Intertextuality

Clepsydra 25 & 26

25

… how will it all end
     does it not need closure
          something to bring
               the water-wheel full circle
                    a golden key to open
                         what

the museum’s door
     memory’s door
          the archives where
               so many memories lie
                    gathering dust

though some may tell the truth
     whatever that is

or does the story go on and on
     never pausing
          never ending
               wrinkle after wrinkle
                    threaded through time
                         after time
                              the candle
                                    burning

the clepsydra
     dripping all life away
          the pendulum
               swaying
                    back and forth …

26

… Westminster Chimes
     chiming the quarters
          church bells
               ringing out a warning

the hills alive
     alight
          with burning beacons

what new armadas
     sailing now off our coast
          what fireflies flicker
               their thunderous roar
                    frightening birds in trees
                         driving deer
                              into the woods

how many people
     cast forth like bread
          upon the waters
               to return ten-fold

hark to the bells
     ringing out again
          St. Clement’s
               St. Martin’s
                    the Old Bailey
hark to the children singing
     dancing in a circle
          never-ending
               until the music ends

and the last child
     is caught by
          the lowering arms
               trapped
                    a fish flapping
                         in the osprey’s grasp …

Commentary:

I wonder how many people still sing the children’s song about the bells of London? Images from it – intertextuality – occur throughout Clepsydra.

“Oranges and lemons,”
ring the bells of St. Clement’s.

“You owe me five farthings,”
say the bells of St. Martin’s.

“When will you pay me,”
ask the bells of Old Bailey.

“When I grow rich,”
sing the bells of Shoreditch.

“And when will that be,”
sing the silver bells of Battersea.

“I do not know,”
booms the great bell at Bow.

“Here comes a candle
to light you to bed.
And here comes a chopper
to chop off your head.”

The song appeared at children’s parties. Two of them joined hands, held their hands high, like London’s Tower Bridge, and the children, in a long chain passed beneath the ‘bridge’ as the song was sung. At the end, the children speeded up and they tried to avoid the last verse when the bridge’s arms descended and two children were caught. These then had to replace the original two gate-keepers and the game started again. At least, that was how I remember it being played.

It is worth remembering how violent in their imagery children’s songs can be. The games seem sweet, but they often have dark undertones, some going back to the Black Death – “Ring a ring a rosies, a pocket full of posies, atishoo, atishoo, we all fall down.” If you don’t know what that all signifies, go down the rabbit hole with Alice and the white rabbit and look it all up! And find out what a farthing is, and a penny farthing – go on – I double-dog dare you!

And remember – poetry carries its own meaning – or multiple meanings – and they are not always easy to find. Dig, my friends, dig. There’s gold in them there hills.

Raven

Raven

When Raven flies through his trap door in the sky, a light bulb clicks off in my head and I fall into darkness. Is there some safety net before oblivion? Raven’s claws scar crow’s feet on a fingernail moon. His bleak black beak widens the hole in my head and the Easter egg of my skull shows thin blue cracks. Outside my window, the river moves backwards and forwards with the tide. Raven shrugs at cancerous creatures, promising nothing. He soars into clear skies in search of his private exit and extinguishes sun, moon, and stars, plunging our world into blackness. The light on the point picks out a heron, mobbed by a clacking ring of gulls. The sea mist wraps the real world tight in its cloak. Now sea and lighthouse, heron and gulls, are distant things of memory. Raven, shoulders hunched, stands like a stone, an anthracite block hacked out from the coal seam in my mind, hand carved from feathers and my forefathers’ blood.

Commentary:

I had forgotten all about this poem in prose. It comes from Fundy Lines, if I remember correctly. Photo credit (below) to one of my former students, an excellent poet herself, who took the trouble to locate the correct rock and then take a photo of book and rock together.


Moo thought his painting of a dark shape that looks a little bit like a bird of ill-omen would be just what this prose poem needed. Maybe he’s right. I trust him with his choice of paintings. Well, most of the time anyway. He can be a bit ‘off’ from time to time, but mostly we form a good team, especially where Surrealism is concerned.

I guess Raven formed part of my Surreal sequences. I really do enjoy Surrealism. The mixing of metaphors, for example, the unexpected meeting of a sewing machine with a carving knife and an umbrella on an operating table. And look what Raven’s up to. He discovers a trap door in the sky. Well, that would be very useful, if we had wings and could fly. Then he turns off the light bulb in my head. I didn’t even know I had one in there. I guess Raven, like coyote and zopilote is a bit of a Trickster. Next he changes into a woodpecker and widens the hole in my skull. Poor old me – avian trepanning – no wonder I have problems! My head becomes an Easter Egg and has cracks in it giving birth to what? Some mad ideas, I guess, pecking their way out into the wonderful world in which Moo and I live in perfect harmony with my beloved and our cat. And look at all those Welsh mining memories – lignite, house coal, steam coal, anthracite, jet – and remember, when the coal comes from the Rhondda down the Merthyr – Taff Vale line, I’ll be there.

It will be a long way from Canada to Taff’s Well. Maybe Raven will be kind and fly me there, through his Island View trap door that has direct access to the trap door just above Castell Coch, the Fairy Castle of my childhood. That would be faster, and easier, than my old two-wheeler Raleigh bicycle with it’s Sturmey-Archer three gear click on the handlebars. I bet Raven can fly faster than I can pedal. And if I could have pedaled as fast as Raven flies, downhill and uphill, I would have been King of the Mountains and an all time winner of the Tour de France. Now that would have been surrealistically surreal, seeing me as a cereal winner, with my snap, crackle, and pop! Not that my dad would have been happy. He never was happy with anything I did!

Cage of Flame

Cage of Flame

Now you are a river
flowing silver beneath the moon.
High tide in the salt marsh:
 your body fills with shadow and light.
 I dip my hands in dappled water.

Twin gulls, they float down stream,
then perch on an ice-floe
of half-remembered dreams.

Eagle with a broken wing,
why am I trapped in this cage of flame?
When I turn my feathers to the sun,
my back is striped
with the black and white
of a convict’s bars.

Awake, I lie anchored
by what pale visions
fluttering on the horizon?

White moths wing their snow
storm through the night.
A feathered shadow ghosts
fingers towards my face.
Butterflies stutter
against a shuttered window.

A candle flickers in the darkness
and maps in runes
the ruins of my heart. Eye of the peacock,
can you touch what I see
when my eyelids close for the night?

The black rock of the midnight sun
rolled up the sky.
Last night, the planet quivered
beneath my body
and I felt each footfall
a transient god.

When will I be released
from my daily bondage?

Commentary:

Moo reminded me that this poem also existed as a prose poem. here it is in prose layout. Think about it and let me know which version you prefer. Is one easier to read than the other? Do the rhythms come through more strongly in one version? Meanwhile, since he hasn’t painted a cage of flame, nor a river flowing silver, he suggested that if I really felt like the poem suggested I might feel like, then All Shook Up – with its warm, colorful flame images, might be just the poem to fit the crime. Better, he said than playing billiards on a cloth untrue, with a twisted cue, and elliptical billiard balls.

I wonder how many people recognize that little tip of the hat to the past glories of English Comic Opera? Since Canada post is on rotating strike – talk about twisted cues and elliptical billiard balls – then send your answers by highly trained snails (snail mail) or dog sled via whatever route still has enough snow for the huskies to haul on. Meanwhile, Ottawa has declared that the Maritime provinces are continuing with their suffering a buffering from lack of rain and severe drought. I do long for that river flowing silver, not to mention high tide in the salt marsh. We need water badly. And the sooner the better. Aquifers, rivers, wells, they all need filling.

Ah, the majestic game of cricket – and how I long for that summer test match curse – Rain Stopped Play. Or as the BBC commentator said on the radio one day – I heard him – “play has been stopped because of piddles on the putch – oh, sorry, I mean puddles on the pitch.” I wonder what Mr. Hugh Jarce would have thought of that. I know he always loved that old cricketing Chestnut – ‘The bowler’s Holding, the batsman’s Willey.” Unlike much wanted rain, it didn’t stop the match, but the commentators who perpetrated that jest laughed so much, the commentary stopped for nearly five minutes. Oh, the things one remembers as one gets old. Now, where did I put my glasses? I wonder if my beloved knows.

Cage of Flame

Now you are a river flowing silver beneath the moon. High tide in the salt marsh: your body fills with shadow and light. I dip my hands in dappled water. Twin gulls, they float down stream, then perch on an ice-floe of half-remembered dreams. Eagle with a broken wing, why am I trapped in this cage of flame? When I turn my feathers to the sun, my back is striped with the black and white of a convict’s bars. Awake, I lie anchored by what pale visions fluttering on the horizon? White moths wing their snow storm through the night. A feathered shadow ghosts fingers towards my face. Butterflies stutter against a shuttered window. A candle flickers in the darkness and map in runes the ruins of my heart. Eye of the peacock, can you touch what I see when my eyelids close for the night? The black rock of the midnight sun rolled up the sky. Last night, the planet quivered beneath my body and I felt each footfall of a transient god. When will I be released from my daily bondage?

Clepsydra 23 & 24

23

… gulls on the wharf-side roof
     fishing boats
          returning to port
               white wakes trailing,
                    pointing to where they’ve been

where have I been
     all my life         

where is the wake
     that tracked me to and from
          so many unimportant places

so often have I waited
     for that moment of reunion
          port station airport

birds leaving nest
     only to return
          then leave again
               are not more faithful

sweet brevity of life
     a stone memorial
          on the harbour wall
               raised to all
                    who went to sea
                         and never returned
                              dying in the waves’ embrace …

24

… a watery grave
     no church no candles
          just cold waters sliding shut
               as down to the depths they go
                    

sinking from level to level
     never to rise again
          not till seas run dry
               burnt up by the sun’s candle

even then they’ll walk no more
          with their beloveds
               hand in hand
                    on diminishing land
                         or sea-licked sand …

Commentary:

“Birds leaving nest, only to return, then leave again, are not more faithful.” A lovely photo, from Avila, of storks, bouncing on their nests, waiting for the wind to lift them up aloft. I thought of using sea side photo from PEI, but this image caught my eye, and my words. A verbal – visual link. Not easy to spot, but there, in the sky above them, a parent waits. As soon as one chick takes flight, the watching parent will drop, fly under the fledgling’s wings, and tutor the young bird in the art of soaring and flying. I have spent many a happy hour, just sitting there, watching them.

And here’s the photo from PEI. An osprey, returning to the nest, after a fishing expedition. One hopes for such moments. Then, suddenly, one day, the magic happens, and verbal and visual joining hands in a single moment of magic. And listen to that baby bird, beak open, shrieking, waiting for the parent to arrive. I can still hear the screeching, although we are in the age of silent, but colorful, pictures.

In the picture below, the Grande Réunion – you can see the White Geese gathered at Bic. They return every year, so beautiful. The first time I saw them, I thought they were a drift of late snow. Then they rose from the field, and flew up, into the air. I have often seen snow falling but that was the first time I saw snow actually rising, after it had settled. A memorable moment.

Moments of magic, as I said, and each of them linked – verbal to visual. Silent dialogs with my time and my place, now shared with whoever has ears to hear and eyes to see and an imagination to reconstruct the alternate realities.

Books

Books
… they fornicate at night
double in size and numbers
fall off the shelves
copulate in piles on the floor

… origami
I guess it’s what books do
when they wrap themselves
in their own pages
and enfold their stories
mingling their tales

… synaesthesia
the critics call it
that mixing of senses
taste with touch
and the lingering
smell of fresh print
tingling in the nostrils

… intertextuality
books talking to books
they start off with one word
and cling to each other …

… and you know
what happens next …

Commentary:

No comment!

Clepsydra 22

22

… winds kiss words from lips
      sand creaks
           squeaks underfoot
                    creeps between dry toes

the sand cleanses
     purges
          brings closure
               each magnificent moment
                    lighting a candle

is this beach an altar
     under the rocks’
         shadow church
              it doesn’t matter

mindfulness
     holding each memory
          each piece of colored glass

wave after wave
     climbing ashore
          washing footprints
               memories away
                    closing
                         door after door …

Commentary:

“Wave after wave climbing ashore, washing footprints, memories away, closing door after door.” Everything turns out in black-and-white – here a crow, there a seagull. What does each say to each, when they meet upon the beach? Silence and stillness. No sound of wind or wave, no sign of the tide rising or falling, and what do the birds say to each other, when they meet like this? Two solitudes, mine and thine, and somehow the silence must be broken, or in our separate solitudes we will remain. What if I open my solitude and show it to you? Will you then open yours and spread it willingly before me? Or will you turn away, crow spurning seagull and there’s no going back.

And did my feet, in ancient time, walk upon the beach in Santander? Did they wander over the cliffs at Cabo Mayor? What did I say to the sands in Swansea Bay when, sitting on the steps by the railway station, I dusted the sand from between my toes, placed socks upon my feet, and did up my sandals? Private places, private memories, private conversations live on in the privacy of my head.

A dozen heads, all crowded onto the computer screen, zoomed in so they can be together for an hour or two, repeating their memories to each other – how much did they really share? How much can we know, your life of mine, my life of yours? At what point do those twin railway lines meet at the edge of time? Or are they doomed to a parallel universe where mind and mind, rail and rail, neither meet nor understand? Tell me, if you can, what the crow thought of the gull when they met, that morning on the sand.

Gone out

Gone out

“She has lived.
Now she has gone out.”

And all too soon
I too will go out
and people
will be able to say
he has gone out.

Or not.
Maybe there’ll just be
a silence.
Few people know me.
Even fewer care about me,
know who I really am
what I’ve actually done.

What have I done?
Nothing, really.
Nothing at all.

But I have struck a match or two,
lit some candles,
and allowed them to shine
in the darkness …

…

and soon, I too,
like those candles,
will go out.

Commentary:
The opening quote, changed and adapted, is from Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim. I was reading it a few days ago, by candlelight, as we had a brief, and totally unexpected power outage because some idiot ran into a power pole on the highway below us and cut off our power.

Reading by candlelight is so inspirational. It brings back memories of my childhood in Wales, summer evenings in the bungalow, no power, no running water, reading by lamplight or candle light. The candle’s scent, the flicker of shadowy thoughts across the page, each word held for a moment or two in a magic, shimmering glow. I recall also the candles on the high altar, lit for midnight mass, and the church all a-sparkle with shimmering light, incense, and flowers.

Power outage – I often think they should be called power out[r]ages. Then I think of the war zones, rife with suffering, where power outages are only one of the many outrages from which people are suffering. “Man’s inhumanity to man.” Robbie Burns, I believe. I regret calling that driver who took out the power pole an idiot. Shame on me. I found out later that he was a human being, suffering, just like me, from the attributes of ageing. A heart attack took him and his leaden foot, dead on the accelerator, sped him into the power pole.

DOA – dead on arrival at the power pole, and at the hospital. “He has lived. Now he has gone out,” snuffed out like the candles I blew out when the power was finally restored. It’s so easy to relight a candle, so hard to relight the beauty of a lost human life.




Clepsydra 18-20

18

… as free as the birds
     a sky full at North Cape
          where shores retreat
               year after year
 
the big red mud diminishes
     under advancing waters
          sea-threatened cliffs
               undermined roads
                    houses
                         the lighthouse

gulls follow the fishing boats
     herring gulls
          blotting out
               sun and sky
                    above the reef

with its seals
     basking in sunshine
          knowing themselves
               being themselves
                    thinking themselves safe

kings and queens
     of their sealdom
          never questioning …

19

… an osprey
     sudden the swoop
          turned into a stoop

water shattered
     total immersion
          then emerging
               with lusty thrusts of wings

claws clasping
     imprisoned prey
          prised from the sea
               raised to the skies
                    up and away
                         murderer and victim

oblivious below
     the black horse
          with cart and farmer
               gathering seaweed

all of them
     having no doubts
          safe in the security
               of their roles …

20

… while lost in the labyrinth
      I searched for a thread
               on life’s loom

a thread woven
     by an unknown
          unseen hand
               a hand and thread
                    I could never control

yet one day
     that thread
          will lead me out
               from the dark

then shall I see
     the sun’s great candle
          beneath which red rocks
               wave and water battered
                    crumble

here at North Cape
     in a way that nobody
          can understand …

Commentary:

The osprey “emerging with lusty thrusts of wings, claws clasping, imprisoned prey prised from the sea, raised to the skies, up and away, murderer and victim.” The words are based on the photograph. A quiet day, somebody shouted, and pointed, and clickety-click, I was lucky enough to capture the whole thing on my digital camera. This one shot summarizes it all.

The stanzas (16 & 17) that precede this moment are available here. Clepsydra, the book, is one single poem, one single sentence, that rambles on and on. Each stanza stands alone, each poem (numbered) stands alone, and the whole book stands alone as a single sentence summarizing what I have seen and where I have been. Bakhtinian Chronotopos – my dialog with my time and my place. In this case, my many dialogs with my multiple times and multitudinous places.

Albert Camus lent me the phrase ‘murderer and victim’. ‘Nous sommes, ou meurtrier ou victime‘. Quoted from memory. I hope I am not too far wrong. My memory fades as I age. Louis Aragon suggested I borrow his line “rois tombés de leurs chariots” – that I found in his collection Il ne m’est Paris sans Elsa. Here, I have applied it to the seals at North Cape, PEI – “seals – basking in sunshine – kings and queens of their sealdom.” Intertextuality – texts talking to texts and recalling segments of texts within other texts.” Wonderful. Alas, I fear the coming days when the memory may no longer be so clear. ‘What will be, will be’ said the Osprey as he pulled the flounder from the sea and carried him too his nest in a nearby tree.

On reste ici

On reste ici

The double meaning
troubles my brain,
tugs heart strings,
sings a violin strain
or strums a throbbing
double-bass tightly
enclosed in my chest.

Rest, reste: here
we will remain and rest.
I like the sound of it.

Outside my window,
the mountain ash weeps
red autumn tears.
Robins flock, grow tipsy
feasting on its berries.
Ici on reste.

You and I, now,
and here we will remain
until, at last, in peace,
we will rest.

Commentary:

I live in a functionally bilingual province in a legally bilingual country. Yet I am consistently told that poems should contain only one language and should not wander between two (or more) of them.

This always reminds of the old joke – “I know what CBC Radio means, but what do the initials EC mean in ici [EC] Radio Canada?” This draws attention to one of my pet hates – the translators who translate for our politicians as they transfer their thoughts from one language to another. Suddenly, without warning, the husky-voiced male prime minister starts speaking French and his deep voice immediately changes into the high-pitched feminine interpreter’s alto. Most disconcerting. I flick back and forth between channels to catch those politicians in both languages. Alas, they rarely deliver the same message in both languages as the nuances and emotions change. Listen carefully and you’ll see (or hear) what I mean.

And so it is with poetry. I love the play on English – rest (to rest or to stay) and French rester (to stay or remain). Why shouldn’t I use that type of play in my poetry? It lends infinite shades of meaning and emotion to the verse. Ah well, the jury’s out. But don’t put foreign words (NB in Canada, French is NOT a foreign language) in your poems. You won’t get published and you won’t win any competitions, even if you do explain what the words mean. And remember, T. S. Eliot didn’t translate the foreign words he used in his Four Quartets. And he wasn’t a bad poet!

Sweet Dreams

Sweet Dreams

Amnesia survives in these amniotic waters,
moving in time to the water pump’s heart beat.
I close my eyes and dream. Nothing is the same.

Do I drift dreamily or dreamily drift?
The bath-tub’s rose-petals bring memories –
primroses, bluebells, cowslips, daffodils dancing

beneath the trees in Blackweir Gardens,
or beside Roath Lake, where I biked
on gravel paths so many years ago.

Photos float before me, pictures of moments
I alone recall. Spring in Paris, the trees
breaking into bud along the Champs-Élysées.

Santander in summer, walking the Piquío
as it slumbers beneath the jacarandas.
One winter in Wales, up in Snowdonia,

I ran down a valley between high hills,
on a freezing night, with only the stars
to keep me company, so cold, I nearly froze.

Autumn at the Peace Park in Mactaquac,
with leaves reflected in the head pond.
Or the Beaver Pond with its fall orgy

of gaudily painted trees, leaves drifting down
on this first chill wind, to settle like tiny,
colorful birds in my beloved’s hair.

I remember the look in her eyes when
I caught a falling leaf and put it in
her pocket, telling her to save it,
like a falling star, for a rainy day.