Beneath the prosperous turf,
The earth eased itself against the stones.
And the sinking drag of local clay,
Was familiar under your spade.
And the spade too, familiar -
Wood-shafted and green-handled.
A decade in the gravel,
Had left the blade hammertone.
What strange ceremonies,
Go on in the Revel wood?
I saw roots there, uncovered,
From beneath the heathen earth,
In the slewing, evening rain.
And from the path,
Along the brook’s broached bank,
I read swirls in the umber water,
Punctuated by pigeon stones,
Upright and fast in the stream.
And there was I, curtailed,
In the shade on the hillside,
Where the rope swing swung,
And the bare bruised earth,
Was carved out below.
From a hedgerow along Doles lane,
I heard the sickening crack of the rice gun.
And went, pursued, into the dense corn,
My feet dragging,
Heavy and terrible in the mud.
Soon I came back on myself.
After lying still, in the pea field,
I traipsed the old Roman road.
And saw the fingers of my village,
Reaching out to Pinchmill.
That week, Michael drowned in the silo.
What terror that bred.
Catching sight of the farm,
And imagining Michael,
Dry-drowning in the grain.
In St Mary’s, I stood out,
Awkward and cantilevered,
Foreign in the pews and never christened -
My father’s umbrage with the vicar
On the matter of original sin
When I was older,
I camped on the sledge field.
A black and a sleepless night,
Shot through with terror,
So close to the Revel wood.
Old greening fences,
Stood up, a life ago.
Tumbling down and broken,
Along shaded garden-backs.
Pressing the high, thorny edges,
of the railway cut.
Bleached bridal blossom,
Pinned ivory in the Hawthorne.
New branches scratching sky,
And old roots clutching earth.
All this, out of sight,
Down in the sidings.
Rubble piled abundant,
Bricks stacked on bricks,
And broken earth-machines,
Dry grass and telegraph poles,
Pipes, gravel and sleepers.
And then a blaze of yellow Rape
In Memoriam Cecil Darling
I saw you in your hospital bed
Bloody faced and propped
Defiant but embarrassed
The proudest man I’ve known.
We would go everywhere -
Your giant hand holding mine
You came to me on Tuesdays
Ham and piccalilli on floury bread.
You could never be hurt
Invincible in your garden
Tending your strong spring onions
And greenhouse tomatoes
And at your bedside,
On Vickers ward,
I was counting the Tuesdays
That we might have left
What a celebration,
When she died.
You were raucous,
and unapologetic.
Like you promised.
In the red brick streets,
Between back to back houses.
Looking over the fields,
Where the pit sunk.
And you cut coal underground.
And later hurled bricks skywards,
From the Hail Mary treeline.
Your lungs bursting,
As you outran the horses.
The half winding wheel -
Now the grave of the Main.
And deep, capped shafts,
Beneath new, cheap houses.
All that’s left now of ‘84,
Is just old men,
And cheap beer in the club
No one blamed you,
Or the others -
bad chested and bent,
From stooping in the dark.
What a celebration!
You were healed for the day
When she died.
We were cold in the pool shed
Hands gripping the wooden edge
Legs driven out and in again
Like a frog machine
Our ankles swung apart
And met again, bone on bone
Chlorine thickened the air
And the wet duckboards
Around the low tank
Felt like Flanders
To our daunted feet.
I felt you first,
in my shoulder.
Tight, in there,
like a gun.
I felt you,
In the cold.
Coming on
too strong.
I thought there’d be
more winters.
More time
to be young.
You came in like I hope to go out -
Not on your knees but fighting,
With lungs full of air.
I knew you immediately.
You couldn't best your mother,
Although you tried.
In the crimson pool,
she was magnificent.
Bringing you in.
Giving you life.
Giving us both more,
Than she ever had.
And then I held you.
Skin on skin.
Eyes on eyes.
A sudden and certain bond.
A north wind blowing.
Its laboured, persistent breath,
Chasing out the dawn,
From the trusting, ancient wood.
I went on in half-light then,
With my precise companion.
The rain festooned the trees.
And every inch of land
Revealed itself to me.
Shedding its morning shroud.
Becoming more intimately known -
Surrendering to the charge.
Failing frames collapsed.
I turned my shoulder to the wheel.
The turf below was a pedal.
The earth below that, a gear.
Our footsteps in facsimile now,
To be remembered in the dirt.
On the broken, Roman path,
Cold metal pressed on flesh.
The loaded, aching springs,
Desperate to break free,
Remained tight and still.
In spite of everything.
The mist laid a town,
Three-hundred chimneys wide,
Out, like the last length
To ever fall from the loom,
And I stood over it, weeping.
Mourning its mechanical memory.
I trailed the river,
Down the slope of tumbling hills,
Through the drowning channels,
Carving careless in the earth.
That soft-rich water -
Seeping into life.
In the sodden valley
Headed by death’s door sheep.
I went on, to the foot
Of magnificent, ancient hill.
Entombed within it
Lay an unburdened secret.
I could have retreated,
Along the blind-brick causeway.
But I saw weak lamplight
In a high, dirty window.
Casting tortured shadows,
Across immaculate labour.
That reassuring returning dream,
Of old ways and old toil.
Of worn hands on worn metal.
Proving this place forever,
Seat and throne.
Castle and kingdom.
Across the Blue Man's Bower Where a great house once stood By a dammed ochre stream Where my father and uncle swam In sixty-six or seven. Near the flooded field Navigated by red pontoons Where a horse would almost drown Forty years from then. I saw her, neck deep in water, Veiled below the surface, In the crook of the stream willow, Her tender feet disturbing silt. And over the Barfield, Where I first fired a gun And was myself missed By an errant, drifting shot - By just turning into the wind. In the wild hawthorn hedges, I heard the torment of the thrush And felt the nettle’s sudden sear On my young and wandering calf. I saw tortured, matted rushes Blinding the bank’s brisk edge, And the strange switchback bend Leading up to the quarry head, Left overgrown and overlooked. The long line of the gun, Its weight on my shoulder’s slope, And the rot-sweet scent of rain Stirred an inherited memory, Until now kept hidden. As I passed beneath the railway, Alongside the water works And saw white smoke rising From the Old Flatts furnace. I crossed the half-moon bridge, Over fine minnows and broad bullheads. I passed the rusted circle sluice That was terrifying to me then, And near a frigate-grey pylon, Humming in the damp, rigid air, I found the horse-shoe river - Stagnant and strangled, And cut off from its kin.
A quarrel, between grass and gorse, At the edge of an emaciated wood. What does the land know? A dead lake rising up on a wasted field. That pungent water, its surface suddenly broken. The scorched circle where a fire once licked. Torn clothes in the tree. A boot forgotten - Or abandoned in retreat. The earth there, stained with memory, Where deep roots go undisturbed. I saw a figure against the sky. A watcher on the crest of the earthen wave. He was there and gone again. A shepherd fearing for his flock? Or more likely fear itself, rational and cold. And I frightened a bird in the long grass. Out of the undertow it flew, alarmed. The gate I had taken led nowhere. Just more withering, wasting ways, to find myself lost on the hill. An old camp below the graves. Like Victorian stones, piled in. Half collapsed and all askew. Those broken, aching teeth, inside an open and waiting mouth. I won’t return to the hill. I have seen it all and sensed the dread. At a certain pitch, along a certain path, I have seen time collapse, Into the crumbling, hateful earth.