Small Things
Jonathan Barnes
Copyright 2012 by Jonathan Barnes
Smashwords Edition
SCRIBE
To begin with confession:
this love affair
with my own pen.
How could I not adore
this rapier tip
that scores the page?
This roving point
that moves in unison
with my own thoughts?
With one quick scratch
what did not live
is given flesh,
and lies there
on the page
in fossil form
for those who follow.
Consider:
lamplight, murmur, leaves, a bird.
As each word rises off the page
it flares,
each like a struck match
in an unlit cave,
and has its brief life
full-lived, fleshed,
a taste inside the mouth
as full as summer.
My pen,
my noble scribe,
who lays down good and bad
with equanimity,
who never judges nor extols,
allows me at the least
to farm the words
which move the mind,
to reach beyond
my own arm's length,
and at the best
to lay those perfect footprints
in the sand.
THE BLUE DAY
Today I long for the gentlest of sounds:
the voice of a piano from another room;
a bee, after leaving its swaying flower,
passing me by in the afternoon.
These things remind me that the world
Is composed of others’ lives, and that
packed together like the stems of ripe wheat,
there is only the solace of a peaceful mind.
In through my ears comes the clear blue day,
where the sunshine unclenches the knotted leaves.
Nothing is quieter than the coasting clouds
till the woodpecker hammers in the silent wood.
I have searched for sanctuary
In uncertain places, and found it in streams
where the green water slides
with the sound of a jug perpetually pouring.
LARK SONG
Man has always
envied larks;
their voices,
far too full
of jubilation,
travel through
an afternoon
like whispered words,
and leave man rooted
in the soil
as dull as rocks.
But man is hunger,
and to win the day
he hunted larks
with mirrors
planted in the soil
like stars.
The innocent
made easy meat;
their flesh
became his own
as blood absorbed it.
But their song
of life
he could not keep,
for as with joy
or love or art,
the fist
destroys it.
THE URGE
The way there
is the narrowest road I know,
perhaps no wider than a single word,
and the journey is a lonesome one.
Those who persist
discover the road goes on and on.
It does not return.
It affords no rest.
There is no reward
for those who travel it,
beyond the virtue
of moving on.
A MATTER OF DEGREE
He is no different from the rest;
like every man who ever lived,
he must have water.
Each day he drinks, and takes his quota,
oblivious or otherwise to the constant duties
of his kidneys year on year.
The chemistry of nerves and brain
depend upon the longing of this cells
for water.
He dreams of it: the seas, the rivers,
placid lakes, the rain-soaked moss
and summer showers, the clink of ice,
his cleansing bath, even the lush
abundance of moist leaves.
He thirsts, and his thirst is that
of all mankind.
He is bound by it, like gravity,
by the laws of physics, the story
of creation.
His body knows, if he does not,
that lacking it, he is but dust
and minerals on a desert floor.
And yet one day, at leisure
in a shallow pool, he drowns.
FROM THE HILL
The sky
took its shape
from the sound
of bells.
They rang
with the blue light
of evening
slanting into
the sullen pines.
They rang
with the voice
of five hundred years
and all that
had passed there.
They rang
till the barley
grew still
in the fields,
and went on
ringing,
the incessant
solemn
monotony
of bells,
shaping the shadows
on the hill,
and the one
who watched there.
ORANGES
They come from the south,
arriving like migrating birds,
bringing locked in humid flesh
a flavour bright as the songs
and the sunshine of their land.
To hold one is to have at one’s command
a teeming world of succulence
and colour, a tiny planet
divided into seas and waterfalls
of sweetness as sharp as brittle glass.
Nowhere in the realm of man is anything
so clear as citrus, painful almost
in its vibrancy and sting of life.
The orange fell from heaven, bearing in
its bounty, keys with which
to unlock daylight in our dark.
MOONLIGHT
Unannounced
and quiet as snow the moonlight comes.
Over the resting land it finds its way,
and paints the pastures and the towns
with colours which we give no names.
Serenely still
or racing through the wind-borne clouds,
its stealthy light seeps into us
and quenches there a thirst we did not know.
We turn our heads, but the moon remains.
THE MEETING
How did they spend
those final hours?
Did they, as I had,
simply watch the road unwind
like tape laid out across the fields?
That day – benign and softened by the sun –
had made it easy to believe
that life was fine.
I like to think they’d spoken kindly,
laughed and held each other’s hands,
but had they bickered
or complained, or felt resentment
for some lack, it’s all the same;
the road must end.
I came upon them in their tomb,
their sepulchre of steel,
boxed in and crushed beneath a wagon
weighing tons.
The flames had died,
the scorched earth round the wreckage
marking out the spot
like punctuation on the land.
Not for me the phone calls and the tears,
the long transition into different lives
and states of being. No.
I had been blessed, that day at least,
and given all life has to give:
the chance for more.
SNOW
Today
the world
must be redrawn;
snowflakes
have settled
white on white
and wiped away
the green markings
of the land.
Today
birds labour
through pale sharp air.
Sound
has departed
into the earth,
drawn down softly
amongst the roots,
the slumbering seed,
the unimaginable dream
of summer.
Darkness too
has bled away,
drained from the shadows
beneath the trees.
The land and the sky
are sewn together.
Only my feet
continue their racket,
those noisy companions
punching their imprints
into the snow.
Alone
I trudge the barren glare,
a crawling dot
on a bleached
white page.
I am
the heartbeat
in the ice,
the frosted breath,
the striving pulse,
for in this pitiless well
of winter
I am the living.
WIND AND ROSES
The wind-tossed garden,
walled, entire, and restless
as a great green sea,
is paradise disturbed,
shaken by the testing air
to find what lives
and how it’s fastened
to the world.
I too am part,
my hair like grass
examined by
the surging tides.
I listen to what
makes me listen,
search the turmoil
of the trees
to find my
own pulse there.
I am alive.
I am alive
in wind and roses
under the burgeoning sky.
JUDGEMENT
From fire to water
and to earth,
we need it all.
If man could choose
he’d build a hell,
not because
he’d wish it so,
but thinking that
he knows what’s best
he’d disregard
the vital grit
that makes the pearl.
So tell me,
is it dirt or soil?
Man knows the difference,
and only man.
MIRROR
There is something of the moon in mirrors,
silvered and unfathomable,
a place of cold hard mineral and dreams.
No arm was ever long enough
to reach that land beyond the glass.
No winds blow there,
no sunshine warms, no showers fall,
no trees, no living thing performs.
That world that you are looking at
does not exist.
Yet again and again our eyes return.
How ardently we long for those lost questions
that the moon and mirrors must retain.
THE OLD PLACE
Before you
there were many generations.
My doors
have opened and closed
on a multitude.
A throng of voices
have argued and sung,
wept and whispered
inside my walls.
There were young and old
each acting out
their measure of life,
each finding in me
that private retreat
from the scrutiny of eyes.
At night they slept
with my arms around them,
and peace overtook them.
They valued my care.
They may even have loved me.
But I never belonged to them.
Then you arrived
with your tools
and your noise.
My rafters and joists
were eased and altered
and light reached into me
where darkness had been.
I heard your tread
on my stairs all day.
You came and went
like the passage of the sun
and I came to know you.
But I was never yours.
Now, silent once more,
my rooms are filled only
with dust and shadows.
Ivy reaches across my panes.
A green gloom invades me.
But soon more will come,
and I shall bloom
once again
in another summer.
Laughter and tears
will spill into my interior
and I shall hear their voices
like the boom of waves.
I shall be reborn,
and the life of others
will flood me with meaning.
In time they too
may come to love me.
But they shall never possess me.
ICARUS
It died alone –
the tiny bird
not yet a fledgling –
crashed like Icarus,
its wings too feeble
and unformed
to save it from
the hard cold earth.
Its lumpen body, clumsy,
pink and luminous as wax,
was laid on gentle leaves
and petals brought down
by the storm,
as if displayed
for mourners who might come.
But only I would witness it,
the pity and the pitiless
that makes this world.
I stood and watched it
for some time – this voice
that never would be heard –
and did the only thing I could:
remembered it.
PHOTOGRAPH
It tumbled from a dusty book –
this captive from a dimming world
in black and white.
A man is standing on a bridge,
intent on crossing, though for forty years
he has not moved.
All history is stopped. All breath
and being is locked immobile
in a piece of paper microns thick.
The figure – lean, dark-haired –
is trapped inside its small eternity,
an insect in an amber stone.
And there it lies, cut from the space
between bright molecules, an image
like an old coat left to hang.
And yet it resonates down all those years,
for he is me, his form the shape
of every echo, every nerve that ever rang.
Each thought, belief, sensation, taste,
was given birth inside that outline –
black and white – which stands
and waits perpetually in silent air.
AUTUMN PIECE
October’s call:
a cello
spilling into
mournful air
its soft
brown voice.
The odour
of things past
settles in us,
and we lean
towards the evening
made of orange
flame and
cool blue glass.
Now,
now we recall
the music
of the bees
and hot wild
perfume.
But the leaves
pour down,
and we cannot stay.
The dark earth
bares itself,
and we – frail beings –
must creep into
the long dark night,
and hope for stars.
BENEATH THE TREES
What kind of comradeship was this:
this boy-shaped shadow in the trees?
What form of comfort did he draw
from those deep roots: the elm, the beech?
Year after year the seasons were at work
in the wood. Bees were distributed
amongst sweet blossom, and at night
the stars sat perched in the branches.
He wanted it to be like love,
this honest passion, simple as the
colour green. And it was so, for
where men trod was not so true.
Inside his bones the language of the leaves
was heard: an ancient voice.
Beneath the boughs he felt their great hearts
Pulsing into patient lands.
IN UTERO
I came from the deep,
from the night-deep nursery
of the undreamed,
cradling inside me
a dark star of love.
A river runs through me.
An ocean of tides
beats in my ears.
Soon I shall know
the vision of air;
my coral bones brace
against the clamour.
I shall come.
I shall be.
Steeped in my moon-dark
cell of water,
I am growing the seed
that will become my heart.
BRIGHTON SONG
I came from the station with its slamming of doors,
with its drumming of diesels as they made ready,
and I headed off down the long straight hill,
for I longed to be close to the deep dark sea.
The lampposts lit my way to the shoreline,
handing me on like a chain all the way.
Their sour light showed me the streets of the city,
but it could not uncover the deep dark sea.
Then came the zest of salt from the blackness,
and the suck and hiss of surf on the strand,
and all the works of man were as nothing
to the sound and the smell of the deep dark sea.
I had come at last to the final barrier,
where the stones of the beach and the road converge,
and I filled my lungs and my head and my heart
with the size of the life of the deep dark sea.
DREAM WOMAN
How glorious
to breathe your
earthy essence!
To feel your hair
like cool grass
pressed against
my longing cheek,
to draw from you
the blood-rich
vapour of your
living being,
palpitating
and as full
of nectar
as a flower.
How miraculous
to roam the fragrant
landscape that
your sweet
flesh forms,
with its dips
and its hollows;
a place of wine
and honey.
More than words,
more than whispered
promises,
the smell of you
reveals the shape
of your
warm heart.
SMALL THINGS
Give me
a conversation which ignites.
Let words needle their way
into meanings, into memories.
Give me
a companion
who will throw back boulders
when I cast my pebbles at her.
Let a whole afternoon
drift by in laughter.
Give me
white wine and crusty bread.
Let the seats be comfortable,
with a view of trees
and clouds that are just so.
And when the sun goes down
I’d like a bed
with a lover in it,
warmed by candlelight
and soft embraces.
Give me
a sense that the world is not too cruel,
and that tomorrows still stretch out
like stepping stones
towards some kindly place.
And let that be a day like all the rest.
THE BELLS OF WENGEN
When I heard the church bell ringing,
all the stillness of the valley
with its vast surround of ice and rock
was, in an instant, deepened.
I gazed at distant peaks,
snow-capped and sunlit
in their cold remoteness,
and felt the roundness of the bells,
their antique metal calling out
a proclamation of man’s long presence
in that place.
Then up the slopes
with the dark procession of the pines,
and into far off crags and cliffs
where waters rush and black crows
circle in the rising air,
all the bells of Wengen reached and rang
till I, with my fragile human heart,
was lifted higher than a bird.
THE DOG’S DAY OUT
He ran across the pebbles,
bouncing soft as light,
and headed for the great grey sea,
not knowing what it was,
except that it was there
and must be scolded.
Knee-deep in waves
the fight began.
He bit and tore,
determined as he always was
to bring the world to heel
and fear his name.
But the water,
unconcerned by such stern discipline,
had picked him up
as lightly as a leaf
and rolled him as a friendly brother would
and dumped him on the sand.
Oh, hallelujah, that such a force
as this would be his friend!
He came at speed to tell us,
his legs like wings,
his body held aloft
my joy and madness.
Then back he went.
We watched this struggle
of the Titans,
laughing at his ecstasy
as though the rapture
in his tiny heart was ours.
Love and war;
the best of each
was wrapped up in a moment
on that day.
Nobody lost
And nobody won.
Just a dog
and the beach
and the sea.
CANAL
It was the time for rest.
We’d stopped and moored our boat
beside broad meadows steeped in mist
knee-deep and opalescent as a moon.
Cows stood like islands as they chewed,
whilst all about them, darkening the trees,
the rusty voices of the rooks.
We worked at ropes and knots,
smelling earth and dull dark water
as we made ourselves secure.
We lit a lamp for comfort.
Look, you said.
The sun, an orange ember,
loitered still along the strange horizon,
its shape less certain as it sank,
its heat now quenched
by soft September night.
Geese broke the sky with sawing wings;
a spell was cast.
We watched the sun depart
like those who see a friend off on a train.
Then, inside the cabin
with its fug of fuel and wine,
we played at cards
and ate our food
knowing that around us,
beyond the tiny capsule
of our laughter and our warmth,
the great night gathered.
THE HAUNTED LAND
Sometimes at the very point of sleep
I stand once more in silence
in the haunted land,
the one where as a child
I gazed out at the borders
marked by elms,
and listened to the sound of trains.
No bird swoops there,
no sound of voices,
only the clouds,
the lofty marble clouds
that tower in the sea-deep blue.
And then the trains.
I thought when I was young
that I would be a different person
when I’d grown,
that trains would take me
to another place
and all would change.
It was not so.
A lonely figure
makes its way perpetually through fields,
a dark shape
in the shimmer of the wheat.
It never stops and yet
it grows no nearer as it moves.
And so life goes:
A cycle, like a memory of summer
long ago.
FOR DAD
When I heard that you were dead,
when they told me that you had died
and that everything you ever were
had ended and would never be again,
I stood in that stark corridor,
the nurse’s face before me, strict and kind,
and waited till her words
at last made sense.
She took me through
and showed me where you lay.
For days you’d battled,
struggled like a man submerged,
your body, frail as frost,
exhausted by the long
unending haul of every breath
until the last.
I took your hand –
something you would not allow in life –
remembering how in childhood
I had revelled in the touch
of yours, so large and gentle,
as you’d washed me.
And on your face,
now drained of life,
there lingered still
a presence
formed by lines and scars,
marking out the map
of your great journey.
More than anything
you’d survived.
Survived when others fell,
survived the strange uncertainties of living,
survived starvation, fear and failure,
survived the horror of what men do.
You’d survived when life had lost its savour,
and went on –
kindness still a flame inside you –
winning victories every day
until the last.
QUIETLY ONE SUNDAY
No word was said,
no comment raised
to focus in the mind
those few quiet moments.
But the clouds,
relenting that December day,
allowed the sun
a soft brief outing
ten breaths long
in which to light the birch tree
on its sodden patch.
And for those heartbeats,
luminescent in the morning gloom,
the white bark blazed
and showed itself
a life of substance.
I too
for those long seconds
stood as motionless as wood
whilst the rays
unwound the hardness
in us both and,
stilled by winter,
we waited, glowing
in that interlude of grace,
two golden beings,
dressed in all the bells
of Sunday.
EGGS
Each day,
without thinking,
I observe
the familiar shape
of an egg.
In my kitchen
they sit
in their rows
and groups
like clusters
of babies,
like bald heads,
sculptures,
miraculous pebbles
textured like flesh
which has turned
into stone.
They are domed
brittle boxes
of glutinous gold,
sulphurous,
dynamic,
perfect,
whole.
I imagine one
breaking
on the side
of a bowl,
its contents
sliding
into the flour
like a soft
yellow sun;
or perhaps
as an omelette
fragrant
with nutmeg.
I can picture them
whipped into
stiff white snow,
or as sputtering islands
in a lake of oil.
A hundred ways
exist
to eat eggs,
but with each
we destroy
an immaculate beauty;
beyond the flavour
and bounty
of eggs
lies the shadow
of wings,
lies shattered mineral,
an emptied cave,
a looted home,
for in each shell
resides
the soul of a bird.
UNMASKED
How cavernous the night!
A place of vast dimension,
boundless as a deep black sea
that has no shores.
No mind can capture its dark splendour,
for we – the blind, the infinitesimal,
this mustard seed in all
the oceans of the world,
this maggot shouting at the moon –
can never break the tug of flesh,
this blink of life which bars us from eternity.
Beneath the ancient light of stars
we are unmasked: miraculous
but delicate as dew, we are a flawed jewel
formed from dust and fortune
under the bright constellations.
FOR MIKE
It started cold that day.
I drove to work with chilled skin
and an irritation that yet again
the builders’ van was in the way.
I tutted and complained
about the late arrival of the mail.
The milk was off.
I tore my finger on a nail
and bled profusely
for a whole half minute.
The usual lunch.
I did some repetitious tasks
and went home early
under lowering skies.
The cat had caught a squirrel
which the dog now shared.
I drank two glasses of white wine
and listened to the radio news,
and grumbled at the many
inconsistencies of our own kind.
Later, at the theatre, a comedian
told a hundred jokes,
though truth be told
I was not really in the mood.
These things make up the act of living,
the ordinary marvellous gifts
that I enjoyed but gave no thanks for
on the very day you died.
LA MER
From the resonant bellies
of violins
the luminous sound
of the sea
has reached me.
Here
in the shell sky
all the oceans converge,
even the ships
which ply their way
like actors
from some other play;
all are consumed
in the glittering light,
the immeasurable pulse,
the same liquid tide
in which salt and song
are constantly sighing.
On and on
it rises and falls;
lifetimes crash and break
on its shorelines.
I do not ask
how this ocean exists;
I only know
that I carry it in me,
moved by the odour
of vast waters,
the spirit of fish,
the shimmer of sound,
a few bright notes
like a cupped hand
brimmed
by a whole blue day.
THE MIRACLE
I did not see it
in the apse.
No miracle
was witnessed
in the nave that day,
not there
amongst the saints
and sacraments,
the vaulted heights,
nor even in the crypt below,
but deeper still,
beneath the tombs,
inside a hollow
hewn from rock,
a midnight place
of cold and stillness
neat as death.
Words long forgotten
steeped the stone.
Yet through this silent vault
a rill had worn
its stubborn path.
A tiny stream
four fingers wide
had wandered in
from sunlit fields
and swelled
this sepulchre of night
with music.
A single lamp
no brighter than a candle
lit the exit
of this liquid voice,
and there
where light
and water met,
a world had sprung:
moss and ferns
of minute scale
had taken hold,
a planted flag,
a declaration of intent,
emerald, moist,
self-reproducing.
Here was the marvel:
the courage of each cell of life
outweighing in triumph
all the thoughts and theories
of mankind.
AT THE END
If I should never see you again,
if you and I were never again to speak,
inside me, all the words we'd ever shared
would gather like the weight of leaves,
like old coins in a silent fountain,
a lifetime of collected shells.
The greyness of cold seas
would wash the void which you’d once filled,
and echoes sharp as keening gulls
would carve away that tender place.
You and I whose hands still touch
can offer kisses where all words must fail,
but at the end when flesh must part,
the empty waste would fill with words -
those words which time has sculpted into shapes
familiar as a mirrored face.
A fortune stored in words once shared
would soothe the aching of a hollow heart,
a love which breath bequeathed to silence
and to sound.
WINE
Through what frail fruit
the earth gives up
its golden dreams!
First in the vines,
to sleeping seed
the soil calls out
its mineral song.
It whispers
in the basking leaves,
and works its way
mysteriously
through firm sweet flesh
as green as ponds.
How bold and tender
is this fusion
of the grape and man!
It settles
in the sinews
like a calming hand,
a distillation
of the planet’s wealth:
sunshine, water,
soil and growth;
awakening
in tongues and nerves
those bright
internal skies
we long to know.
TOOLS
What would I be
if I lacked tools?
A creature stranded
in its thoughts,
a man abandoned
in the abstract
like a leaf in wind,
whose ideas would
remain as such,
or fall to dust.
They are my friends,
these tools, living
in their boxes
and their cabinets
and drawers, like
dormant beings
who await the call.
Tools for wood
and tools for metal,
tools for clay or plaster,
tools to draw
or set down words.
They magnify me,
make me larger
than a thought allows,
these things which
in themselves
are not an end.
They give me breath,
they lend me wings.
TO THE TREE
Your stillness at the heart of things
had always moved me,
not your leaves, which fluttered
or were tossed by breeze,
but you, old sentinel,
who stood your ground,
deep-rooted and determined
through the march of years.
You had outlasted those
who’d placed you there,
endured their acts of war
and constant change,
seen sin and virtue
acted out, been home
to birds, and used by children
as a ship or horse
or castle tower.
Through frosted panes
and summer’s blaze
I’d watched your
billowed form unfold.
I knew your shape,
I’d studied idly all the
upward and the downward
slopes of your thick limbs.
You were familiar,
your form still there
when eyes were closed.
The world around you
seemed more safe
for your firm presence.
You were rock,
but you were also life.
One night a blast of wind
too strong for your old roots
had toppled you, and laid you
prostrate and undignified,
like some old aunt who’s fainted,
arms awry and dress thrown up.
It happened in the hours of darkness
when no-one was around to see you go.
You fell, and that was it;
there was no resurrection,
no reprieve.
You lay there in the turmoil
of your broken limbs
without complaint
as saws were taken to your flesh
and your vast mass reduced
to dust and fragrant emptiness.
I gazed at where for my whole life
you’d stood so steadfast,
and saw instead the winter sky
and wheeling birds.
Your presence had defined
for me the shape
of gentleness and power,
and for a while at least,
the space you left
was the emptiest space I knew.
AMBER
On warm nights happiness, it seems,
is unavoidable, sinking into blood and bone
as easily as slow sad songs.
Breathe it in, believe it;
for a while at least
all the words we speak make sense;
we give each one its moment
and its place,
and fog the air with sighs
and languorous thoughts.
I love the smell of candlelight
and ruby wine.
Our laughter calls down moths
and moonlight to our table.
All is well.
But more than this;
in memory we store away
our amber hours,
knowing that on frosty nights
all the honey of our lives
is liquid still.
BOOK
Miraculous object, hidden world,
that opened shell from whose plain shape
the whole Earth rises!
How easily, with so few marks, the crucible
is lit, the seed bed laid, and distant lands
made manifest in simple words!
Alphabets and ordered lines conduct us
down their well laid paths, with each
a highway to a human tale.
A thousand times it can be told,
and with each reading
another life is fed and watered
and set off down that winding lane
to find significance where none exists
unless we put it there.
THE HAUNTED HEART
Women have been my constant longing,
equal to the pull of tides,
the yearning of the lungs for air.
Into each cell the open arms
of women reach, and bring to life
in every breath
the power of water and of flame,
that soft collision
born in flesh and breath and words,
a touch and taste
that lingers in the blood like fire,
is etched on bone;
the centre and the sanctuary.
And from this furnace
fire consumes the haunted heart,
and pours its light into my dark,
illuminates the act of living.
Fire is quenched by the water it heats;
the shore destroys the waves
which erode it. Flesh must unite;
only life can keep us from dying.
ROLL THE DICE
Perhaps because we know
our numbers, one to ten,
we care to think that fate too
functions to this scheme,
but the heavens rather
have a different map
where souls are tossed about
by torrid winds,
and where we touch
is all we’ll ever know.
The world is neither cruel nor kind,
but randomly it mixes us
with love and loss,
and builds its constructs
to another plan, not ours.
And yet we live and must make
choices every day; we are both
pawns and players in this game.
So roll the dice and deal the cards
and let us have our play.
MUSEUM PIECE
It came from the soil,
a thing of stone,
a dormant messenger returned
to this new light.
A shovel
ringing on its pale proud face
unearthed the same expression
which had lain unblinking
through its dusty sleep.
Godlike it had rested
through tumultuous years
whilst under azure skies
whole kingdoms rose and fell.
It slid away, abandoned
to a lovelessness as dark and deep
as oceans.
Now in this stark room
Apollo lingers on a foreign plinth.
His battles all are fought.
No longer does his name elicit
fear or love; he is,
in this frail fragment,
a voice remote as seashores
in a lonely shell.
Yet what remains becomes the whole;
through marble lips the words still seep:
in every way that mankind has,
his nature never changes.
LETTERS
Because they came from you,
words which long ago
had ceased to sound,
words I’d heard a thousand times,
now ring afresh,
as bright as bells on frosty air.
Your fingers too are precious to me,
moving as they do, the ink
which lets what lingers in your heart
go free.
Soundless are the words you send me,
as quiet as apples on a bough,
yet each is full and ripe with life
as life allows.
I love you naked,
spread out on the page
as sheer as wet silk
stretched across a dimpled brow.
I wish, oh how I wish,
that raised up to my face
your page would give me trace
of your sweet skin.
OMNES EODEM COGIMUR *
For what great purpose
does a tulip stand
and open up its heart
to sun and wind?
Each one has staked its claim
in rooted earth,
and thrust up to fulfilment
in the age old way.
Year on year the fight goes on,
the game is played,
and every time it ends the same,
not with the chance of a better life,
but in the molecules of marvellous dust,
the very bricks from which we’re made.
* We are all on a journey to the same place ~ Horace
IT BEGAN WITH BIRDS
It began with birds,
a trickle in the ice dark,
those voices
threaded through the dreamland,
wordless
but alive and busy
as a tumbling stream.
Only later
did the songs make sense
when, searching
through the furniture
of clumsy words,
I found a space
the shape
of all that’s lacking.
The smell of rain
lives in that place,
as does the red of blood,
the movement
of the summer grass.
It is the vacancy
where once a lover stood
in melancholy autumn smoke.
The dark holds secrets
that the light destroys,
and all we love
and wish to keep
we must let go.
WHERE WILL YOU FIND ME?
Where will you find me?
In what do I exist?
Am I hidden in hunger and thirst,
in need and desire? Am I defined
by the reach of my senses?
Or am I made only of numbers and words?
Like the tail of a comet my cells have departed.
The flesh I was born with left long ago;
I am no more that child
than my lawn is the grass
that was laid with the turf.
I am lines and scars and imprints on others,
a succession of acts, an outline in air.
I am muddle and struggle,
I am habits and prejudice.
I am shaped like the rock
that’s been worn by the waves;
what I’ve done repeatedly
I have become.
LATE
Night had fallen
when I reached your home
that final time.
All looked unchanged
along the quiet shoreline road.
The moon and stars
both played their part
on soft salt air,
as did the sibilance of waves,
and further out,
the unseen dark immensity
of water.
Always at this point
some feeling of arrival
eased me down
those few stone steps
towards the lighted window
and that one place
in the world
that never would reject me.
But not this time.
That last night
in your home, alone,
without you,
I lay and listened
to a silence steeped
in your departed presence.
Patterns on the curtains
spoke your name,
and in the odour
of fresh linen
that you’d washed
I saw you once again
as you’d once been.
The hours bled away
till dawn which,
when it came,
creeping down the wall
that fresh clear day,
would see me rise
and wash
and take my leave,
never to return.
NEW LIFE
Out of all creation
came this being,
where each child,
like the greening bud
on some vast tree,
is their own season’s blooming
of an ancient life.
The same old words
have worked their way
into our mouths,
each generation
holding them
as dear and apt
as did the last,
for each new life
calls forth from us
the inextinguishable,
and opens up a new path
to the heart.
And love walks in.
BECAUSE HE’D WAITED
Because he’d waited,
because he’d stood
where stillness
seeps inside the bones,
eased in like sleep,
slowly over many years
he’d found on quiet station platforms,
touched by rain and frost and sun,
a pathway to a hidden world.
In litter, weeds and passing birds
he’d glimpsed the silence and the sound.
In small things, private in their undertakings,
all the laws of physics held their course:
the blast of gales upon his neck,
the singing of the iron rails
brought him to now,
for over all those years,
poised between two places –
left behind and yet to come –
all his senses burgeoned
like tight twists of paper in a pool.
Awakened to this other world
on quiet platforms,
he'd breathed and learned that,
unlike trains,
life can never be delayed.
NIGHT AFTER NIGHT
For a long time now
the trees have capped the lone grey hill.
Patiently the Earth unfolds;
no rush of days
but over centuries the story’s told.
Countless lives
were witnessed by the patient moon,
and in their day
blew bold as storms
now swept away till all that’s left
lies buried in sad words.
The eyelids of the day now close,
and in the trees the voices
of the rooks draw darkness down.
On every blade of grass
a fresh dew forms
and glitters in the silent fields.
Night after night the Earth exhales.
All settles now; we sleep, we fade,
whilst in the dark,
immense, alone,
the hill endures.
APARTMENT BLOCK
There are people
whose names
I do not know,
but whose faces
are like the many faces
of moons or flowers.
I have seen them,
each at their window,
each in their world,
like the pictures
on a sheet of stamps,
a gallery of souls.
And in each space,
cell-like,
busy with its own needs,
fears and aspirations,
a life as real as mine
performs,
whilst around it
in the darkness
of the murmuring city
unseen, unknown,
but as numerous
as stars,
the lives of others
swarm.
OLD BEAST
Black flows the river on November days,
a slow dark presence in the town,
whose body, gorged on slanting rains,
draws in the pastures of the sky,
the memory of moss and peat and vivid winds.
It moves but stays –
this night-deep funeral of gathered waters –
familiar as sound and air
that slides by dreamlike
under hollow bridges.
No boats today, only the fallen leaves
which spiral as sad dancers do
towards the end, suspended
for a time by grace and resignation.
Soon the brittle nights will come,
the stippling rains,
the cold hard breath of meagre days.
But on it flows, an old beast
moving to a different scheme,
not that of years,
but measured out in silent stone,
forgotten forests lost to dust and fertile emptiness.
Pass on, old beast,
and find your time-worn path
like music threaded through a dreary day,
till you dissolve at last
into the boundless
and the everlasting sea.
TREASURE
Padauk, lignum vitae, massaranduba.
His mouth forms the words
as his calloused hands reach
to caress the timber.
He calls out their names
like intimate friends:
pau marfim, zebrano, pernambuco.
Like a wine connoisseur
with his dusty green bottles,
he worships the promise
of a hidden interior.
On shelves and in boxes
his samples of wood
are gathered to wait.
They are jewels,
rare birds, organic treasures,
a symbiotic pairing with man
who, with his tools,
will split and shape
and release a beauty
which did not exist.
He knows the story;
its voice is the chainsaw,
the slow crashing arc
of toppling trees,
and with them the forests,
the breath of the world.
But he cannot relinquish
this tropical passion,
these spirits of the soil
patterned like lace,
like watered silk,
bright as fish scales,
as pearl in the sun.
It’s an age old dilemma,
for what can he make
that having made it
will justify
the use of such wood?
Amaranth, palisander, Indian ebony.
For the time being now
he prefers the potential
of mellowing boards
and billets and blocks.
He breathes in their odour.
One day, he thinks…
Two years from now,
on a cold winter day
when clearing his house,
his executors burn it.
It gives little warmth.
Cocobolo, wenge, curapay, muninga
OLD FRIEND
When, as a child,
my bed was a ship
on a storm-tossed sea,
I did not thank it.
As a cave,
as an island,
as a landscape
criss-crossed
by valleys and plains
it received no thanks.
For a bed is a bed.
I entered this world
spilled out onto sheets,
and remained there
safe in my bed’s
cupped hands,
sleeping the sleep
of an untroubled mind
till my legs
at last woke.
But each night
I returned
to gather my dreams,
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,
but stop
because your own
entirely
lacked
all sin.
BREATH
Nothing was,
all was beginning on that dew-soft morning
far from now.
The sound of distance
gathered on the crystal air
still cool before the rise of noon,
and from the trees rose birdsong
iridescent as the sun-soaked lawn.
Far off, so far away
the coming tide of what would be;
for now, a quiet breath
drew ripples on a still dark pool.
I could not say what made me pause
that day of days – the day of leaving,
a moment snatched no more remarkable
than one brief heartbeat from the next,
but on that July day I understood
and listened to the one heart,
to the trusted trees,
the blaze of green far greener than before,
with the scent of lavender
reminding me of all the lavender I'd ever smelled,
and of all the summers.
BEAUTY GROWS
Beauty awakens beauty.
It begets itself as a living thing,
opens up its own eyes,
makes its own ears a receptacle
for remote oceans, for star sounds,
for places that were once black
but will never be so again.
Like an incoming tide beauty invades us.
It washes into our thirsty lives and never leaves.
The odour of pines can never be forgotten,
but will heap upon itself the wind,
loneliness, memories of silent faces,
many beginnings and ends,
even those commonplace words once overheard.
Through every aspect beauty speaks.
It comes to us in silent fields
and crowded halls,
and every time its language grows,
word upon word, image upon image,
building spires in derelict lands,
watering with song the stony unawoken air.
Beauty is a lantern in a dark domain
whose gleam illuminates far more
than its own light; it grows,
and bit by bit makes visible
an unseen world:
that part of life that we can touch
and feel no pain.
PERFECT WORLD
A rose could not grow in a perfect world;
bees would not visit it, and the shock of its perfume
would be as music
never played.
There can be no manifestation of light
where only light falls, for the shapes of all things
are revealed
in shadows.
The warmth of the summer sleeps in the snows,
just as reasons for joy are made plain in our sorrows.
Our needs make us
whole.
The roots of a tree are bound in darkness.
Death shows us life. Let the moon have its day,
and the rose have
the night.
MATTER OF THE HEART
What strange gift is this
that lets me see beyond the curtain
stained by light and dark?
Soft moving in the night
the hum of air,
and voices breathing in and out;
the constant bleat of monitors
mark out the steady pace
of heartbeat after heartbeat
on and on -
a sequence once deemed infinite,
a line extending outward
to tomorrows lost in haze.
I had not planned this -
to lie like this, awake,
and hear the dramas of those others
who, like me, have wandered near the edge.
We are as vulnerable as liquid
carried in an open cup,
frail lights which one sigh can extinguish
whilst the world moves on.
How easily the summers pass
whilst in our chests
the mechanisms thump and pound.
Now, in the quiet, the faces come,
and memories of words that make a life,
and smiles as warm as open hands
on night-chilled flesh.
Oh happy man
who in the stillness and the dark
finds all the fortune he has earned
like soft rain falling;
it's what remains when all else
has been stripped away:
the image we have built in others' hearts
is who we are and what we've made.
PASSING THROUGH
Our story begins with a single sigh,
an eddy of dust, a tremor on water.
But it breaks the apple from its moorings,
sets free the pollen, and embarks
on a journey of no return.
And bit by bit our sigh becomes thunder.
How it unrolls in tumultuous seas!
We are the waves that surge through creation,
bobbing the flotsam of bells and laughter,
the butter of flesh, the swarm of words.
Nothing can stop us, however we alter.
We are waves passing through the miraculous atoms;
and the world heals behind us.
Onward and onward and onward we move,
shifting the silent mass of the universe.
TODAY
Nobody will ever know the name of this day
in spring;
it is just one more day,
except that in this life of mine,
now, as I live it,
it is the whole of creation
refined into this single point.
Sounds have been brought to me
from many sources.
The essences of countless lives
have worked their way
like music in and out of mine.
Without any warning today has emerged
as a blue bowl bright with the din
of insect wings.
It is a tapestry whose threads
are the many songs of birds.
And all this revealed
in the emerald breath of awakened leaves.
Today is the culmination
of everything that ever was.
It is a miracle which trundles on
through dusty hours,
a road down which
no man shall ever pass again.
Even now, as pigeons call
from lofty trees,
the warmth evaporates
from quiet stones,
and shutters close
to mark the end of one more day.
The living edge moves on.
Another day will come, and this one,
this day in which all things
were felt and done
will fade away,
a day in spring which has no name,
no way to fasten it inside the heart,
except through these few lines.
SADNESS
Sadness, I need you to go on calling to me
from those far off places.
It is not that I wish to be downcast,
but that a man sometimes needs to measure his own life.
I do not say that the past should haunt us,
rather that the path we have trodden has some importance.
To cast my eyes backwards and to see you, sadness,
like the hulks of dead ships sunk in dark waters,
is to know you have failed.
You are wreckage, detritus I have decided to abandon,
yet I do not wish to forget you existed.
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(Pages 1-74 show above.)