New and Selected Poems (19 page)

XII

 

Like a convalescent, I took the hand

stretched down from the jetty, sensed again

an alien comfort as I stepped on ground

   

 

to find the helping hand still gripping mine,

fish-cold and bony, but whether to guide

or to be guided I could not be certain

   

 

for the tall man in step at my side

seemed blind, though he walked straight as a rush

upon his ash plant, his eyes fixed straight ahead.

   

 

Then I knew him in the flesh

out there on the tarmac among the cars,

wintered hard and sharp as a blackthorn bush.

   

 

His voice eddying with the vowels of all rivers

came back to me, though he did not speak yet,

a voice like a prosecutor’s or a singer’s,

   

 

cunning, narcotic, mimic, definite

as a steel nib’s downstroke, quick and clean,

and suddenly he hit a litter basket

   

 

with his stick, saying, ‘Your obligation

is not discharged by any common rite.

What you do you must do on your own.

   

 

The main thing is to write

for the joy of it. Cultivate a work-lust

that imagines its haven like your hands at night

   

 

dreaming the sun in the sunspot of a breast.

You are fasted now, light-headed, dangerous.

Take off from here. And don’t be so earnest,

   

 

so ready for the sackcloth and the ashes.

Let go, let fly, forget.

You’ve listened long enough. Now strike your note.’

   

 

It was as if I had stepped free into space

alone with nothing that I had not known

already. Raindrops blew in my face

   

 

as I came to and heard the harangue and jeers

going on and on. ‘The English language

belongs to us. You are raking at dead fires,

   

 

rehearsing the old whinges at your age.

That subject people stuff is a cod’s game,

infantile, like this peasant pilgrimage.

   

 

You lose more of yourself than you redeem

doing the decent thing. Keep at a tangent.

When they make the circle wide, it’s time to swim

   

 

out on your own and fill the element

with signatures on your own frequency,

echo soundings, searches, probes, allurements,

   

 

elver-gleams in the dark of the whole sea.’

The shower broke in a cloudburst, the tarmac

fumed and sizzled. As he moved off quickly

   

 

the downpour loosed its screens round his straight walk.

In the Beech

 

I was a lookout posted and forgotten.

   

 

On one side under me, the concrete road.

On the other, the bullocks’ covert,

the breath and plaster of a drinking place

where the school-leaver discovered peace

to touch himself in the reek of churned-up mud.

   

 

And the tree itself a strangeness and a comfort,

as much a column as a bole. The very ivy

puzzled its milk-tooth frills and tapers

over the grain: was it bark or masonry?

   

 

I watched the red-brick chimney rear

its stamen course by course,

and the steeplejacks up there at their antics

like flies against the mountain.

   

 

I felt the tanks’ advance beginning

at the cynosure of the growth rings,

then winced at their imperium refreshed

in each powdered bolt-mark on the concrete.

And the pilot with his goggles back came in

so low I could see the cockpit rivets.

   

 

My hidebound boundary tree. My tree of knowledge.

My thick-tapped, soft-fledged, airy listening post.

The royal roads were cow paths.

The queen mother hunkered on a stool

and played the harpstrings of milk

into a wooden pail.

With seasoned sticks the nobles

lorded it over the hindquarters of cattle.

   

 

Units of measurement were pondered

by the cartful, barrowful and bucketful.

Time was a backward rote of names and mishaps,

bad harvests, fires, unfair settlements,

deaths in floods, murders and miscarriages.

   

 

And if my rights to it all came only

by their acclamation, what was it worth?

I blew hot and blew cold.

They were two-faced and accommodating.

And seed, breed and generation still

they are holding on, every bit

as pious and exacting and demeaned.

It was more sleepwalk than spasm

yet that was a time when the times

were also in spasm –

   

 

the ties and the knots running through us

split open

down the lines of the grain.

   

 

As I drew close to pebbles and berries,

the smell of wild garlic, relearning

the acoustic of frost

   

 

and the meaning of woodnote,

my shadow over the field

was only a spin-off,

   

 

my empty place an excuse

for shifts in the camp, old rehearsals

of debts and betrayal.

   

 

Singly they came to the tree

with a stone in each pocket

to whistle and bill me back in

   

 

and I would collide and cascade

through leaves when they left,

my point of repose knocked askew.

   

 

I was mired in attachment

until they began to pronounce me

a feeder off battlefields

   

 

so I mastered new rungs of the air

to survey out of reach

their bonfires on hills, their hosting

   

 

and fasting, the levies from Scotland

as always, and the people of art

diverting their rhythmical chants

   

 

to fend off the onslaught of winds

I would welcome and climb

at the top of my bent.

The guttersnipe and the albatross

gliding for days without a single wingbeat

were equally beyond me.

   

 

I yearned for the gannet’s strike,

the unbegrudging concentration

of the heron.

   

 

In the camaraderie of rookeries,

in the spiteful vigilance of colonies

I was at home.

   

 

I learned to distrust

the allure of the cuckoo

and the gossip of starlings,

   

 

kept faith with doughty bullfinches,

levelled my wit too often

to the small-minded wren

   

 

and too often caved in

to the pathos of waterhens

and panicky corncrakes.

   

 

I gave much credence to stragglers,

overrated the composure of blackbirds

and the folklore of magpies.

   

 

But when goldfinch or kingfisher rent

the veil of the usual,

pinions whispered and braced

   

 

as I stooped, unwieldy

and brimming,

my spurs at the ready.

I heard new words prayed at cows

in the byre, found his sign

on the crock and the hidden still,

   

 

smelled fumes from his censer

in the first smokes of morning.

Next thing he was making a progress

   

 

through gaps, stepping out sites,

sinking his crozier deep

in the fort-hearth.

   

 

If he had stuck to his own

cramp-jawed abbesses and intoners

dibbling round the enclosure,

   

 

his Latin and blather of love,

his parchments and scheming

in letters shipped over water –

   

 

but no, he overbore

with his unctions and orders,

he had to get in on the ground.

   

 

History that planted its standards

on his gables and spires

ousted me to the marches

   

 

of skulking and whingeing.

Or did I desert?

Give him his due, in the end

   

 

he opened my path to a kingdom

of such scope and neuter allegiance

my emptiness reigns at its whim.

He dwelt in himself

like a rook in an unroofed tower.

   

 

To get close I had to climb long

and hard up deserted ramparts

and not flinch, not raise an eye

to search for an eye on the watch

from his coign of seclusion.

   

 

Deliberately he would unclasp

his book of withholding

a page at a time and it was nothing

arcane, just the old rules

we all had inscribed on our slates.

Each character blocked on the parchment secure

in its volume and measure.

Each maxim given its space.

   

 

Tell the truth. Do not be afraid
.

Durable, obstinate notions,

like quarrymen’s hammers and wedges proofed

by intransigent service.

Like coping stones where you rest

in the balm of the wellspring.

   

 

How flimsy I felt climbing down

the unrailed stairs on the wall,

hearing the purpose and venture

in a wingflap above me.