For Clare
(i)
It’s winter now
and all I want is fire and silence,
Venus a soft blaze in the pre-dawn dark,
the day clear before me
as the door shuts behind you;
your absence echoing the cave
flickering the walls as I write;
the murmur of your words
blurs, turning and returning,
almost audible beside me;
life shivering – as I stand
smoking in the doorway of the morning
– through me, icy, vital, sweet as newly-needled chi.
(ii)
And all I want – day done – is to point out
between clouds the clarity of stars
acutely so and so and so in the night sky:
Orion’s belt, the Bull’s red eye,
the Seven Sisters’ mist of silver
(disappearing as you looked directly at it);
to intimate in my touch their touch,
time so cold, so sharp, in the passing dark
it pierced us with a glitter of intuition
– the warmth of your hands, and then your lips –
to let it in: the whole human moment,
immense and tiny, mortal, poor, but fine as the leafless filigree
of moonlit trees, picked out distinct in perfect shadow on the tarmac.
What Shines For You
Now, as the evening sun
shines blinding through the trees,
the green leaf blown gold and the sky high, bright;
now, as the shadows flicker, hiss, and run,
now would be the time to catch the breeze,
go fly that kite.
High up and miles away,
far the thick city heat,
let the sirens distance into silence,
let the windowed skyline glint; end the day
in the blue beyond, above the beat,
the brick violence.
Find, in the day’s blind wake,
what shines for you, what light
glances your life like a chance of heaven;
whar star discerns your secret need, your ache
for peace – find it here, now, with the kite;
live forgiven.
Watch that Pavement . . .
Only young kids, drunks, and bone-skin junkies know
how many – and how hard – the corners are
that kerb this world:
know their pain empirically – know it in that long slow
moment of hopeless fall as the earth is hurled
(delicately coated in brick and hardened tar)
inescapably in their face; know too
how all things stone conspire against the feat
of standing, want
nothing more than slick mischance to prove it human, true
(like the clumsy embodiment of some blunt
Justice) : - the painfully concrete nature of concrete.
Reasons for Writing
The slovenly turn of day and day
gets under the skin of faith,
bleeds away conviction.
The blistering rasp of lie on lie
abrades the core of purpose,
chars and brittles conscience.
Expectancy is crumbled, pulverised
in the restless clench of time; mind and mood
unhinged morning vows are evening perjured.
Here only, in the roll of rising words,
a caroled consolation: - creation; the rest
slow day-decay, the feel of growing failure.
But this small mark I make in minds unmet
sparks a moment, human, who I am,
illuminates, divine, forever, what I came for.
Neighbours
The soldier with the shears was once our neighbour,
kept the corners of our lawns trimmed – civil,
neat – where our lives met. Grateful for the labour
my wife would make him soup: shyly she’d smile
and nod the cup into his hands, eyes level
with the shoulder from where the gun’s now slung,
a common or garden tool. They’d chat a while:
foods, the cost of children’s clothes, the evil
to the East – the War – and all that that might bring.
* * * *
As we were leaving – tractors, trailers, flicked cigarettes –
my son, impetuous, stuck two fingers
up. Didn’t recognise Jan, at first – gets
hard to tell one green form from another –
saw only gloves, a long split glint that lingers
bloody in my dreams. Someone put a gun
against my head and I could hear my mother
plead, my son scream – he had such fine fingers
for a boy – the sound of metal slicing bone.
‘When they broke my arms with
rocks
I could no longer wield a
sling . . .’
( i )
This day – God willing – I enter Paradise.
Sometime after sunset.
Jerusalem. West, of course.
Join my brother:
my picture like his
plastered on every pole
spattered across every wall.
My soul blown free
(he never told us: his own blood! )
the whole sorry mess.
My death become the fundamental meaning of my life.
( ii )
‘Shabat shalom!’ ‘Shabat shalom!’
bent on their sabbath meal
nodding singing greeting
candles burning cutlery clattering
looking up to see me: who what the no no n
O they will know me!
Know my nation
invincible in their midst!
Know my enmity
enmity deep as tooth
and bone
my own skull my own
enamel
smashing into
shrapnel!
I will kill as many as I can.
I will make that count before I flick the switch.
Shabat shalom.
( iii )
men women children all blown to kingdom come
the way to Paradise
a hail of human bone and blood:
my soul blown free
burns a moment brighter than day
fire
fire and sword
the Word incarnate
– a place amongst the Martyrs –
my little sisters fed.
Halloween
Like walking in the rain, head down, bowed, anonymous,
umbrella dipped, dripping wind toward you,
reflecting blackly, wetly,
Halloween – its slew of green and orange –
ruby brake-lights dampening the stone beneath you:
sinister, sentimental, a fairground shine upon the pavement.
Consider Solomon
Matthew 6.28
‘And why take ye thought for
raiment? Consider the lilies of the
field, how they grow;
they toil not, neither do they
spin: And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon
in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.’
I like to think of Solomon,
grown wise to the trappings of wisdom,
the glistening deference of courtiers,
the cumbersome thrones of gold,
the deceits implicit in palatial mirrors,
sneaking out, between bouts of good sound advice
(and the odd bit of song-writing),
to peak in wonder at the lilies of the field,
divining, in the end, the tiny,
perennial, ingenuous, beginnings of glory.
A Letter Found in Judy’s Drawer
Dear Ma, think it’s time we talked. I need to
and there’s no one else, nor ever has been.
I’m tired, Ma, so damned tired. I don’t blame you
for the blind mindless days ( I see no end )
or the circling dark, the child-like routine
of waking and crying – it’s pathetic,
I know – I’m just too wretched to pretend
anymore. I’ve tried so many things but
this human life hurts, hurts me to the quick:
Christ, heroin, alcohol, they can’t cure
the nauseating guilt that twists my gut,
the deep unanswerable loneliness,
why, Ma, why? Why should I have to endure
this island life, this broken onlyness
so far out that I can’t even sight land,
can’t connect to it? I don’t understand.
Even beauty hurts, Ma, pierces my skull
like foil in a filling – silver and gold,
acute and beautiful in the early
evening sky, so pale-blue pure, clear above
the brick blocks that break the skyline, so full
of oblivion, of all that I hold
deathly dear. The other day, a surly
grey one with dank rainclouds banked blank and mauve
beyond the mind, I broke down, cracked and wept
in front of everyone – how they all stared!
Shrugged it off with a patronage of cheap
pity, a poor glib ‘get a grip’ that kept
their hearts pristine of true pain ( never cared
much for pity, Ma, just contempt gone soft ).
It was the sun that set me off, the deep
cloud cleared and there it was, new-minted, sharp,
tinselled to a metal glint; weird, adrift,
but still as a fountain coin that glimmers
on the flat bottom – a calm fluid warp
of time and place: I thought of those summers,
bright clean moments in my mind’s dull water,
a death ago – mother, father, daughter.
It’s five years now
since he died. You never
knew why he did
it. I did. I knew why
he got in the car
that day and sealed all
the windows; he left
me that too. If ever
I told he said that
he would have to die,
and he did ( though
I never did ) and now
I want that peace
too but I’m frightened he’ll
be there. These things that are in my head – how
do I live with
them? Tried to cut them out,
tried – broken
glass, towels soaked red to my wrists:
some pains, like
cancers, inoperable.
Don’t know anymore
what it’s all about,
anything – some days
I’m hardly able
to control my
temper, to keep my fists
from trashing my
room. An old wife told me
once that unpulled
splinters in time will reach
the heart – I
thought it a tale; you must see,
Ma, it’s impaling my
soul, please don’t preach,
I’m close to
screaming, screaming without cease
no peace no god no
peace no god no
Contact
Simon by email: simon@simonharrison.wanadoo.co.uk