Opened Ground (18 page)

I heard new words prayed at cows

in the byre, found his sign

on the crock and the hidden still,

smelled fumes from his censer

in the first smokes of morning.

Next thing he was making a progress

through gaps, stepping out sites,

sinking his crozier deep

in the fort-hearth.

If he had stuck to his own

cramp-jawed abbesses and intoners

dibbling round the enclosure,

his Latin and blather of love,

his parchments and scheming

in letters shipped over water –

but no, he overbore

with his unctions and orders,

he had to get in on the ground.

History that planted its standards

on his gables and spires

ousted me to the marches

of skulking and whingeing.

Or did I desert?

Give him his due, in the end

he opened my path to a kingdom

of such scope and neuter allegiance

my emptiness reigns at its whim.

As he prowled the rim of his clearing

where the blade of choice had not spared

one stump of affection

he was like a ploughshare

interred to sustain the whole field

of force, from the bitted

and high-drawn sideways curve

of the horse’s neck to the aim

held fast in the wrists and elbows –

the more brutal the pull

and the drive, the deeper

and quieter the work of refreshment.

He dwelt in himself

like a rook in an unroofed tower.

To get close I had to maintain

a climb up deserted ramparts

and not flinch, not raise an eye

to search for an eye on the watch

from his coign of seclusion.

Deliberately he would unclasp

his book of withholding

a page at a time, and it was nothing

arcane, just the old rules

we all had inscribed on our slates.

Each character blocked on the parchment secure

in its volume and measure.

Each maxim given its space. 

Tell
the
truth.
Do
not
be
afraid.

Durable, obstinate notions,

like quarrymen’s hammers and wedges

proofed by intransigent service.

Like coping stones where you rest

in the balm of the wellspring.

How flimsy I felt climbing down

the unrailed stairs on the wall,

hearing the purpose and venture

in a wingflap above me.

I never warmed to them.

If they were excellent they were petulant

and jaggy as the holly tree

they rendered down for ink.

And if I never belonged among them,

they could never deny me my place.

In the hush of the scriptorium

a black pearl kept gathering in them

like the old dry glut inside their quills.

In the margin of texts of praise

they scratched and clawed.

They snarled if the day was dark

or too much chalk had made the vellum bland

or too little left it oily.

Under the rumps of lettering

they herded myopic angers.

Resentment seeded in the uncurling

fernheads of their capitals.

Now and again I started up

miles away and saw in my absence

the sloped cursive of each back and felt them

perfect themselves against me page by page.

Let them remember this not inconsiderable

contribution to their jealous art.

It rained when it should have snowed.

When we went to gather holly

the ditches were swimming, we were wet

to the knees, our hands were all jags

and water ran up our sleeves.

There should have been berries

but the sprigs we brought into the house

gleamed like smashed bottle-glass.

Now here I am, in a room that is decked

with the red-berried, waxy-leafed stuff,

and I almost forget what it’s like

to be wet to the skin or longing for snow.

I reach for a book like a doubter

and want it to flare round my hand,

a black-letter bush, a glittering shield-wall

cutting as holly and ice.

I love the thought of his anger.

His obstinacy against the rock, his coercion

of the substance from green apples.

The way he was a dog barking

at the image of himself barking.

And his hatred of his own embrace

of working as the only thing that worked –

the vulgarity of expecting ever

gratitude or admiration, which

would mean a stealing from him.

The way his fortitude held and hardened

because he did what he knew.

His forehead like a hurled
boule

travelling unpainted space

behind the apple and behind the mountain.

Why, when it was all over, did I hold on to them?

A patriot with folded arms in a shaft of light:

the barred cell window and his sentenced face

are the only bright spots in the little etching.

An oleograph of snowy hills, the outlawed priest’s

red vestments, with the redcoats toiling closer

and the lookout coming like a fox across the gaps.

And the old committee of the sedition-mongers,

so well turned out in their clasped brogues and waistcoats,

the legend of their names an informer’s list

prepared by neat-cuffs, third from left, at rear,

more compelling than the rest of them,

pivoting an action that was his rack

and others’ ruin, the very rhythm of his name

a register of dear-bought treacheries

grown transparent now, and inestimable.

The big missal splayed

and dangled silky ribbons

of emerald and purple and watery white.

Intransitively we would assist,

confess, receive. The verbs

assumed us. We adored.

And we lifted our eyes to the nouns.

Altar-stone was dawn and monstrance noon,

the word ‘rubric’ itself a bloodshot sunset.

Now I live by a famous strand

where seabirds cry in the small hours

like incredible souls

and even the range wall of the promenade

that I press down on for conviction

hardly tempts me to credit it.

The road ahead

kept reeling in

at a steady speed,

the verges dripped.

In my hands

like a wrested trophy,

the empty round

of the steering wheel.

The trance of driving

made all roads one:

the seraph-haunted, Tuscan

footpath, the green

oak-alleys of Dordogne

or that track through corn

where the rich young man

asked his question –

Master‚
what
must
I

do
to
be
saved?

Or the road where the bird

with an earth-red back

and a white and black

tail, like parquet

of flint and jet,

wheeled over me

in visitation.

Sell
all
you
have

and
give
to
the
poor.

I was up and away

like a human soul

that plumes from the mouth

in undulant, tenor

black-letter Latin.

I was one for sorrow,

Noah’s dove,

a panicked shadow

crossing the deer path.

If I came to earth

it would be by way of

a small east window

I once squeezed through,

scaling heaven

by superstition,

drunk and happy

on a chapel gable.

I would roost a night

on the slab of exile,

then hide in the cleft

of that churchyard wall

where hand after hand

keeps wearing away

at the cold, hard-breasted

votive granite.

And
follow
me.

I would migrate

through a high cave mouth

into an oaten, sun-warmed cliff,

on down the soft-nubbed,

clay-floored passage,

face-brush, wingflap,

to the deepest chamber.

There a drinking deer

is cut into rock,

its haunch and neck

rise with the contours,

the incised outline

curves to a strained

expectant muzzle

and a nostril flared

at a dried-up source.

For my book of changes

I would meditate

that stone-faced vigil

until the long dumbfounded

spirit broke cover

to raise a dust

in the font of exhaustion.

A spirit moved, John Harvard walked the yard,

The atom lay unsplit, the west unwon,

The books stood open and the gates unbarred.

The maps dreamt on like moondust. Nothing stirred.

The future was a verb in hibernation.

A spirit moved, John Harvard walked the yard.

Before the classic style, before the clapboard,

All through the small hours of an origin,

The books stood open and the gates unbarred.

Night passage of a migratory bird.

Wingflap. Gownflap. Like a homing pigeon

A spirit moved, John Harvard walked the yard.

Was that his soul (look) sped to its reward

By grace or works? A shooting star? An omen?

The books stood open and the gates unbarred.

Begin again where frosts and tests were hard.

Find yourself or founder. Here, imagine

A spirit moves, John Harvard walks the yard,

The books stand open and the gates unbarred.

(1986)

The riverbed, dried-up, half-full of leaves.

Us, listening to a river in the trees.

A shadow his father makes with joined hands

And thumbs and fingers nibbles on the wall

Like a rabbit’s head. He understands

He will understand more when he goes to school.

There he draws smoke with chalk the whole first week,

Then draws the forked stick that they call a Y.

This is writing. A swan’s neck and swan’s back

Make the 2 he can see now as well as say.

Two rafters and a cross-tie on the slate

Are the letter some call
ah,
some call
ay.

There are charts, there are headlines, there is a right

Way to hold the pen and a wrong way.

First it is ‘copying out’, and then ‘English’,

Marked correct with a little leaning hoe.

Smells of inkwells rise in the classroom hush.

A globe in the window tilts like a coloured O.

Declensions sang on air like a
hosanna

As, column after stratified column,

Book One of
Elementa
Latina,

Marbled and minatory, rose up in him.

For he was fostered next in a stricter school

Named for the patron saint of the oak wood

Where classes switched to the pealing of a bell

And he left the Latin forum for the shade

Of new calligraphy that felt like home.

The letters of this alphabet were trees.

The capitals were orchards in full bloom,

The lines of script like briars coiled in ditches.

Here in her snooded garment and bare feet,

All ringleted in assonance and woodnotes,

The poet’s dream stole over him like sunlight

And passed into the tenebrous thickets.

He learns this other writing. He is the scribe

Who drove a team of quills on his white field.

Round his cell door the blackbirds dart and dab.

Then self-denial, fasting, the pure cold.

By rules that hardened the farther they reached north

He bends to his desk and begins again.

Christ’s sickle has been in the undergrowth.

The script grows bare and Merovingian.

The globe has spun. He stands in a wooden O.

He alludes to Shakespeare. He alludes to Graves.

Time has bulldozed the school and school window.

Balers drop bales like printouts where stooked sheaves

Make lambdas on the stubble once at harvest

And the delta face of each potato pit

Was patted straight and moulded against frost.

All gone, with the omega that kept

Watch above each door, the good-luck horseshoe.

Yet shape-note language, absolute on air

As Constantine’s sky-lettered
IN
HOC SIGNO

Can still command him; or the necromancer

Who would hang from the domed ceiling of his house

A figure of the world with colours in it

So that the figure of the universe

And ‘not just single things’ would meet his sight

When he walked abroad. As from his small window

The astronaut sees all that he has sprung from,

The risen, aqueous, singular, lucent O

Like a magnified and buoyant ovum –

Or like my own wide pre-reflective stare

All agog at the plasterer on his ladder

Skimming our gable and writing our name there

With his trowel point, letter by strange letter.