response

Abode

A response to Philip Larkin

I try not to work too much, and don’t drink.
Stretching, I wake to the rustling dark –
to dawn seeping in through the brink
of the window, and the dog’s bark –
It’s then I see what’s really always there;
light streaming in through the misting air
absolving me of days that never quite start;
fallen empires grown thick with weeds,
a knowing smile at capricious needs
and under it all, my whispering heart.

The mind ceases to glare. Not through fear –
some good done, some love given, time
lined up like a jigsaw – here
missing a piece or two, but it’s fine;
there are more puzzles to do, that’s for sure,
while the stars play out their grand impure
drama, which can be a mess –
all scattered across the endless black
that brought us here, and can take us back;
Chaos can stand such a diffident dress.

There is a peculiar way of letting go –
The smile as a cure – like Gautama’s –
who tells of all deaths we ever could know
and did so to teach us: be calmer.
‘They have seen the Way, like a flash of lightning
in the night’ – now that’s enlightening.
Just relax – no sound, no sight
No touch or taste or smell, no mind
everything collapsing into the void
which we are, and are again, every night.

So. You can only learn so much from death.
You can dream about it, sure, but let it go.
It gets easier all the time. And as for the rest –
The sun will rise. This we can know.
Doesn’t it betray the poet and child
in the morning to sit in stunned and wild
silence, hands clasped in black prayer,
and think this shows some clean truth?
Give me a break. Death is no forbidden fruit
and your whining might just hasten you there.

(Interesting to see that you have no thought
For the deaths of your friends and those you love
as well you ought to
in those dark mornings. Let’s forgive
this self-regard. We know there is space
for all kinds of death; the shadow face
you held up as a simple, clarified skull
is a Janus. And on the other side
is a face of a mother, perhaps, with a soft smile
who takes leave from the world and leaves it full.)

Return of the Red Kite

The Red Kite is a bird of prey which was almost wiped out by landlords with rifles, and then soulless egg collectors. It was saved by some thoughtful people in a campaign against their stupidity. Now it can be seen all over West Yorkshire again. This poem is about the first time I saw one as I walked nearby Harewood.

Carefully she offers control to the currents
as her eye glides up over furrows –
never overcorrecting, she appears
when she means to, clears the barren treetops
and fastens some fur between her beak and the ground.

Her predator’s presence in the city shows
she retains the perfection of ages –
and rats, nested in stubborn woodland patches
sing of her soundings to their children, of days
of sudden pain when scraps and salvage end.

I was deprived of her, by the lords.
Eggs, whose skin could crackle like woodfire
instead were fixed alone, under glass –
as a nobler blood stained the tree-forks.
Their keening night-cry declared the time.

And silence slowly took to the skies while I was born
as the hill-wind began to forget a part of itself.
No longer the slip and slither of air around wing –
only the crow’s desperate gasping and magpie chitter.
I did not know that anything was missing.

Then, one day as we walked amongst the drizzle
along a long drystone wall, I followed her hand
which gestured up. How can it be, that a few dark specks
and their swoopings, complete the sky?
I felt this, and mum smiled to see me smile.