Refuge Page 4

  bikers glitter past, being seen together.

  Sparrows have even more in common:

  spasmodic chatter, pranks for ever

  fizzling out to start again.

  Then rain

  hesitant and clumsy

  after months of drought.

  Which hardly matters to

  some played-out busker

  squatting on a playground log

  or a frumpy pigeon that preens

  and shuffles in a flattened sandpit.

  2. IN THE GARDEN OF THE MUSÉE RODIN

  A leaf spins down

  and scrapes his shoulder.

  Such soft percussion after

  insistent crash of boulevards

  wave upon wave...

  then in Rodin’s sanctuary

  footfalls and angry sighs jostling,

  nudging him on through modest rooms

  stuffed with writhing sculptures, tight-lipped

  daguerreotype families hung in brass,

  carefully labelled stumps and blocks

  that chronicle a clouding vision...

  He who became a lunatic with no asylum

  now stands still

  on a path that tilts and dips

  under balding trees, breathes his fill

  of clammy decay, begins to feel

  he’ll measure up

  to being mad again:

  turned imbecile by hard facts and faces,

  chased by volleys of wheels and lights

  to take cover among falling leaves,

  platinum ponds ruffled by smug ducks,

  distant mothers behind prams, toddlers

  in limbo, safely running circles...

  Who can retrace such circles?

  Will he always be heading straight

  from A to B, or back,

  only to check

  his hell-bent intercity pace

  in some unexpected garden

  that hides from a wide confinement?

  ALL

  He had come to a meeting of roads we all

  reach, if we travel long enough.

  Not like the fork that Robert Frost recalled: two

  paths diverging in a yellow wood.

  Not a crossing of embroidered autumn lanes

  where the fingerpost made Edward Thomas

  quell a mocking voice with stoical resolve.

  No: here you can’t hazard a guess

  like the young with all before them, take any turn

  because there’s always another, swept towards

  a mirage of endless chance, stacking the stakes

  high, spinning the roulette dizzy.

  Here merge all routes he hoped to follow

  all at once, cheating the odds, tireless.

  Like railroad junctions darting in beside a headlong

  train, all fold into one way ahead,

  a beaten track more or less clear, its end known

  if not grasped, every choice he once made

  a looping round, often far round.

  Blind bends and dead ground

  promise no surprises now,

  only a hint of how

  an end will come, show

  up the whole quest

  for where it lead,

  all doubts and queries put to rest.

  IV. BELONGING

  LOST AMONG PINES

  [Basses Alpes]

  Knuckled pine, miles of unbreaking waves,

  spiked persistence, under it and underfoot

  buried cones sprouting from quilted yellow needles.

  Stand beside this ancient ribbed sea

  that quenches its own thirst and try to

  bear our frail girth and rootless passage.

  Two well-hidden finches, shrill and upbeat,

  making sure of each other across dry hectares

  pierce the baked air. Are they near or far?

  One day’s niche in their dangerous trek,

  a thousand miles of awkward looping flight

  to seek out old haunts and new supplies.

  They leave behind an arctic, green sighing

  that sharpens the spirit as it wanders

  on muffled footfalls, aware of loss, waste

  what’s owed to itself and never paid.

  Will it stumble on some vista to measure

  all this living, dying drought and juice?

  Study muddled prints on a sandy track,

  trying to trace some left by one loved beyond

  bounds and time, her hand, voice and breath

  too palpably absent. So why should solace

  spring from one erect, sappy pine bud

  pushing itself, like all of us, light-wards?

  BETWEEN LIVES

  ‘One is always nearer by not keeping still.’

  Thom Gunn: On the Move

  Moor without peak or fold,

  untinged by low, steely sun,

  sole way north a track

  beaten into heather, then shivered

  rock climbing to crumbled pillars,

  entrance to rough-hewn bow bridge

  pitched over gorge, its deep-delved

  torrent a distant hissing ribbon.

  Eyes fixed ahead, scramble

  to its crown, and plunge down,

  loose stonework hurtling away

  to silent freefall. Pass broken arch

  and feel upland turf underfoot.

  Steep-raked birch woods simmer,

  their olive-lit under-carpet

  seethes with hue and cry of living.

  Loose-clothed in shifting shadows

  a rotund figure who might be

  hunter, butcher, cook or wrestler,

  cuts up a carcass, sculpting out

  joints and chops with delicate art,

  at one with his task and himself.

  Nearby in sheltered, green dell

  long, low thatched hut, walled

  in wood and wattle. Its doorway

  profiles a busy, slender woman

  coarse-gowned, raven hair tied aside,

  shimmering like breeze-blown foliage.

  What account would they take

  of some dusty, wandering drudge

  who combs a wilderness for days,

  chances a ruin to exchange

  his nowhere for somewhere else?

  FLIGHT

  1.

  A 747 oddly low for here.

  Caught in 8-mag monocular

  helpless floundering white belly

  puffs vapour scattered into crumbs,

  four engines pitched uncertainly

  between head for land or soar

  and chance it in empty air.

  Air-beached whale! Last

  of its species about to

  go extinct on touch-down.

  Who can be aboard? Look for

  portholed heads filled with

  endless blue or capsized green,

  each looking for more than is there.

  2.

  In forest dusk two Muntjak bolt with crackling thuds

  over coppiced litter, turn stealthy,

  flashing white arse from

  trunk to trunk,

  pause,

  pick up caught breath

  and crepitating shoulder,

  slip along thread-needle pine trail

  as the watcher cranes to sift hide from bark.

  3.

  In semi-darkness

  stiff breeze shakes tatters.

  Something amber dances in brambles.

  Maybe a stray tag for rough shoot lot, rented

  sliver of copse to stand all weathers and pick off

  overfed fowl panicked by beaters into air, their last resort.

  Fooled by a ragged balloon! Stretch its logo

  and read Malvern Scout Group, just one

  of jamboree helium-fuelled, bobbing

  flights from a hundred miles

  west of here, address tag

  for kind return


  still attached.

  RESORT

  I bus back to azure days of rock and sand

  when dark seas pummelled walled bays,

  children holidayed to bathe and dig,

  feasted on sandwiches, hadn’t learnt

  to spend or felt the fear of missing out.

  Alone up front on top I spot

  a purple smudge beyond rising hills

  that edge the sea in concave cliffs.

  A black tor’s wind turbine scythes

  my landscape with maddening blades.

  Tree-smacked the double-decker drops

  into sheer-sided valley as if I drive

  with abandon, lean into blind bends,

  thread bottlenecks towards a stone town

  that glints through thinning woods.

  As we buck and brake at lights or road-works

  I look up past fat-frying bars and gift shops

  at faded Victorian hotels with their portals,

  bay windows displaying well-spaced tables,

  tall bedrooms behind nets and draped curtains.

  I alight where strollers zig-zag up and down

  shorn slopes that end in fenced-off crags

  colonised by grunting, stiff-winged fulmar.

  Far below a paddle steamer waits

  to wallow out round long-deserted islands.

  Not much footage unwinds from this patchwork

  but here’s a sandy inlet of barnacled rock

  where we sat braced against wind and spray.

  Reading Bel Ami, I laughed at something flagrant.

  What’s up, Daddy? (Don’t Fathers know better?)

  BELONGING

  (For Cathy )

  I.

  We’re trimming stalks and husks

  in a strip-light sunset, earth

  sodden, moss-filmed, passive.

  Your fifth autumn. You sift

  my debris as if it’s treasure,

  neatly load the old barrow,

  ask if mosquitoes dance

  up and down spiders’ webs.

  A question I needn’t spoil thanks to

  rooks lolloping west to roost

  miles beyond our hedged horizon,

  in twos or threes, some silent,

  intent on return, some so gorged

  with croaking chatter they slew off

  course and swivel idly back.

  And wouldn’t you love to join them!

  If they were scissors, you say,

  there’d be holes in the sky.

  What’s it like to be a rook?

  “An ugly crow with pale face and beak.

  Some might call you farmer’s friend

  but who’d want to live or work

  near a woodful of yackers like you?”

  Easier said than what it might be like:

  caught at dusk without a perch,

  to drill at teeming fallow, mine for maggots,

  shriek into dawn quarrel, taste

  dry tongue as frost tightens.

  When you’ve flown elsewhere, I wonder,

  will you notice knots of black wings

  making for some distant comfort,

  and think of homing rooks and home?

  II.

  Your age again, I’m all weathers

  outside flint-rendered hotchpotch cottage

  near woods of towering beech and ash

  under rookery flight path, our bowed roof

  streaked white from its restless traffic.

  Look-outs cling to topmost twigs,

  welcome back wandering droves

  with all’s-well bark. The sound

  of permanence that makes it seem

  we’re planted deep in tree-lined shadows,

  though I long for roar and swell

  of thick-flocking autumnal spates

  when cackling jackdaws and shrill crows

  join the daily forage, return and squabble

  over where to ride out the night.

  *

  Above us now tail-enders mutter

  between wing beats, and I kneel

  to help you scrape up our cuttings,

  but I’m back among flattened bluebells,

  knees black with leaf-mould, to rescue

  fledglings flung from nests by gales

  before their first, haphazard flight.

  Never mind the blank stares and idiot squeals:

  they’re slop-fed in boxes by the coke boiler.

  Tossed into aerial trials they flounder,

  catch the knack, and never look back.

  MOUNTAIN SUNDOWN

  Low, lingering Norwegian sun

  throws a birch pattern

  over wood-clad room.

  Most ponder their roaming day,

  share it with postcards,

  scribbling well-used phrases

  that insist on being said,

  miss the moment’s fullness

  when hard, clean light scrubs

  crags and brittle crests of trees,

  and its slow dwindling unveils

  clefts, groins, fine-hatched crannies.

  And beyond it all I’m seeing

  one distant once-loved woman

  sigh before her mirror,

  expectant or listless about

  an evening out, testing herself

  against invasive light,

  trying to shun the moment’s weight.

  AFTER THE SINGING

  She lodged above a freezer shop.

  He stood below her on the first dark step

  beyond strip lights illuminating bargain buys.

  Their concert so long rehearsed

  with indifferent voices, was over.

  Where should they go next?

  Communal zest softened a broken past,

  weekly shelter, somewhere to rub shoulders.

  She shook and cried. He longed for her

  to turn to him, sensing but not seeing

  her morbid inwardness and taut temples.

  He needed to cherish a crumpled face.

  “I’ve been badly hurt. It ruins trust”,

  she said. “I’m the one who’s always hurt,”

  he said, feeling but not believing it.

  Months later caught in the snare

  of getting by and tired by devotion

  that hadn’t begun to heal her pain

  she caught him unawares, hit him,

  he felt, with what he’d said too easily,

  before they stumbled up those dark stairs.

  He traced the mean corners of her mouth,

  flinched from a fretful soprano full of rancour,

  and to hold his own, crassly declared:

  “So...Tempting fate is more than just a cliché.”

  She consulted her watch, looked away

  and said: “at least I’ve let you down gently.”

  THE ASSUMPTION

  ......this

  both the yeares and the dayes deep midnight is.

  ( John Donne: Nocturnal on St Lucies Day)

  I watch you

  file drudgery away

  on the night of the year’s least light.

  And I’m happy

  for your respite.

  Prospero’s staff is broken. Aerial-free you flit

  among cabinets, copiers, stationery.

  Do I walk with you

  in moon-clouded vault

  of the year’s midnight, or is it a trance?

  Every thought

  sways to a dance

  as you waver in your tiredness and take a chance

  with taunts and hints of affectionate sport.

  O we’ve talked,

  making every commonplace a comfort,

  unquiet encounters this night will now eclipse.

  Words cannot distort

  heartfelt release

  that says in no uncertain terms and not to please,

  being loved from head to toe’s your just desert.

 
But here’s the lamp

  where we are duty-bound to part

  and night unlighted summons me away

  to play another part

  wearing hours away,

  while you tread a straight, neatly-lighted way

  with measured shadows that leave an undivided heart.

  O the lamp inquires

  and headlights probe as we stand

  a pace apart in the year’s longest night,

  and there’s your hand

  limp and moon-white

  like a question posed: welcome or withstand

  this tender outbreak of long-restrained delight?

  We’re watchers

  at the year’s grave, benighted

  under lamp-tinged brooms of ash that sweep beyond us,

  your face uplifted,

  traffic-lit, curious,

  then snatched back, refusing to be sifted,

  your breath charged and held, unutterably serious.

  THE KISS

  Recalling Vienna’s Upper Belvedere

  I recap from Michelin and smile

  at how you’d prepared me for Klimt’s Kiss,

  dashing back up the hotel’s four floors

  for a postcard just to show me

  how tenderly the man’s hands rested.

  Yet when we’d thawed out

  from the Prince of Savoy’s walks,

  and stood before the original,

  my eye ran down each pattern of a coverlet

  that draped her, till I saw feet pointed

  limply at her lover as if to match

  her look of comfort and assent.

  ‘Yes: we neglect our feet,’ you said