and in this way,
slowly
over the years
my bed became
intimate;
a home
inside home,
a haven,
a sanctuary,
a place of retreat
from the witness of eyes,
in sickness,
in sleep,
in the embraces of love.
I have never thanked it.
But I do so now,
my bed
which supports me,
which has taken in
my tears
and my sighs,
which has known
my weight
from childhood to man,
and which one day
will bear
what is left
of my body
when the spirit
has flown.
REDOLENCE
So many pathways
lead from the fragrance
of sad bonfires.
Lost autumns
and forgotten summers
re-emerge as perfumed ghosts,
and with them rise
those faded versions of ourselves
which only smoke can resurrect.
Everything that burns
at one time lived
and played its part
in this great game.
Now, in us, the leaves return,
and in the smoke
each breath we take
rekindles life,
and sparks remembrance
of old fires
and the days on which we set them.
THE VETERAN
For Roger Mayo
In Delville Wood
there stands a tree.
Smaller than the rest
which grew in peace,
it has the look of one
who’s seen too much.
Its limbs seem undecided
on which way to grow,
and bear their leaves
with some reluctance,
perhaps not trusting summers
to be worth their while.
Black waters
covered up its friends.
They sank with iron
and with men
and disappeared.
The flutter
of fair foliage
did them no good;
it brought no truce.
Reduced to pulp,
their flesh dissolved
and fertilised
the broken earth.
Yet one survived,
as did the seeds
of others now grown tall,
and each year still
new blossoms form,
and life goes on
in Delville Wood.
FINZI – ECLOGUE FOR PIANO & ORCHESTRA
Once,
from the muffled stillness
of an upstairs room,
I heard a piano played.
In privacy,
the player turned the sounds
toward himself,
as intimate as words he spoke
when at his bath.
But they were beautiful.
If I can speak of hauntings
I would declare myself
beneath the spell
of those clear sounds,
still, after fifty years,
which on that sunny afternoon
my ears retained.
There was about the place
the smell of old wood,
polish, and of something faded,
but the music fell
like fresh clean water
onto thirsty soil,
and sank there,
never to be lost
from that warm day.
How curious
that after all that time,
on hearing it again,
the sequence of those lilting notes
should cause me pain,
as though the intervening years
were peeled away
and what lay bared
was tender as the skin
I wore in those past days.
And of the player –
now long dead –
who, musing on that tune,
had lent it wings?
He never knew
where it had flown.
But that is art:
a message
sent off like a dove,
with hope,
yet blindly
into empty air.
ENDINGS
We sit amongst the pigeons
and the tired grass,
the park bench like an island
in the ebb and flow.
We use those words,
the ones designed to state the obvious
whilst hiding truths.
But we both know.
Above, in cooling air,
the crows have gathered one by one
to form dark punctuation
in the falling sky.
The laughter of a passing child
does not belong,
and once green leaves
turn first to amber, then to red.
It’s summer’s end when warmth declines.
September’s come, the buddleia dies,
and butterflies come
no more.
FROM A DISTANT PLACE
When the wind comes howling
there is only one night,
the night which began long ago
over many decades,
when I lay in a clean bare room
and the wind was my companion.
It came to me like all other winds,
from a distant place,
perhaps from the silent stones
of a quiet valley where
slender reeds bowed to its presence
and it filled its lungs.
The cold sky fed it,
the warmth of the dry land
nurtured its power till
the space between mountains
could not contain it,
and it rode out into the world.
To the boy in a bed
in a clean bare room
it came with stories,
a whispering giant
that told of the seas
with its toiling ships;
of the hounded trees and their secret roots,
of the stark moon rising.
It came with tales as old as the Earth,
of the turbulent sky
and of all the creatures
that labour beneath it.
It is the same wind,
the same coming and going of breath,
of maddened atoms that belong to the centuries.
All the stories of mankind go on.
Swept up like dust,
our words and our sighs go on for ever.
BLACKBIRD
When the blackbird opens
its orange throat
its song unravels
a bright thread of life.
The top of the tree
is adorned by its chant,
the evening is calmed,
the sun talked down
into distant lands.
We have but a lifetime
in which to assemble
a reason for living,
and our words lay bare
the bones of our longing.
We have no wings,
we do not sing truly;
the weight of shadows
is with us always.
But there in the blackbird
the spirit of exultation lives
as sharp as a thorn.
It moves through the universe
borne by its simple
unquestioning courage,
and its heart
forces joy out
into the world.
NOCH EIN BIER!
So, dear friends,
it’s one more beer!
Raise the arm
and let the golden light
soak down, a cold clear pull
that’s cleaner
than the swept blue sky.
It moves
from mouth to veins,
a river in reverse
whose estuary
draws in the ocean’s cool,
and quenches every tributary
and each dry stream
and arid bank.
We walkers
who have trodden stone and dust,
now wash away the hardship
with a song
from last year’s summer
in a frozen glass,
an amber sprite
distilled from wheat
and sunlight
in a soft
undoing.
KINDRED
On the folds of your face something extraordinary
has happened every day.
Smiles have blossomed there unexpectedly,
seeding the room with a sudden benevolence.
By the use of your lips
you have signalled to me
that all things are shared.
Out of sound you have conjured laughter,
a bubbling trill that travels
amongst the stones of your teeth,
the rosy hummock of your tongue,
and makes its journey outward
into the blue shadows,
the hard compress of old sorrows.
Out of air you have moulded words
which remain impossibly,
hung in the heart like vapour trails.
For we are human, you and I,
and seek our own kind through small deeds
and sounds which, though short-lived,
will bind our lives together.
GLACIER
It fell as snow
silently
on unheard peaks
beyond the reach of soaring birds,
of lonely footpaths,
and there it settled still as stars,
a frost
night-deep and ready for the dream.
Long years embraced it,
locked, entombed
in blue pearl sleep
whilst it descended
slower than the creep of moons,
of forests.
The world span on.
So many suns would rise and fall
upon this steady march of winter.
Yet in the end
A stroke from one last spring
awoke it.
It dripped and played
round rummaged rocks,
its song a thread of silver
spun from ice,
a life made liquid,
given wings.
And on it streamed,
rushing now,
its voice grown stronger
as it ran,
surging through the yawning slopes,
the green cathedrals of the trees
and us,
this passing moment in the life
of fresh triumphant water.
THE COOLING
So it’s true then: we all grow old,
even I who understood
that in my case this was not so.
After all, I was no fool; I’d seen
the truth that children see:
the old were surely always old,
the young forever young.
How could I – this central being,
this kernel that remains unchanged,
this constant voice, this conduit
through which every joy and sorrow flows –
how could I grow old?
But I was wrong.
Though summer is a long affair
which bathes us in a haze
of rich green light and endless days,
it lulls the heart, for where
is winter in those winding ways
of warmth and soft blue hills?
To reach this time
I travelled from a fabled past,
a land of gentle ghosts
and altered truths, a broken film
which dust and wishes make more real.
The odour of the past endures,
its meaning lingers in the shapes of words.
I hear it still in strains of music
from those far off rooms,
and blackbirds in the evening.
So hard to watch the flesh decline
and match it to this voice which sings
as strong as thrushes in an April tree.
The frosts of autumn settle on the limbs
and flesh that summer wrought.
It is the way; the year moves on.
And one night, quietly,
the snow will come.
METAMORPHOSIS
It was fate and nothing more
that let me see it –
the slab of rock
that hung out like a pouting lip
above the gorge.
My eyes had come to rest upon it
quite by chance,
and in that instant,
as if my gaze alone
was one too many burdens for its back,
the whole mass fell away.
A piece far larger than a house
detached itself and dropped
with slow and easy grace
into the green and quiet valley.
And as it fell
it seemed to me
a planet all its own.
Trees grew upon it, creatures;
a little world with rainfall,
grass, its light and shade;
it was a stronghold, terra firma, home.
For what vast aeons had it perched there
till that day, that one in millions
when I saw it end?
The sound of its demise
boomed through the valley,
taking seconds
for the shock to rip and ripple
round the peaks,
and what had been so constant
through the summers and the snows
of countless years
now came apart like biscuit
in a giant’s hand.
The dust of death rained down
on startled fields,
drifting wraithlike
through the greening shoots.
It settled there with no laments,
no violins, only the hiss
of waterfalls in quiet air.
I stood and watched
this strange becoming,
this transformation
from the great to small,
till the calm of summer
reassembled
and was whole once more.
Till the very last moment
an apple remains attached to its tree.
But, having fallen, it never returns.
This is our story.
DAYDREAMER
There were wonders always
inside whichever world he'd entered.
The call of clouds drew him away;
he drifted in and out of hours
like sunlight on the patchwork fields.
A passing shower, the scattering of autumn leaves
were breath enough to lift his wings;
he lived immersed in wondrous days
and witnessed time
surrender to his needs.
Where did he go,
that slender boy
who watched the silent pathways,
star-strewn nights,
who delved the hidden mystery
in shadowed pools?
He lives here still.
I carry him
wrapped up in wrinkled skin,
inside old bones.
His voice still speaks
the language learned
in daydreams long ago.
And where he goes
> I follow still.
He knows as he has always known
the pull of life in simple worlds:
in mists and shadows,
fire and snow.
TONIGHT AND FOR EVER.
It is evening like all other evenings
when the trees transmute into the essence of trees.
So quietly the sound of the river rises,
and the voice of the bird is there once again,
punching holes in the exhausted sky.
This is the place,
and above all others now is the time.
When the light at last fails do the trees lament?
Do the poppies grow mournful
because there are not enough days?
It is only we with our words who will grieve.
Tomorrow perhaps a cool wind will ruffle
the confident stars, but tonight and for ever,
let the jasmine bring us the whole of the summer
sharpened into a single breath.
THREE CATS
OLLY
Cats do not
race humans up the stairs,
then swagger with conceited pride
at having won.
They do not
embrace the heads of people
with gentle or ferocious love.
Cats do not
come swaggering in like Al Capone
and grab the cheese
from kitchen tops,
nor, if denied, beat up the dog,
or lie across the hall
with flexing claws.
But you did, Olly Bear.
Your vast tail like a startled
feather duster, held aloft,
heralded your entrance to a room.
And all who saw you
could not leave that presence unannounced,
oh, Olly Bear.
NOOKA
Nooka Belle,
you did not stay with us for long,
yet graced us with your lion's mane
and clear gold gaze
as timeless as the Sphinx
you liked to be.
You came to us when snow lay on the ground,
and left in early spring
when daffodils were blooming.
Each year, for those with eyes,
new marvels and new beauties will unfold;
you were one of those, our little Nooka,
brief and lovely.
And so, to you, our golden girl, farewell.
HANK
Hank,
you were
the naughtiest
of cats.
Your nimble toes
could hook
the food
from other's bowls.
You grew
quite fat.
Often
you would sit
and tear off strips
from books or diaries,
or slowly push
a milk jug
off a table.
We'd rush
towards you,
faces set in anger,
Small Things Page 4