POEMS

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PUSHING ON THE STEEP BITS

All poems © John Gilham 2002

Arrow and Hour-Glass

summer was a long kiss

on a burning beach

autumn was waste paper

a gaffer with a sharp stick

Holiday without you

each day, an old man

lobs pebbles at the sea.

I watch him, and he me.

Treachery

along the ridge, bluebells

starred with stitchwort,

stabbed with campion,

so sharp

that I forgot you for their beauty,

cursed my treachery,

wonder about love

On the Moors

Slowly, pedalling mostly, but pushing

on the steep bits, I climb onto the moor.

Sentinels, rooks stand by their nests

shiny in bare watchtowers; a hare

sits in a field, and higher, larks rise

from the heather and tufted grass,

choralling madly in the eye of the sun.

Along the ridge, wind ruffles tormentil

and marked stones and unmarked tumuli

stud the moor with lost importance. Below, farms,

knots at the junctions of hedge and wall

stitch the fields together, and the crazy clack

of tractors warps and woofs the land.

This is not Paradise – a barn sags ruined;

a kestrel darts low, and fatal; the windows

of village shop, school and pub are blind;

a crow picks eyes from a dying rabbit.

This is the country. How it became so

is a story we could discover – glaciers and wind and water,

man’s digging and chopping, ploughing and shaping,

his need for constant movement, need for shelter, food,

and quietly, unbeknown to the makers, to manufacture beauty.

This is the practice we follow, the promise to keep.

The Cull

Your father used to say good morning

to the animals first, remember.

The cats stretching as he passed through

the kitchen, then, outside,

the dogs, the pig, and individually,

to each cow as he drove them in

and penned them.

That was before he said a word

to anyone,

before the sun, often,

- his own world.

Now he gets up, dresses quietly

as he always did,

and settles his cap against the dark.

Turning from the door, he takes to his chair

and kneads and strokes a cat

through the dawn hours

like an udder,

naming their names.

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The Predictability of Delight

A man, a boy, a dog.

From the suburban gate the choices multiply,

Left, right, the Dirty Patch, the park,

the path by the railway.

Indifferent, the old dog plods.

No way holds rabbits, the best

That can be hoped for a cat

Or some old enemy.

Not so the boy. He

Is learning his world, what connects

With what, how, by walking these roads

And alleys we come home again.

He learns the Dirty Patch and its abandonedness,

The swings in the park,

And best of all, the trains, constant,

Their predictability of delight.

This was my world, for a year or two.

My every morning treat to be out

With my grandfather, who had no aim for that moment

But to be with me, and walk the dog.

And I was too young to know

That this was anything but permanent,

That the man, the boy, would not always watch

The steam trains pass, the old dog follow after.

Shunting

from the footbridge I watched the pick-up goods

dotting the wagons in the yard - domestic delivery -

a constant flow of the stuff of industry, the stuff of shopping,

arranged twice a day by steam engines, shunting,

the shuffling of trucks that men did,

creating order in that post-war, pre-wars world

while at home, my parents talked of Suez

and then, in '68, I stood in a field and watched

the last railtours of the last weekend of steam

thunder over the viaduct, sigh into the tunnel

while at home, on TV, the naked girl

in flames ran from the village -

another empire dropped its fire

we have moved on: horses, carts, steam engines

rest in museums, move us no more;

we can kill millions, ourselves, the world:

it’s a better world, it’s a better war.

Skimming

The best, I always say, are grey slates

and remember a morning spent, as a child

on a Welsh beach, perfecting my skills,

each slim stone leaping from kiss to kiss on the waves

eight, nine, ten or more times, closer and closer kisses,

smaller and smaller leaps, until they sank, triumphant.

Grown up, I want to teach my children -

how to choose a stone, to impart a spin,

how to throw fast and sideways,

to acquire a skill.

Life skills it isn't; marketable it's not

but the happy use of sea and stone and strength,

here on this western beach, at sunset,

shared with my daughter,

seems, for now, all I could ever want on Earth,

or need to take to remember it by.

Somewhere in Central Europe

Somewhere in Central Europe

a fisherman sits by a river

as he did with his father.

He watches the float bob

and the tugs push upstream

with their slab of roped barges.

Familiar it is, yet the romance

of sitting by a highway

whose roots and byways

spread to cover half a continent

still moves him.

How many men,

how many girls, how many lovers

have gazed upon these waters ?

How much moonlight have they reflected

into the dreams of kings?

Today, he does not need his hook:

fish float in the shallows

gasping to escape their burning gills;

his net could catch them;

yet he looks awhile, then heads home

to hear the news of how

from a thousand miles and near a week away

carelessness and greed have reached out

to offer him a poisoned inheritance.

Sometimes a word

or something hidden long ago

stays in the soil,

contaminates what we do

leaches into our lives,

and we are swept away

from what we love, by a force

unarguable, whose tide does not return.

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Whys Move

Why do I need so small a van to take what's mine?

Why go? Because I can. And there's a fine

line between the reasons

why you keep the junk of all our seasons

in what now is your home alone, and

why I no longer want to own

a life I was fond of, once

Why does this journey, though so short

ignite familiar streets like purgatory?

Why familiar faces that I ought

to greet, do I pretend I cannot see?

Why do you watch me with so wry a smile as I unpack?

Why does so small a pile of tack, of wreckage,

salvage, ebb with me like drifting wood?

Why do I feel unsure as though I could

become invisible here too? Though

why and how, when what you do

is close the door and lead us to our bed,

why, Love, I cannot yet foresee.

Sightseeing

sitting at the window

with coffee, postcards, guide books

he glances up then, light as memory

his fingers touch hers, his head inclines

to where, outside, the sun slants down

on trees picked out from the mist,

a swirl of leaves on the canal

and how the light glows and passes on

their eyes meet, their hands clasp, they smile“ -’

it is why they have come

The Winter Lovers

it's late now, for lovers

usually, once the leaves no longer gild the canals

and the skies have opened to winter

the lovers do not come again

until they can sit over coffee

even briefly, on some terrace

and concentrate on warmth

and sunlight in each other's hair

only, these two - talking, smiling, not touching

beautiful as only those no longer young can be

lost in discovery of architecture, history, themselves;

in rediscovery of their capacity for love

alive both to our narrow streets and wide horizons

to our past and their future

what radiance they inhabit

look how their eyes light

with undeclared, yet understood desire

and how, walking and sightseeing done

the evening is another voyage

probing gently into each other's dreams

to come at last into each other's arms.

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Not a Worm Moves

on his allotment not a worm moves without permission

each lettuce keeps nine inches from its neighbour

no more, no less

and an onion, failing to grow orthodox, symmetrical

is humiliated, and dies

at home, he is careful to put his boots where allocated

to fold the toilet paper just so, before use

(although she cannot see this)

and to sit only on the designated chair, holding the newspaper

at the right angle, thinking the right thoughts

she, while looking for some misdemeanour to be mentioned

conscious that the rot spreads quickly if not nipped in the bud

yet wonders how this worm became his slave, and then his master

and contemplates the key or apple that could take them

from prison into Paradise

Flood.

All I could do was move my furniture upstairs, and wait.

One has to be prepared, one has to mitigate the loss,

to imagine what destruction there might be,

and take precautions.

Defences overtopped, I'd be in deep, I knew.

Sandbags would not stop it once the careful, pre-planned,

once in a hundred years protective wall was down.

Overwhelmed, overcome.

I was warned it would be awful. They said

I could not live, inundated, drowned;

that normal life would cease. They offered

buses to sanctuary.

But I already knew that, overtaken by a force I could not stem,

I would accept my fate, accept the damage, uninsured,

rejoicing; engulfed in rising waters

of fulfilled, if feared, desire.

Walking Upstream

This is a river we have skirmished over:

moving steadily upstream from our first

wide encounter, seeing more closely,

understanding better as the distance narrows,

misunderstanding less signals;

we learn to listen above the rush of waters,

we learn to talk about what divides us;

building bridges but not crossing them,

tying our hearts with arrows across the flood,

seeing in each other’s eyes what our hearts desire,

hands reaching, bodies yearning, until at last,

in the deep valley of our dreams, our fingers touch,

and here in the mountain pool we find that spring,

that Eden, which has been calling us.

The Asymptotic Lover

smiles and eyes and warm

words approach the curve, but what

makes the two collide?

as she turns away

he kisses air, a gesture

asymptotical

V & A

last night I undressed you

(and you me)

this morning, I slipped your sock

over your warm foot

letting my fingers linger

and I learnt that Albert

put on Victoria's stockings for her

after their wedding night

her diary says so

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1989

I had begun to think anything could happen:

tyrants tumbling, the dead awakening,

freedom in the air!

Walls were coming down.

But not between us.

All across Europe street-names are changing

while we still cling

to the set forms of a defunct relationship.

Still brandishing our stock in trade

we seek the small profits to be made

from barbs and spikes, small sharpnesses,

our arsenals not reduced one ounce of grapeshot,

retaliation still cruising the cold deep,

and not one handful of kindness to put in the balance.

Oh my love, while old opposites

crumble about us

pray for some leap in your heart, or mine:

let us join humanity.

Annus mirabilis, the walls are down!

My Millennium.

Here, at the end of this dark stone breakwater,

about as far as I can get from parties, and people,

I relish a quiet, cold, turning of the year;

just me and the universe marking the moment

when one small planet's personal journey

is deemed to start again.

Yet instantly, as my watch confirms

my connection back to the turning world,

from every village, sea port, house and farm

along these twenty miles of cliff-bound coast

burst showers of fire, like meteorites;

spontaneous, unmunicipal, launched out of joy,

this countryside celebrates the celestial mystery, here and now,

as the oblivious Earth turns towards the morning.

And all at sea the tears and spray run down

in a torment of loneliness, and love.

How to Let Go.

All the doorbells had names, except his.

He came on the intercom; it was him.

He said: "I don't want people to know who I am."

We went to his apartment, high, indifferent, detached.

He made us tea. We examined his things.

There wasn't much. This was a man, we felt, whose life

had been dismantled, for whom even we, friends,

were part of a building he'd lived in once,

waiting for the wrecker's ball.

We joked about the bareness of it all.

We called it "minimalist" and smiled. He served our drinks,

grave as someone who'd heard of laughter,

as something people did; not understood.

Here he lived, a Stylite,

above the smog, amongst the clouds,

and past him starlings swirled at dusk,

a nation with one purpose, touching wings.

We said goodbye. And saw, in the white and empty room

he'd put our coats, a mask,

blue and gold, on a white rug -

jewelled and feathered, eye-holes made

to draw the watchers in to this one clue,

and on the mouth, a Mona Lisa smile.

"That", he said, "is for the Carnival."

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Border Crossing.

Crossing a border used to be scary.

There were guards, with guns,

and hard-eyed men in peaked caps and high boots

who with the light behind them

would examine your passport, examine you,

and not smile.

Sometimes, too, there was a plain clothes man

in a v-neck pullover, grey jacket and tie

who would put out his hand for your papers

and consider them, suspiciously.

They never stopped me.

I was, after all, a kid at the time,

though Checkpoint Charlie was on the TV

with its crop of shootings

and men were bundled off my train once

and shoved into a shed at the frontier station.

Imagine my surprise, then, to find

on a back road, winding between farms,

a border post surrounded by apple blossom,

unmanned, and that I could cycle to and fro

between one country and the next

without a passport, or identity;

that no barbed wire edged the fields

and that nobody could tell.

The Return

he unlatches the gate

the path is dark

but there are lights in the house

he takes off his boots in the porch

and leaves his rucsac in the hall

she is there

after the surprise, the joy, the kiss

the cup of tea

the hasty meal

across the freshly lit fire

she asks the inevitable

did you find it?

knowing the answer

and that they will have to live with it

all their days

On the Rocks.

Our engagement was on the rocks.

Do you remember that bright morning?

How early we set off from Horton

taking the green, fresh lane

spotting Herb Bennet and little Herb Robert

and then, into the brilliance of that landscape,

the first of many days in what was always home

(though few since so hot remembered)

and never again that stony hillfort

in which we pledged, tired, burnt, triumphant,

marriage on the rocks.

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Packing Up

I rolled up the red carpet

Andy folded the napkins

and Joanne dismantled the cake

the d.j. repacked his van

and the kitchen put out the untouched food

for the homeless shelter - god, they can party tonight.

for nobody ever came. six of us

on duty, waiting to hold out trays of wine

and finger food, all afternoon

three courses for 60 and then cake,

champagne at the right time

and cigars when her father gave the nod

but nobody came. who cocked it?

who booked the wrong day?

and then the taxi came too, for the airport, and went away

a hoax? but they'd paid; so I suppose that me

keeping the tiny bride and groom from off the cake

is all the happy memories there'll ever be

and me, and Andy, and Joanne

and the vicar, and the choirboys and the organist

were unseen extras in some drama that we missed.

The House on the Moor, Destroyed by Fire

in a place remote, high, invisible

over the shoulder of two valleys

the crashed stone slates conceal

the true pathos of what was lost.

ghouls, we hope for some child's toy,

for a charred photograph, a twisted birdcage

but all we find is rusted, cold: a radiator, tools,

some dinner plates, a kitchen range

and remember when we last passed by, in springtime, Sunday,

when there were cars and guests, children in the garden

an expansive host on top of the world

and his women laughing, in designer jeans.

no doubt that in his oven the roast spat

and wine cooled in what was once a fridge;

that casual lust smouldered

beneath the charm and smiles

of people rich and car-endowed enough

to live miles from anywhere, or anyone,

to add oil and central heating

and burn one moment in the sun.

The Third Thing

we watched the thrush die. it took a minute or so

and what made it fly into our window

I don't know;

young, its plumage perfect, high on some

cocktail of insects and grubs,

flying too fast, late for a date

and dead.

we held its still warm body

reverently,

examining the detail of its beauty,

and then buried it.

earlier, I cut the head off a frog while gardening:

an inadvertent snap, deep in the undergrowth

with secateurs.

I cried out - no-one heard;

so I covered it with leaves, and hacked on;

two deaths in a day.

until, going to bed late, drunk myself,

I thought that sorrows come in threes

and feared for my son:

too many beers, no lights on his bike,

cycling too fast,

high on the cocktail of youth and stamina,

adolescent and dead.

and then what silent joy

to hear the key in the lock,

the bike brought in

and the uneven, carefree stumble up the stairs

so I could sleep.

III

and today, I remembered

crushing a snail on the patio, yesterday, by accident,

and that was the third thing

"John Gilham's The Third Thing describes a very human mixture of minor disasters and superstitions we can all relate to and recognise." Ron Woolard in New Hope International Review on Line.

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Barefoot in the Dark

coming downstairs, barefoot, in the dark

I head for the fridge, a yoghourt maybe,

and tread in something squelchy on the floor

cold, wet, and semi-solid.

lights!

cat vomit!

I add it to my list of

"Things The Cats Have Brought Us":

a slit frog, hundreds of feathers,

most with blood on them,

a whole wing, the body never found,

a dead vole tucked lovingly between the sheets

we discovered in the morning,

and several half dead birds it was the devil to catch

once they'd been pried from proud and puzzled jaws

and panicked round the room;

and fleas, and worms, and mice,

a rat behind the arras

and random, unidentified remains.

there are things you bargain for

and things you don't.

considered coldly, these cats

tread as we do, tiptoeing in the dark,

hiding a precarious balance

between nine lives and nine deaths,

the expected carpet and the unexpected slime.

Standing Further Back

a child's death cankers our dreams

imaging the shape of our fears

for we know, but cannot know,

how, sudden as an earthquake

we are thrown into the pit of loss

never to escape, never again to see light

but from a deep shadow

the world, but from another place

and yet, as she works the lock gates

and walks close to the seething edge,

what can I do but smile and watch -

she drowns imagination's hopes, with more imagining

prey to whatever preys on children

she sings and dances in the sun

her trust and beauty, that offend evil

subject to shadow

she will, I know, grow up, she will survive -

harder for me to put my fear aside

and stand further back from the edge than

I could reach in the time it takes to drown.

Travelling Light

A shed by the road, rest for the night,

then on in the bitter dust

towards a place unfurnished even by my dreams,

carrying only what I wear

and a razor, comb and toothbrush,

no other summary;

I could not choose between

the cards that said "I love you",

paintings, "for daddy, with love",

photographs of happiness, and a crucifix

a dying man gave my grandfather

on Hill 60, in '17.

I take only memories, each a particular

sharp ache of regret, each to be worn out

and shed by the road.

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The Vinyl 45

street lights on wet cobbles,

the smell of dirty sea-water

unmoved by tide or current,

seagulls, stale beer, and fish.

in the films, there's a light

reflected like grease across the water

and we pan in to a cheap bar as

a voice sings low onto the soundtrack

of loss, of love, and then louder,

rough as the audience we now see through the smoke,

who talk, ignore the emotion wrung from

a cheap microphone, from coarse speakers

on a beer-crate stage.

but we know this child, this waif, she

who will one day be Piaf, Bassey, or Marlene,

will take the hard dreams of this hard town's most secret dreamers

and live them, with every thrust of passion

a body can give away from its roots

so that what is remembered is not that hope and ambition

used to die here nightly, but that hope lives on.

here where it began, in the bar, hope lives, just;

among the tourists and the nostalgia slummers

hope adds its name to false gods and prophecies,

to alcohol, tobacco, to ecstacy, to crack, and love.

How I Learn Things.

Some, from kids, long ago -

from Tony not to rely on friendship;

from Bruce, how cruel I could be ;

from Kenny, how to run with the pack;

and from Linda, how to kiss gently, and mean it.

From Smith I learned that friendship overrides

the rules that other people give you;

from Jilly, what little girls look like;

and from Julia, humiliation.

I learnt a lot

from incidents and names and faces un-forgotten -

charity, pity, a little shame,

and the first stirrings of contempt.

From you, now, I learn restraint,

the art of understatement, iron control;

and how to love lightly

like the whisper of a disguised god.

Defying Frost

Next door, children rush shrieking to find the eggs

and in our tree squirrels chase and blue-tits perch

while sun and wind contend the season.

We lie entwined. We know what lies behind the sky

for, wrapped in a duvet, long before dawn

we watched the comet hang above the trees,

plummeting around the sun.

And then, aroused by mystery and chill

we made love, and slept, and now warm and waking

I kiss your forehead, and stroke your hair

while fate burns in your eyes.

Gravity, attraction, light, combine here.

Our search is done, our Spring unfurled,

defying frost.

Love Poem No. 3.

Like careless tourists on a summer road

we have come to the border unawares:

this point where friendship ends

and love is the other country;

we could turn back, it's dark in there,

we have no maps.

Thoughtless, our instincts rush on,

certain that it's paradise,

but cautious, our minds balk,

knowing that, through here, the travellers return

staring, wild and silent,

robbed of everything.

We would not believe them, if they spoke

nor act on their belief;

in love's country we walk alone.

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Red Alert.

some would call in the paramedics, helicopters,

and the full panoply of mountain rescue

landslides maybe, avalanches even

we could be talking of floods, earthquakes

forest fires, hercules transports, foreign aid

satellite photographs

and later, a whole issue of "National Geographic."

though I myself do not see it that way -

although you abandoned me during the firestorm,

everything crumbled, milestones obliterated

let the troops stay in their barracks

the lifeboat crews in their civilian lives

the past in its box

I have a toe-hold yet, a light glimmers round the edge

and I am not lost -

I just don't know where I am, or want to be

On Being Led Back to the Youth Hostel, Blindfold, from the Pub.

Warm evening air, the sound of occasional traffic, sheep,

and under my feet, grass, and stones, and mud,

grass again, marsh, until I wonder what route

I am taking, what precipice or soaking threatens

beyond my blindfold, and I grip my daughter's hand,

learning to let go.

She, leading her father back from the pub,

near helpless with laughter, yet solid as blood,

guides me steady through the twilight,

across streams, through bracken, avoiding roads,

walls, low branches,

arriving triumphant, untying the scarf

"daddy, we're here!".

Much trusted daughter, though you led me

through a marsh to tease me,

teetering from tussock to tussock

absurd, blind and fretful,

know it is an unfeigned expression of love

to trust unseeing, and to accept that trust.

Lindisfarne

We visit the post office,

check out the pub for dinner,

and stroll past the harbour.

By the ramparts we stop,

watch a boat putter in from crabbing,

gaze South to Bamburgh.

The castle delights us, a rich man’s fantasy

after the enmity of English and Scots –

we linger, imagining the past.

And then we take the grass track

to the North, birds and butterflies, rabbits

and wildflowers, the sound of the sea.

Our daughters, we hope, await us

there on the beach, fourteen and seven, trusted

in themselves and on this island.

Holy Island, protect our daughters

from our fear – let them live untroubled,

safe before the Vikings’ coming.

Childhood's End

Remember how the kitten kissed the frogs

and none of them turned into princes

or even handsome toms;

but still she'd bend to each one

all round the pond,

ever hopeful.

This is the cat we have just

laid beneath the apple tree,

largest in the little cemetery

of rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs and goldfish.

All unmarked, but all interred

with proper ceremony, and this the last.

Earth rattles on the shoebox -

the sound of childhood's end.

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11.09.2001

the blossom

orange, flecked with red,

tinged with black

the grey, grey, grey cloud

rolling outwards

the ferry boat turning

turning away

the impossibility...

London Eye

In the gold and grey to the West

planes sink into Heathrow; dark

defines the hills that outline this basin,

where, as the night draws closer

last light invests the city with grisaille magnificence.

Houses, offices, streets, switch on their lamps,

crammed trains snake, traffic boils

and tour boats turn on the high tide.

Temples of commerce glisten in the East,

(white stone, tungsten, halogen) and between,

stabbing above the business, here and there,

a church tower, plain, ornate, square, or spired,

soars floodlit.

While over all, massive, sharp, and brilliant,

outshining concrete, glass and steel,

in monochrome like photos of the blitz,

St. Paul's - holding London between Earth and Heaven.

Boxing Day

On this bleak hill, the sun focusing the cold,

out walking on Boxing Day, flakes of ice in the wind,

we sheltered in the ditch of an earthwork,

huge and ancient, silted beneath the drift of centuries.

I wondered what it was for;

not just to eat one's sandwiches in

but to contain things, or keep things out,

dreams and enemies, Picts and Danes.

The landscape moves on, cows graze and forests grow

the plough erodes, lives change

and under it all the curve of the earth

its surface a palimpsest, a maze.

Today there is the silence of the season,

the world, celebrant, on pause

but through and beyond that, from the hills ahead

an axe, shaving at the wilderness

shading to a pick, a plough, a harrow

and a sweeping of scythes.

Order in the high fields

where a warrior from the past and before that

heir of the Romans yet, in his thickest blood

heir of the land before the Romans came

Arthur, twice lord, reigns on his sheep-grazed hill

last hammer of the English, forged by the hand of God

and thrust in the fire against them

he waits with his war-band the hour of need.

Amiable, we amble where he strode

his legacy our present,

his vision ours if we care to see;

sun, friendship, our feet on the ground

the mist veiled fields and woods of England ours

these clods the seal on the charter,

and though the purpose of this Ring eludes us, the map no help

our function is to walk cheerfully,

accepting that the gift of God is the land and the people

and the voices whispering through the last leaves.

Like the old druid, wed to his new religion

as an oak wed to the wind, his roots in the earth

and feeling through his bones the lift of the land

and how God is omnipotent and lost in the wondrous Grail.

Or Arthur, who holds by the grace of the King and his will

this land together, clamped to his careful course

like roots to rock.

Who fights for the feel of the land, since he must;

ordained by the gift of the Grail,

and by acclamation of the rocks and trees.

Who knows what Arthur takes to the Grail,

who knows what faith he gives, blood he offers

and what strength given to that holy bowl

by the curve of the hill, his land and ours

as we wind down the bright fieldside

snow beneath the hedges, in sun and cloud and wind

the ancient forest turned to hedged fields

our future built on his, our eyes, our hearts

lifted to the silver slant of the winter sun

till, back in the village, we kick

the drifts of white from our boots

and find in the warmth of friends and jokes

and drinks by a fire, another bedrock

balance to the past,

a human counter to the world of myth.

We lift the glass not the Grail cup,

our vision in each other's hearts

not in some cold chapel by a winter sea,

and though we are heirs of Arthur, visions of Merlin

neither will come again;

we must cut our own ditches, turn our own sod

and sow our own seed;

parents of those "whose fields are not ours to till,

whose weather is not ours to rule."

Living in the Past.

Take my hand across this road;

not because you are young to cross alone,

and I am I too old;

but because it's busy, and dark, and frightening

and you don't hold my hand much any more.

Dance with me till the band gets sleepy;

not because I'm someone to dance with,

nor to humour me;

but because it's loud, and driving, and rejuvenating,

and you don't dance with me, any more.

Make love with me until sleep betrays us;

not for old time's sake in resignation,

nor to prove anything;

but because in the here and now of this our bed

you want to, one more last time.

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Love Poem

They came to the stepping stones, and crossed over.

They clasped hands, they planned each step,

They paused. It took an age;

But they had come to see the stream renewed

And diamonds flashing as they always had

On the dragonfly-kissed water.

They looked again at Paradise, and knew.

"We had a little walk," they said. But in that long slow morning

Had seen death in Eden, had crossed the river for the last time.

Lying in Bed on a Sunny Morning

A cat crosses the terrace beyond my windows.

She pauses to look in at my bed,

arranged so the morning sunshine

warms my body; aligned so these eyes

can take in the tiny, unimportant happenings

of leaf, insect and bird - my reduced world.

I am confined to a room, helpless, yet I bask like a cat

in the caress of light and air.

This is the same man, these are the same hands

that on brilliant mornings long ago

stroked you from sleep into loving.

This same sun, this same warmth, but a different languor

stretched us - along, around, inside each other -

hours together, feeding on lips and tongues and eyes

until we knew every hair, every freckle, every mole

anywhere under the sun.

Do you now, tending this sick body, think of those days ?

or when we warmed your pregnant belly,

or when our children curled their little toes in bliss

naked as sunbeams? I wonder, but dare not ask.

I doubt you bargained for this final act of love

which I can never give you back or, love, repay.

Staffa

As we returned to the waiting boat

in from the sea flew thousands of puffins

and settled all around us;

their alert eyes, their ceremonial faces,

lining our path, in a kind of blessing.

Homecoming.

We were blown off course;

we tangled in the skerries off Scotland,

till I thought we were drowned;

we lost oars against the rocks, rigging,

everything but ourselves in that sharp arena.

And as we struggled, you stabbed;

you in the short days and you in the lash of the rain,

when every East wind that flung through the fjord

piled the sea against hope

and the old talkers mouthed nothings in the long nights.

We lost direction.

I tied everyone to his bench and me to the stern-post

and we rode the mountains - and slept.

It's never impossible to sleep.

Even you slept sometimes - when the wind

whipped so strong it cut scars in the rock

even you slept, for all seemed final then ...

Until we woke up, the salt cracking our faces,

and the low sun focusing the cold.

the odds were suddenly worth rowing for;

we cast lots for the oars.

You looked out through the islands,

you saw the steel chop of the waves;

and the snow line crept lower behind you;

someone's wife embraced a new lover;

someone's son appropriated someone's wife;

and each night the stars grew more bitter

as you watched them in the South;

and we watched them too, and it was late.

We had to beat up against the cold,

sheltering between islands,

local fishermen grudging us scraps.

The sea froze on our oars and we thought, inside,

of the stuffy huts' thick atmosphere of wives and relatives

and our backs creaked. Surprised seabirds mocked us,

mocked our muscles as we rowed without ceasing

until fast in a rhythm of islands we were gripped by the fog

- you thought it a shroud.

The old ones expected no portent;

they stood on the shore, gossiping into emptiness

like lighthouse voices of the dead -

until you made us; out of some cloud gave form

to this chance coherence of sea-mist molecules;

the almost-sleeping bird appeared on the water, all undreamed,

and scattered the ghosts that hovered on the sea.

I rose, a vapour cast in a cold shroud,

and plunged, swam, to clasp your liquid kisses

tight to the memory of my arms,

as the world dissolved.

At last, lost in the home-fjord, the sea is calm.

the mist-torn mind trawls, drags through its own still waters,

and casts forth into a darkness so deep and raging

no ripple need ever break or new sun rise,

no purpose scoriate the fjord in bright ships

or ever end repeal this long still storm.

The Crossing

This is the ferry, and this the ferryman.

Home is his barge beside the steps

and his wife knitting at the stern,

watching her husband ply back and forth, forth and back.

This is the river, and this the crossing.

Some come daily, some stand and never embark,

and some, like me, cross at long intervals,

savouring the moment, the turn of the tide, from full to slack.

This is the fare, and this the parting;

when the oars dip, the prow turns away

to push aside the green waters. In sunshine or shade

we shall have need for crossing, till the Earth shall open and crack.

Going Through

after all, it wasn't terminal:

on the other side there was another city

mirroring mine.

already I am in its suburbs,

abandoning the last stirrings of regret,

heading with what exhilaration, what fear,

what gathering speed,

into the unknown country

along remembered tracks.

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