Gentle reader, What you have in your hands is a fourth pamphlet of my poetry - the best of what bears scrutiny since the last, Mixed Methods, in 2016. All the previous pamphlets can be read on-line at https://issuu.com/captchaos. There is no sequence to follow here, rather the poems are strung together according to the connections in my head. Good luck with that! I’ve included an occasional explanatory note; if you want to ask more, feel free to e-mail or comment on my archive blog.
Poetry is a bargain: the writer can never know what perceptions readers may bring, where in their own landscape they will place one’s imagery. Thank you - as always - for the time, attention and imagination you choose to invest.
Cover illustration by Hector Gonzalez
TWITTEN* (a post-election daydream) Scarcely more than shoulder breadth, you cannot see the opening from this year’s end. Two sides obstruct the solstice light: no shadows dance or – in its gloomy closing – slink like alley cat round beer cans. Walls so tall they seem to lean in. Ivy overspills their coping, reaches fingers down. I approach our lengthening days between brick piers; but find each minute, newly lit, is – by shallow angles – blinded. There’s more time now, though less to say. Listening for tongues, we hear only three-word echoes. How far this passage goes rests on choice of measure: careless whether yards or metres, lichen clings in fractured mortar.
* (in Sussex) a narrow path or passage between two walls or hedges. Early 19th century origin, perhaps related to Low German ‘twiete’
WOODWORK Each day now grows one minute lighter and the woodpecker climbs a dying trunk, probes for weaknesses, no time to rest. In creviced bark his chisel bill is sunk, repeated stabs making splinters fly: each tree is a door if you use your head. The splash of scarlet unmasks my eye. Though risen late, I’m clearing wreckage; each wind-torn pole gets sawn for fire logs. Pause. Look up. Read the pied message. Its narrow tongue digs insects out, which lurk unseen, beneath each flake of timber skin. Sunshine, still low-angled, warms our woodwork. This turning year is none the wiser that each spent day is one day fewer.
TESTING THE WATER (remembering Scott Hutchison) A flow we seek to capture, bridge or channel, yet cannot confine. Lithe as mercury, slipping fingers, it is held in brush-stroked cloud and then let fall, rattling on rooftops. Pools, unstirred, collect the tension of drip, drip droplets:
mirror-flat, refract our point of view, reveal all kinds of surface. Of running water, folklore says that no enchantment can survive it. To know the end you go to, be the stream, not a stick that’s spun at source. Ride the impulsive rapids to middle-age
meandering, no cataracts in sight. At the delta of days, silt-laden reach the surf; then fathomless beyond swim until you see no land.
WHAT THE EYE DOESN’T SEE Before fake news and photoshop, we used to say the camera never lies. Yet, in this bowl of night, fish-eyes collect and amplify the light beyond discernment’s reach.
More shades than green meet here in ribbons, plumes and streaming spikes, then fade, but flow again. Their known particulars – of solar wind, magnetic field and charge released – expose our partial sight. By boundless silence held,
as underlings, we name the stars. And do not need to hear, from yard-thick ice, some muffled creak to understand there’s a lake unseen, below.
PHOTO OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG WOMAN Eyes. Always begin with the eyes. Abstracted, hers gaze half-away beyond the border lines. Fixed in far-off monochrome, this face had time to prepare, yet is smooth with the sureness of youth.
Mane of hair, centre parted, is a curtain not yet drawn back. Not picture perfect. The slight wave a question – like woods and flowers on an upward path – where she sees how earthbound feet might tread. Face you could be sweet on –
before the muttering retreats of hip replacement, varifocus and whiny hearing aids. When once – through blindfold of our dreams – we would conjure worlds uncropped.
WARY …
… for in that kiss, our continent of unknowns. An imprint of lips, planted like your finger, stills my fluttering heartbeat.
QUIET NIGHT THOUGHT (a reinterpretation)
Upstairs, my moon-bright bed is lit with frosty questions on a silver sheet I look up to watch her beaming face; lie down my dreams in this sad place.
after Li Bai (701 – 762)
CROP Beside, asleep, you wait for summer through an open sash. I stretch, unloose a back that’s been on bended knee lent over gooseberries. Birdsong decorates the silence.
Fruit swells on last year’s shoots: at a hand’s reach its tartness yields to my caress. Tingling from the hurtful thorns – scratches, sweat and sunburn – I drift into recollection of long-since lovemaking.
How our necks, like jousting giraffe, once collided. How skin brushed against skin; a palm placed at my waist, though now your work-strong arms lie resting. Even the coldest roots will warm, unseen, when winter melts.
This is our time. With sharpened blade, we prune bare limbs the damaged and dead wood. Let fresh light bathe a tired heart.
INSIDE THE FRAME (a portrait of Edward King) King furrows his brow, turns from the painted casement. An ever level lawn, shadow barred and border orderly, yawns. It stretches out, year on year on year, to pastureland. Poplars like policemen, guard his settled perimeter. He is thinking what lines to draw, how to moor his houseboat mind. Flat with chloral, he looks back: haystack and horses, cabbages in rows, the daily digging of flower beds. Walls without corners hold him safe beyond his loss. He broods upon
what brushwork still could show. Now daylight cleaves the terraces through skyline fractures, newly-ripped by night. Silence after bombs. In the thick of tumbled red-brick, blown-out windows under a bare-ribbed roof. Its upturned hull – skeletal, smouldering – an acrid nip of burnt rafter. Scorched wallpaper, plaster dust, the lost teeth of gapped chimneys. Hunched in trench-coat, King looks on at streets turned inside out. A filling canvas returns his stare. Cock-eyed angles, missing doorways,
that distant yellow dress: his world within a frame. https://youtu.be/rbIbBH8AHPk
OUTSIDE WITHIN In sanctuary of an unlatched porch I’ve laid my cycle down. The door is thick-strong oak: long hinges brace nail-studded beams, an iron ring for handle. I test the turn of it. But, bolted against contagion,
there’s no communion to be had; the dancing pools of stained glass light unreachable within. Back home yet looking out, we step around ourselves, measure the degrees of separation – two-metre arms outstretched.
Blessed are those with wings: a far-wandering Brimstone settles, briefly matches the budding leaves. First of the year, it knows the secret of distance: that it’s how we become grown-up.
NOT BUYING IN
No PPE your voice to mask. And should you question, they will say that ‘now is not the time to ask’ how duty to protect lost track of plague we knew would come one day. Here’s PPE, your voice to mask. Where are the tests and staff we lack? Is there oxygen enough to share? No, now is not the time to ask. Stay home and ‘take it on the chin’, watching appalled from your armchair with PPE your voice to mask. Be in the herd, get daily spin. Let clapping cover up the lies, for now is not the time to ask. What is the plan to be supplied? How many more must breathless die? Though PPE our voice may mask,
it’s now – not later – time to ask.
“Well it’s a very, very important question, and that’s where a lot of the debate has been and one of the theories is, that perhaps you could take it on the chin, take it all in one go and allow the disease, as it were, to move through the population, without taking as many draconian measures.” Boris Johnson, Thursday 5 March
TRACK AND TRACE Footfall echoes down our unlit alley, like a signal followed. Uploading from your pocket, an unheard blip, blip, bleeping of barcode.
Contact: an unknown voice recites their script. Quarantine.
You will be notified if your status changes. A swab may be required. Unseen,
the scrunching of gravel. Your partial field of view: a white van retreats from the corner of one eye, its exhaust spluttering. Alert, controlled, but double-blind
to false result - not yours take the test next door. Tap on your neighbour’s window, bookmark their location.
PICTURE THIS It is stuff of legend, this inch-wide ribbon draped round my neck like a snake or priestly stole cut short. When – as maroon festoon – I leave it trailed across
the plate, I’m sometimes asked for an explanation. See the roughly painted letters: left, right they show. For we must know which side in case of amputation.
Look. Here is its measure – one metre, tube to skin. Or near as my hands could, all needle-clumsy, sew. And, to mark exposure, a cipher woven in. No matter what the angle,
it makes your image mine.
A radiographer’s marker ribbon is a 'tool of the trade'. Because we view radiographs as if they were a slide, a transparency, technically one couldn't know which side without an anatomical marker. Many ‘old school’ radiographers keep theirs sewn in the ends of a metre-length ribbon, which makes them harder to lose and doubles as a quick check on the standard exposure distance. Generally the legend also carries initials (or a number) so the image can be traced to its creator.
WALL TO WALL (Passing through the Poetry Library, Royal Festival Hall)
It doesn’t happen often, this killing time. I’m looking at a wall of words, as tall to me as those that cleave the West Bank or Belfast. Shelf upon stacked shelf:
this cache of tender conscience an Armalite gathering dust. Yet spines are all unequal heights, leave ground unoccupied. So tread the empty moors and build a wall, outdoors. Make local choices: whether limestone
for its grain or granite to endure. Pack flat your rough-hewn slabs, laying their battered faces into a slant. Place coping stones to crown the rise. Wind can whistle through its heart, find line of least resistance.
ASHES TO ASHES I‘m burning apple boughs at evensong. While still shrill blackbirds linger, the path’s flagstones – by turns – become first chapter and then verse. My bonfire keeps the day’s half-light alive; the sweet twigs placed so they’re not blown off course. Its glowing core is kiln of afterthought. In the smoke, a ritual of remembering: how, once a year, we went with chastened hearts and smudged foreheads, smouldering to school. The mark of otherness unrecognised, until – in the nearest glass – we washed it from our skin, to sidestep explanation.
When flames die down, the bark cast off rekindles what has lapsed. I hear a sizzle of held sap and watch the embers slowly choke on ash.
HOLDING THE FORT*
White feet climb from the bay, taking a tourist trail to explore this outpost. In well-groomed lawn the officers’ quarters stand, restored to Georgian elegance. Memory is a plaque:
On this spot the mutiny of the 8th West India Regiment broke out. Under a mango’s shade, there’s more to learn. ***
Cane bills were the trigger. A broad iron blade, with hooked tip heavy on long handle, to strip and lift the stems. Familiar enough – like erratic food and clothing – yet unforeseen, as the swindling of due allowances had been. Cane bills. Plantation’s badge: handed out, like shame, for clearing swamp of bush.
*** Did the Colonial Office weigh up the risk of putting arms in reach, as manpower short, they bought a regiment? For Redcoats fell to more than yellow jack. Where they hanged the rebels, history doesn’t say. We imagine them dangling from Fort Shirley’s ramparts, overlooking black sands and blue, contested Caribbean. *** Black hands built these dark walls: carried the cut boulders, hauled cannon to the heart of a volcano, long dead. The garrison track heads inland, stumbles on empty magazines, barracks half-swallowed by forest. Windows choked with Strangler Fig. Imperial footing undermined by spreading Bloodwood root.
* In April 1802, African slave soldiers took over the Fort Shirley garrison (on the Cabrits peninsula of Dominica) for three days in protest over conditions there and for fear of being sent to work in the cane-fields. Their action resulted in all slave soldiers being made free in 1807 – the first act of emancipation in the British Empire.
GENERAL SYNOPSIS A settled ridge of high pressure: windows open to sleepless visibility, far from occasionally poor. Soon beyond these roofs and chimneys look, a finishing line. In eventide shadows seek common thread to bind your day. Fish scale clouds – for a time – recede fair becoming variable. A fall unseen waits around some half-dark corner. Rising more slowly, step outside; with weight of footfall steady your staggering gaze. The warm air turns, veering upward. Harvest moonshine floods the gutter. Lit by clarity of its stories, spilling down, find eye for your loosened shoelace.
JAZZING UP THE EMPIRE SUITE We are painting over your past today, with sweeping statements hide its pock-marked face. The paper scoured for loopholes, rips and flaws, we’ve felt for cracks and polyfilla plugged them, then sanded smooth the seams to barely notice. So thinking all’s wiped clean, we’re primed to start;
but first must argue out which tone will turn the smear of bilious pink to sunlit room, a place where you may set yourself apart. The favoured pigment spreads, blots out betrayal; for truth gets brushed in corners, hard to reach those angles overhead and at our feet.
Our sights are set on coverage, wall-to-wall, no under-bubble or peeling edges. Yet this is a rush-to-judgement job: you’ll choose the gloss, add final touches, later.
THIS DARK CYCLE (the Purkinje shift) In line at a crossing we wait for the barrier to rise: its upswing paused, outside control. Arrested, teetering, our gated state is two-wheeled doubt.
‘Talk to us’ the notice says if things are getting to you.’ When pulsing red turns single green we will pass this border; beyond, where streetlamps run out, shall plunge into the moonless ink. Unnerved, our widening eyes cannot discriminate the ivied limbs, closing over.
What’s known becomes unknown. Flickering between margins of bracken bank and leaf-choked swamp, feeble bike lights fail to see the path that’s safe not sorry.
A bridge is looming. Until then wobbly guesswork guides our wheels.
VIRTUE SIGNAL It is one grand gesture: this full-arm stretch, hoisted overhead then let fall sidelong. Not royal hand in limp rotation, rather – from the fulcrum of our elbows – a sweep of unversed semaphore bridging seen-but-not-heard distance.
I’m on deck at the starboard rails, or port side - if leaving not arriving. You’re leant on a seaward wall, looking out. Or some other face to face perhaps? Beached below, one of us unfurls a rug, settles down with friends on shingle. What remains these days is dumb show, doubtful.
Mostly we go nameless, under the radar hide our light. Each to their own. But waving at total strangers – an ageless urge, hard to resist in narrow straits – is least that we can do.
STAYING POWER Within our walls this talisman grows old. In the north-east corner, where demons loom, it seeks chill time enough to later bloom: such hours are fewer now and not as cold. Each year the snowy corymbs soon unfold. Then on pruned limbs a glossy crown makes room, where fruit must strive to swell, not be assumed –
for heart rot saps the trunk, its bark shot-holed. When loading grows too great, some must descend unformed, like once good Christians fallen. For while love’s tears get harder to requite midwinter – from June on - draws in the light. What pears remain wait patiently to ripen; those dropped are best forgotten, odds and ends.
With thanks to my workshop friends, in no particular order
•
Gareth Toms
•
Dick Senior
•
Denise Bennett
•
Liz Neal
•
Maggie Sawkins
•
John Pearson
•
Richard Peirce
•
Pauline Hawkesworth
•
Richard Williams
•
Sue Spiers
October 2020, kenelm@ntlworld.com
Printed by Mail Boxes Etc. Portsmouth
From Birmingham via the Isle of Wight, Mark Cassidy practises radiography in Portsmouth and Havant, where he lives with a cat, eight trees and the rest of his family. His poems have previously seen the light of day in Skylight 47,
Northwards Now, Poetry Salzburg Review, Pushing Out The Boat, and Ariadne’s Thread. He also appears in the anthologies This Island City:
Portsmouth in Poetry, Poems for Grenfell Tower and Poems for the NHS. Others may be found in previous home-grown pamphlets and are collected on-line at https://markbcassidy.blogspot.co.uk/