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Poetry Texts 1
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Poetry Texts
Texts
A Matter of Principle
by Steve Wallis
The lifeblood of breath-quickened clay,
Primal, essential, firstbirthright;
Water will always find a way.
The hand that feeds can also bite
The lifeblood of breath-quickened clay.
The spring will reach the distant bay.
Persistence, too, is strength, is might.
Water will always find a way.
Raging, inundating dismay;
Tranquil, meandering delight:
The lifeblood of breath-quickened clay.
Despite obstruction or delay,
It scorns all claims of ‘watertight’.
Water will always find a way.
Sun-driven cycle day by day,
Tied to the light displayed at night.
The lifeblood of breath-quickened clay,
Water will always find a way.
After Dunwich
by Neal Mason
Poised mid stride, the sea hesitates
like a convert with doubts.
On the crumbling shore, the church waits
for deepest night, new moon
repairing a trefoil. Seeming to decide,
footsteps that slap on the porch
belong to the spring tide.
In the graveyard, waves that were grass
are real water;
crosses, each a spar and mast
heading east, sink like ships,
the wind tolling passing-bells,
sea water running for sanctuary
as the congregation swells
and pushes back doors. A slow procession
fills the nave
to overflowing, takes possession
of each aisle as it gradually advances
to ankle depth, or hems of cassocks,
small waves bowing
low, kneeling on hassocks.
Transepts flood, become black bays
in whose waters
the trefoil moon bobs and sways,
choir screen a permeable wall,
its pattern shrinking ever shorter.
Half a nave away
the font is filling with water.
Bubbles rise in streams, twirling and clowning
from buried vaults
as though each occupant were drowning.
The lectern, an eagle clutching darkness,
becomes a seabird, glares at the procession
rising higher and higher
and teaching its own lesson.
Foam mounts the pulpit steps,
seems to sigh
a sermon drawn from hidden depths.
The equinoctial gale outside
intones and chants, presses and batters
the church’s beleaguered hull;
an oriel window, like a porthole, shatters.
The bulkhead of the altar cannot halt
the will of the tide;
old wounds sting with new salt
as a figure seems to cling
to wreckage. The absent choir’s refrain
seems to wail from the heavens, its descant
lashing, secular rain.
As the waves advance, all in their grip,
the kingdom succumbs,
appears to invert. Its floundering ship,
roof a hull, beams awash,
drifts in the sea where it articles toss,
lightning conducted down
no intercessory cross.
Athlete
by Neal Mason
Run fast enough into the dark
and isolating winter nights and your fear
might not catch you. Running
scared, you record hundredths of a second
knocked off winters of your life, time
measuring you up, exercising you,
success hurting long before achieved,
and even if not. A few minutes' pain
can hurt for years, nightly
sacrifice to rows of empty seats
propitiates a feeling of unfitness;
but more alarming is your worry
the event may never take place.
Confined by a lane which narrows
in the distance, frightened the stagger
might never unwind, you pound,
heart racing, like a contender
with more than two Achilles heels.
Doubt for a pacemaker, pain
questioning commitment, you imagine
unread record books speeding
to obscurity; and you can come last
even with a personal best. Ending
where you started, watch showing it's time
for home, you drive back in heavy traffic,
black car travelling at a funeral pace.
Common Scents
by Steve Wallis
Singly, or in pairs or packs, scenting tracks
searching, cocking, squatting, scraping
here come the common dogs
good dogs, bad dogs, crow-barking-mad dogs
dogs with grey beards and measured pace
full of faith and years and under-the-table treats
bull-shouldered bare-knuckle dogs
with tattered ears
amorous ambitious Jack-the-lad Russells
in trysts with spindly stilted bitches
tickle-belly family dogs, cow-heel collies, stoic labs
ragtag dogs, all woof and wag
handbag dogs with glitter collars
dogs with joggers, dogs with bikes
spiky, tykey bantam dogs
tenacious terriers, diggers, buriers
yapping, snapping, home-spoiled dogs
working dogs, lurking dogs, lurchers and fetchers
erratic dogs, aquatic dogs
splashing shaking sprinkler dogs
bounding, panting, pointing, hounding
the dogs of the towns, all with a common purpose
Derelict Classroom
by Neal Mason
Foxgloves face the windows, vacantly
gaze out, but learn nothing
from chattering thrushes and blackbirds
or the sky blank as doubt;
knowledge and order are lost in overgrowth
and Nature’s grown up a lout.
What were pellets flicked in fun
are flies. Lazy chalk dust
used to drift like pollen,
motes in young eyes,
where now the beams of a blinding sun
glare in rank surprise.
The walls are covered in graffiti, the vandal
moss. The green blackboard
fails to instruct brambles
which increase, oblivious of loss,
while a snail’s trail, looping and curling
beneath, serves for a gloss.
Where the red roof was is white and blue
sky; clouds, unformed
and uninformed of nimbus
or cumulus, writhe as they try
outlines a teacher might approve
and on which textbooks can rely.
A puffball is the globe that children held
in awe, its national colours
now brown, not the variety
primary childhood saw;
the spores would mature to khaki, then fall,
obeying some natural law.
Beyond the broken glass grow pampas
and canes; wind-punished nettles
sting empty air
while butterflies play games
on buddleia. The wilderness encroaches, unaware
of culture, geography or names.
First Flowers
by Neal Mason
Last April's aroma of blossom
transported me nowhere
near as much as this stone bouquet,
its one hundred and thirty six
million year old petals colourless,
scentless, but more heady
than first-flowering spring.
Still fresh, a fossilized recollection
tugs, as though I'd been there, at unpicked
stalks and buds waiting to be pressed,
a postponed wonder which blooms
now, as it did in a grey-green world,
flora itself young, a surprise of petals
pre-empting every poet, every lover.
I offer you these, heavy and slate-grey,
years too late, as a spray
of yellows, reds and blues, a token to all
that might have grown,
seeded in early sunshine, nurtured
by imagination and ever-fertile hope.
