POEMS | ||||
The White Silhouette
From The White Silhouette
‘There went a whisper round the decks one morning, “We have
a mysterious passenger on board.” … Often I thought of that rumour after
we reached Jerusalem … When I
saw the man all in white by the Golden Gate carrying in all weathers his
lighted lamp, I always thought, “There is a mysterious pilgrim in
Jerusalem.”’
Stephen Graham, from
With The Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem (1913)
I thought we would meet in a holy place
Like the church in the hamlet of
Bishopstone
Empty on a Wiltshire summer’s day
The trees full of rooks and hung in green
And the stream in the meadows a rush
Of darkling silver beneath the bridge
Where I saw my first kingfisher flash
Its needle, leaving its turquoise stitch
In my memory. And I would sit
In the church and close my eyes
And wait in vain for something to ignite,
And wonder whether this was my life
Wasting away in my mother’s home.
Sometimes I’d bring Herbert’s Temple
And read the quiet order of his poems
And picture him, as once he was glimpsed,
Hugging the floor in his church at
Bemerton
Asking love to bid him welcome.
I sat with an upright praying disposition
Preoccupied in self-combing
Too callow and spiritually impatient
To notice if you had slipped in
As a tourist to inspect the choir or font
And buy a picture postcard and sign
The book with ‘lovely atmosphere’;
Or as a walker taking refuge from rain
Or a woman primping flowers by the altar …
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from
Angels and Harvesters
As thoughts arrive
From god knows where,
Or sun breaks through
A fraying cloud
Emboldening a patch
Of trees, or grass,
They just appeared
From nowhere
Among the harvesters
The field a world
Of cutting, gathering,
Cutting, gathering.
Their outlines sometimes
Flickering brighter,
They walked between
The bending figures
Curious
Pausing to watch,
Like ancestors
Almost remembering
The world they’d left,
Or foreigners
Amused to see
The same things done.
They moved around
Unseen by all –
Unless one glimpsed,
Perhaps, light thicken,
A glassy movement,
As air can wobble
On summer days.
And then they went
Walked into nothing
Just left the world
Without ceremony
Unless it was
The swish of scythes
The swish of scythes
(To hear James read this poem on the UCD Poetry Archive, click
here)
---------------------------------------------
from The Dark Age
When you see the Dragon above the dormitory
And Orion poised above the chapel roof
Prepare yourself to sound the bell.’
Darkness freezes round me in the cloister.
The vellum words and stars inflict their patterns
Whispering like the ceaseless prayers we send to God.
No one must lie asleep who must protect the world.
‘On the festival of Saint Germanus
Look for the jewel of the Archer’s arrow
Hanging above the middle of the tower:
That is when to start the night-time hymns.’
The stars are our seasons, the keys of our prison:
Winter snowfall, glittery scatterings of spring rain
The globes of poppies in the harvest fields
The dying meteors of copper beech, oak and elder.
‘On the day of the Lord’s circumcision
When the bright star in the knee of Artophilax
Is level with the corner of the dormitory
It is time to bring the taper to the lamps.’
The thrill of live flame! A writhing spirit,
The chapel like a soul skinned with gold.
This is the light I seek beyond the constellations;
O lux aeterna, burn off my crusted life!
‘On the feast of our beloved Saint Agnes
When you see the Virgin’s spears rising clear
Above the space between the sixth and seventh windows
Make ready for the sacred office.’
I dread nights of fog, mist, vapours, cloud
The clinging absence, the separation from God.
Lord, how long before a star expands inside me
Flooding my soul and flesh with gracious light?
‘On the feast day of Saint Clement
Orion will rise above the end of the refectory –
But wait until you see the sword and scabbard
Before you wake the brethren.’
So many nights I have waited before eternity
Listening for music, looking for meaning,
But all I’ve felt is the dark between the stars, my heart
Beating, like a bell, the phrases of mortality.
(To hear James read this poem on the UCD Poetry Archive, click
here)
---------------------------------------------
Kevin and the Blackbird
from
The Dark Age
I never looked, but felt the spiky feet
Prickling my outstretched hand. I braced my bones,
My heart glowed from the settling feathered heat
Heavy, as smooth and round as river-rolled stones,
Warm as the sun that eased my back and legs.
Of wings, the sudden space, the cool air flow
Across my fingers, I did not know the test
Had just begun – I could not bend my arms
But stood there stiff, as helpless as a scarecrow,
Another prayer hatching in my palms –
Love pinned me fast, and I could not resist:
Her ghostly nails were driven through each wrist.
-------------------------------------------
Cranborne Woods (17 May 1994)
from Oracle Bones
(For my mother)
We stopped the car, ducked below the fence
Felt time unravelling in a revelation
The seconds fall and scatter into thousands
Of tiny saints, a reborn multitude
Flowing past the trees, through pools of sun,
Each earthly form a spirit flame, pure blue.
They watched us drift among them, large as gods,
As if we’d come as part of their parousia
To stay with them forever in these woods.
As time grew darker we slipped away like ghosts
And slowly drove … towards your death next May
When once again I saw the risen host
Could watch you walking weightlessly among
The welcomers, the gently swaying throng.
(To hear James read this poem on the UCD Poetry Archive, click
here)
-------------------------------
from The Monk’s Dream Tugging apart the curtains every
day He always saw, three stories up,
a grand Sweep of the Thames, the trees of
Battersea And, squatting there, the
Japanese pagoda – Inflaming, a parody of a
bandstand, Its four sides flaunting a golden
Buddha. It glowed like a lantern near the
glitzy braid Of Albert Bridge at night.
If he had crossed The river he might have heard Renounce
the world Escape the gilded lips or seen
Gautama lying In mortal sleep, his face
relaxed, his flesh released; Even in death, teaching the art
of dying. At night, across the river two
golden eyes burn Into the heavy velvet of the
curtain.
To hear James read this poem, part of the sequence, ‘The Frame of
Furnace Light’, on the UCD Poetry Archive, click
here)
--------------------------------------------
A Vision of Comets
from A Vision of Comets
The flight was delayed.
Outside, the night sky was clear,
And the land that had received the sun all day
Now slept in silence.
It could have been a Greek island
Or the new land of America.
He was returning home, for good, or for bad,
And the welter of accumulated memories
And friendships loomed up from the pit
Of his stomach in sudden queasy waves.
Time tickled on and passengers sat in rows
Under the flickerings of neon
Slowly numbing themselves to the worry
Of wondering when the flight would flash up.
Eventually, sunk in the midst of
Painful feelings of regret and loss,
A sense of peace overtook him,
An inner inexplicable assurance
That his journey home was right.
He felt suddenly at ease and, turning round,
Saw people rising as one from their seats,
Quickly assembling their luggage and moving
Towards the gate for their departure.
He went back against the flow to find his bags
And say goodbye to those who had been his intimates.
Strangely, as he approached the place he’d been,
He saw what seemed to be starry darkness –
As if the wall had melted away –
And people vanishing into the fringe of his eyes.
He somehow knew the young man who stood there.
It must have been outside for the darkness
Stretched all around sealing the horizons.
He approached the man, who pointed to the sky,
And there, igniting the dark in golden sprays,
Eight glowing comets moved softly through the night,
Slowly rising, turning, dipping, gliding
Like gilded dolphins hooping through the ocean blue.
Their tails, from which auras of sparkle
Would fizz and fade, were interwoven and moving
As if guided by an intelligence,
As if the comets were on the kite strings controlled
By this young man as he moved his hands.
Then the comets began dissolving –
Yet their particles realigned and coalesced
Into luminous strokes with dots and squiggles –
And he realised they were giant words of Hebrew,
That they were telling him what his purpose was,
What his mission was on earth.
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