The Enfield Sonnets Page 2

The Fields Of Killingbeck a work in progress

The unrelenting cold of Christmas Eve

Had eased a little, enough to allay

The dark, enough to get through, a reprieve

Impossible to gauge or even say

For sure if snow was on the way, instead

Light rain began to fall through everything,

Slowly blown slanting spreading through coloured

Glazed illuminated bulbs still branching

Distant creases in a low ungathered

Night that prefigured the year’s end as it

Crowded upon me filling the stifled

Air, yet mute and far-off as an unlit

Star or as the future stretching around

Them, lost with whatever it was I found.

Sometimes it is impossible to breathe,

The future weighs so heavily upon

Me, how shall I ever manage to weave

A narrative with nothing to go on,

With so much lost and inaccessible

And still only reachable through a door

Standing ajar and unapproachable.

The entangled years that sought to immure

Us, trailing lost threads that could never be

Pulled free or traced back to their origin,

Exerting a stranglehold, memory

Was unable to release or begin

To unravel without language aligned

Superimposed on what is left behind.

Language alone manages to steer me

Through the hidden straits and open peril

Of insomnia where rhythms to be

Are stored unknown and unwritten until

Conjured piecemeal into reality,

Attended by their lost experience

And pierced to the heart by memory

Remaining yet fading from existence,

While the future crumbles into nothing

As though propped upon its own far shadow

Under a precarious scaffolding,

A replica left empty and hollow

Within and mimicking words forgotten,

Splintered into time between now and then.

The year is hurrying towards its end

And even as I struggle for a way

Through, nothing now can lessen or amend

Its unending vacuum left to weigh

Heavy on my mind, the words do not come

On cue, subsumed, irrecoverable

And aground alongside memory from

Which there is no escape, an empty hull

Forgotten in full unfathomable

Seas, lodged fast forever on a last ledge

Of time, beyond what is salvageable,

Refusing still to release its knowledge

Mute without shadow under sealed pressure

At unlit dreamed levels of the future.

How can I make a beginning again

From all that has gone before or even

Out of the end, however much the pain

Recedes it will not go away, often

Now there is nothing to think of or say

Destined always to wonder how to go

On with language in such a disarray

To wait there left with nowhere else to go

With no refuge at the end of it all

And however much I try to rehearse

The past it is always beyond recall

Yet I know that only silence is worse,

The airless paralysed sound of a mind

Trapped forever with what is left behind.

Silence is worse and yet I know full well

It is the vacuum necessary

For words to come and as an empty shell

Keeps the sound of its own reality

So I am as its hollow left to tell

Of how mute imagination was brought

To birth by a shadow that fleeing fell

Along the day and out of darkness wrought,

Echoing through far falling city rain

To iron grey depths where scuttled empty

Starlight foundered full underfoot in vain

Where neon blinking intermittently

Signalled unheard words charred into the sheer

And endless silence of the atmosphere.

All there is left to do is to allow

Memory to come through and not renege

On what took place but openly avow

Its truth, still existing with a language

Of its own and left in reality

At an address unknown somewhere in a

Dream, forgotten in anonymity

But echoing beneath insomnia

From an endless arena in the dark,

Confined again, reliving what happened

Yet fading unseen as a watermark

Between pages turning towards the end,

Its proof inscribed as an unlocking key

Inserting time into eternity.

The air is heavy with threatening snow

But still it does not come, filled with light found

In a world turned upside down and as though

Reflected already upon the ground.

There is nowhere left to start or begin,

Following on after as an echo

Suddenly reaching an utmost ending,

The words are almost more than I can know

And I am left as a stranger even

To myself for my life is no longer

Mine, still waiting there for snow between then

And now, yet trying to find another

Meaning hidden in the recovery

Of time that passed without its history.

It is the feast of the Epiphany

And the hoar frost is again receding,

Even lightly fallen rain, already

Fitful and uneasily loitering,

Is left there forgotten at a corner

In Hampstead where a tree still rearing lit

Stands abandoned beyond notice after.

And nothing that is lasting seems to fit,

It is the on-going long drawn echo

That signals an eventful outcome

When sometimes at the end of hours hollow

Is the yield without anything to come

Or fall back from, when in brocaded lace

A divested unlit tree leaves its trace.

It is the labour and sometimes seeming

To be going nowhere that is the key,

Opening like a closed fan unfolding

From its origin and extremity,

Faltering outward among untold lines,

Arched precarious and narrowing in

The thin concertina of its confines

Collapsing into nothing from within,

Knowing that I am only following

Another trying to keep up and yet

Always falling behind, an existing

Mislaid shadow unable to forget,

Left without anything to come or fall

Back from, in silence unanswerable.

There is a floor that is interstitial

Palpable between the polarities

Of a dream stretching into terminal

Darkness and left to plunge precipitous

Towards its own infinity below.

Silence that I am always on the edge

Of, pushed so far there is nowhere to go

To except insomnia, the last ledge

To which I cling, veering on the abyss

Slowly crumbling within a vacuum

While I rehearse a last night in stasis

Alone. Out of the chaos the words come

In their fashion and of their own accord,

Costing almost more than I can afford.

In the dream I was climbing a ladder

In a photograph and more than half way

Trying to follow my children further

Up and about to remark on the way

That climbing there without fear, suddenly

I could no longer breathe, even awake

I was still without air in full panic

My throat paralysed my mind still frantic

For a way out and the means just to take

In air and establish reality

Again and end the nightmare rehearsal

For the end, nothing else seemed to matter

Yet nothing could help me in the struggle

With myself or the stifled words left there.

I was born in nineteen forty eight in

The early hours of the morning during

A sudden December night when the din

Of late revellers outside in passing

Had quietened down and Coburg Street was

Left to nurse its silence under gas light

Flickering. My mother was tired because

She had prepared all evening for the sight

Of her sisters due to arrive from Ireland,

Hoping to be there during the labour

Of her first child, but they did not come and

I was born unattended when her hour

Was at hand, its aftermath was the span

Of a count-down from when her life began.

I knew nothing of what had gone before

And you gave us so little to go on,

It was hardly mentioned or left obscure

As though it had never happened, your own

History was then as a vacant space,

A few sentences gathered together

Preserved by word of mouth without a trace

Of the day passing or what happened there.

For your origin like your life had been

Wholly plundered and left in disarray,

Only things you carried away could mean

Anything and there was nothing to say

In passing. I remember your silence

Most, the way you spoke in the present tense.

I can only imagine what you felt

As you held me and gave me my first name,

Your move against all the cards that were dealt

Before you, a freedom that then became

A prison ensuring you would exist

Living for each day and yet ignoring

An open door and an exit you missed

In the confines of a fan unfolding.

The way through was always on the other

Side, forever in front of you always

Behind, in all the noise there was nowhere

To lay your head, the lost unquiet days

Never burned out, even to horizon

The future was not within your reason.

How can I ever be worthy of my

Task, nights like this I just want to forget

It all, to sleep awhile or yet defy

My destiny by refusing to let

It go. Often my mind is in tailspin

Falling without end through reality

And the end unfinished and left within

As a ruin in its totality,

In the space between waking and dreaming

And where I am lost trying to follow

Another, someone once known and hearing

My own voice answering as an echo

Ricocheted through an immutable night,

There is no choice, I have to get it right.

Silence recurring was left as silence

After, destined never to come to an

End but not the same as it had been once

Before from when memory first began

To take shape, this was wholly different,

Nothing was left to remind us that you

Had ever been there, nothing that was meant

To last for very long, but we all knew

This was the end, time would not come again

But remain as though something had happened,

Familiarity was to remain

The inexorable feel of the end,

Time once was a cavernous vacuum

Filled with the emptiness of days to come.

Only silence was left to tell of you

And its drawn out presence endlessly wound

About us all you had amounted to,

The lost days and remembered nights were drowned

Out always, still just beneath the surface,

Hurtling downward and beyond retrieval

With words once that vanished without a trace

Into the delirium of it all.

Silence is where I must start from, it is

All there is and all there is left to go

On, the times I awake thinking to miss

Something, a shadow I could not mislay

That fell in the night alongside my own

With the certainty of a day to come.

How shall I address your silence when I

Cannot confront my own left there to trail

Into the distance as though on stand-by

And as though it is all to no avail.

What remains is a mute reality

Falling backwards with nowhere else to go,

An ebb tide’s diminishing entity

Yet leaving me no choice but to follow

Or to stay where I am on an empty

Shore an interval existing before,

Incising the sea’s glass infinity

With an open splintered fallen sun, raw

Levelling in the dark, in a mind’s hold,

Lost to the world, locked into the untold.

To confront silence I have to go back

To a dream recurring and coming out

Of nowhere, suddenly taking the lack

Of all the years alone and spent without

You and drawing them into a question

Which you being alive cannot answer.

I try to focus on an illusion

That was to propagate your death after

And leave us in the dark just believing

In what we were told, yet I am distraught

By the truth and continue entreating

You to explain a lie that left us caught

In a time warp with you alive, unknown

To us, and living out your life alone.

It was more real than life itself, a dream

Somehow in which I could believe again

In the time that was left, enough to mean

Something at the end of the years in vain

Trying to remember you in falling

Rain whenever its ripples spread along

The ground, softly issuing spiralling

Into the light and left there to belong

As they narrowed in the dark to a core

Again. And yet you claimed it was a way

Out to protect us then from an unsure

Future, from knowing that you went away

To live at an address we could not find,

To live just by leaving us all behind.

Whenever I saw you in a dream you

Would always appear as I remembered

You and recovered from your illness through

The years since then, while saying how you led

Us to believe you were dead in order

To be able to leave and to survive,

And I cry we could have known each other

And with the knowledge you were still alive

And I try to tell you how I have missed

All the life we should have had in between,

The joy remains even when you insist

Things were for the best, nothing seems to mean

What it is and I am left with my grief

And the wonder of it in disbelief.

And the dreams were repeated in this way

Until they finally came to an end,

I found it was impossible to say

Anything that would last enough to mend

The endless distance of the years between

That kept us apart in the same city

With the miracle of your life unseen

Existing without us and suddenly

Quietly about to come to an end.

For you were going to die all over

Again, there was no time left to depend

On, no chance to put it right or alter

Reality, I kept on asking why

There was not enough time to say goodbye.

My disbelief was only the wonder

Of it all, the fact of the narrative

Was the only explanation after

That you did not die but went on to live

Instead, and this was more acceptable

Than the reality of what happened

And what we were left with after, until

The lie on which we had come to depend

Was overturned by a dream. Yet even

They would fail to protect us in the end

And in the last one we only met when

You were about to die, this was the end

Of a dream and they never once returned,

Years passed before I faced what I had learned.

It was too late when we met to have known

Each other even in the make believe

Years of a dream and in this one alone

You were now dying and about to leave

Me to wonder at the waste of it all.

I kept on saying that you were so near

Why could we not have been told, all the while

Thinking you were dead, living with the fear

That we would never see your face again.

You kept your silence and now there was no

Time left and all the words were just in vain,

What was before us was all we could know,

I learned more about your life from your death

For you seemed to live beyond your last breath.

You were never seen again, you were gone

And the dream disappeared into my mind,

What had once occurred was in some way won

Back from time and became somehow aligned

With the future, events that were able

To mirror each other when turned about

Were lodged forever in a cat’s cradle

Where meaning itself was turned inside out,

A dream superseding reality

Because its existence could not be faced

Until the end of years of atrophy

When a dream’s last origin could be traced.

The silence of your death was in question

The silence in a dream was my reason.

The sequence of the dreams became a part

Of my existence, a vital refuge

Like softly falling rain, a place to start

From, an anchorage in a centrifuge

Blurring that would never cease to revolve

And yet somewhere I could find you again.

Years melted in the way ripples dissolve

Spiralling back into their core in vain,

In surface currents before and after

Circled outward in a far unbroken

Pattern forcing time into an answer

In the dark, to the locked silence since then,

You told no one and could not reason why

You kept a silence long enough to die.

I must empty my mind of everything

And exist as an open vacuum

With silence slowly filling echoing

Unheard, channelling in an outward rim

From a radial arc of falling rain

Aligning with the dark centrifugal

With light random in rhythm and in vain.

Endlessly encompassing a still pool

Narrowing levelling into its core,

A thin unravelling film, a surface

Involuntary, a tidal structure

Vanishing as memory without trace,

As silence hidden volcanic within

An endless compass softly issuing.

In the summer of my eleventh year

We were all suddenly sent into care

It was then that what was to become clear

Was silence not its echo everywhere

Resounding as an aftermath only

Of the night before, but silence that went

Back through the years, a shadow behind me

Of the unsaid between words never meant

To be heard and yet left behind instead.

And from that summer nothing would ever

Be the same, the secret of the unsaid

Was to follow you forever after,

I turned towards an imaginary

World where my own silence lay before me.

Silence had always been there for as long

As I could remember, somehow always

About in the foreground of things, among

Events and sudden happenings when days

Turned into nights and hours then forgotten

As just another day breaking into

Silence. No one spoke about the nights when

Time seemed to explode and as though it knew

Far too much for its own understanding,

A day would become another layer

Put behind us then but never settling

And yet nothing could be done to alter

Anything we were to become immune

While silence spun an unending cocoon.

While you lay in a hospital during

The dark unending summer of nineteen

Sixty, still too ill to be wondering

How we were or what existed between

The days and nights of the ongoing ward

Routine, you must have looked at a future

Like a shadow before you, a backward

Look at what lay behind in the structure

Crumbling around you from which there was no

Escape. Still young and left without any

Hope of refuge or rescue, an echo

From your girlhood with its infinity

Filling you with regret, yet with no one

To guess at the secret you kept your own.

Whatever would you have said at that stage

If someone could have shown you a way through,

The door was ajar, nothing can assuage

Your silence as the secret cancer grew

Unknown to anyone as two vital

Years were lost, yet suddenly that summer

You simply backed away from a crucial

Chance to speak and break your silence after.

What was it that forced you to hold your tongue,

Was it the habit you had of never

Having time for yourself struggling among

Your colleagues and friends for privacy there

For your secret and its presence that went

Unnoticed while you lay as a patient.

And so your well-known diffidence saved you

From detection or so the story went,

You were to remain as steadfast for two

Years almost until a sudden event

Outside your silence prompted you to speak.

But by that summer you must have known how

Much time you were left with, enough to break

Into the years you would have to allow

For your children growing up. What drove you

Towards a relentless last choice that lay

Beyond even the reach of speech and too

Far out for all the things you could not say,

When language failed, it was then already

Too late to alter its reality.

We were in The Hollies separated

From you for the first time, there was no one

With a familiar face related

To us who wanted us, left on our own

And as though just abandoned in that place

And unable to find a way back to

A life that each day began to efface

The distance that lay between us and you.

The children’s home was only for TB

Patients and you yourself had become ill

While working as an auxiliary

Nurse, keeping your silence, working until

The signs then became unmistakable

And lodged with an illness that was to kill.

At the end of that summer holiday

You had to leave the hospital early

Before we left, The Hollies were to say

That we had bought her into jeopardy

Interrupting her treatment, our mother

Had thus to be discharged early because

Of us and our disruptive behaviour,

She was going home but we were the cause

And if she remained ill it was our fault,

And darkness lay on the young unfolding

Day left there forever as an assault

On her frailty, while uncomplaining

You watched my father make his old excuse

For a drink unable to be of use.

What was it that made you hold your silence

For so long, knowing that it would be too

Late when you finally told, your defence

Could only be that you had to get through

In order to feed your children until

They were almost grown up, you used say

How glad you would be if this could fulfil

Your dreams you would not live to see that day.

Could this resolve have kept you going for

Longer then even when your energy

Had already gone, something there for sure

To cling on to with a reality

Of your own making, even as the day

Breaking with everything you could not say.

Sometimes you would say that there was something

Wrong but I never knew how to answer

And almost two years passed and with nothing

Following the simple statement after.

The words would not come neither yours nor mine,

Language itself which by then had broken

Down faltered in its momentum and time,

Left in waiting behind things unspoken.

Then you would tell me how there was no one

Who knew but I seldom could answer why,

Something that you had not told anyone

Yet you never expected a reply,

Being your secret it was more about

Being able to let the pressure out.

The facts do not hold up to scrutiny,

Seemingly then, only I alone knew

Anything at all in reality,

But I was too young and able to do

Nothing so I simply put it all out

Of my mind because it was as a thing

Overwhelming and it left me without

Anywhere to go, yet understanding

That time in passing was just standing still,

As though remembering something somehow

Mislaid and then forgotten and until

That moment beyond recall, even now

The recollection of permanent fear

From so long ago breaks sudden and sheer.

What is there to say about those years when

I cannot bear to summon them to my

Mind, what I am left with is your joy when

We met each morning, whenever I try

To remember you it is then that I

Come back to, the expression on your face

Was the look of someone waiting to die,

A still reflection nothing can efface

As though you had entered another plane

Of being, something you had to go through

With just to combat the silence of pain,

Of never looking back again, and you

Far-out in front walking over water,

Mute with my destiny as your daughter.

Such a look it was, as of another

World, its rapture a gaze I had not seen

Before, returning from duty after

The night shift you merged unnoticed between

The people you worked with on your way home

While quietly approaching your children

As we briefly passed by, someone alone,

You were isolate among the women

Returning, hiding another life from

Them and a death they could not imagine.

There was nowhere to lay your head and some

Nights you walked the streets in order to win

A fugitive verged sleep before morning

Broke the nightmare of your waking dreaming.

Why does my mind return as though by chance

To those early mornings which when weighed in

The balance across the endless distance

Of the years amount to almost nothing,

Something seen in passing or imagined

With the hindsight of silence left on hold,

Silence that would never have jettisoned

Its reality and yet trapped untold

With nothing left to say, an immanence

Slowly imperceptibly just ebbing

Away ferrying you from a last chance

Mutely and inaudibly receding,

From a world left to guess or apprehend,

From silence destined to come to an end.

When I confront the void of existence

It is always then that I seem to go

Back to, an inexorable silence

Pervading everything only to grow

The more profound, sojourning alongside

Another language from experience

Aligned over darkness, opening wide

A door to the outside within a sense

Of being, a space where the fugitive

Is destined to run forever without

Rest in a world left without time to live,

While pursued through the shadows round about,

Yet listening in vain for the echo

Of silence a night can summon or throw.

Each passing morning left you more afraid

As your secret became impossible

To sustain, echoing and overlaid

Held back by a day’s impenetrable

Lasting necessity as the simple

Steadfast urgent need to feed your children

Became evermore inexorable.

There was never any refuge and when

The whole thing broke, it was already too

Late and nothing could prevent the ending,

Unerringly you had found the way through

To a future left without anything

To go back to, while silence broke into

Its last days, unfathomable and few.

I can only think intermittently

Of those days where they remain forever

Shuttered installed in their futility

Or oblique and blurred across a mirror

In the dark, seen in dreams without a star

To steer by without a shadow left to

Lean upon, the vacuum of a far

Time layered and loosening as sand through

An hourglass or as silence emptying

Endlessly recurring and mute with fate

On standby and with a last existing

Chance to speak, but it was always too late,

You knew you would not live to see us grown

Up, silence without end was your reason.

And yet there had never been any kind

Of choice, a trapped unimaginable

Existence was all that was left behind

While you reckoned up the darkness until

The end, its countdown and the sacrifice

Of your whole life, weighing its summation

Against a single day held in the vice

Of knowledge and experience, random

In a reality from which there was

No escape. Even your home was a door

Open to the dark, an exit that does

Not close, just left to stand ajar, unsure

Within shadows and light from the inside,

Your nights spent in a doorway open wide.

The Fields Of Killingbeck a work in progress

September 11 2001