Hiraeth

Two New Poems

Two New Poems

1

My Words

My words are black print
on white paper.
My memories flare
 – an aurora borealis of senses
sent crackling down the spine,
in and out of the mind,
tumbling the brain into a world
 … what sort of world?

An unimaginable world.
One never forgotten.
One never re-recreated.
One that never existed.
One that never could exist.
One for which the young child,
six or seven years old,
yearns for the rest of his life.
His unsatisfied life.
His unsatisfying life.
His meaningless life.
His absurd life.

2

Puppy

Oh, pity the poor puppy,
not knowing
 what he has done wrong,
not knowing
how to put things right,
always inadequate,
always in fear
of the angry word,
the quick, sly kick,
the vicious blow,
whining and cringing
at his master’s feet.

“Into your box!”

And always,
that cold puppy bed,
often soiled,
 where the long, chill snakes
of frail, wriggling dreams,
remind him of
the next day’s
punishment.

Commentary:

Both these poems evolved from the comments I made yesterday to my blog post. I have started noticing that those words, beneath the poems, sometimes have a rhythm and a magic all to themselves. I guess it is a little bit of the unconscious slipping upwards and spilling out.

Discovered poems – I never set out to write these two poems. When I re-read my commentary, I thought ‘wow, there’s a poem in there”, and I found not one, but two new poems. Interesting. As I age, I discover something new every day. What a wonderful world it is, unless, like earlier this week, I discover my tap leaking and am forced to call my friend, the plumber, into my water world. Alas, if only that tap were tapped into a maple tree and it weas spring once more. Ah well, I am a dreamer, I can always dream.

Carved in Stone

Carved in Stone

28

The man who cannot cry
is dry indeed,
his inner space
a wasteland without rain.

Who can now walk forty days
in a desert wilderness,
without water?

Where is that crystal fountain,
with its healing streams
flowing from the rock,
its waters flowing through us,
bringing us tears of sorrow
and tears of joy.

Water and words –
they drift through me
and shadowed waves move,
shifting shape in the changing light.

29

A rising moon,
shimmers over the bay.
It reveals the path
that leads me back
to my primal waters.

Oh, salt flow of tears,
salty the waters
of the baptismal font
washing away all stain of sin.

Immersion in water,
a new start, a new life,
and all the soul-sweet eternities
of water and the word.

Commentary:

Water – such an important commodity, and filled with so much symbolism, religious and otherwise. And our bodies, on average, are composed of 60% water. We can survive for three days without water, if we are lucky. How precious it is. How much we depend on it.

The Bay of Santander, so beautiful beneath the moon. And I remember the full moon’s circle touching a rocky triangle as it rose above Peña Cabarga. Oh, the night life of the fish as they rose in the bay and basked in the moonlight. How often was I tempted to walk out along that moon path and walk the waves to Somo and Pedreña on the far side of the bay.

Immersion in water, a new start, a new life, and all the soul-sweet eternities of water and the word. Total immersion, then, not just in languages, but also in water. Where would we be without those life-long commitments, not to mention the crystal fountain whence the healing streams do flow?

Carved in Stone 27

The philosopher in search of his stone.

Carved in Stone

27

Miguel de Cervantes –
I read and re-read his words,
envious of his ability to reach out
with language that thrills me still.

I see him as a total entity,
while I see myself in pieces,
broken, unable to express
the simplest thoughts.

As I age, I sense the water
slipping from the water-clock,
the candles burning lower.

I still cannot make the mark
I want to make, for they are beyond me,
those marvelous word-worlds.

My words are mortal, his are immortal.
Mine just ink stains on a humble page,
his cast in print, but crafted to last forever.

As I bear witness to those powers,
so much greater than mine,
my eyes fill with tears.

Commentary:

They are beyond me, those marvelous word-worlds. Indeed they are. But I do not seek to create ‘a marvelous word-world’. I am happy with ‘ink stains on a humble page’. I seek to reach out and find those one or two people who accept me for what I am and find their own selves in a small corner of the tiny gardens I discover or create. Not a world, then, but a tiny corner of my own world, described, and offered to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear and hearts and minds to feel and understand.

And what is this infatuation with the poem itself? I no longer write individual poems, I write sequences of linked poems, a set of poetic narratives, if you need to find a label for what I am trying to do. Cervantes once wrote “La épica también puede escribirse en prosa.” / Epic poetry can also be written in prose. What happens if we reverse that statement and say – “A narrative sequence can also be written in poetry.” Interesting, eh?

And what is this desire to leave something, some trace of us, behind? I cannot answer that question. The answer will vary for each one of us, and for each fall wall flower perishing against the garden wall. I look at the homeless, pushing their grocery carts, head down. Their existence is as important as mine. Their desire to survive, for another day, another week, another season – and winter is coming one – is more powerful than any poet’s desire to leave a work – a magnum opus – to celebrate their lives.

And yes, my words are mortal, as I am mortal, as Miguel de Cervantes and all the great writers were mortal. Patrick Lane once told me that if poets leave one poem behind them that is remembered, they have done well. Even the greatest poets, and you can check this in the anthologies over the ages, rarely leave more than ten or a dozen memorable poems. As for me, I am happy to say that I have never had a poem included in an anthology. Not to my knowledge anyway.

And what does Magnum Opus actually mean? I leave you with the quote from Wikipedia set out above. Click on it, and find yet another way to distract, deflect, and change the direction of our lives! Given that road, who would ever want to walk it to its end?

Carved in Stone 18

18

Day-dreams, cloud castles,
châteaux en Espagne.

I climb the castle tower
in Segovia, and watch
Golden Eagles flying
in the air below me.

I walk the walls in Avila,
feel the stonework, warm in the sun,
and sense the passing of time
as it slowly gathers,
like clouds in the air
when they foretell a storm.

I trace masonic signatures
on the cathedral’s central façade,
and marvel at the master carvers,
who shaped the statues.


 
They also created angels
and the praying pay-masters
condemned to kneel there,
seeking forgiveness for their sins,
as flickering candles mark time.

Commentary:

Avila: 3.8 kilometres of walls. 9 entrances. Inside the walls, the old city. I lived for three summers in El Rincon, a Hostal in the city centre just outside the Mercado Chico. I still dream of walking those city streets, visiting the bars each with its different customs and tapas. And I remember the tapas, each bar specializing in something different. The Rincon, a marisqueria, and I learned so much abut sea-food, its transportation, the ways of preparing and cooking it.

And while in Segovia, you look down at the Golden Eagles, in Avila, an eternity of storks looks down at you. I remember my friend, standing at the door of the Hostal and calling the storks, as they returned from a day in the fields, by the names of the churches in whose towers they built their nests.

I never thought those days would end, but end they did. As all things do. Now I must take a delight in the memories as they walk before me and call me by my name.

Carved in Stone 14 & 15

14


The sun throws shadows
across the cathedral’s face.

Crosses, arrows, stars,
masonic symbols
hammer-and-chiseled
into the granite sea-cliff
of the entrance way,
reveal the signatures
of the master masons
who laboured here.

And not just here,
for they traveled everywhere,
adding their stone signatures
to those of the other workmen
who left a piece of themselves,
carved in stone.

15

In the cathedral
of Santiago de Compostela,
Maese Pedro sculpted
a statue of himself,
a figurine, small,
low down, facing the main altar.

Students rub noses with him
before their exams,
when they look for luck
having forsaken their studies.

Illiterate people
consult these carvings
in the same way the educated
seek knowledge in their books.

16

The Bulls of Guisando,
pre-historic, unweighable,
the bearers of Roman graffiti,
itself two thousand years old.

Commentary:

… workmen who left a piece of themselves, carved in stone … I couldn’t find my masonic markings from the cathedral in Avila, so I added the words carved into one of the Bulls of Guisando instead. Amazing how people want to make a little bit of themselves eternal – in the sense that we extend our names, our graffiti, our messages beyond our lifetime and, stones thrown into a pond, who knows how long the ripples from those tiny word-waves will endure?

So, what’s it all about, Alfie? And which Alfie are we referring to, the one who burnt the cakes or the (in)-famous gorilla in Bristol Zoo, who went missing? And how many Alfies are there out there? And why buy an Alfie-Romeo when you can buy a neat tombstone for a much smaller sum of money and have it remind people of you long after you have gone?

Silly questions, really, but this is what poetry is for, to open up the curious mind and to dig warrens for bunny rabbits so that the hunters of curiosities can dig their ways down and find whatever they shall find. But do we ever find what we are looking for when we first start out? Good question. Carve your answers into a piece of rock and leave it by the roadside to see what happens to it. Or else, you can write a message, stick it in a bottle, and send it out to sea to float on the waves. Put my name on it, along with yours, and maybe, one day, it will arrive at my doorstep in Island View and, if I am still here, I will reply to you by the same method.

Carved in Stone 12

12

A Ruffed Grouse sought refuge
among the berries
of the Mountain Ash.

I shot him,
not with a gun,
but with a camera.

Intertextuality –
a friend borrowed the photo,
turned it into elegant brush strokes,
and now the painting
hangs on my wall,
opposite the tree
where once he sat.


 
A still-life
face to face with its reality
as early morning dew
forms on spider webs,
hammock-strung
between grass-blades,
bending in the wind.

And what if the spell breaks
and I can no longer see the fine seeds
of the dandelion clock kissed away
by the lisping lips of time?

What is life?
Is it just an illusion?

Commentary:

I shot him, not with a gun, but with a camera. Interesting. I have never seen the need to take the life of living creatures, except in cases of absolute necessity. And no, I have never killed, let alone for fun or sport. Shooting with a camera, that’s my ideal, and when a friend and fellow KIRA artist likes the photo and offers to paint it … well, that leads us into the nature of intertextuality, where reality becomes photo, becomes painting, becomes a text, and you, dear reader, are contemplating all those moments that join us.

The fine seeds of the dandelion clock kissed away by the lisping lips of time. This image comes from my walks in the Welsh countryside around Brandy Cove, Gower, with my paternal grandmother. “What time is it Nana?” I can still see her, bending down, plucking a dandelion, and holding it out for me to blow the seeds away – one puff, one o’clock, two puffs, two o’clock. I recall the seeds, drifting away on the summer breeze. “The Good Lord loved those dandelions,” she once told me. “That’s why He planted them everywhere.”

What will happen when the wells run dry and water runs out and there are no more dandelion seeds? How long will it be before I can no longer see them? Vis brevis, ars longa. The answer to my questions – I care, but I really don’t know.

Angel

Angel

Oh yes, I have been with them, the lost folk, the tramps, the homeless, the bag-women, all the gente perduta. I have stepped on their fingers as they sprawled on the sidewalk. I have trodden on their toes, tripped over their legs, bumped into their stiff, stumbling bodies and stepped in their wasted body fluids. I have stayed out all night, shared a pack of cigarettes, producing another pack or a bottle from the pouch beneath my wings. Such stories they tell, and they tell them in that antiquated language that I first heard hundreds of years ago. They know me now. I won’t say they trust me, but they tolerate my presence, a Jacques Cousteau voyeur, looking into the sea-depths of their despair.
            Garbed in garbage bags, thin trickles of wine and vomit slipping over their lips and cheeks, bloody bandages wound around needle wounds, they have scars at elbow and foot. I hear the warmish blood whistling its snake song through their arteries and veins but death shall have no dominion, not while I am on watch.
            I enfold myself in my wings and weep as these people, my people now, pillow their heads on bloody bandages. Their world is a world of vomit and reek, yet the edges of their shattered lives rip chunks from my hands and fingers, pluck feathers from my wings, tear holes in my heart. Needles I have seen and touched, blunt, shared between three, five, and twenty-five. Round and round, they go, slipping the thin threads of drug-dreams and tainted blood from friend to friend while the blunt points stab at bruised flesh and leathery vein until the freed blood oozes through fingers and hands clenched tight to hold and staunch.
            Night after night I have watched them searching for something just beyond their fingertips. As the late-night diners emerge from their opulent restaurants, I have seen my people fortifying shop doorways with cardboard castles. I have watched them climb inside, shut down the portcullis, and enfold themselves in the plastic that will keep them free from wind and rain. They all crave the bottle’s warmth. They fight and scratch for that which will hold them together, body and soul, that spiritual glue that binds the spirit before setting it on its drunken dreams of freedom. Kings and Queens, tumbled from their earthly thrones, they dream of the paradise they lost, yet think they can find again at the sharp point of a needle or the bottom of a bottle.
            Oh bird-on-a-wire dreams held captive in a skull-bone cage, how you yearn to grow wings, like me, to soar, to fly, to be released from the body, to at last be free …

Commentary:

This book, All About Angels, is available online at Amazon.ca. Click on the link below to purchase the book.

All About Angels
Paperback edition

Last Dance

Last Dance

Ten years ago,
in the Hospice for patients,
the shy lady in the corner,
body withered by cancer,
stood up to dance.

She bowed to the band
then floated into movement,
dancing alone.

She clung to the empty air
as she once clung to her lover.

Nymphs and shepherds
played sweet music at midnight
in this room turned sacred grove,
where naiads and dryads
emerged from the shadows.

Her dance-steps
were a draught of joyous water
from the fount of eternal youth
and lasting love.

Commentary:

Moo offered me one of his paintings for this poem. He calls it Keep on the green side. Every Wednesday, in the hospice, a local band came in to play. Some patients danced, others sat and watched, some stood on the sidelines and listened to the music.

I had the fortune to be present at the singular performance recounted above. I never found out that lady’s name and I never saw her again afterwards. She remains a mystery, like the naiads and the dryads, and the hamadryads, who inhabited those mythological woods where so many of us dream our dreams of one last chance and one last dance.

Carved in Stone 6 & 7

6

At Westbury White Horse,
I wandered among unkempt mounds,
forgotten graveyards,
ancient barrows, their secrets
buried deep underground.

I walked to the horse’s eye,
stood there, then sat on the hill’s edge
to watch the sun drown
in a river of blood that turned
the White Horse red.

Shadows encroached.
A creeping chill came over me.
I started to shiver, not with cold,
but with the icy fear that someone,
something, evil and powerful,
long dead, but risen again, lurked,
hidden in the ground mists,
that rose as I fled,
not daring to look back.

7

But that fear,
deep-seated as it was,
could not match the terror I felt
as the sun set
over Badbury Rings.

An ancient horror
reigned over that place.

Mist warriors, visible
only from the waist up,
their weapons drawn,
charged towards me.

I felt chill fingers
clutching my heart, gripping it,
and tightening their hold.
I fled from them in the half-light.

Ancient powers linger long
in spite of charms, spells,
and exorcisms.

No wonder so many ancient tribes
shattered the legs of their dead
so they could not rise up
and walk again.

Commentary:

According to Wikipedia, the Westbury White Horse or Bratton White Horse is a hill figure on the escarpment of Salisbury Plain, approximately 1.5 mi (2.4 km) east of Westbury in Wiltshire, England. Standing at the northern edge of Bratton Downs, on a steeply sloping hillside below an Iron Age hill fort, it is the oldest of eight white horses in Wiltshire. The white horse has long been revered in European mythology. In Celtic traditions, it was associated with the Otherworld, acting as a guide between the realms of the living and the dead. In many myths, the white horse represented purity, power, and the ability to traverse spiritual boundaries.

I love visiting these sites. However, they need bright sunshine and warm weather. When the light starts to fail and the day grows cold, strange feelings emanate from the ruins. Many people have commented on this phenomenon and there are reports of sightings, such as the one that I associate with my visit to Badbury Rings. I went there late one afternoon, and as the evening drew in and the air grew colder, I and my companions felt a sudden (and totally inexplicable) fear. One look, and we ran as fast as we could back to the car park, got into the car, and sped away. None of us have ever forgotten that strange experience.

Hallowe’en

Hallowe’en

1

Today is All Hallows Eve.
Tomorrow is Oaxaca’s
Day of the Dead.
The clocks change
the day after tomorrow.

Today, it’s raining,
and rain is a trick when
it forces celebrants off the streets
and town councils vote to change
the traditional date and send
young children out trick and treating
on a dry, warmer night.

But this rain, after drought,
is a Hallowe’en treat.

It brings a promise
that the aquifers will refill
that wells will not run dry,
and above all,
it brings us hope.

2

Around us, fall thrives
and watches and clocks
will soon fall back.

Trees weep for lost leaves.
Flowers that flourished
now wither and perish.

Hollyhocks topple and fall.
Bees’ Balm is abandoned
by butterflies and bees.

3

I expect time
to change with the clocks
and my body clock
will soon be out of sync
with the tick-tock chime
that denounces each hour.

Hours that used to wound
now threaten to kill.
They used to limp along,
but now they just rush by
and I, who used to run
from point to point,
now shuffle a step at a time.

But still I live in hopes to see
the clocks spring forward
once more.


Commentary:

A great poem for Hallowe’en, even if I say so myself, and I haven’t even mentioned the Blue Jays and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Oh, woe is me. Shame and scandal in my poetry.

Game Six of the World Series on Hallowe’en – wow! – well, one team will get a treat and the other will receive a very disappointing trick. I know which team I support, but I don’t know who will win this time around.

Having said that – with substantial rain after drought, everybody in my province is a winner. And who could wish for more than that?