1st MAY 2015
Over the winter I have had two poems that have been successful in competitions. For anyone who hasn’t seen them elsewhere, I thought I would reprint them here.
The first was one of the winners in the Poetry News quarterly competition for Poetry Society members’ work. The theme was ‘Gold’, and the poems were judged by Kei Miller. The theme was related to an exhibition at the Queens Gallery, and we were invited to read the winning poems at an even there in February.
The origin of this poem was in a view put forward in connection with more than one find of ancient jewellery and metalwork, displaying extremely intricate detail, that some of this work must have been done by children, as only they would have manual dexterity and sharpness of eyesight required.
SMITH
Though other boys would follow flocks and herds,
some forage food along the muddy shore,
I knew the narrow doorways into dark,
could weigh dull stones, judge mysteries of ore.
Others were learning how to ride, to fight,
while I was studying to work with fire,
to conjure out of earth those glowing threads
watching burnt fingers beat out plate, draw wire.
The war-band’s weapons occupy those skills
my master has to temper and anneal
the living blade, yet years in smoke have dulled
his eye for gold, though not for steel.
My eye is bright, my small hands deft, to form
the interlace, set gems, shape filigree,
adorn a pommel on the warrior’s hilt,
the clasps that pin his wife’s fine drapery.
They come to see us work; the ladies speak
of my quick craft, tease me to make reply.
Lords treat the master with a gruff respect.
I read that darkened face, as he limps by.
This poem was published in the Winter 2014 issue of Poetry News, and on the Poetry Society website.
The second poem was Highly Commended in the Torriano Competition this Spring. The judge of was Martyn Crucifix. It was written after looking at photographs – mostly of the Second World War – displayed at the Imperial War Museum.
AT THE WAR MUSEUM
Here is the shadow that was always at
our backs, though we were shielded. We knew
the stories – or the ones they chose to tell
to us, to tell themselves. Also the silences,
events that no one dared to mention.
These faces look familiar – recall the ones
who brought us up, who filled our world, but here
in uniform, removed to strange locations,
and performing tasks we never saw
them do. This is the world made strange, furnished
with obsolete contraptions that delivered
death, the well-known places mostly wrecked –
a quiet church you visited last year,
calm as Wren left it, is shown broken, open
to the sky, with shattered monuments;
a library’s hush, all raucous debris, plaster dust –
and if that happened to the books, what of
the people shelved in tidy residential
streets, gap-toothed with rubble, bathrooms
bared, paper hung ripped from private walls?
They had their modes of coping with it all –
swagger and slang, ‘business as usual’, wink
of an eye – that got them through. Styles
at first quaint to us, and now a foreign language.
Pictures, writings, that seemed so peripheral
at the embattled time, now offer
our most intimate approach to this
alternate world. While, always, looming
back behind, what they themselves half knew,
an elder dark – of shells and mud, of gas
and blasted stumps, torn flesh and broken minds,
that forged, and warped, the world in which we grew.
As there was no publication arranged by the organisers, the winning poems were published by Martyn Crucefix on his own website. You can read all the chosen poems there, together with his comments on them.
Some poems from previous postings –
PLAYBACK
If given six wood blocks, eight marbles,
and a cardboard box or blue balloon,
coould you, I wonder, still invent
enough new games to fill an afternoon?
I now forget how life is given
to woollen rabbits, balding one-eared bears,
a face is read on every bus;
how to pitch camp between the legs of chairs.
Once I could stage the whole Olympics
with a stadium on the garden path,
a Grand Prix round the front-room carpet
with one shoe-box full of ill-matched cars.
The profits of an education
rarely take account of knowledge lost;
but how much more will be unlearned
before another thirty years have passed?
PORTRAIT OF A GREAT-GRANDFATHER
The solemn vacancy of Victorian
photographs – of the unpractised sitter
holding himself stiff, long minutes at a time
during the plate’s exposure. An open face
stares into middle distance, telling nothing.
Far more expressive are the big hands, awkward
like parsnips bunched and hung across his knees.
Dark shadows round the nails might almost be
black earth ingrained – except that he’d be sure
to scrub them before putting on that suit,
shiny, ill-fitting, tight at the shoulders, jacket
falling loose, the sleeves pushed back in rucks.
The painted trees behind him fade away –
the top line of his head has faded too –
though you can guess his hair receded early,
as my father’s did. Firm shading still
outlines the long jaw, which they say is mine.
The picture bears no date or place. He looks
to be apporaching middle-age. Perhaps
he had it taken for some personal occasion,
like his second marriage; or it marked
a public celebration, jubilee or county fair.
Or was it just a sudden whim, that he was
taken in, persuaded by the flashy apparatus
of an artist able to frame patriarchs
from village labourers like him?
FOUR WINTER ANTIPHONS
Come, Arbiter of life, of death,
come in the frost’s fierce touch
to wake us out of summer drowsiness,
arresting rosebuds, curling mottled leaves
to crispness, easing the trees to sleep;
scythe through the misted air
to harden earth, to sharpen choices,
trying the appetite for life.
Come, ruthful Scrutineer
of all the heart’s devices,
come in the inquisition of the wind,
tempered with blowing over icy seas,
to sweep our streets of idle loitering,
search for the gaps, for papered cracks
in our veneer; come keenest sword,
pass between joints and marrow.
Come, Guardian of the burning gates, come
but defend us from harsh punishments
of cold, from black betrayals of the ice,
the slow corruption of extremities,
the sad withdrawal of passion;
from the dulled eye of appetite,
the iron of a frozen heart, deliver us,
from nightmares of a cold, hard bed.
Come, Messenger of radiance, come
with the brilliance of new spun icicles,
drop as the purity of snowflakes
that obscure a leaden sky
with drfiting otherworldliness,
and spread protective wings, to cover
with transfiguring dark all secret promises
of hope, eventual new birth.
AWASH
First watery blue
light before the dawn
a faint gleam
shines up the tarmac river
flowing by the gate
vapour drifts off the sea
all night
it has been dripping from the eaves
willow leaves hang damp
their branches waft
like water weed
it feels
as if this picture window
were the side of an aquarium
it would be no surprise
to see fish
drift among the branches
or the whole lawn slithering with eels
This poem started with just the glimpse of a person, from the window of a train, moving slowly through the outskirts of an old industrial town. In that brief moment, he looked like someone out of my past – something about him, pushing his bike, that seemed to belong to another age.
THE MAN WITH THE BICYCLE
The man with the bicycle is on the road alone.
He wheels it up a short hill in the rain,
the collar of his workman’s coat turned up –
and does he wear a cap – or is that part
of what has been evoked from forty years ago?
He is a stranger – or perhaps a man I know –
patiently climbing on the black, wet road
into the evening light, toward some house
that waits for him, a woman by a window,
maybe some children and a meal cooked ready.
He should ne far too old by now. He looks
no more than my own age – also too old. Somewhere
his life goes on, part of another world,
part of myself. He wheels his bike now,
always, and the woman and the children wait –
his meal kept warm and ready for the table.
tonylucaspoetry 