vrf part two

various ragged fringes

part two

the sparkler---THE GLINT OF COPPER IN A YORKSHIRE PUBLIC HOUSE/ THAT ACTS AS A REMINDER--- highlets---THE WHISKY---a seasonal migration---CHALICE & IRIS

the sparkler

crackling brainwire –
the electric burning out, he
blew a fuse?
withdrawal from a dream as from
a loved one, alcohol, a drug,
a loved one

- there were bleating goats
we were in a pub
the girl was called
My Loved One
with me like a pint of bitter to my hand
she was gone –
there was a sideboard
where there was a bar
Someone was coming in by the door
a muffled banging
Someone locked out
Someone was striding across the bar
Someone was being suppressed, I thought I knew
who that some one was

that was

.... ....... ... .. .....
in haste I thumbed through to the notes at the
back, there was
no reference there

a bustle delivered us from that & we were
sitting on a wall
the two goats bleating
above the axle of a car
An Articulated Truck
the truck pulled out in a panic
feeling, should I have acted?

a race of thought across
a set of misconnections
times we lost each other
on the way

And The Sea Beats Like Drums
On The Walls of my Ear
On a dull Door
To the Blood Throb
Oh my Loved One
Sometimes I think I AM YOU
the dirty silence sucks me up
and I fail to connect
she is blond, she saves gold
and her hair in barlight glitters
with
How long will this go on?
the muffled banging
the child shut out
where is the truck that took
the goods away

the burning
electricity
the waiting room
& the train
we get our wires so crossed
I can’t explain
the silence of the sun or
du soleil & ils chantent aux
look there’s a throne in the sky
ears oreilles THERE’S A SINGING IN THEM
les enfants du sommeil a screech of pain
a lost nostalgia la faerie s’eveille & then

a glass ship asleep in the sun
a ghost ship appears off the coast of
the island of Noirmoutier
voices calling to souls enislanded
to leave bodies & to sail
to Galloway

throngs flock
on wires
to get across

the two goats are the two breasts
of a lost opportunity
& meetings missed

the line suppressed is
at last in the notes

the dream’s a blessed mess
the absence of bliss
a kiss bound in promise
as coopers hoop staves to barrel beer

the blended moss
the goats ghosts
of past brats
& muffled banging

articulate
a disappearing truck

THE GLINT OF COPPER IN A YORKSHIRE PUBLIC HOUSE
THAT ACTS AS A REMINDER

of the act of cleavage after which the people fall apart, learning to act dispersing parts of skilled trade. Some set wood pattens into sand for runs of setting molten metals, some make tables or learn to print texts. So a dynasty of silversmiths sits on the coffee table. So the dynasty of smiths who knew the lay of the land and who drew the sword of iron from the stone of ore have set it in a riddle of the cinders of legend, in the hillside, in the text of the land. This is what is The Matter With Britain. A simple shift of a vowel or our preposition. A prehistory of tinker bards mending their p’s & q’s. It’s not the presence of the celts gives a quality of rare blue air to the rocky western coastlines of these islands, for I felt it once in Portugal. The Gold Coasts hint a trade in slaves and glimmer with the beauty of imperial romano-british dead. It is the beauty in our hearts. Tin glitters silver deep in mines of sleep reflecting resonances of nostalgic and diplomatic trade. Phoenicians were the most promontory of semicolonists; and somehow slipped into the green hill text. The archaeology of trade is discount, bound in books & sheafed – a silver tray displayed by a negro butler as the evening darkens in a study that was opulent, and fraudulent – a scene that faded after sunset and a man went down to drink away the evening, when the spirit went out from his heart, when it faded, when the sun went down and entered a dark public house. The man went down walking with all the confidence of one who knows exactly which oblivion he wants: forgetfulness of seashores, “where we sat”, the climate light, and delicate the air. The southwest freshens and brings on reminders of out ocean welfare, the featherbedding, the opulence of celtic sunsets, and who we were was carried water on the wind to be deposited upon whatever moor. There is this world we share, a common substance, common quality, “as rare blue air” of “these islands” was once clear, the planet turning, confident, his needs, her needs, to be fulfilled, into the dark, the distance the lines cross, across the board, and out to there. The sea is washed up on the shore, and afterdark, stark terrors dulled and clubbed into a kind of dreamdark sweetness. Right across the alehouse lines are spread inclining to some named oblivion: the afterdark as bare of all reminders.

Some animals that moved about within the afterdark came up to stare at the remainders of a feast of bygone pleasures that the host had fled from; they reminded me of fish of prey who come to surface as the ancestors approach the portals in a play of dreams brought to a fisherman’s hand are mackerel and thick and sleek of flesh, like smoke that’s blood over a headland after sunset, like the skyline after the sun went black: the sky a livid flame.

the cliff
the sea roar near
the waves pulled back to roar
dip in to drown in drums
it all went black

it’s not the absence that inhabits gleaming seashores, but the absence of an absence that improves it:
silver among the greens
the palace of fire
on the sea-rim

highlets loch
sunart heel & toe the
fingers inter
lock

the goods go out to remote fringes, from
centres, changing hands are charged for
higher prices yet; the mark-up is a function
of an endless set of lochs
the road leads on
beyond a solitary piper wailing
in the rain by courtesy of the
development (highlands &
islands &) his drone
describes the wind & cold & can
depress the heart most dismally
long after it is heard no more – the
tourists call the tunes

the sea is slack, shale-grey
the rains fall on a site marked out
for further crafts & highland
information

foam is
windblown back
to streak in streams
across black loch
the trees sway; twigs break off
it’s hard to brave a way
against gale

sea passages
from dream
shimmering eyelets
landlock
a shimmering drop

the boats that pass like clouds & clouds
passing like islands
rafts across
a fairy water, across
a glittering atlantic passage

Such water that’s vital
stings throat & stings tongue

campers in the dawn make fires of sticks until
all leafage is a blaze of fairy, and the essence
is: a sheen of sun on skein of esk
and all the passages are luminescent

fires of sticks smoke
& coffee cloud sea
raasay skye a
cigarette & woodfire
a vestal task
to draw clean water
keep the speech alive
to clean your teeth &
keep the speech clean

birch, rowan, scrub &
mushroom, crowding down upon the
foreshore
making whisky blaze
in the imagination
sea
bird rock & island out
a sgurr in the
sliver across the eyeball

flame or leaf
clings to the branches
leaves the wood
touches a barren land
with gentleness
bare rock is castled in the heart
in a barren land
an open castle
golden in the open
heart
& another castle further out
within the heart
sunwards
across a sea-track
the

speeches fail us

THE WHISKY

is aqua vitae
an elixir aphrodisiac
a music
raising sight beyond crest
of wave blown back to spray
streaks in spindrift
back
along the wind direction &
what follows
enfolds like a sheep
like a furred or woolly sleep

Fire in the blood is no
impediment to song
The palate blazes with a fire’s reflection
in the hearth
outsize raiders
outside razors
shine a threat so
we reach for a glass of
aqua vitae
an expedient for many
drawing voices out to sing
This time I want you all to sing along

a wave of music
lifts us off, lifts a
heart in delight at the
skills so quick to finger the
exhilarating rings, the reels of
evening pleasure
dancils, eh? the
the dancing reels reflected
are
in whisky

a seasonal migration

in a brief fluorescence
shines a threat
policemen waiting

cars take to the motorway at christmas
televisions are turned on, there are bombs
in the nine o clock news

but the mind’s
elusive lady has
connection with
white horses
passing out of
just beyond a
grasp of hands

dead yeartime, darkening
in advent, healths are thick
with virus & we cough away across
whatever downs

the bombs drop in
an influenzic still
and off her horse she has
a most familiar
and welcome grin
She fills her dancers with spirit, they
“a purpose to be merry” in the light spilled from
the tap room door, with strange remembrance
with spirit, with light & with love
we are lit up from above

quintessence of grain warms the heart
the characters withdraw into the text
to drink with the grain of
midwinter comfort

CHALICE & IRIS

1.
Moon Swell-Belly Full
By June the Twenty-Sixth
See her burst her belly out
These last few days

a redness streaks the eyeball
face clear pale & cold
in a radiant summer iris night

Night? 23.30 hours
and the air has this amazing light....

Midnight and the bright dome settles to this
Ordinary Roar of Space
when cloud-islands are luminous
with what the day has been

2. a look through glass

the chalice is
that winning spirit
Who Has Got It?

Symbol radiates
a land illumined

flash/ a mirror or
car headlight
on a wooded moor

Revives this Ordinary Roar of Space
when is a mirror not a door?

the ghost fades from our eyes
our irises awake

in summer rolling hills roll like our waves
roll we go bowling out in all our cars
a sense demystified, a gauze
stripped from our eyes
There is this dome we share, come
iris mirror headlight
chalice to my pen
come doves sweep slide & glide
onto my tongue

my cupped hands bringing water
with a blue within
see the clouds in the skin of my hand
drink my water

3. chalice & iris

there comes a moment when
a dark grey silverfringed cloud of a
heartsuddenness shadows the sun

sudden gust & a fall
water sparkles again

See water? in the clouds of
my hand? on the cloak of a
standing illusion

The sun shines on
patches of land
& we turn towards shadow again

myosotis scorpiodes
water
& the true forget-me-not

5. cloud hill of lime

man of water
on a soft green hill
there is an entrance here

questions water
fingers cloud turned hill
wrings tears from clenched eyes
springs water from rock
with his supple twig

cloud hill of lime-
stone, chalk & clay
a land of apples
heaped up in a metal bowl

come of age we step
onto a windy field
to be slapped in the face
by nothing but water

the children followed a fine robed hooded man
into the hill, his finger
pointing out the way. The last child let
the tinkle of an ice-cream wagon
hold him back

6. the pointing finger

he dips his fingerbones into
a bowl of bronze and scatters
water in air

fat cattle graze
the plain below, fat apples
raised from seed & all
the wealth is sunk
in cheese & cider

7.
the door swings open
bright faces in the bar
a slow handed bar tender

the tap room door
is on the latch

shoulders make the way a path
towards a hatch of warm light

a public bar away from wind where
messages of wind sink in

On to Part Three?