CHOICE AGENDA
Excuse me, vulture
Would you like to select
The expedition leader, the geologist,
One of their camels or the guide?
Please circle appropriately for your choice.
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All posts for the month September, 2011
Choice Agenda
Posted by simon7banks on September 30, 2011
https://simonsworlds13.wordpress.com/2011/09/30/choice-agenda/
Winter Day
WINTER DAY
This ice beaten down and silencing
Bitterdead winter’s day
A full hour before the smothering
Dusk when the pallid sun
Would redden and smear its lifeblood
Over the darkening sky
A white owl wafted silently
Down the leat’s long scar
Like a sign of something living
Unbelievably far
From the cramping hands and the fading
Warmth of a failing star
When the cold was merely a reason
To welcome the muscular fire
Flaming the toffee amber
Pint in a waking hand
Ice was at bay but the owlflight
Woven around the spire
Of the sleeping church was speaking
Of when the sky would light
And the armour of ice would be breaking
And death and dark would tire.
Written after waiting at a point in Norfolk in midwinter watching birds of prey coming in to roost as the sun set and seeing a Barn Owl waft close down the ditch just in front of us.
Posted by simon7banks on September 28, 2011
https://simonsworlds13.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/winter-day/
Callanish
When I visited the stone circle at Callanish, on Lewis in the Outer Hebrides in Scotland, I was moved, but didn’t know it’d produce a poem. In fact my idea was to write about the courage and inventiveness of prehistoric humans and what had become of that, but my first thought was to pin that on Stonehenge.
Just as well I changed my mind. Callanish fits. From then on I was almost in a trance as I wrote. Once I’d written a first draft, I went through making the poem a bit less smooth and regular, because I was convinced it must be a rough-edged, spiky poem. Since I was in a trance-like state, I can’t explain some lines better than any thoughtful critic.
CALLANISH: WINTER SOLSTICE
The stones do not speak, they do not move
They are intense, apart
They will say nothing to the darkening sea
The wandering visitors in bright cagoules
The impoverished and water-sodden soil
They spoke once
In a moment’s flutter of day
In the Northern winter’s night
Moment when time stood still
New birth at winter’s turn
Cold-handed celebrants
Gathered around
Welcomed the sun, its covenant; renewed
The hard-won order of stony fields
That welcome is long gone
Grown cold, as women whose shattered skulls
Bore witness to the dark side of the sun
Neither the magical smith nor carver
Of mythical fish on soft stones
Will answer a call
What happened to
That wonderful inventiveness?
Carousel of light and song
Iridescent fly picked apart
Whispering forest butchered
For the giant’s unreal hoard
Under clawing black roots
Soft words to a chasm
The human time
May be nearly over and then
The embossed golden shield with lost words
Foretelling the end and beginning
A glorious tragedy ending
Will tumble and shatter
Or will there be new words spoken
Round Callanish ring still unbroken?
With the warning above, here goes: the poem starts with Callanish as it is now, visited by tourists. Then it leaps back to when it was a site of worship. The worship, and their society, had a dark side, but they made wonderful inventions and art. The inventiveness has led to destruction. If we go on as we are, not only may the environment be devastated in a mass extinction, but we may be one of the species going extinct. But there may be a way to avoid that.
Posted by simon7banks on September 27, 2011
https://simonsworlds13.wordpress.com/2011/09/27/callanish/
The Roads to Rome
THE ROADS TO ROME
I don’t say it’s a long way home
Because I don’t know home exists.
Wandering in forests, confused by mists,
I’ve heard that all roads lead to Rome:
Maybe that legend is a lie
And all roads lead to a silent shore;
But memories of a light, a door
Suggest there was a home, but why
The road to it will always twist
And turn away and run instead
Towards the city of powerful dead
I cannot say, but having missed
No pointing tree or flying crow,
No sudden cold or smear of blood,
No reddening sunset, opening bud,
Maybe I’ve found the home I know.
But carving on a rotten log
Tells of an easy way to rest
While still the broken branch points west
Over the river blurred in fog.
This poem can be interpreted in different ways, but let me rule out one: it isn’t about a Catholic conversion! It is about a sense of a meaningful journey and a home to return to, interpreted in different ways, about doubt and death (all roads lead to a silent shore) and about diversions from the way, characterised by a material Rome of wealth and power. I would rate this as one of my four or five favourite poems I’ve written, along with the next one I’m going to post.
Posted by simon7banks on September 25, 2011
https://simonsworlds13.wordpress.com/2011/09/25/the-roads-to-rome/
The Well
THE WELL
A man with a briefcase came
Showed me an angular plan
“Beneath the site of this house
An underground stream once ran
A record of 1801
Refers to a well right here
Though when the new town was built
Mentions of wells disappear.”
I thanked him and closed the door
And said nothing of the well
Soon after I sold the house
There’s nothing more to tell.
Well…can be taken on two levels. Wells, hidden waters, the unconscious, a spirit world (traditionally associated with water). The narrator hides and denies.
Posted by simon7banks on September 23, 2011
https://simonsworlds13.wordpress.com/2011/09/23/the-well/
Explorers
EXPLORERS
“That this is my North-West discoverie:
Per fretum febrae, by these straights to die”
“Oh, my America, my new found land”
– John Donne
I
Intricate fantastical
Palace is built
From fragile weave
Of dreamt formulae
On the mathematician’s
Flowerdecked grave
With a walk like the waft
Of a branch in the breeze
Comes a woman whose eyes
Are pools in a cave
That a diver might brave
With no light to return
In the day to farm and fashion
In the dark to watch and wonder
At the dawn to remember
Where the sea and the sky blur together
There are havens and reefs for the sailor
What land lies over
Those silent hills?
Wastelands where black bats gibber
Or cradling a silent river,
Valleys of song?
Officials make inventory
Of all the goods the travellers pack
And plans for drought or for attack
Are hammered out while song and story
Buy off the devils along the track
Trapped in the hills and hunted down
By hidden bog and avalanche
By haunting wind and wolf, survivors
Stumble beside a clattering stream
Down to the valley of their dream
Where cupping hands bring out bright gold
Trees offer fruit of no known tang
And vivid song as no bird sang
Wakens the travellers from the cold
They name the valley, import the skills
To mine the gold and lay the roads
Till someone heads for other hills.
When no dark ridge is left, the wise
Explore the forests of the mind
And stare in one another’s eyes
Now out of mist on broken lands
What new and treacherous hills will rise?
Well, this is one of those poems where my attempts to explain sound like a friend of the dead poet suggesting what his words might mean. Certainly physical exploration and conquest come into it. People may explore from wanderlust or for all sorts of reasons, but their discoveries have consequences. At the same time, the excitement of finding something totally new is intense. So where do we explore when there is no more terra incognita?
The opening, I think, sets the scene of the atmosphere before the explorers set out – but I can’t really explain the mathematician’s flowerdecked grave: it just seems right!
Posted by simon7banks on September 18, 2011
https://simonsworlds13.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/explorers/
The Blue-black Sloes
THE BLUE-BLACK SLOES
The queen has made a laurel wreath
For the new champion to wear
So he will not grow old and weak
The whisper of the brittle leaves
Is of a people falling down
And of a king that cannot breathe
The blue-black sloes have gathered round,
The blackberry and scarlet hip
They twine about the king’s own crown
Inside the castle nothing moves
The guests are frozen to the walls
And spears of ice hang from the roof
The withered wreath has taken root
And pressing through the embroidered cloth
Will resurrect the warmth and doubt.
I don’t want to provide a text-book explanation of this poem, but think the seasons (autumn, winter, spring) of Britain or similar places climatically, Celtic myth and rebirth.
Posted by simon7banks on September 15, 2011
https://simonsworlds13.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/the-blue-black-sloes/
Wolf
WOLF
Cry in the night
A wavering yearning wail
Remembered
The pack all know their part
The smell of sickening deer
Bloods their comradeship
Torn flesh is life
Wolf dreams the voices in the leaves
The running of a long-lost mate
The tumbling play of cubs and then
Midwinter snowlock, icy breath
Fairytale devil
Hiding in homely things
Better to eat you, dear
Ravenous, clever
A chalice for our wish to kill
For rape and for rebellion
To turn the world right upside down,
Of chaos, and the homeland’s milk
Of law and lace for all time spilt
Wolves ride our dreams
In each dark wood
A half-remembered beast
Down each sharp slope
They wait, or wander like the wind
To fall on anywhere they wish;
The fearful grope
Of climber on the alp falls short
Because the wolf waits just beyond
But at his fall the wolf will stand
And soon have sport
A child is missing
Sheep are torn
A travelling brother never comes
Folk knew the wolf must be the cause
So hunted it with dog and gun
Until one lonely wolf was left
Searching for any of its kind
Into a trap and hung to rot
So who had killed the lost child now?
Some human wolves must roam the night
And must be burnt to break the curse
To wolves the random rage of men
Is like a maddened hurricane
That picks this up and sets this down
Safety and death in hands of clown
That wail again: no devils of dream
Unearthly through the forest stream,
But wolfpack hunting in the night
And not a tiger burning bright.
The layout of this poem elsewhere reflects the fact that there are two voices – one describing the wolf,’s experience, the other representing human fears and images of wolves, the wolf as symbol and devil. Unfortunately wordpress won’t let me indent the verses as they should be! So the human image of the wolf bit is from “fairytale devil” to “break the curse”, and the rest is, as it were, from the wolf’s mouth. The last line reflects and answers Blake (Tyger, tyger).
Posted by simon7banks on September 13, 2011
https://simonsworlds13.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/wolf/
At the Seafront
AT THE SEAFRONT
What will come over
A shimmering sea
At the stroke of a delicate dawn?
Dark boats sliding silently,
Or a white bird crying
From a cloud one word
As the breakers crumble?
Wait and see
Watch, be humble
Posted by simon7banks on September 11, 2011
https://simonsworlds13.wordpress.com/2011/09/11/at-the-seafront/
The Witch of the River
THE WITCH OF THE RIVER
The witch of the river has long green hair
Her tresses wave in the water’s flow
She dreams the mayflies out to mate
Her blood’s the current running slow
When her long slim fingers flex in sleep
Then the lithe and writhing silent fish
Disturb the surface: if she dreams
A shudder, then the wordless wish
Rouses the drunken river to spate
Till she gently, softly draws it down
She’ll treasure stones a child throws in
A coin, a cup, a sword, a crown
For they are young and she is very old
For they are of the sky and she the mud
She and the river too will die
But now she’ll dance, with running blood
Posted by simon7banks on September 10, 2011
https://simonsworlds13.wordpress.com/2011/09/10/the-witch-of-the-river/
