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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

&nbs