PART ONE: New Year’s Day: 1966

NEWYEAR’S DAY: 1966

Here I am, an infant in an ancient land: Here where centuries of men have left To scarlet banners flying in the morning air; Clanking to boats that whispered of departure, Hissing across a watery world unknown Where calm could mean the death of half a vessel, And sails were billowed by the breath of God Where men died strange sad deaths in distant countries, While some returned to bring the far deaths back And make them a familiar part of living; Until the whole world shrunk into this land Where centuries of men had rearrived, For always this new land was never new: To Romans, Saxons, Normans, it surprised them With shocks of recognition, as a home. (Perhaps His feet had trod here, after all.) And

I am arriving here again, this first time, To paths where my father’s feet had walked to school; Where ancestors lie buried and forgotten, But, being dead, do not forget us here.

900 years ago, it was, he sailed here, A steward of William, with the Norman fleet; A stranger from the cold blond north he stood, clear Eyed, surveying the land that lay asleep After the battle, green and peaceful looking, But firm and welcoming underneath his feet; Held by a thought, he paused, and, without kneeling, Thanked God with all his heart: the land would keep His children and his children’s children after He strode the blood-dried earth, weeping with laughter.

To Scotland then they came, and took the land Which, through the years, became another land At odds with where the Normans first had stood And God’s good will was on the side of each. Blood sprouted from the wounds of men again, Arteries emptied into the thirsty earth, Commingled with old blood, already dust,

Rekindled one live blood, which coursed the country Underground, through veins of earth, becoming One Celtic, Roman, Saxon, Norman blood: A blood more real than blood of living men; A land more real than flesh, warmer than skin: A blood as real as wine, or Blood of Christ; A land as real as bread, or Flesh of Christ: The bones of buried dead became one vast Skeleton of the land, and of the past.

The grass is green again, and whispers now Of senseless civil wars, and senseless death, And comings together only for other wars With other lands: cruel crazy alternations Of fighting self and others: weeping nations Battle a time, and die, while generations Glitter a time, and fade, and pass, as wars Swell up again like wounds improperly healed: And all that could be learned is lost in death. The grass is silent, can not tell us how.

I came here

an infant from a savage home, A foster-land that fed me bitter milk, Indigestible, that gagged as it nourished: A place not good or bad, but just a land Different, alien, new: Where other blood Flows underground; feeding another grass.

But dry and burnt and rustling grows the grass: Not the cool green meadows of my father’s home; Not the snow-bred coursing of his blood; Not the walks to school through the morning milkWhite mist; not the slowly softly changing land That centuries of rotting dead had nourished.

And when he grew he left the place that nourished Him, and sought for new and different grass Where he could sink his roots into the land: And, after continents of seeking home He stopped, and tasting a familiar milk At last to calm the wandering throb of blood.

It is not easy, settling old blood: Divided it will grow like those twins nourished And brought to manhood by the she-wolf’s milk Who, while young, played and sported on the grass And did not question that it was their home But loved it for itself. And yet the land

Grew up between them as they grew; the land Became their difference; and fresh young blood Was spilt, because each loved another home, Reverted beast-like to the one who nourished Them. And so my foster-home fed me dry grass Instead of the familiar promised milk.

And then a babe I drank my mother’s milk Divided once again: half Ireland And half the fiery wine of Spain. The grass Of both lands, mingled with my father’s blood, Conceived a mixture rich - but undernourished In a country that could never be my home.

So I came home to find a better milk, Be nourished by an older kinder land, Where wisps of blood still whisper from the grass.

Yet still I hunger, still

in an ancient voice I hear the grass, but cannot understand the language That it speaks. Inside my womb a foetus rattles Kicking to be free. Yet I am impotent To conceive the healthy child: I stiffen With rejection of the senses; I stream, I scream with interrupted coitus, Unable to fulfil inside myself The finished child; unable to bring forth The poem

alone

The roots are cut away, the withered plant Knows nothing but a dry and desperate want.

The wind blows flecks of foam upon the strand I do not know the source where it must spring I know that somewhere there must be a land

The beach is rippled like the sea, the sand Is ruffled down upon a seagull’s wing The wind blows flecks of foam upon the strand

If I could tag a wild bird in my hand Then let it go and watch its wandering I know that somewhere there must be a land

What if I followed it, and could not stand To see the sights its journeying would bring The wind blows flecks of foam upon the strand

But this be all my eyes are fit for, and The winds, blown through the blinding white foam, sing I know that somewhere there must be a land

So, in my heart, a city is unwound Where mankind can endure anything The wind blows flecks of foam upon the strand I know that somewhere there must be a land.

Is this the place?

There on the distant shore Faint fading echoes were washed up at my feet And, rather than retreat or hold my ground, I advanced backward, with the steady gait Of an infant’s first few steps, keeping my eye On the remnants of a civilisation Old and lost now, but better, in the end, Than no civilization at all.

Land Swam into my view, grew larger and diminished In a fading seventh. The old new country Disappeared. Islands startled the horizon In a waste of sea. Drawing closer in, I could see the chords of swarming islanders Scaling the cliffs, ascending to the top, And disappearing beyond the realm of sound.

Then on the deck the heavy native feet, Misshapen, broad, from climbing on the rocks Impossible to fit with shoes, came pounding Great octave chords, like drum-beats on the planks Descending in the bass. Their wares were sold, The tourist bought crude carved and plaited trinkets, And they departed, in manufactured boats, Half-civilised to greed: while still the past Clung in bright colourful shreds about their necks, Blowing in the wind as they pulled away.

Et puis, et puis encore?

A waste of sea. Dappled by lands that faded in the mist And reappeared only to fade again And reappear as other lands. Unreal. Beneath the plunging prow the waves beat up As solid sheets of living sea, and stood Suspended in the air, only to shatter In foaming, flashing, fresh salt sea-green drops Which stood, suspended in the air again, As if the sea itself must live two lives While each boat passes over it. And I, Feeling the desolate spray upon my face In its journey back to the sea, felt the joy Of its bleak return as salt drops on my lips. Surging like blood across the veins of ocean We travelled on the stream, to rearrive At the core of heart. The new old country Appeared out of the fog, quite suddenly At night, the lights of Folkestone clustered there On the shadowy coast. And we were home.

But is this then the place?

DIGRESSION. _____________

Basically, I still believe T.S. Eliot was right when he said that poetry is an ‘escape’ from emotion. Why? Very personal: Reading aloud. Tragic or merely pathetic fiction. The death of Ilyusha or Emma Bovary or Platero. My voice breaks constantly. They are, orally speaking, barely readable. A tremendous effort of the will is needed. Prose can be a harrowing experience. And should be. But poetry? Even the most tragic voice. From Tichborne to Lowell. Can be read, unbroken, to the end. Yet the experience is deeper. And stays with you at least as strongly. Or stronger. As long. Or longer. The metre, the rhythm, carries the emotion along with it, unbroken. If you feel yourself going, vocally, you can pull yourself back into harness, back to the line and the rhythm. It is, so to speak, beyond emotion. As Yeats said, not even the worst actress in the world would think of crying at the death of Cleopatra. The impersonality of even the most personal of poetry. Its holding itself within a strict form. Forcing itself into an order. An arbitrary order. Personal? But true.

A poem sat in my heart, waiting to be written down, while I was stretched upon the rack of twenty-seven years, torturing my back and spine: but still I could not get rid of it.

I had got home, my roots were down, and yet the half-expected Scotch-snap left me slack: collapsed on the bare ground like an old sack emptied of its contents, unable to fit

Into any world: remembered waves of pain whipping my naked flesh again and again while my soul whimpered earthward - For God’s sake

Let each scar become a sonnet, made to burn less fiercely, in old forms and metres born: Make my heart grow stronger, or let it break.