Author’s Ideas Blog

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The Track

Go, turn behind the willows leaning down

And cross a broad, unmetalled, concrete bridge

Beside the throbbing relay station’s fence,

Behind the bold-brick houses, built, set, square

Upon the fertile valley’s bottom, where

A tiny talking brook provides the sea

For toddlers’ first wellie-splashes, and then

For boys from school to fall into and soak

And come home scolded, seek again to sneak

To tiny kingdoms of hedgeholes and mud,

And live in, in their dreaming, sleeping minds.

And if you find that stream, that bridge, those trees,

Begin to walk the track and to explore

A microcosm of all England’s lands

Expressed in half a mile, so few acres,

As shells express the whorl of hurricanes

Invisible in shape until an eye

Above the world can picture them all whole,

As rockpools mirror all the ocean’s depth

And as a garden mocks, with love, the wild

And wildernesses live behind a shed,

So know that this small span of well-loved land

Can teach entire the lessons of landscape –

Entire, at least, the principles on which

Every other sight, whether moor or mount

Or shore or fen or cliff or field or wood

Or lawn or park or scrub or shingle down

Or chalk-hill flank or tide-bared mud or sea –

The principles on which these worlds are seen

And loved, and held in balanced wonderment

With awe and joy each sharing parts of thought

That flicker from the buds of hawthorn hedge

To wave-tops, turning, crisping white, a-rush

To burst upon the land with such desire,

Enthusiasm to enact and give

And interact and change and be part of

The world that springs from those first wanderings, young

As a boy might be, so was I right there,

Turned from the street onto the brick-dust track,

The over-written history of space

And growing things that taught me how to grow –

Ah, go down beside the willows, then take

The slowly steeping walk up that hill,

Turn about, look around, see the world

That we have, this gift of childish heaven

That in it holds appreciation of

The living, growing land beyond the sky.

Wordsworth never finished the poem we call ‘The Prelude’, but it was meant to be his autobiography in verse, or, as he put it grandly, the story of the ‘creation of a poetic mind’.  I actually think this is a fairly good subject for poetry – if only of interest to other poets – but possibly self-indulgent!  Nonetheless, even without Wordsworth’s age or position, I found it really pleasurable to revisit my childhood places in verse like this.  Does this mean I’ll expand it?  

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Seeking Beauty

I used to think you had to understand,

To know your place in history’s line,

Your form, your pace, your isocline,

And hold your past and future in one hand,

 

The hand that holds the pen.  No more.

The pattern of art’s providence

Is far more complex, fractal, tense,

Than any art can frame or store,

 

And when I’ve walked through quiet pines

I’ve heard the boughs that yawned and swayed

That beauty isn’t something made

But something found between straight lines.

 

Hear Mozart tumble with his tune –

He knows how long to tease and tweak,

But try and numerate that feat –

Retire, and learn to play bassoon.

 

I wrote three thousand words today

In just two hours, to do what’s due,

Delineate some skill’s debut

And teach a child to make work play.

 

But that was not enough, I missed

The target I had had me aim

And have drawn out this writing game

To be the whole week’s stretching list.

 

What better?  Suffer?  Write and sob

Or inject laughter, distract noise

Forget my children, leave the boys

The girls, the classroom, drop the job?

 

I am one man – I have one heart –

And when I test it, stretch it out,

The pain is like a desert’s drought,

The muscle rested pulls apart.

 

Then only through life’s constant work

Can I find rest from doubt or debt.

There’s no relaxing here, not yet,

So I’ll pick up the pen I shirk.

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In Memoriam CRNM

I went alone by old canals

And saw the gardens grown from waste

Coal-heap compost, newspaper paste

And smelt the raindrops’ funerals.

 

Around a reedy, autumn pond

A wary grasp of sycamores

And mortal ash trees marked with flaws

Where wire fences scarred their bond.

 

Upon the puddles ripples ring;

The sky begins to decorate

The garden with a water-weight

And smack the mud, and patterns bring.

 

It is a partial sanctuary;

Aided and abetted, rich,

Leafmould rotting in a ditch,

A very sullen place to be.

 

The lonely walk I’ve taken here

Has led past corners where we laughed

And where we drank a loving draught

And where we shared a pint of beer.

 

How could it not, when every street

Has been a place we’ve known and shared?

When every roadsign once declared

The city was our place to meet?

 

I cannot walk past cranes or trees,

Follow paths or railway lines

Without seeing speaking signs

Of what you sometime meant to me.

 

I had to go to somewhere new –

A place I never shared, and still

As up the tower I found my thrill

I wanted so to be with you.

 

The train fled through a concrete scar

Half across the garden fields,

Through the chalk your bone-land yields

Not long away – and yet too far.

 

I felt my trespass in a place

Reserved for our shared wanderings.

I cried to think of happy things –

Cold on the downs, your true embrace.

 

The beach is shingle and I read

That half the land is shingle too,

Five centuries worth of land born new

Where once the sea lay in its bed.

 

Each stone a flint plucked from the chalk

And rounded by the waves’ rough play

Until it found a place to stay

Where rustles are the stonefalls’ talk.

 

There is a castle on the marsh

Built by a famous, frantic King,

Now a ruin, crumbling

And eaten – rotten – broken – harsh.

 

Built there to stand upon the shore

But stranded by the passing tides

Each bringing stones, and wrack besides.

The sea is not there anymore.

 

Two miles inland – what a plain sign

For all those things we deem most firm.

The world will change, so ends the term

Of all possession – but chiefly mine.

 

I loved you till it creased my soul;

I changed my mind to want your shape

And feel the lack when you’d escape:

You did.  I let the pebbles roll.

 

So starts an avalanche again –

The smallest stones move rocks.

The freest hearts are bound with locks

That rust like links in anchor-chain.

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In the British Museum II

On the third wide floor of the museum

You can travel between treasures gathered

In centuries’ collection of the past –

A past of narrow stories intertwined –

That’s what the glass says, and the little signs

Ruled on white Perspex, all best guesses,

Estimations – archaeological –

Risky historical reputations.

But looking in the glass I can still see

Fingerprints in a stoneware pot, once hid,

Then found, no framed and famous, full of wealth.

The massed carnelian lozenges with birds

And simple beaten snake-head bracelets, rings,

The taciturn quartz, hard and sworn silent,

Collected silver profiles destined soon

To soften, stick, unpiece and glue, adhere,

The swallow in themselves the featured fair,

Becoming blank, upon which expression

Can be new-shaped a decorated face.

All interrupted by a sudden threat

That prompted careful choosing of this vase

And surely careful memory’s searchings

For a place in the crook of an ash tree

By a bed in a brook by the long field

Where a treasure can lie in secrecy.

To try to put a glass between ourselves –

Me and this distant woman or man –

Is no more possible than to part

Two melted coins, two rust-fused swords or rings,

And all the people making all these toys

Are like the massy links in one colossal

Tunic of chainmail, which the earth unites

By giving up its moisture, making rust

That freezes pliable metal and dust.

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Now Send Flesh

That coat of gentle, ginger suede,

Real warm, perhaps the sleeves too long,

No inside pockets, can’t belong

To this me, since such fabric’s frayed.

 

The leather’s bright as bought, except

A collar-line; the buttons tied,

All rethreaded, worn with pride;

I’ve thrown out others – this I’ve kept.

 

For weeks I’ve followed round my ghost

Counting when I wore that first,

When she gave that, bit lip, cursed,

To find her hand was still on most.

 

But this I purchased long ago

When I was first at leisure, rich,

And chose to rise to pleasure’s pitch

And wear the mirror’s happy glow.

 

I bought it yet before I knew

The name that now distends my fears.

I’m tied to something through the years

That has no will to say or do

 

Yet speaks, forgiving, soft and smooth,

The skin like skin I miss to touch.

Ask, ‘Do I miss her?’ ‘No, not much,

Except when breath my lungs would soothe.’

 

On every surface, every door,

Fingerprints and darkling hairs.

I find her when I walk upstairs,

She rests in blankets even more.

 

The pencil pot, the chopping board,

The tent, the grout for fixing tiles,

The dreams of treading sunny aisles,

And every single guitar chord.

 

I haven’t yet resolved this rage –

Am I to amputate my past

And lose the years I clung to, fast,

And blanken all my diary’s page?

 

Don’t give advice – don’t share your grief –

I know already that time heals,

That when a nerve is cut it feels

But later leaves its torture brief.

 

Can you imagine I want that?

A heart which soon will cease to care?

A place to hide?  Oh, how unfair

To know distraction or combat.

 

So either suffer every jab

And let no-body lift a share

Or betray, regret, then forswear

The once-bright future, paint it drab.

 

That jacket though is still as fresh,

And I still like it as I did,

And while I hated, cried and hid,

I petrified.  But now send flesh.

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Snow Convicts Me of Selfishness

The air plays fair with floating flakes

Today, not landing, touching, cold

And sure to make all memories old

As they’re immediate, as now wakes.

 

The moment of our living life

Which we have called the present, well,

Impermanent as snow that fell,

As dreams of future home or wife.

 

To touch is just to melt, to slip

Into the water of my tears

And reaching back through eight long years

I catch a stalagmatic drip.

 

Each thought or act, designed to build

A structure, gently, life’s smooth plan,

Is now dissolved.  What I began

The changing of the air has killed,

 

Wind from across the sea or land

From far-off cities, far-off fields

Each birthing wind, which in turn yields

The emptiness of empty hands.

 

But all of this is out of place –

To let the snow be first a sore

Is to ignore the beauty – more –

To see the mirror but ignore your face.

 

My hurt is not the only one,

I am no axis for the world.

Forget the anger that you hurled

And let the tears drip, then be gone.

 

Unsettled snow and bitter wind –

The metaphors of my unease.

The weathers, like the seasons, tease

And when I pitied me I sinned.

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Ash Wednesday

The ash still marks my forehead like a bruise,

So rare, this imposition of a state

Quite unlike everyday, preoccupied

By plans and hurried patchings of short time.

A foretaste of a heavenly banquet’s mine –

Indeed, for as I chewed the bread, sipped wine,

I had no other thoughts at all, just hope,

Pure gratitude and joy, joy still and cold

Like shining crystal in a dirty rock.

That is the flavour of the awaited feast –

The freedom from the guilt and daily fear

Of failing tomorrow’s contracted tasks,

Of wasting the chances to write and to keep…

I have no fear of death, he said, but, ah,

To fail!  A thing I have not known, and fear.

I’ve loved to hear Charles Gordon saying that

For all so many years, since still a boy

I saw that desert city burnt, attacked,

Feluccas swarm across the Nile, close-packed

With jibbah-clad jihadists, Gordon stand

Calm and clear of conscience, ready to die

To prove his point.  How dangerous a film!

But I cannot deny it feeds my heart

And so proves that ideas, when acted well,

And scored with mystic themes, pearl-satin skies,

The bittersweet melodies of wanting,

Yes, ideas can outlast the very stars,

For supernovas have exploded since

The pyramids, the Hadrian wall, some books,

Some towns, some very buildings, all of that!

And deserts have advanced across the plains

Since ancients wrote down recipes for thrush

In honey, piglet cooked in brine with herbs.

Much longer then will last self-sacrifice

When isolated in a parched, dry town.

The dust of all the desert, dust of sin,

Can’t choke the throat the spirit wants to loose

And when I sang in worship, welcoming

The news of Easter, still a long walk hence,

I sang despite the dust surrounding me.

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Valentine

The first of many days of Lent,

A walk of indecisive hopes

That fall and flutter, telescopes

Can pick out figures where time went.

 

One moment I have heart to dream,

Then crush it, sentencing my step

To be man’s mark on barren steppe,

And lose my sight of what I seem.

 

The promise of another task,

The light of distant island shore,

A flock of child-like bird adore

And ask the questions children ask;

 

Why does the sea lap up the rock?

The shapes the cliffs make, do they change?

If I walk west, where will I range,

And when return?  Who times the clock?

 

The desperate, half-mocked chance to care –

I didn’t really let the card

Imprinted with a kiss regard

My face’s puzzlement – just there –

 

I stood it on a shelf as if

I understood its sending, sent,

I understood all that she meant

Because I’ve fathomed motive’s glyph.

 

All characters are now to me

Like people populaced in books,

Their eyes give wary or vacant looks,

They seek to conquer, or to be free.

 

Reducing all my colleagues, friends,

And new acquaintances to parts

I vastly undervalue hearts

And so my hope in people ends.

 

Up jumps a hope, and then it drops,

And day by day or eve by eve

I wipe my tears on my sleeve

And harvest sadness with these crops.

 

I know too much, yes that I know

And would be glad, surrendering

The rush of teaching’s rendering

Of people, for the chance to go

 

And live for nothing else but this,

Grass and sand and seagulls’ cries,

Peatsmoke stinging bleary eyes,

Words that heal with their kiss.

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A View of Trees

The curtains and the curtain poles are down,

The grips that held them plaster over, pale

But just discernible.  Another leave

Now taken from a room and sight I need –

The branches, budding, of the roadside trees.

I’m realising this is my default –

To choose a room, then place the bed to look

Direct into the branches of a tree.

First ash, in my childhood home, then holly

In an arch, then sycamore, now common lime

And weeping horse-chestnut, struggling to leaf.

And it is not coincidence – my taste?

That next I’ve found a place that looks onto

A stately park with planes that wobble up,

Those hesitant trees that ponder problems

Then peer down to find they’ve out-grown their place!

So tall – they can’t be native!  Oddly-hued

By a passing decorator using up

His tins of remaindered household colours.

From Spain, half-bred Greek and American,

His disparate parents lend him several strengths,

But he hasn’t yet won my heart.  Ah, let

The morning tell him to me as I rise

And every day see buds a-breaking out,

Little moleskin fruits achieve their sphere.

Still remain a novelty – I know you’ll

Begin where someone sets you, wary tree,

Too quickly noticed growing in a waste

All spindly-shooting with those palmy spreads.

I’m growing generous in spending love

Now all my natural children are bound close

And coppiced into useful poles, ideas

And metaphors that show me how we are,

So now come time to welcome even planes –

A tree I had no feelings for before.

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Lines on Highbury Field

The pace of circling runners has now stopped,

Their anticlockwise ringing of the hill

Completed for another Saturday.

Instead the calls of coaches to their boys,

By name, by numbers printed bright

On neon jackets, home strips, away strips

And the thud of leather on leather, the thud

Of childish pleasure in the swinging foot,

The leaping leg, the spring, the catch, the cry,

And sliding tackles scuff the turf with scars,

The boyish shallow trenches of the wars

They live to fight.  For disappointment lasts

But fragments of a minute, not so long

To sour a day as it can do for men.

Instead, with every burst of rivalry,

Each charge up the touchline, each desperate chance,

The game stays living, changing, bright and sweet

Like May sun out from cloud and in again.

‘Come in now, please,’ he calls, the giant there,

A man and half a man to eight-year-olds,

The beauty of his giving as they shoot,

He crouches in the belly of the goal,

The little, four-foot goal, and bids them try

To pass him, knock it in the net and score,

And they begin to learn themselves and find

The pleasure of that leather-smacking thud,

The swinging foot, the leaping leg, the spring,

His catch and cry the affirmation of

Each boy’s good value, his name, his number.

Sometimes spoken – ‘Diego!’  Ringing out loud,

The passers-by and balconeers all share

The pleasure of a boy’s attempt on goal.

Sometimes unspoken – just that look or pat

As Mitchell sidesteps, taps it in the net,

Arry nutmegs coach and all the eight-year-olds

Cheer both.  The older group have finished now

And moved to dribbling, easing bright blue globes

Against the gentle slope of the park’s lie

Upon the hill, up to the cones, then down,

Stretching slightly to keep up with them.

Beyond, a trainer spars and kickboxes

With today’s customer, who wants to learn

For stage, or screen, or just simple fun

Of throwing punches in the morning air.

This richness, more than leisure, more than just

An occupation for the weekend hours,

How we enjoy it, but to tell the truth

It’s undervalued.  God gives peace to men

And all these boys not marching, trained to die,

Assume this is normality.  Not so,

In history, how rare this chance to play.

And I can see it as a prophecy

Of dwelling in the Kingdom without end.