Separation

(from The Examined Life)

It s like a Sunday outing to the Downs

a batsman strolling out on Shamley Green

as if he thinks the summer has no end;

but then the road begins to twist like a gut

and the last bend flips us into autumn

across a ridge the school stretches the sunset

like the Thin Red Line at Balaclava.

We drive in silence through the iron gates

and park, get out, as calm as undertakers.

I can t believe the journey s at an end

but just starting. A bell rings like fate.

We stand, talk like friends of friends

then Dad recites the pep talk he s rehearsed;

my ears can hardly bear each kindly phrase,

my eyes are turning to my bedroom posters,

and I wonder what my mum is doing now

shelling peas while watching Songs of Praise?

I get a hug from Dad and watch him go;

he drives off with a grin that s not his own

and takes my childhood home.

Silence

4 December, 2024 (from A Hidden Silence)

You'd better stay alive till I return

In two weeks' time. Or else I'll haunt you!

She laughed, re-shrinking to the bones

Her flesh had papered smooth.

The fortnight felt as long as summer:

I watched the flicker of an eyelash, and dropped

Sweet whisperings in her ear –

Impromptu babble, malaprop.

A change of rhythm, shortening breath,

A gurgle, as from a sink – I called the nurse

Who looked at me, and nodded. Death

Was still unsayable; she took her pulse

Then left me – guardian of that gentle smile –

To place my hand above her wisps of hair

As if it were a baby’s fontanelle.

Lost for words I said the Lord’s Prayer

My breath increasing

As hers grew sparser, intervals

Of silence growing in between us.

Afterwards

For twenty minutes I beheld her corpse –

O little sea horse washed up on a sheet! –

The slits of whites of eyes – a glimpse

Of how life loses colour, irreverently.

A nurse dressed up in red to be an elf

(A different Christmas costume every day) –

Looked in and signalled ‘Tea?’, and went.

The silence hadn’t come: I had to wait

Next morning when I fetched her things,

The bed now smooth, neatly made.

I packed her glasses, watch and ring

And drove back through the rain

The wipers clearing tears at source

But not the thought that at the last

The only words are silence; and with that thought

The silence came to pass.

Tryst

At Trinity Bridge, 9 October 1977
(from The Magic Theatre)

The clocks are striking eight around the town.

Willing her silhouette to get here soon ...

I mutter my lines – like Jacques’ lover

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrows’. A shiver

Creeps in my scarf and down my jumper

Each minute till eight-thirty, forty-five, and nine.

But I have visualised our brief encounter

So intensely – that when I cross the bridge

To go back to my digs, resigned,

I pass our doppelgängers as they watch

The river, and quiver at my fleeting ghost

To whom they owe their moment of existence.

The Gospel of Gargoyle

(from The Gospel of Gargoyle)

Blessed are the rooftops

    for they bear the weight of gargoyles.

Blessed are the gutters

    for they are the rivers of Gargoyle.

Blessed are the poets who believe;

    Gargoyle shall be their friend.

Blessed is the moonless night

    for it hides the plotted path to heaven.

Blessed is the wind

    for it blows chances across the way.

Blessed is the chimney smoke

    for it is the incense of the earth.

Blessed are the dogs that roam

    for they are the preachers of Gargoyle.

Blessed are the ugly

    for they shall remain ugly.

For in the world of Gargoyle

    there is no ugliness or beauty.

All are equal under the stars.

Nostos

(from the Oratory of Light, after the Irish)

Lord, in dream I cross

The vast grey ocean

Rolling through waves and troughs

To sweetest Ireland.

And as my boat arrives

The seagulls scream

Their welcome in the skies,

Rejoicing that I m home.

Gliding on Lough Foyle

With swans to serenade me

At last I find my soul

On Mount Binevenagh.

By the abbey of Durrow

The elms are whispering

And in the startle of a flurry

A blackbird sings.

At dawn in Ross Grencha

I hear the stags; and cuckoos

At the tremble of summer

Blow echoes through the woods.

The Journey East

(Winter 2010)
(from The White Silhouette)

The car revving up, the three of us

wiping mist away to find a whiter world.

Black-ice to Clonakilty

cortege of cars behind a spectral hearse.

Strings of lights in Bandon, sapphire-cold,

and the stars are moving through the river.

On Cork s Victorian viaduct, a train made of snow.

We steam below the River Lee.

Cork city crusts behind us;

three swans on Slatty Water; feathery ice.

The sun s last x-ray radiates the trees.

Lights turn red in Castlemartyr.

Diesel-slush road. Across the Blackwater

Waterford has drifted white.

Inching mile by mile through Iceland? Greenland?

Wexford, another country.

Dungarvan s glittery square:

each shop an advent calendar window.

Beyond the Suir bridge the dark returns

but angels are alighting on New Ross.

Rosslare night; chalet on a ghostly estate.

Sound of wind in chimney.

Dawn ferry, sudden vibrations

propellers churn the sea to snow.

The swell-swing up and down and up

O let the voyage finish now, and grant us solid earth.

From Pembroke Wales unfolds in white;

a postbox in a wall, red as a berry.

Below the Severn bridge

water turned to bone!

The Somerset Levels, crisp and even;

the motorway accelerates the dark.

The night re-icing the Yeovil road

not now, not now we re nearly there.

Cattistock lumped with snow;

wood incense, curtains edged with gold.

A house on Duck Street:

an outdoor light a star that s stopped overhead.

Angels and Harvesters

(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

The Monastic Star-timetable

(from The Dark Age) 

On the holy night of Christmas

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 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 scrabbard

Before you wake the brethren.

So many nights I ve waited for 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.

Cranborne Woods (17 May, 1994)

For my mother
(from Oracle Bones)

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.

Corn Circle

(from The Frame of Furnace Light , in The Monk s Dream)

For my father

It was the third day after he was dead

His body yet to be consigned to fire

We were marooned in limbo, as becalmed

As the endless days of summer rolling by

Turning to ash the surface soils of Wiltshire

And shrinking the chalk streams of our valley.

That evening we stood on Pepperbox Hill

Gazing at fields embalmed in golden heat

And there, as if cut from the corn, a circle.

We walked down and picked our way through rows

Towards the solar disc burning in the wheat

And crossed the threshold of the temenos

Entering the benediction of the stasis

The heart of the sun, whirling, motionless.

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 ticked 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.

But as he made his way to where he d been

He saw what seemed to be starry darkness

As if the wall had melted away

And people vanishing into the fringes of his eyes.

He somehow knew the young man who stood there.

It must have been outside for the darkness

Stretched 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 a sea of 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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