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Lament for the Day Hospital     Silent in Pond Street

The Early Poems       Death and the Maiden

 		    
 

 

 

LAMENT FOR THE DAY HOSPITAL  

 

          for George Platts

 

 

                             PART 1

 

1

As though as mute I have existed for

Almost a year, hardly daring to breathe

For the weight of my fear, everything known

Founders under the full hurtling force of

The planetary morning as I trawl

The far vestiges of a life ajar.

Rain softly flows through the hollows of May,

Through the storm-laden leafhold and the strung

Steep shadows, my foothold loosens, the words

For the end no longer seem to matter

Anymore. Here fairground horses cantered

And are motionless now, the revellers

Are loitering in silence or in vain,

Nothing is near, the earth’s depths seep with rain.

 

31st May 2007

 

 

2

          for Andrew Way

 

I met a brute last night at the Royal

Free and I let the marauder in while

Hesitantly, suddenly, offering

Apologies for protesting outside

The Free, while emphasising loyalty

To the liver ward for simply saving

Me. Casually he cut in, at his

Ease completely and like a heat-seeking

Missile locked on target the words went in.

It is my job to keep the hospital

Tidy and the placards look like litter.

Ingenuously I countered, ‘Litter?’

Recoiling from the turmoil within me,

The litter is what’s on them at the Free.

 

11th June 2007

 

 

3

           for Colin Plant

 

‘It’s a done deal,’ it’s already happened

And there is nothing anyone can do,

We have been abandoned in the heart of

Camden with only the unceasing sound

Of the knock on a door to remind us

That it was always too late. Yet Margaret’s

Shadow falls forever over the Trust,

Turned away with nowhere to go she lay

In her home and quietly waited to

Be rescued, mutely pleading for the bed

She so needed. The Crisis Team came as

Expected and they left her to her fate.

How will the words make it through to the end?

There is nothing left on which to depend.

 

21st June 2007

 

 

4

           for Wendy Wallace

 

As if by chance the day hospital has

Survived, just there on the verge of closure

For almost six years. Back then, protest and

A hunger strike would bring an unforeseen

And precipitant dismantling of art

Therapy to an end. Many have passed

Through the door of ‘Fordwych’ and yet have been

Returned to themselves and others with the

Knowledge of its refuge, sure harbourage

From a world even more savage than then.

The mute voices of the age, we are the

Marginal and the dispossessed, remnants

With a future that cannot be managed

And a closure that cannot be assuaged.

 

29th June 2007

 

 

5

           for Katie Clayton

 

The placards have a voice of their own now,

They exist in the darkness at the heart

Of light, signalling intermittently

From the far periphery of life, from

A region where souls no longer matter

Anymore, a place where fifties neon

Flickered through the industrial distance,

The silent alphabet of my first years.

Nothing is near, even language and its

Infinity has lost its meaning for

Me now, the endless journey in pursuit

Of the asphodel has failed and this loss

Is as nothing, mutely we stand on the

Banks of Lethe, you cannot help me now.

 

28th – 30th July 2007

 

 

6

           for John Carrier

 

No one is near and too soon there will be

Nothing left, an atrocious dumbing down

Is taking place, here in Camden each and

Every one of the four Day Hospitals

Left are casually and stealthily

Being dismantled every single day.

The recovery centres in the wake

Of their trace invite us to a room with

Surround sound and a décor about to

Be decided, a consolation prize

For the future’s favoured few. Everything

That matters will be run down, therapy

Gunned down, while the Trust’s dating agency

Burgeons foremost over art therapy.

 

30th July 2007

 

 

7

           for David Taylor

 

These dysfunctional red necked men hold our

Future in their hands, their words are weighted

In the balance with Truth, reality

Is awry, language but a residue

Flung to the margin from the spin of things

Beyond imagining. They lie and they

Deny and we are left to their silence

While we die in our homes or on the streets

Of Camden, this is England and it is

Happening everyday, and even as

We stand by just as a crowd looking in,

Margaret is silently saying goodbye.

The dismantling is meant to overwhelm

But there is no one standing at the helm.

 

31st July 2007

 

 

8

           for Camden Council

 

Mary lies interred in St Pancras Church

Yard, wife of William Godwin, Mary

Wollstonecraft with nothing left to live for,

Mutely threw herself into the Thames and

Was saved from an even earlier death

By an anonymous passer-by. The

Author of A Vindication of the

Rights of Women, you were only thirty

Eight when you died, igniting a brief flame

Still inextinguishable three hundred

Years on. A stone in the same cemetery

Laid in the sixties by Camden Council

Commemorates the Sharpville Massacre,

Jamestown echoes now without an answer.

 

3rd August 2007 

 

 

9

           for the day hospital patients

 

The managers are honourable men

They have allowed the protest to be heard,

George seemed almost flattered by his placard

When he chanced to pass by, but even he

Would have baulked at downright incitation

Of the vulnerable and the ill who,

With no way out, launched an assault only

On themselves and the freedom to say no.

Unequivocal I stand, yet for some

Things I am prepared to lay down my life,

For Margaret left alone, left to die in

Vain, fearing life more than she feared herself,

Making known the imponderable rage

Of Caliban before his own image.

 

2nd September 2007

 

 

10

           for the Trust Board

 

That it has come to this, where in the name

Of heaven are the fugitive and the

Lost, for we turn and turn about in the

Shadows, in the city’s first momentum,

The walls of an unlit maze, a dream’s low

Diurnal echo in the darkness of

The day. While at the stroke of a downturned

Finger as dominoes we lay, felled in

The mortal turmoil of our disarray,

The stars are beyond our counting, they are

Left to fall away, nothing is here and

Dismantled is the last stay of the end.

As prisoners left and as though condemned,

Abandoned with no one there to contend.

 

5th September 2007

 

 

11

           for the Primary Care Trust

 

In the name of hell they cower on the

Streets of Camden, afraid only of the

Moment and what it will bring, while eking

Out a life on the most exposed pavement

In London where murder is random and

Routine, and the wail of the marginal

And the dispossessed founders in the wake

Of its own echo signalling unheard

Across the fathoms near the Finchley Road

Station. Hosed-down, the pavement artists sprawl

Against the wall, their last stand effaced as

Their ‘graffiti’ by Camden council. As

A ship going down in its final list,

Shadows on the sidewalk, lost in our midst

 

23rd September 2007

 

 

12

           for Dave Lee

 

And if I should cry out, who in Hampstead

Would hear me and yet I write as one with

Them, adhering to the ‘Great Tradition’,

While deep inside I am as one screaming.

In the miasma of insomnia

And the hollows beyond dreaming I wait

Without knowing where I am going, right

To the end, a subjugated language

Left to the mercy and the whim of the

Moment, ‘where shadows move as they must for

The light darts until it dies’. Nothing has

Altered and the interval is as dust

Already, the sonnets are seen as though

‘Graffiti’ peeling from its own shadow.

 

26th September 2007

 

 

13

           for Camden Mental Health Consortium

 

You who could have done so much chose to do

Nothing, telling us all instead to let

The closures come, you were the patient choice

And the only chance we had, yet you took

Away our voice before it was even

Born. For you are the truly culpable,

The dyed in the wool, I’m alright Jack berthed

In the town hall, too busy for the last

Phone call, feathering your nest while the rest

Of us go to the wall. You hijack hope

Itself, holding it to ransom to the

Lowest bidder, subdued like an errant

Runaway slave left manacled in the

Market place or on the banks of Lethe.

 

7th October 2007

 

 

14

           for Stephen Conroy

 

Make way for the bad guy, there’s a bad guy

Coming through, a used-car salesman, that’s what

They call you, but in the unseen depths of

The PCT and the low sea mist of

The Trust, in that Bermuda Triangle,

With the Health Authority looking on,

It is us going down with all souls on

Board, not you. And you will know them by their

Actions, a gung-ho gang of five, hell-bent

On preventing us from staying alive,

For the casual atrocity bring

On Conroy and yet, armed only with our

Own shadows and the last analysis

Of existence, we are your nemesis.

 

7th October 2007

 

 

15

           for Rob Larkman

 

Have you any idea what it’s like

To be left to live in fear of you, while

Each day breaks into what is to come, for

Your ranks are arranged around us, amassed

Against the future, in a hand to hand

Fight with time. We are the expendable,

The nameless and the proscribed, numbers to

Be swept away or left on the highway,

Clinging to the margin of things to come.

Why can no one hear our cry or our mute

Entreaty as we wander to and fro,

With night coming on and nowhere to go,

Beyond reach or rescue, left to stand by

While we watch each other needlessly die.

 

7th October 2007

 

 

16

           for Rebecca Harrington

 

I was there when you stifled the life of

Jamestown and it was your hand that dealt the

Fatal blow, while the rest of the council

Sat in thrall seemingly mesmerised by

Your drawl ‘Care is not for life’. Until then,

No one in Camden had so far stooped so

Low, we had come to the end of care as

We knew it and there was no turning back.

Margaret was a routine casualty,

Just another name in an undreamed of

Philosophy, where I draw my breath in

Pain, in an effort to tell her story.

Ophelia drowning in the shallow

Depths, left with a day with no tomorrow.

 

8th October 2007

 

 

PART 2

 

 

1

 

There is nothing that anyone can do,

We are helpless before the onslaught of

Those who are supposed to take care of us,

And not one from among the long-drawn and

Down-laden sonnets of my life, fastened

To the interstitial day as dreams on

The wall of the world, will yet resonate

Enough to make any difference to

The death of a single one of us. Why

Can no one hear our cry or is it that

No one is listening? Give. Sympathise. And

Control. Borne along on the barque of poetry,

‘Care is not for life’ like a loaded gun

Left on a hair-trigger when words are done.

 

12th October 2007

 

 

2

 

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. How could

I have forgotten that tumultuous

Conclusion, coming back to me calmly

As forked precipitous distant lightning

Coursing like mercury through the darkness

Of the day. The years have taken their toll,

The sonnets bend now under the burden

Of the moment, assailed on every side

By the echo of existence and the

Far unfolding exigencies of time.

My hand rests open on the loosened rein,

While rhythm gathers head, all around me

The first October leaves begin to fray,

As wind-torn fragments on the surface lay.

 

17th October 2007

 

 

IN MEMORIAM

 

Professor Gertrude Falk

(24 August 1925 – 9 March 2008)

 

                   Prologue

 

I’m trying to cope with Gertrude’s death

but the pain is not of this world, the

very place where she sat seems to

heave with her presence and the words

on the placards call out her name,

I am left with her life and I don’t

know what to do with it and

nothing again will ever be the same,

so short the time that she left behind,

yet its unending echo magnifies

my mind, she exists now only as a

memory, an infinity from which I

cannot break free, I’m so tired Gertrude,

wait for me.

 

 

Forever Young

1

 

Gertrude, how shall I protest in the days

To come, without you by my side? Gently

You stood before me unfaltering and

Unforgotten, familiar and yet

Sudden and as though from another world,

Out of the distance and the disarray

You quietly took the helm. You knew more

Than we knew of the time ahead, the rain

That never stopped falling through the summer

Of your last year, the end left to stand there

Loitering before you. Love that is the

Pain that is not of this world, ‘You can’t stay,

Gertrude’, Well, I’m not staying anyway.

Throwaway words, the cold could not allay.

 

17th March 2008

 

 

2

 

You cannot go like this without even

Saying goodbye, with no one there beside

You to quietly take your hand, under

A low-strung sheer and empty year the sky

Seems nearer now. Fragments laid aside or

Casually left behind, veer as an

Incoming black tide across the chasms

Of my mind, nothing is here to show that

You were near. Yet you knew two months before

You needed to just what you had to do

And nothing could dissuade you from the end,

Your life the damaged goods that would not mend,

Tomorrow something you could not attend,

As death became another new-found friend.

 

4th April 2008

  

 

3

 

You sat there right through November until

We were forced to turn you rudely away,

Forever young you sat there for far too

Long that last afternoon, mute and watching,

Endlessly weighing the clamorous hours,

The silent vigil before you. And now

It was too late and still you chose to wait,

Borne along on a listless ebb tide, on

Some remembered unlit shore beyond us,

We would not hear your laughter anymore.

So short the time she left behind, yet its

Unending echo magnifies my mind,

Moments already as though long ago,

Sudden as softly falling April snow.

 

9th April 2008

 

 

4

 

These days and their kind will not come again,

From the limits of language, to explain

Without fear, how for a few short hours you

Are here beside me on the bench once more,

Beckoning or trawling through history,

How even in the ashes of your bier

You never saw the barriers taken

Down or the protest left at half-mast since,

You were still alive when the lane opened

Up but you didn’t live long enough to

See it, or the wall, all there is to tell

Of your last summer or the unfinished

Paper that was meant to have crowned your whole

Life left clamorous with the sound of us.

 

10th April 2008

 

 

5

 

However long the protest has to run

I shall never see your approach again

Though I watch for it for the rest of my

Life, left to needlessly wait around in

A world that has lost its meaning and is

Wholly empty now. There is no answer

In the gathering shadows, only the

Lowering echo of your name, Lethe

Is where you stand and you cannot help me

Now. I’m left with your life and I don’t know

What to do with it, an infinity

From which I cannot break free, struggling just

To find what it was you wanted to leave

Behind, I’m so tired Gertrude, wait for me.

 

10th April 2008

 

 

6

 

What a time it is here, only a song

Or chance keeps the poem alive and yet

There is nothing to fall back to except

An incoming levelling ebb tide, a

Distant depleted leftover day that

Refuses to go away. How shall I

Find you again or out of the cold wind

Fashion your laughter, I who came to know

You more than I knew myself, am helpless

Without you and silent now before an

Endless echo that clings and cleaves and keeps

The words at bay, a mute infinite sound

And while all that is known begins to fray

As darkness once that on the surface lay.

 

27th August 2008

 

 

7

 

They came like thieves in the night, in the full

Flare of morning and they tore you down,

Trampling over your image in the lane,

Gertrude, there was no one left to fight, all

The placards were gone, every single one,

Only the plastic fastenings were left

Still clinging forlornly to the railings.

It hurts and there is nowhere to go with the

Pain, my spirit breaks beneath the burden

For I have carried you to the protest

Since your death as each day became a weight

Too heavy to carry, as I willed you

Just to stay alive, long enough to be

The inheritor of your memory.

 

20th September 2008

 

 

8

 

What was the meaning of it all? In vain

I look for your approach in the lane, still

Tremulous with what you gave to us back

Then, shuffling quietly, bowed in the rain,

An unfaltering dynamo calling

Out to us or just simply silently

Urging us onwards to yet another

Tomorrow. Left forever bereft, I

Grapple with the pain, never to see her

Face again, even as the placards seem

To assail, only to fall back to no

Avail, even as they call out her name.

The last of the great and good of Hampstead,

The empty railings echo now instead.

 

16th November 2008

 

 

9

 

Gertrude, I have lived through such a time since

Then, your shadow left in the empty lane,

How they came for the placards again and

Again, leaving us with no respite, no

Shelter from the storm, with nothing at the

Bottom of Pandora’s box, nothing. And

Out of nothing I shall conjure my rage,

Rage for her trampled image in the lane

And rage for the desecration of all

She was alive for, nothing can assuage

The fear she knew in her last year or the

Litter torn from the spirit of the age.

There is an unpaid debt of simple tears

Owing to her, the sum of all my fears.

 

16th November 2008

 

 

10

 

Gertrude, they waited until you were in

Your grave before they came for the placards,

They could not confront you in your life, so

They tore the protest down behind your back.

They say that everything can be replaced

But something has been effaced forever,

I let them take them and I let you down,

And the simple joy that we once knew has

Gone. Forever young and bowed under her

Ancestral pain, I’ll never know her kind

Again, her bequeathed obituary,

Flow river flow and convey that lady,

At the end all she wanted was to be

Free and that’s the way it turned out to be.

 

16th November 2008

 

 

11

 

It is not us anymore now but me,

And the lane has been left empty for a

While, how casually I was to break

Under the burden of it all, leaving

You behind without even a look back

As you approached in the distance of dreams.

I wake only to the reality

That time no longer matters any more,

Its unreachable equilibrium

A seesaw of years with nothing left to

Level out the score. The hours are by far

Too many, they were always too many,

Between then and now I could not live them

All, line by line and yet destined to fall,

Day by day with my back against the wall.

 

17th November 2008 

 

 

12

 

Day by day they took away your poem

Fastened to the railings for the world to

See, the council’s final ignominy.

How could they then have sunk so low while still

In the axis of her dying shadow,

For we were not given the time between

Even her death and its diagnosis,

And before two months had run their course, the

Enforcers arrived in the lane by force,

But she would not be there to see as though

She knew already the atrocity

That would unfold untold in the future,

Enacted there in the heart of Hampstead,

The consummation of our daily dread.

 

17th November 2008

 

 

13

 

You threw your mantle around us because

You knew the council would not come for you,

You could not know it was your last summer

But you knew how vulnerable we were

Just to be there with the right to protest,

Yet you never shared this with us either

After or before, mutely you sat there

Bowed with your knowledge right through November.

And after on the ward your concern was

For us, questioning quietly what would

Happen when the lane would be finally

Opened up on a day you would not see.

We need you on the bench Gertrude, my last

Words were replied to with silence held fast.

 

17th November 2008

 

 

14

 

The protest could only founder without

You, without a word the council took them,

Every single placard, one by one, and

I let them take them and I let you down,

How shall I follow in your footsteps now

When everything about you made my life

Complete and when nothing is what it seems.

Your description of vision lit up my

Mind and with a single word the sequence

For the origin and the end, I heard

Their echo resonate through the future.

Gazing into the mirror of your life,

You gave me my own reflection to keep,

Not its last diminishing in the depths

Of a mirror’s horizon beyond the

Utmost reach of the long promontory

Of night, but someone somehow enough to

Stand fearless in the light, and in my dreams

You were the alpha and the omega

In a world where nothing is what it seems.

 

18th November 2008

 

 

15

 

Destined only to founder without you,

Where do I go to from here, here where I

Sat with your ashes on the bench and was

Oblivious to the cold and aware

Only that these days and their kind would not

Come again. From the limits of language

To explain just what it was that you meant

To us back then, you were the driving force

Behind the hours that were heading towards

A perfect storm at the end of each day.

At the helm always, you took control and

Steered us through all the way to the other

Side, so high we were at the end, so high,

That we never saw you waving goodbye.

 

18th November 2008

 

 

16

 

I had to leave the protest behind in

Order to grieve for you and to confront

The silence threatening to overwhelm

Me in its wake. There are no words for loss

Only the thudding of its aftermath

Down the corridors of the mind, without

Even an exit sign to be seen. Full

Nine months it took for the first cry to be

Heard, with not so much as a word to be

Said to anyone, grief keeps in thrall its

Own counsel while the world goes on its way,

While I try to believe Gertrude is dead,

That she won’t come down the lane furious

With Glenda, the end hidden among us.

 

18th November 2008 

 

 

17

 

Where do I go from here with everything

Left behind me and nothing in its place,

How shall I follow in your footsteps now

When love is the brief equilibrium

In the balance of time, when the only

Way is the way back, how shall I ever

Remember you when it is easier

To forget. And there is no answer in

The gathering shadows, there is only

The lowering echo of your name, your

Torn and trampled image in the lane, now

Urging me on if only to explain

Those days in the rain, how sometimes after,

She would try to make us ache with laughter.

 

18th November 2008

 

 

18

 

Those days in the rain, when there is no

Way out of the labyrinth of language, when

Silence is a lasting and resounding

Echo, I remember those days again

With you beside me on the bench once more,

How even in the aftermath of your

Ashes, words flowed as a river bearing

Us both along and into another

World where death no longer seemed to matter,

A place where a poem was enough for

The boatman and the coin to convey a

Life. It was so hard to come back from there

With nothing to bring with which to belong,

Existence left to barter for a song.

 

21st January 2009

 

 

19

 

Even now after so long without you

I am torn between my own fear on the

One hand and a need to get back to the

Lane to take up where you left off on the

Other. And I too have been an island

Unto myself, not knowing whether to

Leave that shore or even if I wanted

To leave anymore but I know that time

Stood still for a while allowing me to

Follow after, knowing full well I could

Never catch up then or ever draw up

Level with the future, for it was gone,

Night or day if at all, I could not tell,

Only that time was ineffaceable.

 

19th February 2009

 

 

20

 

How I longed to be done with those days and

The violence in the lane after your

Death and which I could neither confront nor

Ignore, somehow it was all mixed up with

All you were alive for, all you had stood

For, an endless maze deep inside without

Any way out without you by my side,

Mute with the horror, the horror of it

All, even then as the world was reduced

To litter just to be carried away

At the end of the day, and the lane left

Wholly empty without her, she was gone

And yet I was left behind with the one

True absolute good that I could lean on.

 

19th February 2009

 

 

21

 

There is nothing to search for now except

To find a way somehow through the shored up

Debris left far behind as each day falls

Away from the momentum of it all.

There is only the long ricochet in

Dreams, endlessly reaching for something, yet

Knowing full well that it can never be

Found, lasting, existing, paralysing

My mind, even as its memory once

Lit up the darkness of the world entire,

In vain I call out the name of someone

Long consumed on their own funeral pyre.

In the wreckage where a ship ran aground,

There is no absolution to be found.

 

19th February 2009

 

 

22

 

At the furthest reach I trawl through the last

Scattered fragments of your life, while I try

To assemble something to resemble

A song, as your days slowly ebb away

Beneath their lowering echo. Between

Then and now, it was bound to happen, I

Stand in a resonating maze, still in

No-man’s land trapped between the mute hours as

They attenuate untold, until time

Turns round on its heal without as much as

A word to throw for a passing echo,

Paralysed, in panic and with nothing

To say except when fate becomes a cry

Inchoate and enough to set a course

By, the end signalling always its source.

 

20th February 2009   

 

 

23

 

If only I had listened more closely

And not let the words just slip away like

Mercury to the ground, what I would give

To hear you now quietly narrating

Your stories and sometimes repeated so

Many times, I had even forgotten

How they ended. The only refuge is

Then and what I can recall, I hardly

Seemed to listen at all, we got so used

To you and we took so much for granted,

The fragments left behind are all there is

To remind us of how once you were here

In the unfinished life we failed to hear.

 

20th February 2009

 

 

24

 

And the paper would be left unfinished

And left as something you had meant to do

Through that summer and never got round to,

Each morning you’d leave for the Medical

Library, your sole intent the final

Touches to a long standing last paper

To do with vision. You were so near and

Yet so far and destined to remain there

Without any solution to crave for

Or the outcome you so desired, for we

Lay in your path almost as an ambush

Each day and however you might try to

Pass on by, you were forced to stay and save

Us, leaving us after with what you gave.

 

25th February 2009

 

 

25

 

You would try to keep the protest going

By being there scrupulously keeping

Watch until the last two months before your

Death when its future became entangled

In the endless thread of catastrophe

That would first invade and then as it laid

Siege to your mind, left to stay where you lay

Felled to the core day after day, to no

Avail, for you could not be comforted.

Even as we tried unable to save

You, all I could see was the empty bench

And what you believed in left behind, too

Afraid as you laid there even to cry,

Your life unfinished, and about to die.

 

26th February 2009

 

 

26

 

We who could not save you either then or

Now, would be left with what you gave us for

The rest of our lives, for in the minds of

The living, memory lives on and flows

Like a river bearing us along and

Out of this world where echoes fall away,

Where nothing seems to matter and nothing

Is what it seems. Day by day you lay so

Afraid you were for yourself, so afraid,

In those last days at the end you looked out

On to the world and everything was dire,

Your life was so much more, something higher,

And incandescent flame that would not tire,

By saving us you saved the world entire.

 

26th February 2009

 

 

27

 

The poem is a well from which to draw

Your story when suddenly it runs dry,

Even so, I cannot understand why

After a while it will not sustain me,

Waiting helplessly around, hour by hour,

Surrounded by the rim of horizon,

I thread its course onto a string, without

Source or ending, bewildered at the heart

Of distance and left with nowhere to go,

Silent in a drought of words without an

Echo as I turn and turn about as

If stranded in a limitless desert

Watching while the sand falls endlessly back

From itself, yielding to its own low drone,

The far wind moving over its surface,

Carrying me on its current to some

Far off place, another life other than

This, the colossal abyss of loss and

Whether it is night or day if at all,

When the end is all that is known, yet known

From what is left behind, from the fleeting

Interval of before, that the only

Duty we had was to each other. Love

That is the pain that is not of this world,

When I remember those days in the rain

And the reckoning in the empty lane,

Days that were destined to be left in vain,

That I can neither rescind nor explain.

 

27th February - 1st March 2009

 

 

28

 

The colossal abyss of loss, it is

No wonder I fell silent in the lane,

There was nothing left with which to explain,

And yet there was absolutely nowhere

Else I wanted to be, something beyond

My knowing was then bearing me along,

Left alone with her last mortality

People passing to and fro saw nothing.

Some indefinable part of myself

Was gone and though the sword of sorrow hurt

I would have to then pull it out again

With no way out of the vector of pain,

There was only the towering abyss

Above, not Gertrude, not her, not like this.

 

1st March 2009

 

 

29

 

Without her by my side I was on my

Own, afraid of almost everything then,

Facing death in the past more easily

Than just being at the protest alone,

Without thinking I put up the placards

In memory of her name, unable

To cry or even how to wonder why,

Bound about in endless stupefaction.

Softly I would call out her name knowing

Full well there would never be an answer,

There was only her lowering echo

To reclaim and a life that should have been.

The protest leftover as though in vain,

As if its time would never come again.

 

1st March 2009

 

 

30

 

If I should bring the poem to an end

What then? You would not be a part of me

Anymore, it would be like handing you

Over to untold anonymity,

To people who never even knew you,

Who never heard you laugh or saw you try

Unable to cry, lost in those last days.

And if they should ask, how would I describe

Your brief goodbye or the slow surrender

After of a life unfinished as you

Took your leave of this world, fitful, fearful

And still unready for the storm to come.

I who sat with your ashes in the cold

Could not keep you then or leave you untold.

 

2nd March 2009

 

 

31

 

What if my project should fail which was to

Tell the world what happened in the lane back

Then, how a narrow pathway in Hampstead

Opened up while Gertrude was on the ward,

She didn’t live to see the barriers

Go, so long looked forward to all summer,

And so she missed the six month siege after

Her death when the council came again and

Again, and she never saw the morning

When they took them, everyone. She took on

The managers head on while her life drained

Away, she would do it anyway, for

She wanted to change reality there

For the world and my ending is despair.

 

2nd March 2009

 

 

32

 

As plunder the placards had been destroyed

And then it was as though you’d been killed all

Over again, not by cancer this time

But trampled underfoot by those who were

Put there to care, who was supposed to know

What they were doing, and did a good job

That day. Gertrude, they did it because they

Could, I was at a medical appointment

And you could no longer be there, I left

Them out overnight to fit it all in,

Caught in an ambush without my knowing.

Your image lay discarded as litter,

Forever Young, unnoticed in the din,

Was pulled down from the railings in ruin.

 

3rd March 2009

 

 

33

 

Your death had dealt the protest a mortal

Blow, by the time the council marched in for

The final reckoning, the placards had

Already been destroyed and as I tried

To struggle on they just kept on coming

For the pitiful remnants left behind,

A residual echo left to find,

And the final stamping into the ground

Of an errant, lost, deracinated

Spirit. Whether the protest petered out

Or it became a sudden derailment,

It was enough to keep you from fading,

As I looked for your approach in the lane,

Wind-torn fragments were flapping in the rain.

 

3rd March 2009

 

 

34

 

We had saved the duplicate placards but

They had all been ripped down from the railings,

The holes were torn and their structure was gone,

And with no way out and winter coming

On, the alternative set still stolen,

And the council still coming back for more,

With no time to turn around in to mourn

I simply walked away from what had gone

Before without even a last look back,

Leaving you behind, half out of my mind

With the untold human cost of it all,

You were gone, it had been for nothing and

By then you had been too long in your grave,

The placards were now too damaged to save.

 

4th March 2009

 

 

35

 

The protest had consumed Gertrude’s last year,

In the wake of her death it had become

My life’s work and though I looked in vain for

Her return, she would not be coming back

Again. There was no shelter to be had

From the rain, no respite from her empty

Place in the lane and where I sat with her

Ashes once, oblivious to the cold,

Like a ship in the night we foundered in

The height of a perfect storm, going down,

People passing to and fro saw nothing,

At the helm, she took the protest with her,

Nothing could be saved, nothing. So much more,

In the time I could have done so much more.

 

4th March 2009

 

 

36

 

For people passing there was no protest,

There was an appearance in name only,

And a slow winding down after her death,

The very placards that the council had

Effaced would remain wind-torn in the rain,

So much so, they could never dry out now,

Even then as the words called out her name.

But the reality was so much more,

A death and its double jeopardy, and

All they had to do was wait, the council

Had Nature on their side, an imminent

Winter was just around the corner and

I was slowing down with anaemia.

I could not be there in the lane after

Without the words to say how I missed her.

 

4th March 2009

 

 

37

 

Gertrude, I shall never forget you, my

Only friend, how little was the time we

Had in the end, we cannot catch up now

Nor ever draw level with the future,

Without you at the helm where will it go?

Gentle breath of yours my sails must fill, or

Else my project fails, only your song is

Bearing me along into another

World, here I stand where you once stood, without

Anyone to take my hand, for there in

The minds of the living, memory lives

On. Forever young you sat there bowed with

Your ancestral pain and for far too long

That last afternoon, the future as far

As you could see, destined never to leave

That place, left there with the wind in your face,

And as you rose, you stumbled sideways and

Yet would not be comforted, you thought it

Might be hypothermia, from then on

We were forced to turn you away and from

Then on nothing again would ever be

The same, flow river flow, flow to the sea,

Then somehow you came from the Royal Free,

Sent out to tell the world, just as you’d been

Told, without the time to turn around in,

Without even the words to say your name,

Gertrude, it’s too cold today, you can’t stay,

It’s cancer, I’m not staying anyway.

 

4th March 2009

 

 

38

 

Love that is the pain that is not of this

World, it is an infinity from which

I cannot break free, not Gertrude, not her.

We were drawn to each other, I am sure

By the love we had, each of us for a

Mother who suffered in silence and in

Travail and yet most surely learned to love.

For we were loved and Gertrude’s life was like

A kaleidoscope revolving around

A single beam of light, shot through the long

Corridor of time without end, settling

Ever changing, the still point around which

Everything else moved. Unalterable

The lasting finality of it all.

 

5th March 2009

 

 

39

 

You could not know Gertrude without being

Aware of the weight of the Holocaust

Within her, its shadow walked beside her

 Most days in the last days of that summer,

Talking in the rain her mind would return

Yet again to the life of her mother,

The sole survivor of her family

Who perished at the edge of their village

Early on in the Final Solution.

Her father’s story was the same, they both

Survived and Gertrude would grow with the depths

Of their sorrow upon her, in Brooklyn

As a girl, then from Antioch to UCL,

Bowed under the enormity of hell.

 

5th March 2009  

 

 

40

 

If you’d lived you would have had much to say

About the lane vacant throughout winter,

As if no more than a chance happening,

A stage on which the play came to an end

In the middle of its run, with no last

Night for the critics to remark upon,

Shuttered and abandoned and left as though

No one had bothered to show, and with no

One to take your place, with nowhere to go.

There is only her lowering echo,

An audience to wonder then in vain,

Even as the placards call out her name,

The protest, if only I could explain,

As if its time would never come again.

 

12th March 2009

 

 

41

 

It’s too late now to put anything right,

Time is awry, I live a prisoner

Of a poem, bound about by echoes

Ebbing, while the toll of the levelling

Light grows all the more severe, the future

Flows into another time, an unknown

Reality, I stand on the banks with

Nowhere to go while the day makes its own

Way without looking back. The end alone

Guides me and without so much as a cue

To respond to or anything to hold

On to, I can never catch up now or

Ever draw level with what is gone. You

Got nothing back for your labour, I have

To get it right if only to explain

Somehow, before the words begin to wane.

 

16th March 2009

 

 

42

 

What I would have given to be with you,

Sat before the barriers, beside you

On the bench once more, the evening drawing

In and people hurrying on their way,

And us, oblivious and trawling through

History or grave in the shadow of

Its aftermath, by the light at the end

Of the day. What hand were you dealt that you

Had to die so wretched and yet so soon,

And with so much left that you still had to

Do, and with so much to give, so much to

Win through to, and so much taken away.

There was not enough time to explain why,

Without even the time to say goodbye.

 

16th March 2009

 

 

43

 

And what I would give to be able to

Return, to take up where you left off once

More, those days will they ever come again

Except as a lowering echo in

My mind, a residual light left on

In a time to come that I can only

Turn away from, the lane then to narrow

To horizon, a battle lost and won

In a no-man’s land of its own and fought

For and lost all over again. I could

Not fight them all and the placards were gone

And the protest at half-mast without you,

A memory once in an empty lane

As if its time would never come again.

Those days and their kind that I simply walked

Away from, with all you believed in

Left behind, marooned, abandoned and yet

As a cocoon that would unwind, I had

To leave it to erect a monument

Out of the protest and its argument.

 

17th March 2009

 

 

44

 

Without you the protest became too much

To bear, nor could I tell your story there,

And though it looks abandoned now and for

All the world to see, an ordinary

Lane somewhere in Hampstead, its time is yet

To be. Gertrude, someday in the time to 

Come, we shall be there just as we were in

Those days, you destined to stay forever

Young and tirelessly there with the placards

Quietly listening but taking it all

In just as you had done always, right from

The time you were young to the bitter end.

If you’d lived, it would not have been in vain,

Those days in the rain left now to arraign.

 

17th March 2009

 

 

45

 

Those days in the rain, how shall I even

Know myself again, I who could not go

With her would be left to follow after,

As though I could ever catch up with her

Or begin to explain without the words

To wonder, without the future just to

Weigh against the day, with only her death

To set a course by, either from or yet

Towards the bitter days left to arraign.

How can I return without the poem,

Without rhythm enough to say along

The way how much I miss her, without her

How shall I protest in the years to come?

Yet I have to get it right, to set the

Record straight and let her keep up to date

With after and before, with the long, slow,

Isolate hours that lay in between, and

With what was taken from her tardily

Without any warning, what it entailed, 

And the protest so brutally derailed.

 

27th April 2009

 

 

46

 

But I cannot put it right nor ever

Alter the ending only echoing

Despair, so many were the hours I spent

Immobilised and wondering, waiting

Without an answer, without a reason,

And whether it was night or day at all

I could not tell, time was an enemy

Held to ransom or plundered for the hell

Of it and the mute futility of

The future, even as the words began

To fray. I wasted so much more trying

To put it right, days would be barter for

A phrase, a single word for a night, borne

Along on an ebb tide without any

End in sight, or stranded on the banks of

It all, besieged by a sense of exile

And longing beyond recall, and pitched in

A fight with time that would not come again,

A current drifting to and fro in vain,

Fought for to the end until the words wane.

 

28th April 2009

 

 

47

 

There is no refuge when morning breaks with

Nothing to show for my labour, only

A fugitive yet overwhelming sense

Of exile, its longing keeps me going,

Torn between the need to get your story

Told, and month by month, a protest left on

Hold, about to fold without my knowing,

I let you down by simply not showing.

Not for a moment have I not been there,

With you beside me, the wind in your hair.

 

30th April 2009

 

 

48

 

If I must go back at all let it be

For her only, so that I might carry

Her burden from the day she was forced to

Lay it down, we have come so far Gertrude,

So far, that now there is no turning back.

You would not go gently into that good

Night, whatever would unfold after, nor

Would you rest awhile untold, still calling

Out to us, urging us onward to yet

Another tomorrow, even as he

Rowed you down that river, leaving Lethe

Behind you forever. I sat at the

Protest once with your ashes in the cold

And could not keep you nor leave you untold.

 

30th April 2009

 

 

49

 

Sometimes I hardly know which way to go,

There is no signpost for miles around nor

Any pathway to horizon circling

Ever widening whichever way I

Turn, inexorably drawing me in.

Time is always out in front, tarrying

Awhile or casually leaning on

Its own shadow, as though I could ever

Catch up now, with nothing to show for my

Labour, the hours falling back moment by

Moment as I wonder without knowing,

Whether I shall reach the finishing line

Or bring the beginning back to the end,

With the time I borrowed only to lend.

 

3rd May 2009

 

 

50

 

It hurts that the protest is still on hold

And that nothing more could be done back then,

Alone and without her and left with her

Death, I could not fight them all, waylaid and

Besieged for six months after until they

Won, it was over and now everyone

Could know that in the lane, at the very

Heart of Hampstead, the right to protest had

Been in vain, another death had happened

And it followed in the wake of Gertrude,

Before her dust had settled into place,

Free speech was dead and not a trace of it

Could be found, only an echo to sound

Its existence surfacing underground.

 

3rd May 2009

 

 

51

 

For six months the protest has occupied

My mind and not for a moment have I

Not been there as I tried to find something

Approaching Meaning from an unforeseen

Ordinary devastation, and yet,

Looking back, with an aftermath so far

Reaching, not a trace of its existence

Was left behind or anything to show

That Gertrude had died. What was there to know?

Would anyone remember anything

From so long ago, passing to and fro?

Only in its history could it throw

The permanent shadow of effacement,

The right to protest and what it had meant.

  

4th May 2009

 

 

52

 

The right to protest was not meant to be

Enacted, it was in reality

But an idea, even a weapon

To turn upon itself when before a

Placarded imaginary war, not

Something to lay one’s life on the line for.

It survived to be betrayed, the paper

It was written on and no more, then held

Imprisoned in the unturned pages once

The ink had dried, this much we were denied,

Freedom was rounded up and found to be

Guilty as charged, humanity was in

Jeopardy and protest was underground,

Was it for this her life was lost and found?

 

4th May 2009

 

 

53

 

I seem to have lived the whole of my life

In these last six months, helplessly waiting

For the words to come just to free me from

Their burden and no amount of longing

Was to any avail, endlessly caught

In the strands of existence and enmeshed

Beyond my knowing. A moth spiralling

Into the light, I had to navigate 

The night alone with only silence for

An answer and an end that would never

Come. The future was what I could bring, a

Time that was lost in passing and in vain,

I could not live again except in dreams,

In a world where nothing is what it seems.

 

5th May 2009

 

 

54

 

For the first time since walking away I

Can say to myself I want to go back

And lay down the dead weight of foreboding,

Unutterable and at its utmost.

Why was I so afraid and without an

Answer then or now? I could try somehow

As once, after an overdose, to find

The courage to stay, less afraid back then

Of myself than of finding the day now

Without you. I who had wanted only

To die, could not go back to the protest

Fearing an affray, unable to say

How much I miss you, and with little choice,

To see with your eyes and speak with your voice.

 

5th May 2009 

 

 

55

 

At times it seemed as if we were flying

And though it rained as high as the hilt of

Summer, it could not bring us down, while day

By day we were allowed to stay as if

No more than as luck would have it, as though

Even Hampstead still held sway. You never

Questioned why it was but they never came

For the placards while you were there, who, in

Your heyday, tramped from door to door for years

Collecting money for the cause. Who could

Know then that in your final year you would

Call in your last chip to try and save us,

For so high we were at the end, so high,

That we never saw you waving goodbye.

 

7th May 2009

 

 

56

 

Some kind of a protester or even

A bag lady sitting on a bench in

All weathers, that’s how they saw me, Gertrude,

That’s how I saw myself, as little more.

And my life had been unremarkable

Until then, when something turned me around

And shook me so hard, nothing was the same

Again. I could stand there instead and tell

The world what was happening from a lane

In Hampstead, how the nameless in Camden

Wander through a day that is endless and

Untold, with a shadow to call their own

To hold onto, an echo of a name

No one wants to know. Nothing was the same.  

 

7th May 2009

 

 

57

 

Was it for this she sat there in the cold

Until she couldn’t take it anymore,

For this, day after day yet quietly

Waiting and while the rest of her life drained

Away?  Gertrude, they did it anyway,

And there was nothing more you could have done,

You saw it all and as though it had been

Foreseen, until Mental Health in Camden

Was no more, that the very scaffolding

Would fall even as you drew your last breath,

Was something you would take with you, along

With the casual futility of

It all, but you were there right from the start,

Giving it everything straight from the heart.

 

8th May 2009

 

 

58

 

You could hardly bear to give up the fight

But everything was taken from you, I

Tried to keep you up to date on the ward,

So near and so far, as you lay within

Reach of the protest you would never see

Again. At eighty two you had come through

As if you were as good as new, the years,

Their loneliness, were now quite suddenly

Behind you and the future was what you

Could bring in a few short months without your

Knowing. I would live the whole of my life

In the time I knew you and yet after,

With no one at the helm, we were a crew

Destined but to fall to earth without you.

 

8th May 2009

 

 

59

 

You foresaw it all as you sat there, no

Wonder you didn’t care, you could afford

Not to and with so little time ahead,

It never occurred to you even for

A moment, whatever it was that was

Thought or said and you never heard it, as

You steered our frail craft into the future

And into the storm in front. Each day was

What you would bring in a last effort to

Offset time then narrowing and closing

Behind us, while before us, tomorrow

Rose from the impenetrable unlit

Shadows of the end or what would follow

After, the hours left to flow to and fro.

 

13th May 2009

 

 

60

 

To and fro, the hours would be left to flow,

Whatever would unfold after, those days

And their kind would not come again, the lane

Would be stripped bare and divested there in

The full and rapid flare of morning. They

Took them when my back was turned and when you,

Yourself, could no longer be there. Gertrude,

They did it because they could and I let

It happen and all you were alive for,

All you had stood for lay under their feet,

As the placards, torn from the railings, were

Binned as litter there and then, behind us.

Nothing would assuage your wind-borne image

Lost and found as unforgotten salvage.

 

13th March 2009

 

 

61

 

How long must I remain without the end,

Helplessly lost or left among the sheer

Unfathomed depths of your story? Without

Her to call to how shall I come up for

Air as I turn and turn about under

The dead weight of the future, too far out

To ever turn back now? I navigate

An uncharted world, time that will not come

Again, that was never meant to have been

In vain and how it suddenly became

The unforeseen endgame of existence.

As the day began to stall, she saw all

The way to the end, how it would unfold

After, why I would not leave her untold.

 

14th May 2009

 

 

62

 

You could not think of anything to say

After the news was broken, anyway,

For you, time was already in the past

Tense when you spoke about being damaged

Goods. Mostly it was the far off look on

Your face of another place other than

This, which was left behind to remind us

Of a day that nothing would allay. If

Only you’d been given more time, the space

Enough to efface the way you were told

Or the routine surface words for the end,

In a moment everything was taken

Away, the future was an edifice

Left to fall, to vanish without a trace.

 

14th May 2009

 

 

63

 

Unforgotten salvage lost and then found,

How can I return without you, without

The words to wonder, with the rhythm of

Another time always at my back, an

Incoming infinite black tide bearing

Me along, the mute rhyme of the future

Echoing beneath your song? You have gone

And you’re not coming back again even

In dreams wherein I search the low sunless

Shadow, a world left behind from before

That I shall not know again. Nothing came

From any of it, there where I falter

After, fearing an affray in the lane,

While I try to save the placards in vain.

 

15th May 2009

 

 

64

 

Without the protest I would not have known

How in its infinity, its very

Longing, regret can alter time after,

How a life and death in sudden and brief

Equilibrium became as a poised

Trapeze act aligned on the edge of time.

Nothing again would ever be the same,

Except an attendant planetary

Darkness that seemed to draw me in as though

In passing, even as she lay dying,

Between then and now, never to let go,

Encircling horizon with its shadow.

Nothing came from any of it and yet

But for those days we would never have met.

 

16th May 2009

 

 

65

 

If only this burden could be lifted

From me, if only she could have lived, how

Can I find the right words for the things that

Cannot be said, how can I ever reach

The end without her waiting there instead?

How shall I leave this maze or resurrect

In their entirety all the vanished

Days, now that she is dead, and how shall I

Remember when it is easier to

Forget? Mute futility drives me and

The anonymity she was left in,

The future set against time, falling back

In the flow of an ebb tide to and fro,

The enervate weight of its own echo.

 

16th May 2009

 

 

66

 

If I should falter before I get there

Would it have been worth it after all, with

So little time to turn around in as

The poem begins to stall? Who am I

To imagine that whatever happened

There, anyone would care, and what am I

Anyway, to even think of going

There? Each night I lose more ground as the day

Falls abruptly away and without me,

While the hours bend inwardly back as they

Veer from the sheer affray of tomorrow,

Left behind with a time that will not come.

The end is so far off and now there is

Nowhere else to go, its abode is found

At the next corner of time, a journey

To be wished for and yet at the utmost

Reach of the world, it is the only place

I know. We have come so far, there is no

Turning back, here where I throw no shadow

Either from or towards and life itself

Seems out of earshot on the far side of

Dreams, whatever there is to bestow is 

Left for a future more precarious

Than any of us know, for we write for

The sheer hell of it and for tomorrow.

Was any of it worth it after all,

You offering yourself for no applause,

Your last year a sacrifice for the cause?

 

19th May 2009

        

           

 

1

 

So near and so far, how shall I ever

Know except in passing, whatever it

Was that it could be so casually

Left behind as though it hardly mattered

Anymore, allowing each day to slip

Away without my knowing. If only

I could have seen just how little there was

When weighed against its own infinity

After, the darkness that prevailed, to have

Heard even for a moment, the lasting

Lingering shortfall of the years that were

Destined to be so precipitately

Curtailed, yet I never once let it in,

Beside me, you were quietly dying.

The inexorable weight of it all

Before and after, as planetary

Darkness seeped through the hours, overwhelming

The past with a distant future that was

Left behind forever beyond my grasp,

While its fathoms rose through the floor of my

Mind and what I had known was at an end

As I faltered alone in dreams searching

For a time that would not come and a life

That became the mirror for my own, the

Very moment it was taken from her.

The anonymity of the abyss,

I could not know that it would come to this,

Her life and death left in untold crisis.

So near and so far, without an answer,

How could I have possibly walked away

And without my knowing, without even

A last look back, with nothing to keep me

Going but the anonymity of

Her departure and the futility

Of her despair? I could not bear to be

There, so unutterably left without

Her, while the very light of the day hurt

As it assailed my soul and as the end,

Palling into the night, only to shear

Away as though owing to tomorrow.

Before and after were beyond recall,

As a derelict building left to fall.

 

1st June – 12th June 2009

 

 

2

 

But I walked away in the end without

Any reason for doing so and just

As surely without looking back, even

As it lay around me, the vestiges

Of your last year and all you had fought for.

There without you the protest could only

Fail, as an empty building left to fall

Beyond repair, without you I could not

Prevail against the current of the day

Seen as though in the distance far away

While all about me solid darkness lay,

And so I faltered fearing an affray

Mute with the weight of it all, unable

To say what was then unutterable.

What did I do to all? Yet it was all

In the diffidence that faltered, the end

And then its outlasting disparity,

Infinity that would overwhelm me

In its wake, leaving me to suddenly

Forsake even my own integrity

As I ran away unable to stay

Without her even for another day,

Leaving her behind as if forever

Buried, as unforgotten, ungathered

Remnants in my mind. For I could not say

Deep within the darkness then, what it was

Like in the full light of an empty day,

Left there without her, fearing an affray.

The unshiftable weight of the unsaid

Was a burden too heavy to carry

Leaving me no choice but to lay it down,

To stay and wait alone for yesterday

In the time to come. In order to say

What could not be said, I would have to walk

Away from my own dread and with the mouth

Of a ventriloquist speak as the mute

Voice of the living dead. I let you down

Without my knowing, just by not showing,

The lane would be full to overflowing

With the empty air and your absence there

Without an end. Words cannot put it right

But you would not go into that good night.

 

22nd – 23rd June 2009 

 

 

3

 

Beneath the show of a last bravado

I was as someone mortally afraid,

The last night had come and I couldn’t go

Onstage anymore, the curtain would rise

Before it was over, to memory

Alone, something once and seen in passing

To and fro, that would not be seen again,

That was destined to fade into its own

Shadow. Nothing in the world could save it

However much Gertrude had tried while she

Lived and died, taking it with her after

As if she knew it would founder without

Her, the rest is left behind, a trial

Of words stamped with the longing of exile.

But I never felt fear when you were there,

You, who had come to know me more than I

Knew myself, were always at the helm, in

The front row of the auditorium

Or simply there beside me everyday.

So short the time that was left, we had no

Way of knowing, months that were made to last

A lifetime through, how I miss you there in

Everything I do and there is no way

To tell you that I could not even cry.

I see your face where there is no other,

Beckoning through it all, as good as new,

Left with your last unanswerable why

As I beseech the world to hear your cry.

But they didn’t listen then Gertrude, why

Should they now and your last year was in fact

In vain, something resembling the music

Playing when a ship went down in the dark,

You tried to live for as long as you could

And for us, even then as it reared up

Before you and without any warning,

Not once did we see you waving goodbye.

Yet you must have known how near it was to

The end, sometimes you were as one looking

Out with a fixed gaze far beyond the rim

Of this world, borne along on an ebb tide,

When it came you wanted only to die,

Lost to yourself and still too stunned to cry.

 

23rd – 25th June 2009

 

 

4

 

There is little that I can relate to

Now and empty is the meaning of this

World, the struggle day by day just to start

Again, lost within the ruins around

Me, stretching into infinity, yet

Knowing with a growing knowledge that it

Is already too late. There is no known

Relief for the heart waylaid and besieged

By grief, for a mind engulfed and too far

Out, drifting still and endlessly outwards,

At the uttermost rim of the age

And language, I could only run aground.

The ebb and flow of after and before,

The limitless sound of the depths and the

Origin and the end pounding onto

The shore, the country of my own making

Where I exist among the untold hours,

Rendering to another tomorrow,

Yesterday that I am forced to borrow,

Salvaging indelible ruin for

Something lost and found, mute with a future

Without her, silent under the burden

Of the words about her, as though in vain

As they break beneath the strain of it all.

How shall I ever go back to the end,

To a history I cannot amend

Without her there to answer when I call?

Those days and their kind are beyond recall.

The world is smaller now that you are gone

And there is nothing left to go back to,

An empty stage, the lights permanently

On hold and the auditorium

Lit and then left unsold, as though people

Passing to and fro remembered nothing.

I thought to do it by walking away

But I could no more forget you than the

Child in my womb or the poem that is

Your life and something I must give away

When its time has come. Love that is the pain

That is not at this world, was not in vain,

Labouring to crown the finishing line

Knowing she was not yours, she was not mine.

 

6th – 12th July 2009

 

 

5

 

Have I the right to even remember

When you live only in my memory,

When each day I lose more ground as I try

To convey something of another world?

A time that was then inexorable,

That was lived in the imaginary, 

And experienced to and fro almost

In passing, yet as though it hardly seemed

To happen at all, as day by day, and

Without anything showing, and while we

Stood casually by, time itself was

Running aground but without our knowing.

I salvage the little left behind, left

Before me, the hours that were lost and found

Miraculously sound on an ocean

Floor, infinity in the dark unshone

Signalling forever beyond my reach,

Like the early neon of my first years,

Off and on and inextinguishable,

The heartbeat of the industrial night

Flickering and in vain in the fifties’

Rain. A moment in time and you were gone

As suddenly as you came towards me

Urging me onwards and urgent and as

If with each breath exhorting me only

To stand firm in the approaching hour of

Your own death, as if we struck a bargain

With time there and then for eternity

In return. The lights are low now in this

Darkened place, with nothing left to learn or

Offer, here where I wait without hope or

Despair, desperate with the need to sleep,

With no refuge as I try to follow

After. How soon they would be left behind,

Those days and their kind and diminishing

Under the weight of their entirety,

But you were so much more than what I could

Recall and what I chose not to forget,

Days looked for in vain that I shall not find

Again though many are the miles without

Any end in sight, you were the mirror

Reflecting everything I was here for.

 

17th – 21st July 2009

 

 

6

 

Have I the right to forget even for

A moment what is now impossible

To bear or yet remember, you saved me

And now there is a debt outstanding and

Owing to time thereafter, nothing less

Than life itself and nothing more than love.

It is a sum I am still unable

To pay and however hard I try, it

Exists as a shortfall only to weigh

In the balance against me while the end

Is destined to lie forever beyond

My reach, an echo’s ricochet falling

Away with a sound of its own, nothing

Can allay as it tips and slips headlong

Into the abyss. 

 

24th July 2009

 

 

                                                                                                   

147

 

I who could not go on without you, would

Be forced to go back without you, to try

Somehow to begin again from where you

Once left off, the day you staggered out from

The Royal Free to say, I’m not staying

Anyway, I’ve got cancer, as you tried

To go on your way with no tomorrow.

Out of the panic and its disarray,

For months the placards would hang as though they

Were just abandoned after, left to fray

At half-mast since and in vain in the rain,

By my own hand only, to fall away,

When the time came I could not fight them all,

Waylaid and without hope, without despair.

A dream’s precipitous plunge through the air

Presaged what it was like without her there.

 

3oth April 2009 

 

 

148

 

We who could not let go would be left there

Suddenly without you and the brief night

Watch with you in our midst would seep into

The shifting sands of our lives forever.

And the paper would be left unfinished,

A counterweight in the balance of time

That you gave unstintingly to others

Until time was no longer leftover,

Your last days squandered on a cause that would

Amount to nothing, that people passing

To and fro, would hardly seem to notice

Anymore. You would do it anyway

And the paper put aside for us is

An equilibrium left in stasis.

 

19th January 2009

 

 

149

 

You stared out towards the world with a gaze

Of infinite regret, clinging onto

The days of your life as they unfolded

Before you, your fingers tremulous and

Steadfast and still unable to let them

Go, there was nowhere to lay your head, no

Shelter to be had from the storm to come,

You sat there, an island unto yourself

While the current slowly rocked you to and

Fro and your mind became as a whorled shell,

As we urged you to stay, your spirit had

Already fled to the banks of Lethe,

You were left there with all there is to know

With night coming on and nowhere to go.

 

3rd January 2009

 

 

150

 

We had no idea how narrow was

The margin, how soon the ripple would reach

The uttermost rim, so we just kept on

Taking it for granted and you never

Let on even though everything had gone.

It was as though you had been sucked into

The low reach of some unseen tsunami

And yet seemingly surviving the first

Onslaught had been set down on a random

Shore far beyond us where we would not hear

Your laughter anymore, a place without

A trace of the castaway left behind,

Set down there in the midst of all your fears,

You’d been living on borrowed time for years.

 

3rd January 2009

 

 

151

 

Nothing in your life had prepared you for

Your death, its impending knowledge came with

The instant annihilation of all

You had stood for and in the long ripple

Of the shock wave after, the scaffolding

Would fall still clinging to the edifice

After. You were left with the unfinished

Paper, imperative in your lifetime,

That somehow you never got back to and

Now there was only the leftover time

In which to die. And you kept exclaiming

About the lasting devastation, how

You were now just damaged goods, but you were

Silent about when it would be over.

 

3rd January 2009

 

 

152

 

Each of us in our own way tried to keep

You alive, Ilsa and your grandchildren

Even the protest on the bench outside

And Eva with her own formidable

Will, and for two months right until the end

You must have known that not one among us

Could walk away or simply let you go.

And so you lived a little longer as

Each day passed, as you struggled to find in

The time left, a reason to stay behind,

And you knew more than we knew of the time

Ahead, while you stared out towards the world

As though as dead already, as you tried

To free yourself inextricably tied.

 

1st January 2009

 

 

153

 

There is no answer in the darkness or

In the time to come, no ending to

The locked involuntary echo left

Behind, but from the time you first paused in

Passing, remarking and then enquiring

As to the absolute purpose of just

Sitting in the cold, observant as an

Eagle in flight and yet minute as a

Foraging bird, from a meeting no more

Than the momentary greeting of ships

Passing in the night, more than seven years

Would elapse and almost to no avail,

From a chance encounter without a name,

Nothing again would ever be the same.

 

31st December 2008

 

 

154

 

But the truth was so much more, you gave up

Because you could not go on anymore,

You stayed alive as long as you could

And for us and nothing can alter this.

You laid there at the mercy of your own

Fear, unable to stay or loosen your

Grasp or just effortlessly fall away.

Gertrude, for so long I have foundered in

The dark, not knowing which way to turn,

The origin of an endless echo

That will never relinquish its hold or

Ever let me go, and yet how many

Times shall I casually turn away

From the darkness to come wherein you lay.

 

31st December 2008 

 

 

155

 

What you would endure during those last two

Months, all the thoughts you must have had and all

For nothing, the last words I said to you

Now seem hollow in the extreme, looking

Back you must have known from their aftermath

How little I knew, Gertrude we need you

On the bench this summer, you would have known

Then that those days could never come again

And even that the protest would founder

Without you, that all of it had been for

Nothing, for who would remember any

Of it after, you were going to die

And as night follows day by your own hand,

This is what you gave us to understand.

 

12th December 2008  

 

 

156

 

I’m left with your life and I don’t know what

To do with it and with only death to

Point the way, and yet you were so much more

And you never wavered even for a

Moment, you had made up your mind as you

Had always done from the time you were young

And nothing was going to stop you now,

Life on your own inimitable terms

Or nothing doing. And you knew more than

We knew of the time ahead, we would be

Left instead just to stumble in the dark

Forever with never a sure foothold,

We were left behind without our knowing,

The end came without anyone showing.

 

12th December 2008

 

 

157

 

No one knew how near it was to the end,

You were right all along and we were wrong

And there was nothing that anyone could

Do, and by all accounts the March sky was

Unusually blue that day and so

They turned you round to face an ivory

High magnolia which had suddenly

Flared into a full transitory bloom

Inlaid in a solid blue window that

Last afternoon and you still got through and

We were left there forever without you,

With the tree that bloomed in Seattle once

From your memory, you would take it all

With you, the great and the ineffable. 

 

12th December 2008

 

 

158

 

There is no absolution to be found,

Like the Sibyl of Cumae you wanted

Only to die, and for the life of us,

We could not bear you up, and you kept on

Answering how you were now damaged goods

And how you wanted to evaporate,

You were dissolving before our eyes and

We failed to realise. You could have lived

For a few months more it was not too late,

The fluid in your lung had drained away,

And all you had to do was to respond,

But you would never be the same again,

When radiotherapy hit your brain,

You saw it as an assault on your mind

As if there would be nothing left behind,

An expert on vision, you became but

A casualty of your own being,

Something fleeting and a way of seeing,

But not the woman we had come to know,

In those days when I walked in your shadow.

 

10th December 2008

 

 

159

 

If only it could have been me. Once and

When I too wanted to die, I would be

Left alive instead, destined to survive

And without my knowing, to live out my

Life without you right to the end. You gave

Me back my voice, worn out and thin and lost

In the din as though it had all been for

Nothing, a mirage on a flat calm sea.

In the long ricochet that lay between

After and before, the day would fall short,

The future, the balance of Choice and Chance,

A seesaw with no equilibrium

And nothing left to level out the score.

And there I would stay in mute disarray

Just to stall at the heart of existence,

But to wonder and as I used to, with

The pall of camouflaged stars disparate

Through neon and ebbing beyond seeing,

Or sometimes tardily left switched on as

The casual blue of a new day, they

Bend towards the end, lost in the blur of

A distant oscillating interval,

Leftover only as a memory.

You took the helm quietly questioning,

At times it was as if we were flying

Far above the earth in pursuit of Truth,

You became, for a barque becalmed at sea,

The silent unseen wind for a journey.

 

15th March 2009

 

 

160

 

A chance affinity of the spirit

And nothing more, choice had little to do

With it and yet we were different in

Everyway, Gertrude the professor and

Diehard Labour campaigner who trudged

From door to door year by year collecting

Money for the cause, but something hidden

And found and brought to bear, turned

Her overnight into a protester,

Need against greed simply clutched at her throat

Like a claw that would never let go. She

Sought out the lost and the dispossessed and

The immigrant whose life had come apart,

There with the underdog right from the start.

 

10th December 2008

 

 

161

 

By then all she wanted was to be free,

For two months she lived in mounting terror

That the hospital would move her somewhere

Else, and it was as though time was her last

Stand and she would not be parted from

Her destiny. She felt abandoned at

The end and that the Royal Free had washed

Their hands of her and then when they moved her

She died within a week in Golders Green.

A chance affinity of the spirit,

Something carried on the wind and destined

To come to an end in mortal meltdown,

Like a capsized ship that has run aground,

There is no absolution to be found.

 

10th December 2008

 

 

162

 

She seemed to sense from the actual time

It began that the protest was something

Unusual, something you would not see

Again and she was there right from the start,

You have to catch the clinics she would say,

Especially in the mornings so be

There early, she would urge us every day.

And it was more than just a place to meet

Or somewhere at the end of her own street,

She became as a little girl again

At the door of her father’s furriers  

Shop, there while he offered a listening ear

And later as she grew and to her cost,

She would hear stories of the Holocaust.

 

9th December 2008

 

 

163

 

It was a mystery as to why she

Was there and we never thought to ask her,

We just went on taking it for granted

And as though each day would last forever.

What was it that made her stay for so long

And so much so that she hardly noticed

Time in passing, lingering there, and then

Suddenly remembering something she

Had almost forgotten to do again,

And then she would hurry away, guilty

Among her small tasks and all the mundane

Chores of the slowly darkening setting

Day and yet she would not go quietly

Into that good night, nor would she ever

Leave that site still echoing thereafter,

The silent voice of the protest that was

Destined only to founder without her,

Left to the mercy of men who in the

Last year of her life dared not come near her,

Now it is about her but without her.

 

9th December 2008

 

 

164

 

How shall I finish what I have begun

When instead of facing reality

I falter day by day only to turn

Away from the agony of it all.

She was a casualty of the cold

And because of her age, vulnerable,

Her eventual illness which had for

So long gone undiagnosed, would only

Serve to make her more so and without her

Knowing. Yet she should have died years before

But she just kept on going and without

Anything showing even to herself,

When Gertrude sat outside the Royal Free

The future was as far as she could see.

 

8th December 2008  

 

 

165

 

It is almost forty weeks since your death

And I am as bewildered as I was

Back then, there is no lasting harbourage

To be found and I am left to drift on

A limitless flat calm sea with not so

Much as a landmark to be seen, only

The wind itself has any idea

Where we are going, there is nowhere left

Ahead for the spirit to lay its head.

And there is no meaning that can assuage

The battered fortress of the besieged heart

Where after and before pound on the door

As once, when the stitch slips and unravels

And the fabric comes apart, all that flies

In the face of reality denies

Also, yet the light darts until it dies.

 

8th December 2008

 

 

166

 

Gertrude, I am lost in a maze of my

Own making, the line leads to nowhere and

I do not know how to leave you behind,

Only the lowering echo of your

Name drives me onwards now and yet how to

Remember you in the time to come when

It is so much easier to forget.

If only the pain would let me go, for

I have to get back to the lane and I

Have somehow irretrievably lost my

Way, where are the words when morning breaks and

With nothing to show for my labour, with

Not enough light to see by to augment

The echo of death and its argument.

 

8th December 2008   

 

 

167

 

With nothing to assuage the rage after

Her death, I then shut down on everything,

Felled and immobilised by the long sword

Of sorrow left at the core of Being.

Not Gertrude, not her, we had come so far

Together, somehow I thought you would go

On living forever, as though fortune

Had anything to do with it, so when

They told you it was cancer, you wanted

Only to die, when told in a ward round

About a lesion in the frontal lobe

Death could not come fast enough, and your bed

Was moved from ward to ward and whatever

Was wrong from then on kept on going wrong.

You were out of the chaos and where you

Wanted to be but we were left in a

World that was so much smaller without you,

Constrained and left to turn and turn about,

Your place on the bench in the empty rain,

Those days and their kind would not come again.

 

1st December 2008  

 

 

168

 

My mind has been in a stupor since your

Death, I thought I would never write again

So colossal was the loss to us all,

And still so far reaching, so very near.

Nothing again will ever be the same

And nothing can be done to put it right,

To this day I still have no idea

How I could have got it so wrong, she was

Dying slowly before my eyes and I

Failed to realise, I simply kept on

Asking her to survive, to stay alive

If only for us on the bench outside.

And she knew more than we knew of the time

Ahead, you have no right to ask me, she

Said, and all she wanted was to be free.

 

1st December 2008

 

 

169

 

It was too late, it was always too late,

Maybe the protest kept her alive for

A little longer who knows, at the most,

Time to turn around in before it was

Swept away leaving her but two months to

Prepare. She should not have been out there and

The relentless cold bearing down on her,

The endless hours spent getting the message

Across, the meetings and her petition,

And the day she walked to Daleham Gardens

All the way from the Royal Free, her bit

For the cause she used to say, it was so

Much more, there was no time left to spare

And everything she was, was brought to bear.

 

1st December 2008

 

 

170

 

There is only the lowering echo

Of her name day by day diminishing

In the lane without any answer in

The gathering shadows, there where the words

On the placards call out her name. In vain

I sat there trying to pretend that soon

It would be alright, all that afternoon

I sat there in vain, staring straight ahead

Screaming deep inside that Gertrude was dead.

All around me it was a casual

Ordinary day with people passing

To and fro unable to stay or just

On their way as I tried to reason why

There was not enough time to say goodbye.

 

1st December 2008

 

 

171

 

You sat there for far too long that winter

With cancer eating away at your lung

And for far too long without your knowing,

No one knows how you managed to survive,

To man a protest and to be alive

And for so long. The rain that never stopped

Falling through the summer of your last year,

You were never so much alive as then

And no one had any idea, you

Sat there for the world to see and yet in

Reality you were dying slowly.

And after, I still could not let it in,

Simply urging you on with my last breath,

Right up to the morning after your death.

 

1st December 2008

 

 

172

 

The times you were still there waiting for me

And I was already too late, always

At the last minute and you never said

Anything at all even when the cold

Became too much to manage, you never

Once let on. And yet you sat there right through

November until we were forced to turn

You away, you sat there for far too long

That last afternoon, lost in your silence

Quietly listening while the night set in.

It was the first sign that something was wrong,

When you rose to go you stumbled sideways,

But you wouldn’t be helped to be upright

Insisting that soon you would be alright.

 

1st December 2008

 

 

173

 

I’m so tired Gertrude and I do not know

How much further there is to go, how shall

I put my shadow down when I have now

Forgotten even that I had one, how

Much it falls short, how much I fail to see

As I falter in the wake of my own

Destiny, falling back as the ebb tide

To some remote reach of reality

Where lasting brief residual light breaks

Across banks of planetary darkness,

Sudden random and precipitous, depths

Where the light darts only to fall along

Ravines that pall and rear as sheer fissures

To the sky, it is an infinity

Beyond reach from which I cannot break free,

Left in thrall as my shadow is to me,

Another life that is not at this world

Where all that is known of eternity

Is something vestigial and left on hold,

An echo unanswered that goes unheard

Or a shadow’s faltering still untold.

In vain I trawl the stars darkening now

Under neon, and only in the rain

And their reflected distance can I see

The way again, where after and before

No longer seem to matter any more,

We are the shadow of eternity,

And yet I’m so tired Gertrude wait for me.

 

30th November 2008

 

 

174

 

As I was taking the placards down I

Heard a group of people say let’s look for

Gertrude in the lane she’s here I’m sure she

Is, she was here just the other day and

They fell into such a silence there as

Though you still held sway in Hampstead and you

Left standing on the banks of Lethe and

Unable to stay and left to loiter

An echo’s reach away. Words begin to

Fray, what can any of us say about

Anything now, when nothing can allay

The planetary darkness of the day.

Once I was near enough to say your name,

Diminishing day by day in the lane.

 

28th November 2008

 

 

175

 

The only consolation to be had

On the morning after your death was that

At last you were where you wanted to be,

You were out of this world, leaving behind

A lasting legacy of agony for us all.

No one could have kept you alive, no one,

You had made up your mind and would not be

Persuaded and however hard we tried,

Right from the start to the bitter end, you

Had in reality already died,

You were going quietly and without

Our knowing, without ever looking back,

Knowledge had become intolerable,

Your last illness was not negotiable.

 

27th November 2008

 

 

176

 

You thought the protest would never survive,

We sat there as though transfixed as the storm

Gathered head, as it reared up through the trees

A swirling heightened darkened column, its

Downturn like sulphur as it hit the ground

And about to tip the barriers like

A capsized ship in full sail as we fled

Towards them, and there under the onslaught

Of a driving night rain we never thought

To see them stand again, we pushed them back,

Five full barriers into their shoes. It

Would remind you that you were still alive,

An omen that would shake you to the core,

We would not hear your laughter any more.

 

27th November 2008

 

 

177

 

And when we had begun to listen you

Came towards us then from the hospital,

‘You can’t stay here Gertrude it’s far too cold’

And she said I’m not staying anyway

I’ve got cancer and just as she’d been told.

And her words became mixed up in my mind

Bob Dylan had just sung Forever Young,

With Gabriel’s Oboe and The Mission,

And with everything she would leave behind,

The barriers that had withstood the storm

Even after the wind had blown them down,

And the lane about to open up, so

Long looked forward to after the wall, now

About to suddenly engulf us all.

 

27th November 2008

 

 

178

 

I watch the evening turning into night

And my fear is as wide and as deep as

The earth without her, how shall I return

To the protest now, without her there to

Greet me and about to fling her laughter

Into the air as far as it could go?

And how shall I cope in the days to come

Without her by my side, there at the helm

Always and the still point within the void

Of the vortex as the last days began to

Slowly overwhelm. Those days and their kind

When you sat there for far too long that last

Afternoon while cancer consumed your torn

Lung and took you too soon into the storm.

 

27th November 2008 

 

 

179

 

For nine months I have been in a sleepwalk

With not so much as even a word to

Be said to anyone, left alone with

An endless interval of silence, yet

People passing to and fro saw nothing,

For I was a flickering shadow lost

In the fast maze of her low unquiet

Echo, entreating me to find a way

And to say what I had to say and not

To follow, even as the placards called

Out her name day by day in her absence,

She pulled me back and would not let me go,

The last and the least in the scale of things,

Waiting for whatever the moment brings.

 

27th November 2008

 

 

180

 

Gertrude died last night that’s how they told me

And I had no idea it was so

Near, it happened when they all had to go

Away for a brief respite from the day

Intending to return again in time

For the end that was drawing near. And now

It was over and as suddenly as

It had begun and only then was I

Told and now it was too late, it would be

Too late always to say goodbye. I was

Left with the agony of the unsaid

And with not enough time to explain why,

You needed no one to go it alone,

When the end came you did it on your own.

 

27th November 2008  

 

 

181

 

There is no answer in the gathering

Shadows, the encounter however brief

Was meant to be, whatever would unfold

After, Gertrude would get her story told

And I would lose the subject of my song.

Destined never to belong again, in

Vain I look for her approach in the Lane,

The self abasement and the colossal

Self effacement and the old forgotten

Tune that she would hum each day always as

She slowly proudly took the placards down.

Beside me only in my memory

How shall I protest in the days to come,

In a no-man’s land of my own making.

There is only the lowering echo

Of her name resounding through a world she

Would never hear or ever live to see,

A reality wholly yet to be.

From the lightning and the thunder to the

Dark side of the moon far over Lethe.

 

26th November 2008

 

 

182

 

I had no idea you were about

To die, I thought you would go on living

Forever, that you’d be back on the bench

Again and urging us on as always.

You spent two months looking out on the world

From a place of lasting desolation

Where you lay in name only, where no one

Could remind you of who you once were, 

You laid there wondering just what it was

That it was taking so long. Yet how I

Willed her to stay alive, but she knew more

Than we knew of the time ahead, the rain

That never stopped falling through the summer

Of her last year as the end approached her.

 

26th November 2008

 

 

183

 

What is there left to tell at the end of

It all when only the polarities

Of night and day remain and where they end

Or begin or overlap in a world

That has lost its meaning and where nothing

Is what it seems. And nothing again will

Ever be the same for I lived out my

Life right to the end in the time I knew

Her. When I try to remember those days

Already distantly falling as the

Last leaf falls through the windless cold, at once

Deliberate and involuntary,

Borne along the empty air they fall

But with a difference ineffaceable.

 

25th November 2008

 

 

184

 

The rain never stopped falling throughout the

Summer of your last year, and you would bring

The umbrella in the morning and stay

All day, sometimes almost in another

World, gathering all the days of your life

And threading them on a string, lingering

Over some long lost or forgotten thing

Time and again as if to replicate

Its entity indelibly into

My memory, by also responding

To some vestigial oral tradition

Gertrude could at last leave her life on the

Bench, whatever was the disparity

It had become too heavy to carry.

 

21st November 2008

 

 

185

 

I had to wait so long for you to come,

So long I thought it would never happen,

In vain I paced the lane knowing I had

Let you down and knowing there was nothing

I could do to put it right, now you were

Near enough to reach even though it was

A place not of this world not of this time,

But somewhere to resurrect you in rhyme.

How I willed you just to stay alive, just

Long enough to see your last reflection

Something you would not live to see, something

That would unfold into infinity

And yet all you wanted was to be free,

Flow river flow, that’s where I want to be.

 

21st November 2008

 

 

186

 

It keeps coming back, the lost paper, with

Its own overwhelming finality,

Being at the protest with us every

Day, it had become a weight too heavy

For her to carry and with no way out

She chose to lay it down without saying

Anything to anyone not even

To herself. And so it was that it would

Stay unfinished and with no time to turn

Around in when her time was done, the panic

That set in and the devastation when

You realised in the end just what you

Had done, nothing can make amends for this,

The crown on your whole life, left in stasis.

 

9th – 10th March 2009

 

 

187

 

Today it is an anniversary,

And I have reached halfway or thereabouts

In a poem you were destined never

To see, I could have done so much more and

You still got nothing back, I’m left with your

Life and I don’t know what to do with it,

How shall I ever lay it down, the weight

Of the undone, the sheer load of the lost

Paper and everything I knew once, now

Lost and won all over again and left

To mourn in vain in dreams, in a world where

Nothing is what it seems. You gave your all

Waiting in the rain as though somewhere in

A time to come, approaching and ebbing.

 

9th – 10th March 2009

 

 

188

 

Self effacing to the end, you could not

Comprehend why The Guardian had put

You in its Honours List, you were eighty

Two that day and it was the last time they

Could, both they and The Independent had

Managed to get through to you in a way

That no one else could. You were stunned and

Then upset that someone might have had to

Pay and then where would you put yourself, you

Could not see for the life of you just why

You were there. To you it was an omen

Of a time to come, somewhere not of this

World and yet somewhere you already knew

And the rest was somehow to be got through.

 

19th November 2008

 

 

189

 

Whenever she talked about her mother,

Gertrude would lower her voice until it

Was barely above a whisper, and it

Was as though in some way she was about

To betray a secret and so much so

That I was answering almost in a

Whisper in the surface flow of her own

History. It seems that the family

On both sides, all from Lithuania,

Perished in pogroms in their villages

At the hands of the Nazis. Their letters

Had been destroyed and without them only

The nameless photographs were left and they

Were lost forever, never to belong.

Sweet Thames run softly till I end my song. 

 

19th November 2008

 

 

190

 

He was some kind of a man, how can I

Sum up her life, startling like winter light

And infinitely faceted, her mind

Was the constant summation of her time,

Her years happened to span two centuries

Of change, and her life reached across the globe

In the service of others, all the way

From Antioch to the Royal Free and

To her obituary. Wherever

That river goes that’s where I want to be,

Flow river flow, flow to the sea. Goodnight

Sweet lady, may your song always be sung,

Farewell Gertrude and in whatever tongue

Farewell, and may you stay forever young.

 

19th November 2008

 

 

Epilogue

 

How shall I ever leave this maze which I

Surely entered of my own volition,

Here where I loiter alone with time, left

To falter at the heart of existence.

Stranded I stand in the narrow runnels

Bewildered as at the start, with only

The end to set a course by and yet at

My back always, the darkest utmost rim

Of horizon extinguishing the light.

In dreams that I cannot hold fast, a phrase

Here and there will suddenly ignite with

Its own meaning and written down as though

By an unseen hand to fade with the night,

But in the search for Truth and its reprise,

Through night rain the light darts until it dies.

 

24th January 2009

 

 

Silent in Pond Street

 

And you would also stay forever young,

My only friend down the long years, you would

Die two days after Gertrude without my

Knowing, and nothing after or before

Could make any difference to the years

Of silence that somehow lay forever

Between us. I exist with the knowledge

Of illusion to keep me going, while

Planetary darkness slowly seeps through

The universe and the random hours of

Each day. Everything is left behind, as

A manifest perpetual regret

Engulfs my mind, remorse enough to shear

From the last silence how once you were here.


 

THE EARLY POEMS

 

The Reckoning

 

I know so little before you

who know so much but I feel

humbled more by the wile

of a young sparrow eating

calmly beside a traffic roar

enough to endure

carnal through isolate

moving leaves are

mnemonic to your wing

 

March 30th I983

 

 

Beethoven Cavatina Opus 130

 

life stuns into June gold for these are the fourfold petals

of the marsh marigold unfastened they die withered

in fullness of light caltha palustris or cups of kings you

cannot help me now frail day spirals as hung pine stars

more dark than night they breathe the green truth eternal

stopped sap sings the failed bravura of men

adagio molto light indifferent moves among the moving

trees and days that go from me

quickened sepals pull at life wild defiance at their heart

they trace the path of the young to come through

these dead stems raise a last sublime a morning face

and yellow petals burn into colours from their time

lost as moments as the asphodel they come to me

no ease from fire and the downbeat heart of man

 

 

‘I tell you, I would rather be a swineherd understood by swine,

than a poet misunderstood by men.’  Kierkegaard

 

outside the department of civil engineering a lost July

formed from ochre steel vacuity the held relentless day

grappled live the feel of a mind’s burning

my brother spreads a pathway of tarmac in the sun

and kindred bodies flame the white stone the time

we shook geranium blood against a Brudenell sky

assuaged was that low distilled blue into red ecstasy

fear shook our cellar clamour while eviction gathered head

the world streamed its garden gate with hazed lorry roar

deemed insanitary emerged his one legal jubilation

high my father marched through the front door and I pulled

a tin cart seamless round wheeless over yard sound round

none contest your massed strength the hand down fragility

of your heart my brother like these you run from me

 

 

Agnes

 

and I have known the vigil of your voice

trailing the high endless death of summer

solemn nights your mind aground

obsessional your isolate desire blond

ritual strands a moon’s detritus

morning seams the darkest leaves

with futility

 

 

‘ferry me down there’

 In Memoriam John Mackendrick

 

you remain from the brimming crowd

as one transfixed upon a stage

shrill worldly uneasily alone

and naked as the mandrake

I’m a poor cowboy and

hell is my doom

but the young to come

mocked your nasal tone

and Brutus took your name

 

 

Cyril Williams

 

military still you fix numbers

to a supermarket coupon

the future the far side

of all days past you talk

less then from your latest

illness for words coalesce

once when the light

went out wind blown

branches through the glass

spoke as men

 

 

Your Mr Flintoff holds out little hope

‘I must stress that I have absolute autonomy I give it

sixty forty against and do not send the poetry’

 

dishevelled in a seventies studio Grieve was

humble and subdued waiting for a question flow

that dwindled in the light an ageing man holding words

parrying a beat poet Bell lunges still upon a stage

uncontained he stands without his book nowhere

near the microphone he reads unheard an unknown

Geoffrey Hill ropes in chaos and the audience is calling

for its money he promises reparation for Ted Hughes

missing and for Bell in the corner without his book

my father knew a poor devil when he saw one

with instinct he sat beside a broken man without

knowing why to read from that same unknown or

pretend to read for one unknown without knowing why

my brow burns red still which the queen has kissed

and long after you were gone my father lost his mind

well I came to classics through Coriolanus but

really it was Penelope more the part about

filling Ithaca full of moths for I must know how

he made it and I suppose it was the master’s words

to Gwendolen or Jude in the rain at Christminster

for this alone I come with my son from all things past

the future alight in dreams I cannot hold fast

anymore than the sun dark from which you turn your eyes


 

The Erlking

 

leaving for the last time you could not hold

your son and your arms were empty of him

man as you are with young days put aside

so many men have left in the same way

hope the salvage from an unredeemed heart

and a mother will hold Tamlin fast until

he be dissolved Waly Waly shall green leaves

fall but she will renew love outworn

time is redeemed from the passing reach eternal

and despair is the one respite of truth

the Erlking father look where he stands

tree enamel grains into mist and rain

my father my father you hear what he sings

the green leaves are fallen tossed in the wind

and the young man took his songs

to London without music I am nothing

the former Schubert disciple

was a dispatch clerk after one year

my father my father there down by the whins

come the Erlking’s maidens where dawn begins

yellow the moon among the green willow

old love will not renew you left surprised

to come again as someone passing through

my father my father he won’t let me go

Erlking is hurting me hurting so

the green moon walks among the green willow

in seinen Armen das Kind war tod

 

 

Der  Leiermann

 

you hold the end of the wind for these last leaves

the world falls softly but you will not let go

startled branches heal wounds of future leaf fall

all leaves come to perish longing for the wind

all leaves come to perish longing for the wind

only the tree bereft imprints their glory

gentle in your finger fold the remnant days

softly call unfolding all the branches hold

fold on fold moving hands loosen into life

fold on fold moving hands loosen into life

you hear the last wind bewilder still the branches

lily lily I feel out of this worrld

 

no one spoke at the bus stop no one thought

of the words before piecemeal shall the fugitive

run only the night can die and you

passing out of reach on a Mayday afternoon

your end would be the madhouse or the streets

or so you were told only the woman survives until

gold go from the root and the days beauty dies

you pulled the arrow on the bow

Cartemandua ransoms the Brigante throne

while Gretchen bewails at her wheel alone

remote always even to yourself relentless exuberance

surged on truth to stir but once the restless derelict

meaning of your day you laughed the reach

of laughter children know but your mind was forged

on this world a self-made colossus melting into snow

fly o man you could not yield to man life

the feel of the earth’s void gently through your heart

ungathered still you stormed my untried provincial thought

with the held down tsunami of your will summer built

on the sweat of your brow winter simmered for your soul

I saw you at the Ode to Joy moving as one

realized into your last song and all you were alive for

the random wound of this world pulled you down

a moment out of time I held your hand in mine

I see you now as then larger than life

solemn as a child listening

I want to be Keats the world leaves of grass

afraid only of poetry and yourself

and rage and joy irresolute

your mind would darken as the darkest day

remote in epilepsy I feared you

and fled from you the drugs would dull

your mind you said restless with a passion

for boats you took off round the world

you were gone with love unrealized

his hand in mine und ach sein Kuss

time waits on all love you came back to die

to fall to drown in the shallow water

Meine Ruh’ ist hin, mein Herz ist schwer

Ich finde Ich finde sie nimmer und nimmermehr

 

I walk the night vestigial of your sojourn

weeping for the wounded and the wound makers

I saw the streets as only you could see them

time was headwaiter waiting on in hell you

the table clearer for death the company

walk close to the wall the wind will not blow cold

the branching tree burgeons mortal ecstasy

look for me when leaves fall and there will I be

the wind will come again and then I will be

the tree eternal fell among so many

lets go on together turn and turn about

I will make the songs and you shall grind them out

 

 

Beethoven’s C Minor Quartet, Opus 131

 

mercury in the run of the leaf Caligari

stifles the moon expressionist tilt of a world’s

end drew the canvas spin to ripe oblivion

beside yourself at the last the Titan’s viola

I am Schubert! Franz Schubert!

 

 

‘and we shall never be as once we were,

this life will never be what once it was.’

                             Delmore Schwartz

 

light streams its certainty on the rigor mortis of pine

life is but a moving star’s unstrung geometry

felled at Fusiyama by the fan of Hokusai Ruskin’s

tardy paint-pot flung transformed art for art’s sake

random once a piano sang random the spirit’s reality

but man the fallen angel dies in the image of God

 

 

In Memoriam: Herbert Howells (1892-1983)

 

time as oppressor impossible impermanent

the heart beat of eternity that never lets go

time turns diminishing unreachable reflections

its lifehold the distance of kaleidoscope fold

Jubilate and Te Deum pull me through but life’s

own hubris has put such futility into light

I cannot hold shadow colour running at the heart

or see in that long perspective of the retina

where all existence stalls timeless with reality

nemesis the space between threshold and horizon

over my evening window worlds of far pathos

moving out of light through depths beyond indifference

only the mirror knows where its fractured image goes

with time inextricable it strikes upon itself

 

3Ist December I983

 

 

Alexander asked him if he lacked anything,

‘Yea’ said he, ‘That I do, that you stand out

of my sun.’

 

deep the mirror of Nectar Assam and Amritsar

it is the first time in the history of the Golden Temple

that prayers have not been heard or were heard as the young at Assam

my father was a wandering Aramaean

while I must fumble ever for the right word yes or no

the language does not matter even to myself

I cannot justify myself or you so sure with me

with or without the word I cannot heal the casual

oppression of speech that makeshift inroad into silence

and could I read the characters on a Schliemann poster

would I not be more afraid the young unsilent or fractured

stone to fringe into Trojan ochre I am one as dead

caltha palustris or cups of kings as the sun rust

from a last hold the June casque breaks upon a flower fold

 

 

Sudha Goel

 

Sudha Goel a nine month bride and her unborn baby burned to death

one evening in New Delhi while her husband, his brother and her

mother-in-law looked on. She had failed to satisfy the dowry

demands of Shakuntala Devi, her mother-in-law.

 

Do thou Jatavedas on my behalf invoke Lakshmi fulvous of

the nature of gold radiant as a moon in glory in presence

who passes not away gold I shall possess and milch cattle

horses progeny and thralls Sri draw near with steeds

divine in the midst of elephant cry favour me you transcend

eternity and tongues daughter churned from the milk-white sea

the satisfied and the satisfier one with gold and wordless

seated on a lotus lotus-hued Sri deified of gods

boundless as the fugitive moon in refuge I solicit thee

do thou Jatavedas on my behalf invoke that Lakshmi

of gold the nature of fire high as the sun in glory

 

by sun gold was generated the fruit of the bilwa tree

created cryptogamous by thy austerity misfortune within

and without may it exclude for me from the world

I came bestow on me prosperity and fame manifest through

Kubera and Renown ‘the jewel of reflection’ the cap

of Fortunatus I repel calamity the elder sister of fortune

squalor of hunger and thirst want of increase turn thou

from my door Sri come near of odour known teeming

ever with harvests unconquerable the mistress over all creatures

she who lurks in cow dung give to me desire of my heart

fruit of my toil the truth of speech may the ornament

of cattle the savour of aliment fame and fortune

stay in my abode for this is my oblation

 

excellent progeny was born to thee in Kardama do thou

inhabit with me cause thy mother Sri lotus-garlanded

to dwell with my family may the regents of water

perform their offices of humidity stay in my domain

Chiklita that Sri thy mother divine remain with me

do thou Jatavedas on my behalf invoke Lakshmi moist

personified of thrift verge in hand mace to men of evil

gold the nature of fire high as the sun in glory

do thou Jatavedas on my behalf invoke that Lakshmi

imperishable who passes not away gold I shall possess

and milch cattle horses progeny and thralls

 

a cry is heard in New Delhi Sri blazes kerosene

hands of Shakuntala bear bride gold torn from flame

from Hindu love a nameless one breathes unborn

India dies alive her price strikes eternal shame

 

let that pure person ruminate ever the hymn to fortune

who desirous of fortune sacrifices day by day

lotus-thighed and lotus-eyed art thou lotus born

befriend me grant felicity give to me my desire

thou art giver of horses kine and wealth let riches come

most opulent goddess grant me progeny and to be

long-lived for thou art the mother of sentient creation

the fire possesses wealth the wind wealth the sun wealth

the Vasus wealth Indra wealth Brihaspati and Varuna wealth

son of Vinata quaff the moon-plant juice may Vritrahan

imbibe juice of the moon-plant may ministrant priests procurers

of riches take of the juice of the moon-plant may the gods

confer on me the requital of sacrifice be this thy litany

thy votary without resentment or malevolence or greed

 

lotus-tenemented lotus-handed fair the face of the lotus

eyes of the lotus lotus-hued beauteous beloved of Hari

be gracious source of the vigour of the threefold universe

and loveliness the white fragrance of white blossoms

to the spouse of Vishnu one with the earth resplendent

Madhavi the cherished of Madhava the dear to Achyuta

we recognise the great Lakshmi we reflect on the consort

of Vishnu may Lakshmi speed us lotus-seated resembling

the leaf of the lotus dwelling in the life of the lotus

of eyes long as the petal of the lotus Padmini

loved of all propitious to the wishes of the world

 

place thy lotus-foot in my heart make away forever

for me debt penury hunger and sin fear sorrow

suddenness of death and the slow disquietude of the mind

 

(after the 1858 translation by FitzEdward Hall of the Sri-sukta, or Litany to Fortune)

 

 

You might have left the Weingreen’

 

from these marshlands dead wood roots in the shallows and is

not dead I am come from the North my glazed eye can see

against an unfamiliar sky but the surface

the dead reflected tree to dare to walk in the length

of Queen’s for two hours I walked until my rage was spent

and none of you not one at you will come through these doors

again and what can I say to my son whose future

you hold as ransom after twelve years on the Social

my father dared to take me to Rome twice you turned him

away and further said that hands would be laid on us

and that force would be used to throw us out of the door

but I’m not going anywhere any way any-

more and the police here are a lot more human than

you in vain after fifteen years I look for Lowell

through All Souls and Magdalen I’m living with the dying

living with you when February closed the toilets

at The Plain it went against the grain to use yours but

my possessions safe enough in St John’s Quad were gone

and though I weather you and that from your own mouth

I had crashed the civilisation of the South

 

 

Oxford 1985

 

Part 1

 

sensing his Achilles heel Camus never used cars

unless he had to yet chose abruptly to accept

his own limitation at the end how casually

necessity circumvents integrity but

arraignment is always in the heart where choice and chance

remain illusion and the tired taxi driver is

a friend no hold as strong as the root hold chance or choice

the topmost forest fragments reach the sky in whispers

 

you come to my corner childlike from California

what shall I say to an honest man who fears nothing

at Magdalen can any speak to me fearing nothing

and the Romans knew a rascally Etruscan when

they saw one and refused to ransome Etruscan boys

and the American mind sees what there is to see

usually that confronting him re Park Honan

who on that provincial lawn actually taught me

while his colleagues authorities on Dryden and Pope

sole wielders also of the power of admission were

writing articles on the one hand for the TLS

and on the other and without hope no perpetual

no my poetry was not worth the paper it was

written on and no P.H. could not admit even

were he to become in rotation departmental

chairman to say nothing of the Bishop of Durham

next year or the year after that nil carborundum

and there’s more ways than one to storm a citadel

as Mao said after all I shall sit here not serving tea

to friends occasionally reminded that common

sense and decency either or can go hand in hand

morning leaves hung in green enervation such are not

seen in the North and among these young enervate leaves

and yet it seemed the most natural thing in the world

strangers in Oxford and yet not strangers at Magdalen

to speak of the long honey-coloured stone speechless

in sun hold or becalmed as after a storm to belong

I who came as a rebel asked only to belong

the new gold dome of the clothworkers hall at Leeds

was with its scaffolding gone almost a new horizon

many a day it kept me going through rain and sun

when things failed many an hour urging me to come and

wordless some things sometimes only stone can understand

but green leaves in Oxford open but are not open

and are not chestnut tardily remembering spring

three people on a bus were talking casually

compulsively and hardly listening to each other

whereupon a pair of the acutely self-aware

and half-turned towards one who wore a pin-stripe suit one

I have heard before talking on Egyptology

In the nineteenth century turned mid-sentence to hold

at full width aloft to read intensely at full strength

and as it were all the gathering intensity

of The Guardian exclaiming to The Times entry

on Oxford folding unfolding more than once sure

vulnerable unsure he slowly put his paper down

and morning leaves hung in their green enervation

such as are not seen in the North and among these young

and enervate leaves impassively grieved an old man

 

 

sometimes the railings are wrought to their utmost April

in Magdalen moves on sand young a fitful tree breaks young

isolation to speak with me though I am become

pariah a thrown shadow thrown over cornerstone

but light remained on a telecommunications

vehicle after the sun impermanent among

this building lot and blown among blown sand the long

honey-coloured stone of Normandy and Magdalen

O bewildered heart and Pound translating a fragment

had it there at the start but I have heard the bay tree

creaking under its burden of snow with strength enough

to move in the wind as the sea as bay leaves blackened

though he blew all at Rapallo dissolved light resolved

the bright commercial vehicle in a building lot

the Professor of Greek counted for little at Leeds

the School of Classics being constantly in a state

of proscription but outside the room of Professor

Arnott I realized the fragility of things

all ideals hurt both within and without but mostly

the other person with no way out he constantly

unlocked and locked his door only for him I ended

a sit in and that was before the examiners

meeting and only Mr Rowe has suffered my rage

and only Mr Rowe has deserved my respect

and took in his stride needless humiliation over

the Venus de Milo and for eight weeks on Hebrew

the official university card in his own hand

and P. H. declaiming on an Etruscan cup

May snow in the underworld pine smoke in the pine dark

impermeable nothing lasts in the end nothing

outlasts night pine smoking dark the natural dark

diurnal but the topmost forest fragments reach the sky

in whispers light the only chance we’re given light

the one chance eternal topmost forest fragments

light has its beginnings in the heart

 

 

Part 2

 

when you stopped to pick violets by the wayside I

wondered why you should want to pick them at all so

small they were and so impossible to keep yet

for whatever reason only you would have seen

them when I try to imagine your dangerous

life you give so many reasons the tired country

girl coming to the end of her second marriage

could not live alone and mostly you talk about

money in a compulsive monotone mostly

to yourself mostly as a wife and you drive hard

and you live hard there’s no way out you won’t be drawn

on the woman you drive each week to the airbase

and back you gave me violets although I forgot

them I’m certain that in a closed car at Wilcote

you got more from a nesting swan than I could and

I kept on asking what the name of the place was

And you were answering almost in a whisper

 

that Descartes had cut the throat of poetry Locke that thought

it panacea lived among learned men for whom

rumours of Chinese analogy of words naming things

and Fenollosa said deriving his thinking

from Emerson and began for the first time in centuries

to restore metaphor Aristotle’s hallmark

of genius from what he saw in the ideogram

‘some of the fellows have been asking how long is

this to go on’ gentlemen I’ll grow old sitting amongst

you all and as for that commemorative ball

I wouldn’t miss it for the world I’m going as I am

alas my godmother at the mention of

misogyny got cold feet I’ll not run from midnight and

the prince and the prince is in his castle waiting

from a train over the Thames I saw London for the first

time although I had been before I had not seen

till then from darkness little comes much that is colossal

mainly as a library girl I used to read

and The Elders was still fashionable in the sixties

and poetry today flourishes at St Hugh’s

Rachel you can keep your place for I’ve heard that female dons

suffer from misogyny much as men but worse

everyone was there permeable green glass a floral

garden at the waxworks museum I was unable

to distinguish between the live and the dead reflected

or not reflected from that threshold and no one looked back

no escape from the shadows lengthening before

me reality is oblique as railings thrown

by the afternoon behind me are oblique and

things done cannot be undone things said the present

I have known only as the knowledge of good and evil

and the heart makes no amends for that to come and

the heart permeable as a floral glass garden

the set between heaven and hell and no one looked

back and things held and lost or the fast train on the Palace

Pier its last threshold crossed stalled running to abyss

 

the nurse said would I sit up and one line of scribbled sense

is all I have of you and your family at a party

while you were hastily admitted as bulbar palsy

to a medical ward and you asked to write unable

to speak after an hour for several minutes you fought to

breathe unable to live he would have been three months dying

 

 

the morning shift was coming to an end when you said don’t

leave me the senior nurse was shouting about routine

there was never any choice there was never any time

to listen and you with the same name as a Tudor king

could not be comforted and the surgery was minor

but you haemorrhaged on the table before it began

I never got to know Stanley ambulant at first but

gradually less able and it was not his brain tumour

prevented him from speaking more not having anything

to say and the manner of his death was in keeping no

one came near he died emaciated on a bed pan

arched beneath clean sheets Stanley fearful unprotesting still

 

the tide was out and the sea too far out to reach wide the mud flats

unbreathing the tide is out though hollow sands are

hollow surfaces touched by the permanent shadow of

sea unbreathing the tide will be out when sunlight’s

last hold is a thin horizontal below horizon

life is convergence discernible as the end

as legend seen in the watermark between sand pool and

confluence mainly necessity is total

some with time and some without some who cannot look at all

mainly necessity a thin horizontal

below horizon abandoned turned sand abandoned

beside a low sea wall alive enough and small

enough to find we are confluence submerged the passing

flux of mud flats when sunlight’s last hold is converged

I was a girl when you taught me two years and my mind full

of Yeats and Donne you taught me what you knew and that was got

from the text Marlowe Chaucer Shakespeare inseparable

from you now I was a nurse and a woman when I saw

you again they booked you onto the ward as down and out

the college that tried to prosecute in the end thought

you were drunk and that night the second nurse was sister to

the prosecution lawyer and that night a doctor spoke

about Huntingdon’s Chorea and out of the depths once

in Potternewton Park you struggled to write poetry

but never got past the first line and you still critical

though the text was unfamiliar I read from Troilus

and Criseyde mainly as one afraid out the depths once

you were mentor to me a tree is a tree is a tree

sunlight cuts the retina as only Hebrew letters

can among pebbles inviolable ages

burn impossible on Brighton beach there is no remorse

stone-white stucco wind-blown white stone on the seafront

tragedy is not ephemeral as the small hotel

as memory once enacted where memory

once existed is reality possible at all

as moonlight is diffuse light from the Palace Pier

over water is clear light from a Ferris wheel empty

revolved empty of people light revolved nothing

is here beyond the apparition of pebbles blown on

kerosene nothing is real as the dead unreal

the sound of water falling back from pebbles and there is

no remorse for the knowledge of good and evil

ths asphodel is small enough to hold in both hands

small enough to hold in dreams what is left behind

is beyond recall the possible always out of reach

and Eliot was received into the parish church

at Finstock afterwards and disparate among oak

trees walked the adjacent ancient forest of Wychwood

wearing his bowler hat and thereabouts in June

I927 and the Romans built at Fawler

down the road Margaret forever in her ball gown

gone to be parlour maid to the honourable Sissons at

Wilcote a wilful swan nests beside the closed car

Eliot received the Nobel prize the night I was born

and Margaret in sequins gone as blossoms pall and fall

I’ll not belong again at Wilcote how little how long

can I remain and Pound got βρόδυδακτυλος

from Sappho’s rosefingered moon unknown outside Homer

who used it to draw the dawn Pound could not say in

I949 why he used the Aeolic rather

than the Homeric form and did not know that Sappho

unless as Aphrodite had brought him the word

small enough to hold though I look for the hung reflected

tree it fails me Margaret is gone imperturbable

pheasants call from enclosed industrial pine the shipping

magnate’s shooting rights are at bay on Palm Sunday

when with liquorice and water spirits of the well

are worshipped landlord or freemason eviction

is the same or Athenaeum member and the Romans

built at Fawler and the President of Magdalen said

 

Note

I am indebted to Hugh Kenner’s The Pound Era for this poem

 

 

For the Big Boys at the Gates of Magdalen

 

Ginsberg have you tried to carry that red and gold volume

around midway with a chair up bus steps I’ve cursed you yet

hard as the loosened sound inside bricks turning on hardened

cement or the outerside pounded LA Albuquerqe

Wichita Vortex Bayonne iron Horse Apollinaire

My Sad Self you are one of the greats I was twenty years

coming to Howl and thought Whitman irresponsible why

so long why can I read you now in Magdalen but to know

how to speak the right language but to know how to listen

but to know how to know and not to know but to see with

a breathing heart and trees scream and drop bright leaves

this side of folly and I never finished On the Road

my last day by the railings residual sadness

the Mexican episode do we end or begin at all

 

Griffin give them guns

 

 

Oxford from a Prison Cell

 

what road did I come by

poetry leads to a locked door and at the last deserts

the body it has used you come to me at the threshold

after seven days and you come as a faithless woman

though the sun coloured iris hurts it breaks towards sunlight

Caltha palustris unearthed closes only to the dark

the body will fight to the death for its own dignity

while the mind more able to imagine a walled up tomb

than a room with a locked door the eternity of one

and the time of the other where the mind freewheeling can

recall only the absurd I sat once with my back to

another door learning Greek for the first time and the last

time learning Greek then you came with cups of kings you cannot

help me now let’s go on together turn and turn about

I will make the songs and you shall grind them out

 

 

Untitled

 

When I asked you to pray

You turned me away

I’ll not ask again

You ride with John of York

Who cannot pray

You ride with David

Dunelmiensis

Et tu Brute

But you’re not as they

Who is worse

The chaplains of Oxford

Or the porters of Magdalen

 

 

La Figlia Che Piange

 

for ten years her arms full he let her stand Eliot was

silent after La Figlia emptiness the sojourner

who cannot disembark you would not look back emptiness

neither hurting nor healing is the sojourner who will

not see his journey’s end to heal is to hurt and you would

not look back time the distance at the distance of things snow

dissolved over the Thames altering nothing the vowels

remain before and after and untaught out of depths

the senses make the metre reality the oar pull

on the water to know the spirit is to look back to

know futility if only for one who would not look

back altering nothing the knowledge of good and evil

snow dissolved over the Thames altering nothing

 

 

ךףמ

 

the more the merrier Carey said dissipating in

a moment a three years’ rage through a downpour Balliol

and St Johns in rain whiten whitened from rain and writing

poetry and studying poetry so Sir Kenneth

Dover said are two radically different activities

Balliol in the rain grey as the light brown breast of the wood-pigeon

and many are quick to reject and none so consummate

as he חכמה is wisdom and ן זק is the word

to be old and I have heard the vowel sounds of unstill

water more valuable to me than the rhythms of Greece

or Rome I weather you in the spirit for the flesh is

strong and will not let go as Lowell said the spirit

is weak and vacillates before itself and the spirit

is not invulnerable broken the key in the lock

is broken and the tree is gone that sheltered me in the

sanctuary of your stone and the blown sand that covered me

is subsumed without pain I cannot look through the railings

of Magdalen without pain my spirit is in that corner

reading in vain loosened from its downturn and loosened from

leaves the weeping willow’s branches are upward on the wind

the age is all and you and I are indissoluble  

 

 

Limen

 

walk close to the wall the wind will not blow cold there

 

I could not sit in the tradesmans entrance that was not what

I was there for I see again open carved scrolls open

on the locked door of Magdalen and I was reading Conrad

when the police were summoned the first time and for the life

of me could see no reason for moving from that door when

the police were summoned a second time I was guilty

of leaving the tradesmans entrance to read Conrad outside

the locked door of Magdalen and I went down with them to sit

in the tradesmans entrance and no one ridiculed me and

for two hours nothing came near me and something out of this

world remembered not recalled survival the wind upon

a wall the Oxford Wall and the only road I came by

white was the wind over the stone of Torre Road Station

and open on the locked door the learning I had come for

 

 

The Return

 

in St John’s Wood evening comes slowly to the listless trees

listlessness much the same as that at the edge of Wychwood

only the difference matters and the diurnal form from

which the night takes hold they do not disappear vestigial

here their substance smokes on the skyline reality is

memory the forest trees they do not disappear and

dark is the light within and dark is their hypostasis

though darkness firstly comes to the topmost forest leaves light

comes lastly to the darkest the difference is within and

the difference between futility and despair is the

tree in apparition and the way the night takes hold and

futility is eternal and is not of this world

 

 

Carol

 

You mentioned before you left, the possibility of

visiting me as a friend, indeed, you have presumed to

expect your request to be adhered to, so I must ask

you now to respect my reluctance to enter into

a makeshift mercurial and masquerading friendship.

Since I cannot dissuade you from a wholly destructive

precarious future, chosen freely by you, to be

exploited entirely by you, then there is nothing more 

I can do that would not further hurt you. More so I shall

remember you in my poetry and more so as the

woman you will become, someday and from the depths you move

in, you might recall that freedom is won only after

the knowledge of freedom lost, in the end you will become

as the lonely girl still looking for love that you once were.

 

28th April I986 – 28th May 2006

 

 

Elizabeth Bonichon

 

I have been and will be very sad for Etienne it

seems to me that he suffered unnecessarily for

far too long there seems so much more that could have been done and

I find myself crying over trivial things the days

and the evening pass easily enough but it is at

the ending of the day that I feel the loss of him the

most however I have many friends Adele her husband

Albert I don’t know how I could have managed without her

so I am very lucky in many ways but my life

will never be the same again enough to cope with most

things and I have my two cats they are good company now

I have a third a stray I don’t want him but I can’t turn him away

and I am waiting to see if he can or will improve

 

 

DEATH AND THE MAIDEN

I984

  

For Kathleen Smyth

       of Attymass

 

 

Text Box:  

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the letter told you to pull yourself

Together and named you Katy for the

Old days, your brother would be too busy

Working to make the journey from Keighley

To Leeds at such short notice and without

Any warning, it was too far to come

And you would be out of the hospital

Before long. Yet you had been his mother

While grandma cut peat in order to be

Able to put food on the table, your

Tears would smear the words on the page after.

Did he know what you knew in those last days

Then in his last years, he would disappear

Without warning from the face of the earth.

 

the Lakeside Cafe was becoming shabby its season

almost over restless and waiting fidgety as the

formal anxiety of leaves I served at the banquet

heyday and every table flowed with honey my untried

fervour was wooed into folds of starched white linen and high

Sunday tea Easter rose after twenty years from the closed

shine of marble only a straw perpetual sunlight

for dreams where unlit people move as shadows walk close to

the wall the wind will not blow cold there I hold your hand though

you see with eyes out of this world out of this night and all

your dreams awake clamouring with the voices of tired

children I have traced the letters of illuminated

signs and seen the sutures of the night burn into neon

angels and death lies between the unreal shadow and its

dissolution my mother was afraid of cemetery

flowers and omens in blossoms of the lilac bloomed world

without end rain is falling softly in spring and you are

searching for something you cannot find though more than once you

would ignore the open door time stalls in black squall rain lets  

its indignation fall on Beckett Street ancient doorways

open sepia within the living seaming colour

fluctuate moments of surrender and defeat and frail

as life when light strikes to tremble into dust yet lost in

your acceptance timeless as the pledged sun and death for the

knowledge of good and evil from steep sides of a cobbled

ginnel steam flows as rain it sighs for the moment it dies

I hold your hand in steam only in the ginnel can time

let go I have seen you among the women returning

and you were serene among them a woman listening

in a morning throng far beyond them and you were so much

alive never so much alive as then walking over

water between a shoreline and the sea and the land flowed

with milk and honey then as you wove leaves of red and gold

into destiny Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring and

you so far beyond me that remorse was endless only

as the end of eternity endless as music heard

on a keyboard unreachable as grace unreachable

as you walking over water lily lily you see

the white hair of a woman streaming why can you not see

me lily is in front of me and all I can hear are

your last words  lily lily I feel out of this worrld

I listen to the quarrel of your departure love was

never like this I stand behind my father’s chair and now

begin to look at you why have I no answer for your

unspoken why I know we are free only as the rain’s

uncertainty on the cobbled stones of a city night

it falls where it will with the light and we are living yet

helpless as the livid shadows of these stones this is the

equilibrium of rain where shadows move as they must

for the light darts until it dies but your mouth has fallen

open your words unlearn their language your eyes have seen such

sound as only the mind with its first cry can understand

you shall outstare yourself you shall not supplicate again

you thrilled us with the lost Titanic your relatives booked

as steerage but did not go in the end and at the last

moment you would not look back your head is bowed away from

the pillow and you remember a time when grandma said

they’ve only patched you up lost as your eyes are the lost words

of a book you hold as refuge you hear the first wind call

softly to its leaves you hold his hand insignificant

as these and snow is laughing in his eyes and still curling

in his hair for you were as a snow bride I’ll take you home

when the hills are fresh and green those autumn leaves of red and

gold I youst to know and your mind left as the colour of

the fractured marcasite darkest stone at the crossroad runs

sheerest rain over the stones downward amber light seams the

runnels of the night and darkness without was reflected

as darkness within rain was through the both of them it rose

through night stone rising from night rain only a night blur of

amber darker than darkness a mirror in the dark you

come to your destination as a woman unweeping

with knowing not of children nor anything of this world

in refuge a woman unforming and a fugitive

alone in the sun will run to and fro at the random

of his own unlimning at the crossroads once a woman

stood and the stones were amber water

my dearest dature Kathleen

after a long while i been thinking what was rong

i am always dreming of yo and the children

i Hope you are as in By times i am here

all alone in my one House i often think

of the times i youst to trip over i youst

to like to goe to your House but will it ever

come again that you would come this summer

what a time it is here no one of my Famly

would live in Ireland now dont noe Kathleen

it is lonly here no one to talke too

no one lefte the are all gon away

it is rite emegration to England be as good

as you can the world can find us all out

no one coming or going our road now

it is very lonly in Ireland

the are better off we all hafte to goe Kathleen

no one at me only god and Blesod mother

what did i doo to all

it is Hard Kathleen to live anywhere whout mony

there is no mony here only dool and old penicens

i am getting 2 pound a wake and i am not so Bad

Hoping you Kathleen you will soone be all rite

Mama to all

she watches from a Sunday boat remembering among

her children a shoreline seen at the last reach running to

the future the manifest unmoving causality

of the sea and the trees rose into June such depths of high

unbroken water beyond sunlight and beyond gold the

green leaves were engulfed beyond time you the embarkation

of a girl lonely among children where is my spirit

now so many so many are the nights and I have been

a mother and a fugitive how shall I run from them

bread is the staff of life and yet the leaves burn in the sun

along the shoreline converging to a far cafe and

you will disembark there for leaves are on the water and

the day is done piecemeal as my soul remains the living

tracery of your death man shall not live by bread alone

He will give his angels charge of you alive in the hands

of an unsure boy who dreams a surgeon’s dream my brother

is a maker of illuminated signs this is the

way his nightmare dreaming wheel is held at bay white horses

galloped hooves of delirium one way over my last

horizon a rainbow flashed king’s ransom earth’s corners on

grandma’s brooch they were but silver stones of marcasite as

I trailed chain links in slow procession of kings long after

and she was a tiller of the ground a gatherer of

peat for most of fifty years once she drew her life to name

a rook’s anvil I never knew what she meant she stayed when

you were away the lightning and the thunder almost touched

dont be afeard if it comes it’ll take the both of us

on their hands they will bear you up too soon you followed her

primitive incongruous and catholic black her kid

gloves they sent her back at the end of summer everything’s

changed a white horse canters now on the billboard where it stood northwards expressionless desolate as white stuccoed on

these thirties buildings the corner eagle flames on painted

wings for years he stared unruffled grey as fixed stone only

the written sign seen through the railings of my school remains

white stone Curtis for store equipment younger than her years

she stood at the crossroads where the stones were amber water

I saw you alone among a crowd full of girls and you

were not like any of them my daughter I beheld you

as you will behold me these words were to stay long after

this crowd’s vanishing away for you spoke as a mother

about to leave all her children behind forever you

take my hand a last time and once we were women walking

together and now the boat is full of Sunday people

drifting into stillness among them you become the young

infinity of a girl watching death on the water

and manifold only as leaves that fall along a June

afternoon and green depths rose silently over your

ruin such darkness from light came without wind without rain

and all your children left in disarray                          

tell me what you know bread is the staff of life and you were

diffident in your day and sometimes went barefoot in the

hurry of bundled peat that you gathered in fear while your

life was left astray consumed like peat in the schoolhouse fire

once they brought you back from the dead those Irish furies then

chanted over you bewildered the face of a limbless

doll you would awaken to the faces of your children

I’ll be glad when they’re all grown up who can tell if you steered

your ship or your night was scuttled by stars of hell you stoop

for the gathering of days you saw the Giant’s Causeway

tumble down time with unleashed impulse pulls the joystick round

where is the rage of your own red heart

walk close to the wall the wind will not blow cold there for I

hold your hand against the white desolation of stone where

refuge was surrender and survival but the ceaseless

wind upon a wall yet your ruin ever shall be for

at the casting of the spirit down life is barter brought

to death’s consanguinity darkness holds its own control

within the darting of the light every dissolution

flows as rain lily lily I feel out of this worrld

this side of life the end is but the known unknown over

spaces of the night neon’s shadow blazed with rain colour

pulse of certainty I shall not know again and nothing

survives beyond a moment or the spirit’s letting go

let there be light even though shadow ever shall remain

the cafe had been our only refuge and all at once

without any reason I no longer wanted to go

there something overwhelming was pulling me in without

my knowing fraying at the day’s edge something before it

had happened sojourned now in an abode on the far side

of my mind and you had been laid off but this time it was

different and everywhere I looked you were there and then

you were gone as though you had fallen away from the day

as a shadow falls in a dream waiting for someone to

bring you back but nothing had happened no one had noticed

that the world had stopped dreaming with nothing showing with a

momentum spiralling and throwing me ineffably

ineluctably to the darkest utmost outer rim

what was it that I knew and without my ever knowing

but the tray was too heavy for I had cleared too many

tables and the season was winding down casually

to an end the August bank holiday was over and

even as I seemed to founder under the weight of such

inexorable momentary oppression my mind

had grown used to the affray bending beneath the slanting

pressure of a late September afternoon my fingers

suddenly loosened their hold and as though no longer my

own released their last frantic grasp on the tray how much I

struggled to contain its equilibrium yet nothing

could prevent the outcome or halt the ending and helpless

I was held almost in another universe while time

lay in disarray as my silence ran aground my clutch

was simply prised away from the load as it fell and I

never knew what it meant your spirit was broken beyond             

repair time seemed to fall short whatever I tried to do

and even your last words would not be addressed to me at

the last moment I too would not look back just leaving you

there and without my knowing that you were about to die

and when told outside in the rain I was left paralysed

and only in my heart was I able to turn about

and run through every barrier to where you lay alone

I would remain transfixed forever afraid and outside

controlled and told they would never let me see her again

trying to hide from the last ineffaceable horror

of it all the mute irresolute silence of the end

the garden gate was open on the morning I came through

into a world more high and white than I could know silence

on that road was deeper than snow deeper than light I took

my prize from the dark though unbearable moons pull me down

I watch snow falling impossible want waits on me as

I walk the shadow the kaleidoscope hurtling always

on a knife edge the window this side of silence and there

the streets were hung with triangles of red and blue waving

free as their symmetry airless and tardy as organ

music of the early fifties while shale of high black hills

crumbled into silver from a leftover moon and where

children under starlight and gaslight became as men at

the far side of a street cry endless the rites of capture

and flight utmost the shadows at the time of abandon

in a green world seen through a great Victorian sideboard

brooched silver wrinkled black on astrakhan and rain walls rose

sunless shadows and the near sky caught a pinnacle wrought

from the black spears of clothes posts and from tumult nurtured to

renew the untouched flowers whose colours grew unwithered

from the green unshone of privet leaves suddenly fire soared

on a feather bed beaten back by the wide span of my

father’s hand and when I open a box of ribbon spools

only the touch of their tin black silk is sure or the old

words of an old woman not to be assuaged you get what

you’re given and no more and left as the empty red of

a June day I hold the dry stem hollow of your resting

or your ruin and the cornerstones of granite were black

without end when rain ran once down Regent Street relentless

yellow floodwater hurtled without light out of darkness

there is a parcel that is too heavy and now only

the letters before me have any meaning A or B

become unbearable simplicity and as words heard

for the first time and aligned as lost words addressed within

a station but refuge is not to the fugitive a

beginning or an end random the escape from this world

random the captured shadow the space between pursuer

and pursued is an isolation nothing can redeem

nor remorse assuage and at the heart there is no refuge

from the heart and still no release from your words or your voice addressed within a station but there is a parcel that

is too heavy there is a parcel that is too heavy

and cornerstones of granite black without end plunge into

transitory depths at the end of infinity where

crowned illusory white queens stare through my window and where

the earth moving underfoot unearthed once such a heaving

rich maternity the recoiling moisture of young worms

became as hewn flesh moving for to live was to break life

just to run or to remain I was to fear life more than

I feared myself the queens are dissolved and their jewels have

fallen away and bricks were spurting ochre into crevices the day

we passed with load upon load and coal dust showed over white

stucco the white impassive stone of Torre Road Station

and every one was red unbroken soundness to link with

another mortar that tore some few bore cracks to the core

I watched days drift on glass unstrung unstill and as only

the stillness of roof birds somewhere in the middle dark the

sounds from two worlds disappeared somewhere in the middle dark beyond an iron bedstead wall the moldering reach of

our back world filtered green with sunless shadows and privet

roots enclosed trimmed still flowers and to the last corner at

the edge of stone the fused walls closed silent words within rain cornerstones of granite black without end and the light was

extinguished from a floral glass bowl to remain as the

natural day a solstice to bear rudimentary

stillborn the night out of darkness or the darkest day and

a room contained infinity once to become beyond

horizon as a lasting sheet fold above me transfixed

the unlit levels of the sea while midsummer awry

among the marigold pierced geraniums to the

heart and let blood to broach a brick brocade and emerald

emblazoning and passing yet as the legendary

phosphorous shamrock ribbon sent every year from Ireland

an open door stands open upon itself an open

doorway opens only to the dark no threshold between

the hold of the dark and the light hold unlit as the depths

of a mirror’s horizon or the shadow beyond its

own threshold resolved beyond reflection and the fire on

a feather bed was beaten back by the wide span of my

father’s hand between the unreal shadow the fire and its

dissolution and fairground horses ran upon the night

dissolving into neon light without darkness and light

without shadow my father built with loosened sun and bricks

pulled from old slums were walls of children wild rain crackled fire

on a tarmac roof and when my father pulled it down the

bricks opened red the unreal day he unpicked every one

gold was seamed in mantle flow tongues of fanged serpents stifled  

under feet of sandalled stone Sister Theckla strides alone

her shadow sheds into black of her woven robe black as

the cross on her moon white heart fragile was her wimple fold

as snow in May Mary stands enthroned weeping blue among

her flowers rayed as the sun her red heart bids me come and

on paper sheer as a heel on a serpent’s head I press

my hand to scribble rich and as iron shone with black lead

we shall build a house from these stones every one unbroken

soundness to link with another and apart and silent

you toiled for the sake of piety and work and tipped your

cap at the mention of the dead and once at dawn under

arc light and police watch and the critical still birds for

ceremony you exhumed a murdered man so let the

Lethean river run you were the church’s funeral

man and the ulcer is fermenting and it threatens to

erupt to spill over every moment and the axe that’s

for them the landlord and his crew when they come you cannot

cry for your freedom nor laugh at your folly father of

my first years irretrievable now the voices in the

airless garden that overflowed vacuity only

the close sea outside this high Victorian Sunday holds

without meaning without movement within the colourless

undark haze of a Hornsea garden how shall I put my

shadow down without movement and paralysed within this

incombustible haze how shall I come entire or hold

without meaning while out of the sea upward the chalk high

military stone rose incandesced above me moon white

crenelations without shadow light within light or the

breakwater breaking darkness without reflection to wake

to find something beyond darkness once held and left behind

fused without sunlight the sea’s parallels within a frieze

left outside horizon a stifled ochre foreground was

soldered inanimate blue unreal converging blue and

unreached by those who mostly looked outward from the sea out

of the depths when rain waters rose over the world little

black Quibba wept at the emptiness of things O Mary

we crown thee with blossoms oblique the brief equinoctial

day I first put my shadow down out of the depths Lord hear

my voice silent now as the silence from this frieze or an

unlit animated Ferris wheel upon a neon

shadow people looking outward from the sea from the sand

let my cry come unto Thee and little black Quibba wept

at the distance of things and when milk flowed from a flower

stalk it left me afraid Sister Theckla weaving crowns from

blossoms at the stem and the donkey in the street passed by

without notice queen of the angels and queen of the May

forlorn as her fanfare fading father of my first years

the unreal day opened red as you unpicked everyone

can you hear the fontayn of the sweet nightingale and the

putters putt on the green and are not distracted startling

light perpetuates a startled evergreen no rest this

side of the enclosure as the holy hedge consumes an

August afternoon arterial gold draws the spoke of

the leaf hold and the green leaves are oppressed I cannot cross

to the other side though sun dark leaves hurt and left now as

the undersurface reflecting but deflection August

inviolable among the holly leaves the broken

mooring of an orb web beyond repair O but there is

no way through and no going beyond this August day as

she sings in the valley below I am certain that once

the holly hedge passed this way nothing remains now except

an enclosure open and unenclosed so why have the

holly leaves disappeared while the car park as then is still

adjacent and the pathway either from or towards but

why am I so afraid the last August corner of a

holly hedge has gone as the last searing reflections of

a broken mirror’s fragmentation and though I come with

my children the holly hedge remains for you were always

on the other side the one way journey beyond only

through the holly leaves the putting green is deserted and

the putters have left and the last corner of the holly

hedge has gone sometimes the nurses took us through the putting

green to woodland under oak trees downward to where fern leaf

beyond lasting depths of deciduous oak leaf airless

grew and nothing disturbed the breathing fold risen green from

leaf mould endless light and darkness as only these fern leaves

how without wind or rain the firmamental waters hold

such silence I had not heard before such a silence and

neither birdsong nor oak leaf dissolving underfoot and

the sudden nurse calling through a shower of rain calling  

me back for I walk alone over leaf fern a one way

journey beyond the nightingale fontayn heard on a keyboard

the cafe would open for a few more Sundays but its

season was done and the trestle tables were already

folded away you had been laid off and the season was

done and I was weary among tables a weariness

such as only the formal leaves could know before leaf fall

yet casual Sunday people were casual before

leaf fall the cafe by the water would it ever come

again and you were gone you had been laid off and the long

season was over and the high endless summer that we

worked together when Robert and I did all the running

the silence at the end of the day while people worked in

silence constrained among dressers full of willow pattern

the illuminated house was left in vacant darkness

and only a torn note you tore from a door to remain

remained but she told us to come on Tuesday evening and

one day at the tea shop Mary promised to help and she

was then a landlady and left an address and told us

to wait and I persuaded you but she did not come she

told us to come on Tuesday evening and at the crossroad

I can think of nothing and there is nothing left to say

to you the high stone converges and from every side its

banks plunge downward into flames of low rain from Gledhow Wood what road did we come by tell me what you know why do you

walk the leaves as though for the last time over water the

October wind was forming I don’t want to go to the

cafe anymore and you heard only the wind calling

I Sing of a Maiden Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring

her lifetime for a moment held his love daddy brought you

flowers that day so proud he was to bring such a teeming

of chrysanthemum and dahlias amassing under

cellophane and you recoiling so little so much the pity of it all

lily of the valley hyacinth blue and asphodel

man astride wrinkled as deadweight sea and for years I walked

shallows clear with you leaden as delirium soft as

the fugitive stopped feet of a dream where hell is falling

headlong down and the desperate and the fallen are left

inconsequential under heaven there only the flash

of a welding arc for we are filaments of men and

shadows out of neon the night sees upon window glass

flickering the key is broken fast within its lock

at the intersection sky domed into concrete blue no

loophole for the soul through that vaulted mortised horizon

a primary unmoving vastness outstared me there man

was but an oscillation on the blur of interval

from the stillroom of a cafe to a world without end

where pageant is as lucid as sunlight under marble

rain is falling softly in spring and you

are searching for something you cannot find

though more than once you pass the open door

Will Be. Wait for. Want to.

lily lily

 

 


 

 

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