POEMS IN HOLY WEEK iii. Tuesday - Life

I scrabble back on course with this third poem in the Holy Week sequence - not necessarily in terms of theme, but certainly in terms of production.
          Swimming is a constant source of inspiration for me and I am slowly but surely turning into a caricature of an Anglican vicar who has a single source of metaphor to explain the world!
          This poem however does, I think, take what I do and make something of it.  Swimming is important for me and it is hardly surprising that it should figure in my poetry.
          I am still trying to keep the meditative quality of the week in my thoughts and also the consideration of mortality.
          I have attempted to follow my friend Ceri's observation that in a previous poem I had ' looked and focussed in on the ordinary [and] have found a vein of truth'

Poems in Holy Week

iii.       Tuesday – Life

Sometimes, just sometimes,

swimming’s simply joy:

the strokes are almost effortless;

the water parts to let you through

and closes carefully behind

as though accepting your

progress and welcoming

your presence as a guest.

You are confined. 

                                   The

floats mark out demesne

and the black line of tiles

shows the direction you

should take;

                       they even indicate

when you should turn

to try another length.

I swim a metric mile

each day, as if it

signifies –

            while kids discard

imperatives and bounce

and splash, ignore the lines

and just get in the way.

My smartwatch measures

out my swim, and tingles

in my hands tell me my

time is almost done and

that the effort’s made.

I swim my distance,

but get out where

I got in and end a

journey nowhere.

The final stanza I first thought was too bleak, but then I thought that there was a truth in it.  In one sense it is absolutely and literally true, but it is the other senses that interest me.  When I re-read the poem I felt almost like an outsider reading the work of someone else.  I am still wondering if that is positive or negative or neither!

POEMS IN HOLY WEEK ii. Monday - City

Years ago there was a period when I seemed to be taking people to hospital for all sorts of reasons, breaks, sprains and illness.  As a confirmed blood donor I felt that this ferrying was part of my deal with the fates to keep me out of the place as a patient!  That compact seemed to hold for a good long time, but now I find that I am visiting surgeries and outpatients more as a customer than a driver!
          As part of my sequence on Poems in Holy Week, I used my experience of going for a test to focus ideas of mortality and, at least for me, one of the ways that we can get a sense of perspective: observation and metaphor.
          I am not sure if there is enough in this poem to make the sense of the narrative clear, just as I am not sure that my conclusion is an ending.  Perhaps that is part of the point!
          I will print the poem here as a way of keeping the sequence alive and also as a way of laying down an expression of a feeling for later development.

Poems in Holy Week

ii.        Monday - City

                  the concentrated dust

I eat each day;

tablets I believe

more slavishly

than those of law;

my packages against

mortality and what’s

inevitable,

                                   I find,

each day, my life acquires

new acronyms, significant

but I don’t know

exactly what they mean

                  I go for tests that are

increasingly intrusive

and undignified

                  just like today when

in the city, in a hospital,

with papers and identity

I’m shuffled off to wait

                  and think,

I stare at chairs,

the sort that do not

fit in homes, but

are the stuff of

                  public space,

The chairs are grey,

with lacquered metal arms

which curve with elegance

up, forward, slightly splayed.

Two curved, matt planes

for back and seat as if

carefully cut from

fragile shell of giant egg,

thin, delicate.  They take

light well, reflecting gleams

in unexpected, subtle ways.

They people emptiness

with waiting space and

give expectancy to absence.

I know I will be called,

things done,

decisions made,

and chairs will not be
a consideration.

I have used punctuation, line length and positioning in more obvious ways in this poem than is my usual approach.  I would appreciate feedback on this, or indeed on any other aspect of the poem.

POEMS IN HOLY WEEK i. Sunday - A girl skips by

In spite of knowing the date of Easter for this year for some time, I was still surprised to discover that today was Palm Sunday.
          At one time I would have known about this Sunday some time in advance and would have prepared for it.  When I was younger I used to go up to the vicar during the Palm Sunday service and get a palm cross which I used to pin above my bed having written the year of the palm on the top bit.
          As I grew older Holy Week became more significant for me and I used to go to the Good Friday three-hour service and listen to the sermons!  I think I fancied myself as something of a theologian, and perhaps I still do to a certain extent - but my religious faith has not accompanied me into later life.
          The shock of not knowing the significance of the day, the sight of a little girl with an ornate palm decoration and a lasting interest in religion prompted this poem
          I have set myself the task of writing a series of poems during this week.  I am not going to assume that I can produce one a day, but I will do my best to think about each day using the contemplative nature of a version of Holy Week to guide my thought or at least to give them a particular sort of spin.
          This is the first poem.

Poems in Holy Week

i.         Sunday - A girl skips by

At first I thought she held,

perhaps, a lollipop kebab;

a fairy wand; beribboned

like a playschool sceptre;

stick for fools to liven up

a masquerade. 

                       And then

I saw some other girls with

things much more Baroque,

and realised this was Palm

Sunday and constructions

complications of the simple

cross, made from a single frond,

that I pinned up (religiously)

each year above my bed. 

How things have changed that

such a day can creep

right up on me, un-sensed,

like ordinary time!

And now I wallow

in my lack of faith

and idly consider

how that affirmation of belief

(in one week’s time)

that, ‘Christ is risen!’

gets no four-word answer

from my mouth –

which is as empty

as the tomb will be.

This poem is the working out of an idea that has been in my notebook for some time.
          In a strange way I think that the initial concept came about as a reaction to the political corruption and chaos in the country here in Spain.  The consideration of the woeful state of honesty in government, banking, business  . . . and the list goes on, made me detail a whole series of physical representations of injustice taking in Dresden, Coventry and Hiroshima.  These names were too big to be contained in any poem of mine and instead I thought about bullet holes that I had seen!
          The three locations I mention in the poem all contain holes made by bullets or projectiles of some sort and although death is an inevitable companion of these pieces of destruction in strictly historical terms, I found that I was able to de-personalise it to a certain extent so that it did not become the main preoccupation of the poem.

Lessons?

The pockmarks in the columns

of the Classical façade of

Dublin’s GPO; brutality that’s

smashed in stone along the walls

that form The Tate; the holes in the

Cathedral roof where Cromwell’s

soldiers fired at gaudiness

in Ely’s beams they could not reach:

these damaged buildings

wear, with pride, the wounds

that now are pointed out

only by chatty guides.

The voices echo from the spaces

gouged in history that

detail man’s destructiveness.

Forget the people.

They’re too vague

to think about

(those men

who made the marks)

and they’re all dead as well –

and probably before their time.

Just let the ruins speak.

And listen to the eloquence
of broken things.

I think that there is a link between this poem and the poems Torture and Again, again, again.  They certainly all stem from a consideration of the concept of loss in some form, and the power of inanimate things to convey some sort of moral sense beyond their mere physicality.

After reading this poem to the Poetry Group in Barcelona I found that the references were not clear to a group that comprised Spanish, Catalan, Californian, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish. Moroccan, South American and a few other nationalities!  I like the specific nature of the references, and they are personal, I have seen them all - but I have reworked the poem so that it is, I hope, more inclusive.

I am pleased with the last three lines and I am determined to use 'The eloquence of broken things' as the title for a book!

Anyway, this is the reworked poem.  Do let me know what you think.

Space to listen

Look for the unintended breaks

in buildings; flaws in what

might otherwise appear whole;

forced imperfections that demand

an explanation from the past

to justify the lack of a repair.

The pockmarks in the columns

of the Classical façade of

Dublin’s GPO; brutality that’s

smashed in stone along the walls

that form The Tate; the holes in the

cathedral roof where Cromwell’s

soldiers fired at gaudiness

on Ely’s beams they could not reach:

these damaged buildings

wear, with pride, the wounds

that now are pointed out

only by chatty guides.

What voices echo in the spaces

gouged from history that

detail man’s destructiveness

in every country where

the past still stands and

from the gaps where

it has been expunged?

Forget the people.

They’re too vague

to think about

(those men

who made the marks)

and they’re all dead as well –

and probably before their time.

Just let the ruins speak.

And listen to the eloquence

of broken things.

I have changed the title of the poem as well.  I was never comfortable with a title that is also a question!

Thanks to a throw-away, casual comment from Caroline, the subject of trees has become one which is a feature of my poetry writing!
          As I sit, sipping my post-natation cup of tea, my view is of trees.  I have watched them now since the Autumn, with that attention that comes when you know that you are probably going to be writing about them.  I thought that my observation was acute and I took great pleasure in detailing the changes in the trees through the two seasons that they have been my subject matter.  That, at least was what I thought.
          It turns out that my observation is just as sloppy as anyone else's, and Spring caught me unawares.  It was the beginning of the transformation of the gnarled stumps of the old trees with the first shoots of the season that focussed my attention.
          I have thought that the trees in the cafe of my leisure centre are more than usually, melodramatically gaunt in their winter emptiness.  They could, quite easily be transferred to the stage for some Gothic horror production.  It was a combination of my own lack of perception and the theatricality of the trees that prompted this poem.  The first of the Spring Trees series.

Debut

Each day I looked,

a keen spectator of the scene.

But what is obvious now,

shows me I did not sense

the movement held

within the bulk of trees.

Slow ripples of the yearly rings

that plump the bark and

break the twigs to bud.

Each stunted spike of growth

shows up the tattiness

of last year’s props.

The tired scenery of

dead productions past.

The carcases for odd

forgotten plays. 

                      

                       And now,

with just a touch of green,

re-used and tarted-up

they’re good to go

for yet another show!

Although you might think that I should get a life, I do find watching the trees fascinating!  I am fully determined to keep writing about them and in a year, end up with a sequence which may, or may not work as a separate entity.

          I am trying to get the Autumn Trees poems I wrote, illustrated, or to have art work to accompany them when Flesh Can Be Bright is published in October.  I hope this series or another can inspire further art work.

This is a poem of observation and speculation.
          An ordinary scene but one which took on a particular sort of significance because of a perceived 'artful' quality to the observation.  I often find myself thinking of paintings when I am presented with certain arrangements of people in places.  It is inevitable, I suppose as most of the art that sticks in one's mind is narrative showing recognisable places or people or arrangements of buildings or shadows or whatever - not difficult to link to one's experience.
          The starting point for this poem was, two workmen talking and walking around some earthworks which are the foundations for a project which is ongoing near the cafe I use every day for my cup of tea.  I was surprised by the casual elegance of the framing of this couple by trees, equipment and the surrounding structures: the unremarkable could have made a whole series of 'arty' photographs - especially in black and white!
          It was while thinking about the way that the simplicity of the scene was charged by my own 'composition' of what I was looking at, that the idea for this poem arose.

Men

Two workmen talk.

Walk.  Look,

and talk again.

The artful opportunity

of an arranging eye

sets them in tableaux,

notes the artifice:

an arm extended;

weight all on one leg;

smoke curling from

inevitable cigarettes.

Two men talk,

and walk a space.

Painterly, a composition,

framed by branching trees.

Their clothes locate, define –

and yet it’s timeless.

Two men walk on

through history:

disciples, rogues and kings;

metaphors and saints – but

in the end they are

just men who

walk and talk.

This poem, like the previous poem with the long title, make me wonder about what I am saying or trying to say in my work.  I wonder if this poem says anything at all?  It does to me, but the key is whether it means anything to anyone else!  I will have to wait and see for the answer to that!