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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