Friday 9 March 2012

BURNT STRAW IN TEN ACRE

High on the hill slopes,

Red flames lick the entrails of dusk.

All I can hear is the crunching greed –

Of fire devouring stubble

And broken bales,

Wiping round the headlands

To find hawthorn just out of reach.

A thousand ghost-faced farm workers

Seem to haunt me,

A thousand patterns of flickering shadows.

You cannot imagine the intense and terrible awe,

The narrow divisions of horror and beauty.

It is to forget civilisation and urban norms,

It is to find elemental thrill.

THE GEESE

Unearthly and unannounced,

A gust of geese

Drove out of the December sky

To disappear behind the elm copse.

Neolithic, goose-honking dawn:

In that moment I stood speechless,

Spellbound utterly

By the mysterious omen,

The blinding Damascus-vision.

Then gone,

Quite sudden,

As if snatched back from a window.

I waited, but they never returned...

May their memory pulse through my veins

On every wild December dawn!

BEYOND FIRE AND ICE

The sky is a wreckage

In ponds,

With deadlines concussed:

Ice-packs of denial.

The unthinkable has become

Overriding thought.

How to suppress

My feelings of loss?

Candles would flicker

In musty cloisters,

Ice would melt

Under gossip of sun.

This scarp, then, these quarried wolds –

Indifference born of treachery.

Not to cry

Is not to hurt –

But hurt forever.

BEYOND SPEECH

Silence.

We gift it bread and wine.

It is the moment of understanding

Between two lovers.

Silence.

A valley unpolluted

By movement;

The quiet time after stories.

And the truest language

Mirrors silence,

Prepares for life.

And the truest silence

Follows confession,

Prepares for death.

Silence.

We bring it into the world,

We guard it in shadowy corners,

We hold it closer than our secrets.

And when we finally let go,

It becomes our companion.

LYRIC MOVEMENT

The wind roars through the pines

With the noise of a thousand express trains,

Roars through the pines

With an expression of brute force.

This is nature’s power.

But the wind is also gentle,

Also gentle and man-made,

Like the sighs that follow

A parting kiss.

END OF TERM

So it’s good-bye to Gosport,

To Solent and Lee,

Good-bye to Cowes, Isle of Wight

And the sea.

A trip down memory’s

The lane we all take,

And never regret our teenage mistakes.

Hampshire’s the grass

That’s greener than home,

The sand that’s honey,

Yet dry as a bone.

Hampshire’s the route

Of the woodland walk,

The secret dell

Of the lovers’ talk.

So it’s good-bye to Gosport,

To college and pie,

And sea the colour

Of blue-rinse sky.

Deep in the place

Of you and me,

Laughter’s as real

As the verb ‘to be’.

THE MISTLE-THRUSH

Above the noise,

Incessant noise,

Of dropping rain

And dripping leaves,

The mistle-thrush voices

Protest (fierce) against the

Storms, and sings freely into

The wind.

In times of stress and fear,

Of greater misfortune than today,

May I also have the courage, the courage,

To voice such forceful protest.

NATURAL MUSIC

Brahms would have understood –

This mellow foliage,

These autumn tints,

Berries turquoise, crimson,

Purple, pink,

The Golden Valley suffused

With October sunlight.

Clarinet Quintet Opus 115, no less;

Written for his declining years,

The ache of things past,

Things not achieved.

A kestrel puppet-dances

On invisible strings,

Drops deadweight

Across a short-lived vole:

This blood-let is for real.

But now the autumn day resumes;

Serenely wistful, recomposing late Brahms.

‘Da capo’ is what

The rooks appear to say;

‘Return to yesterday.’

BACKWARD GLANCE

Blighted by frost,

The half-hearty fuchsia

Deliquesces black.

And yet the day improves,

October oriole,

With the warmth conjuring

Summer.

By the shore,

Breakers unzip white,

And the wind intones

Reef Lecture

Across the bay.

For a moment,

And the eternity of

An afternoon,

We again find love,

Learn to take face value

As the whole truth –

Remembering yesterday

As only a memory away.

Thursday 8 March 2012

NOT AS IT SEEMS

Officially it’s spring –

A cloudy sky waterlogs

Towards the west,

Columns of drizzle

Compress into quagmire.

Officially it’s spring –

Yet a Stalinist breeze

Infiltrates from the Urals,

And bedraggled rooks seek out

Those last remaining elms

Of Gloucestershire.

Officially it’s spring –

Yet the blackthorn blossom is late,

And only coltsfoot

Bedeck the hedgerows,

Incorrigible yellows,

Wild as truant boys

Slipping into sight.

BUILDING SITE

My worst nightmares confirmed:

The valley yanked

Into bulldozer submission,

Trees torn out like

Redundant teeth,

Obsolete clouds hidden

By tower blocks,

Spiral of concrete enormity.

Next week,

I’ll walk in a new valley,

Where cowslips will be

Just cowslips,

Where elms will be

Just elms,

And the sun will merely

Shine...

And history will hurt

By its absence.

We need our living dead.

Wednesday 7 March 2012

ALDERTON’S ELM

They’ve felled the elm

That was my joy in summer calm

(If my dread in winter storm).

Now I profess little knowledge

Of aesthetics –

Still less of country planning.

Discussions of

Beauty I leave to academics,

Cost analysis to the clerk.

But this I do know;

They’ve felled the elm

That was my joy in summer calm

(If my dread in winter storm)...

And a familiar landmark

Hurts by its absence.

Tuesday 6 March 2012

LINES FOR MY MOTHER

Your breath was my first passion,

Your tom-tom pulse

The first rhythm I danced to.

I clung, longer than I knew,

To your umbilical love.

No fairy tale proved too grim

For your guardian-angel comfort.

And when the bedclothes

Failed to stave off nightmare,

You were always close at cuddle.

School would gong,

And clamour rough-and-playground tumble;

Spitfires would nose-dive out of sky,

Flatten towards airstrip zero.

You were always there for me.

Then later, when a tambourine

Ushered-in girls

And strange talk,

The dance began again,

Disquieting, desirable.

I chewed each nail in turn.

And now the insistent tom-tom

Of my own pulse

Draws me back to you,

As I seek approval

On this, my wedding day.

ZODIAC

Across the valley,

The woodland script is illuminated

By gold leaves;

Autumn at its most compelling.

But now twilight intervenes,

Chases goblins from the bushes,

And holy fools from the oaks.

Now it stealths along hedgerows,

Surfaces with the boundary ditch,

And enters my garden shed.

Still not content, this

Twilight coaxes Wagner out of radios,

And summons the shadows

From the hinterlands of lawn.

Now the page is closed,

The script forgotten.

Only stars are left,

Wide-eyed as children,

Corrupted by the Zodiac.

LAST VISIT

A sadness ghosts

The room;

Silence drags down

To paralysis.

Somewhere two corridors

Distant, a hoover

Nags away at dust,

Troubling our sanctified

Calm.

Worse still,

Another cleaner emerges

With feather-duster,

Attempting to purge

Recusant cobwebs.

The magpie on the lawn

Turns Gatling-cackle

Into dada shoot-out.

We return to silence,

Our only counter to guilt.

Shrive and housel,

And the semi-excuses

We use as reversal.

Not touching. Never touching.

But she has shrunk,

Turned her bed into cot,

Turned her face away,

And back to a

Frightened childhood.

ZODIAC

Across the valley,

The woodland script is illuminated

By gold leaves;

Autumn at its most compelling.

But now twilight intervenes,

Chases goblins from the bushes,

And holy fools from the oaks.

Now it stealths along hedgerows,

Surfaces with the boundary ditch,

And enters my garden shed.

Still not content, this

Twilight coaxes Wagner out of radios,

And summons the shadows

From the hinterlands of lawn.

Now the page is closed,

The script forgotten.

Only stars are left,

Wide-eyed as children,

Corrupted by the Zodiac.

LINES FOR MY MOTHER

Your breath was my first passion,

Your tom-tom pulse

The first rhythm I danced to.

I clung, longer than I knew,

To your umbilical love.

No fairy tale proved too grim

For your guardian-angel comfort.

And when the bedclothes

Failed to stave off nightmare,

You were always close at cuddle.

School would gong,

And clamour rough-and-playground tumble;

Spitfires would nose-dive out of sky,

Flatten towards airstrip zero.

You were always there for me.

Then later, when a tambourine

Ushered-in girls

And strange talk,

The dance began again,

Disquieting, desirable.

I chewed each nail in turn.

And now the insistent tom-tom

Of my own pulse

Draws me back to you,

As I seek approval

On this, my wedding day.

Monday 5 March 2012

PADRE PIO

To some,
He is just incarcerated
In his own silence,
A man aloof
And unapproachable.

To others,
The Word has glazed
His eyes,
And his face is serene
With understanding.

Saint or showman?

* * *

The young reporter
With too-much mascara
Needs copy,
Will telex faith
Into safer readership.

She does not see
The votive flame
Of his conviction;
She cannot hear
The below-decibel mumble
Of Credo.

* * *

His copy is inscribed
In the heart’s own Vulgate,
His sales pitch
Becomes the mystic’s conscience.

Through his wounded hands,
He takes on the guilt
Of a generation,
Draws suffering into his side.

(c) Michael Newman

THE ICE-MAN

Bequeathed by ice,

A face younger than yesterday,
Older than five thousand years.

Trapped by unexpected snow,

The hunter-gatherer
Became fugitive,
Seeking an impossible way back
By routes unfamiliar
And yet all too familiar.

His foes: sleep and fear.

Fingers ice-lumped,
Eyes pinched out.
No mountain guide,
No base camp cheer.

Ambered in glacier,

He is imago,
History’s prize specimen.

* * *

Yet when they raise

His body,
They lay-on hands,
As if in ritual.

Who would deny this man,

This contemporary of Adam,
A taste of the divine,
Though his gods were elemental,
And not of risen flesh?

(c) Michael Newman

THE LORD'S SUPPER

There was no shining light,

No conversion outside Damascus.
I took up the elements as normal,
Watched the priest perform the blessing,
And then returned to my pew.

At what point prayer took over
I cannot answer.
There were no tongues of fire.

Yet later, at the Communion rail,
I felt risen in my putrefied flesh.
All that had been Void
Was filled with radiance:

Loving God, I could love others.

(c) Michael Newman

DESTINATION WALES

They come, visitors
From Tardebigge and Dagtail End,
From Sambourne and Headless Cross,
Escapees for the week,
Middle England migrating to Mid-Wales –
A murmuration of camper vans
And glue-pot jalopies inescapable,
People watching people watching people.

What they find could never be replicated
In England’s pastoral dells:
White horses stampeding
Onto Borth Beach,
Frothing across pebbles;
Cader Idris scanning disbelief
To eclipse the sky;
Red kites soaring in the wide-brimmed sunset.

Of course the lager’s just the same,

And petrol costs as much,
And hills are just as leg-heavy.
But there is a magic
That may not be denied.

Saturday becomes Monday,
Tuesday slips into Thursday,
And all too soon the farewells.
Sad tears flow with the Severn
All the way back to the Midlands.

Once, a fragment of Paradise
Broke away,
And splashed down to form
The Dyfi Estuary:
And God decided to leave it
In place.

(c) Michael Newman

WINTER PRELUDE

I wake to

A talcum dusting of snow;

Shards of ice designate puddles.

There are no disruptive voices,

No tractors to snarl and prowl

The single-track lanes.

Morning turns to afternoon.

Same clouds, same gloom –
And into dusk.
Until the skies relent.

I watch as

Crows stack flight
Above the horseless paddock,
And a wagtail maps out
The course of an oxbow.
Nothing else moves.

It is so quiet

I can hear the pulse of the stars.

A SENSE OF LOSS

She prunes autumn from the shrubs,

Makes of it an uncertain geometry,
And a pile of bonfire brash.
Now earth-brown replaces stem-green,
And the garden takes on austere beauty.
Flutes and violins may do for summer,
But here oboe and viola
Set the tone.

Trees seem elaborate cages now
To trap the reluctant sun;
While the last wasps creep dangerously
Among fallen fruit.
I can sense warnings,
Hear the below-decibel buzzing.

Berry-bunches on the cluttered hedgerow
Lighten our November darkness;
This month of topaz and fireworks
And troubled moons.

With the wind turning arctic,

Shadows move in muffled coats;
Disembodied voices chant football slogans,
And the first frost orchestrates
Rhapsody in White.

(c) Michael Newman

COLLISION COURSE

We dip its beak in water,

Bring it back to flesh and feather.
Mercifully, the neck is not broken.

One bird, newly fledged,

And beyond parental control,
Flying smack into cruel glass.

٭ ٭ ٭

I would have left things at that,
Content to have played a merciful God
In front of my younger children.
But then you take a pot-shot
With your airgun,
And only by luck, miss.

As you battle with the dark side,

And rid your teens of humour,
There is no therapeutic water dip;
Nor do gentle giants, eyes agog,
Will you into fairy-tale flight.

Between needle and black-out,

You flicker on the edge of humanity,
And watch me die.

(c) Michael Newman

REMEMBRANCE

The day my father died

You sought to embrace me,

But I pushed you away

As though something unclean

Had passed between us.

There was no grey

To the all-alone sky,

Just a loud blue

That commanded

Unnatural happiness.

I looked to the hills,
But they were broken-backed,
And could not be retuned.

The day my father died
Your hurt eyes spoke
Across the null-and-void,
But I had nothing left to give.

The teacups tinkled
With mindless laughter,
And the eyes of the clock
Were countersunk:

We passed a silent evening,
Shrieking with unspoken words.

Michael Newman

LOVE LETTER

We don’t do platonic,

You and I –

Were always meant to be lovers.

And if I love you for a day,

All the world’s sonnets will flicker

Across my brain,

Set up strobe lighting.

I shall be sectioned for reciting Spenser

In the supermarket.

And if I love you for a month,

A long far holiday month,

Then every candle will be gutted

In every public place,

Unable to cope with the hurricane

Of our passion.

We don’t do platonic,

You and I –

Lovers for a circle of suns

And a cycle of seasons.

Yes, the eternity of a year.

I will have learnt your ways

By then,

How your eyes say yes

When your lips do not move,
How your fingers play Chopin
Across my soul.

It will be like tongues of fire
Where the only language is silence.

(c) Michael Newman