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,
survi
ved 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,
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