bent, where a sword can reach across

  a hemisphere to gut an ambling man

  and sharp-eyed spears drift at the edge of space;

  and, truly, a warrior who would gain his place

  amongst the angels, they who sing the raging calm,

  must take his stand against the ring-fenced farm –

  if he cares to fight for the living epitaph

  of his great-great-granddaughter’s unenslaved laugh –

  where the meat and milk and blood is human.

  The sunlight is veiled, the empires it grew

  looted and labelled, the king’s jewelled retinue

  scattered, his exploits a stele that none can translate;

  and no gold to give that is not gold plate,

  no exulting heroes but smooth-voiced snakes in suits

  (‘strategic consultants’, the mind that computes)

  who blanch beneath a diplomatic smile;

  and the letters of Nature’s sacred book

  unillumined in the eyes of those too dazed to look,

  the drained men a premature senility

  curls up like leaves; and in that grey city,

  behind a brace of code-locked doors, a lord who trusts

  in his wealth – Selah – yet secretly lusts

  for a body that death might never defile

  grows pale at the thought of his failing strength

  and all those proud forebears tuned to the grave’s wavelength,

  for a name’s not a house that the storm won’t lay bare

  and you can’t buy grace with a silver prayer –

  hear me open my dark saying – and piles of gold

  won’t make that strange chamber one degree less cold,

  recalling the wages of monstrous greed.

  Wondrous the one who flows in His stillness,

  embodies the bedrock, whose breath is the clearness

  of the world-spangled heavens and the lichened wood,

  and blessed are those who live simply – not ‘good’,

  but listening less to the talk than the thunder –

  and lost is the herd with no sense of wonder

  (he who thinks he knows is a fool indeed,

  not once having died while still drawing breath:

  ‘Almighty God, what is this? My boy, this is death’).

  To recognise the Word which glows in every stone

  is to feel your flesh grow light, is to own

  nothing but that wild and tender sense of creaturehood,

  is to step gently, it being understood

  that the way is a way of restraint;

  an outer and an inner cleanliness

  becomes the pupil – Hugiaine! – who judges less

  than he suffers with all those who moan in their sleep,

  clear in enmity as he is in deep

  love, casting no man in the hieroglyphic fire

  before his time, knowing His code is higher

  and wider than conception can paint

  or poem build. Let no soul succumb

  to deceit but consider what it has become

  and what it is, a child of the star-toned origin

  all things point to and where they rebegin,

  and why and how it is obstructed from seeing

  that radiance that is the body’s being,

  the birthright of whole-eyed women and men

  upright on the earth. Praise to the One

  and to the Holy Mother Spirit and the Son,

  Christos and Sophia – words that believe in silence

  and She who is the light of that immense

  and waking garden – and courage to the fool

  who holds the flagrant stamen these waters cannot cool,

  now and forever. Onwards. Amen.

  *

  COPYRIGHT

  Every effort has been made by the publisher to reproduce the formatting of the original print edition in electronic format. However, poem formatting may change according to reading device and font size.

  First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Carcanet Press Ltd, Alliance House, 30 Cross Street, Manchester M2 7AQ.

  This eBook edition first published in 2018.

  Text copyright © Ned Denny, 2018. The right of Ned Denny to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988. All rights reserved.

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publisher, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Epub ISBN 978 1 78410 539 6

  Mobi ISBN 978 1 784105 40 2

  PDF ISBN 978 1 784105 41 9

  The publisher acknowledges financial assistance from Arts Council England.