The House of Belonging [1 ed.] 0962152439, 9780962152436

Citation preview

THE HOUSE

of

BELONGING

\ DAVID WHYTE

Front Cover:

Pace Barn, Southhampton, Paul Rocheleau, Photographer All

Rights Reserved

NY

©1992

THE HOUSE OF BELONGING

BOOKS BY DAVID WHYTE POETRY Songs for Coming

Home

Where Many Rivers Meet Fire in the Earth

The House of Belonging

PROSE The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in

Corporate America

Crossing the

Work

Unknown

Sea:

as a Pilgrimage of Identity

THE

HOUSE of

BELONGING

Poems by

2

DAVID WHYTE

(/"

VI

2

MANY RIVERS PRESS LANGLEY, WASHINGTON

This book

is

and

dedicated to

Brendan Wliyte

the house he will

make

from his own belonging.

COPYRIGHT ©

1997

DAVID WHYTE

ISBN 0-9621524-3-9 1st

2nd

Printing: 1997 Printing: 1997

3rd Printing: 1998 4th Printing: 1999 5th Printing: 2002

LOST Stand

And

The

still.

Are not

lost.

you must

Must

two

it

is

this place

know

and be known.

it

around you.

you may come back again, saying Here.

it,

trees are the

tree or a

are surely

Where you

lost.

are.

David Wagoner copyright

called Here,

as a powerful stranger,

to

same

to

Raven.

two branches are the same

what a

You

ahead and bushes beside you

breathes. Listen. It answers,

made

If you leave

If

treat

ask permission

The forest I have

No No

trees

Wherever you are

1976

bush does

Stand

You must

is

still.

to

Wren.

lost

The

let it find

on you, forest

you.

knows

1

CONTENTS I.

3

page

BELONGING TO THE HOUSE This Life

4

The House of Belonging

7

At

Home Happens

10

It

13

Winter Child

14

What

II.

I

to

Those Who Live Alone

Must Tell Myself

BELONGING TO THE NIGHT

23

Sweet Darkness

24

All the

26

What to Remember When Waking The Winter of Listening The Well of Stars The Journey

29

34 37

III.

True Vows

BELONGING TO PLACES

4

Yorkshire

47

Elderflower

51

Ten Years Later

53

Four Horses

56

The Horse Whisperer Tienamen (The Man in

59

front of the Tank)

CONTENTS IV. ige

BELONGING TO THOSE

67

Brendan

70

Edward Dougie The Hawthorn

75

79 82

Two

86

Working Together

Strangers

88

Loaves and Fishes

89

This

90

The Sun The Truelove

96

(continued)

Poem

Belongs To You

I

KNOW

Digitized by the Internet Archive in

2011

http://www.archive.org/details/houseofbelongingOOwhyt

CO BELONGING TO THE HOUSE

THIS LIFE

At the center of this there

He

a

is

has a

life

man I want new house,

to

know

again.

view of the mountain

a clear

and hidden in the close grained

wood

of his desk a

new book of poems.

He

has

left

the

life

he once tried to love

now

it is

only

a

shadow

calling for another

and

this

shadow

wants to become

it falls

shadow

real again

against walls

and fences and stairways the dark

now

let

against

penumbra of my belonging

me

cast

my shadow

life

before the specter haunts grave.

C

3

3

me

to

my

THE HOUSE OF BELONGING awoke this morning I

in the gold light

turning

and

this

way

that

thinking for a

moment

it

was one

day

any other.

like

But the veil had gone

from

my

darkened heart

and I

it

thought

must have been the quiet

candlelight that filled

it

my

room,

must have been

the

first

easy

rhythm

with which myself to

C

I

breathed

sleep,

4

H

it

must have been

the prayer

said

I

speaking to the otherness

of the night.

And I

thought

this

the

is

good day

you could meet your this

love,

the black day

is

someone close to you could die. This

you

how is

the day

is

realize easily the thread

broken

between

world

this

and the next and

I

found myself

sitting

up

in the quiet

pathway

of light,

C

5

3

:

the tawny close grained cedar

burning round

me

like fire

and

the angels of this housely

all

heaven ascending through the

first

roof of light the sun has made.

This in

which

this I

the bright

is

is

live,

I

where

ask

my to

friends

come,

this

is

where

to love it

home

all

I

want

the things

has taken

me

so long

to learn to love.

This

the temple

is

of my adult aloneness

and

I

belong

to that aloneness as

I

belong to

There

is

like the

my

life.

no house house of belonging.

c

6

HOME

AT

At home amidst the bees

wandering the garden in the

summer

light

the sky a

broad roof

house

for the

of contentment

where

I

wish

to live forever

in the eternity

of my

own

fleeting

and momentary happiness.

I

walk toward

the kitchen

door

as if

walking

toward the

door of a recognized heaven

and see the simplicity

of shelves and the blue dishes

and the vaporing

C

v

3

steam rising

from the

kettle

that called

Not just

me

in.

this

aromatic cup

from which

to drink

but the flavor

of a

made whole

life

and lovely through the imagination seeking

its

Not just

way.

this

house around

me

but the arms

of a

fierce

but healing world.

Not just I

this line

write

but the

innocence of an earned forgiveness

flowing again

through hands

made new with writing.

c

s

n

And

a

man

with no company but his house, his garden,

and

his

own

well peopled solitude,

entering the silences

and chambers of the heart to start again.

C

9

3

IT

HAPPENS TO THOSE WHO LIVE ALONE

It

happens to those

who

alone

live

that they feel sure

of visitors

when no one is

else

there,

one day

until the

and one particular

hour

working

in the

quiet garden,

when

the

green bud at

the center

of their slowly

opening silence flowers in

belonging

and they at

realize

once,

that

all

along

they have been

an invitation to everything

and every kind of trouble

C 103

and that

life

happens by to those

who

inhabit silence

like the

bees

visiting

the

on

mallow

tall

their legs

of gold,

or the wasps

going from door to door in the

tall

of the

daisies.

I

my

have

forest

freedom

today

because

nothing

happened

really

and nobody came to see

Only

me. the slow

growing of the garden in the

summer

heat

and the silence of that

unborn

making

known

life

itself at

my

da

desk,

my

hands

still

dark with the

crumbling as

I

soil

write

and watch the

of a

first lines

new poem,

like flowers

of scarlet

coming in a

fire,

to fullness

new

light.

C

12

3

WINTER CHILD my

Myself at like at

door

Blake

home

in his

heaven

my own

heart

newly opened by the news and

my

face

turned upward

and innocent toward them.

All the stars like a great

crowd

of creation singing above the blessed house.

C

13

3

WHAT MUST TELL MYSELF I

Above

the water

and against the mountain the geese fly through the

brushed darkness of the early morning

and out into the

light,

they travel over

my

immovable house

with such unison of faith

and with such assurance

toward the south

cresting the

mountains

and the long coast of a continent

as

they

move

each year

toward

a

horizon

they have learned to call their

own.

CiO

I

know

house,

this

and

this

horizon,

and

this

world

I

know

have made.

I

this silence

and the particular and

treasures

terrors

of this belonging but

know the world am going.

cannot

which

to

I

I

I

have only

and for

my

this

wings

me

and they carry in

breath

presence

this

my body

whatever

do

I

from one hushed

moment

to another.

I

know my innocence I know my unknowing

and

but for I

all

my

go through

successes

life

like a blind child

who

cannot

see,

arms outstretched trying to put together a

world.

C

15

3

And

the world

my behalf me in its arms

works on catching

when

go too

I

far.

know what

I

don't

I

could have done

to have earned such faith.

But what of all the others and the

bitter lovers

and the ones

who were

not held?

Life turns like a slow river

and suddenly you at

are there

the edge of the water

with

all

and the feast

the rest fire carries

the

and the laughter

and in the darkness

away from the

fire

the unspoken griefs that

still

make

togetherness

but then

CiO

just as suddenly

has

it

become

a fireless

friendless

night again

and you find yourself alone and you must speak

to the stars

or the rain-filled clouds

or anything to find

at

your

hand

place.

When you are alone you must do anything to believe

and when you

are

abandoned

you must speak. with everything

you know and everything you are in order to belong.

If I

have no one to turn to

must claim

If I

I

I

my

aloneness.

cannot speak

must reclaim the prison

of my body.

If I

I

have only darkness

must claim the

C

17

3

night.

And

then,

even in the closest dark the world

me

can find

and

if

I

have honor

enough for the place in I

will

it is

which

it

finds

me

know

speaking to

and where

me

must

I

go.

Watching the geese go south

I

find

that

even in silence

and even in

stillness

and even in

my home

alone

without or a I

am

a

thought

movement part

of a great migration that will take

me

CiO

to another place.

And though all the may pass away and

things

I

love

the great family of things and people I

have

made around me

will see I

feel

me

them

go,

me

living in

gathering

like a great

ready to reach a greater home.

When

one thing

die together,

dies

all

and must

things

live

again

in a different way,

when one is

thing

missing everything

is

missing,

and must be found again in a

new whole

and everything wants to be complete, everything wants to go

and the geese

home

travelling south

shadow of my breath

are like the

flying into the darkness

on

great heart-beats

to an

unknown

land where

I

belong.

This morning they have

found me, full

of faith,

like a blind child,

nestled in their feathers,

following the great coast of the wind to a

home

I

cannot

CiO

see.

oo BELONGING TO THE NIGHT

SWEET DARKNESS When

your eyes are

the world

When no

tired

tired also.

is

your vision has gone

part of the world can find you.

Time

to

go into the dark

where the night has to recognize

its

eyes

own.

There you can be sure

you

are

not beyond love.

The dark

will

be your

womb

tonight.

The

night will give you a horizon

further than

you can

see.

You must learn one thing. The world was made to be Give up

all

free in.

the other worlds

except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes

it

takes darkness

and the sweet

confinement of your aloneness to learn

anything or anyone that does not bring

is

too small for you.

you

alive

ALL THE TRUE VOWS

All the true are secret

the ones

we

are the ones

There

is

you can and

a

speak out loud

we

break.

only one call

your

life

own

thousand others

you can

Hold

vows

vows

call

by any name you want.

to the truth

you make

every day with your

own

body,

don't turn your face away.

Hold at

to

your

own

truth

the center of the image

you were born with.

Those who do not understand their destiny will never understand

the friends they have

made

nor the work they have chosen nor the one

beyond

By

all

life

that waits

the others.

the lake in the

in the

wood

shadows

you can whisper that truth to the quiet reflection

you

see in the water.

03

Whatever you hear from the water, remember,

wants you to carry

it

on your

the sound of its truth

Remember, in this place

no one can hear you and out of the

you can make

that

way

what

I

you

will kill

it

promise

to break,

you'll find

real

is

silence a

and what

know what

I

am

almost forsook

and

looked again.

my

Seeing I

broke

a

me

reflection

promise

and spoke for the after

in

first

all

before

it

to turn

time

these years

my own

voice,

was too

my

late

face again.

C25l]

not.

saying.

Time I

is

lips

WHAT TO REMEMBER WHEN WAKING In that

first

hardly noticed

moment which you wake, coming back

in

to this

life

from the other

more

secret,

moveable

and frighteningly honest

world

where everything began, there

is

a small

opening into the day

which

closes

moment

the

you begin your

plans.

What you is

can plan

too small

for

you

to live.

What you

can

live

wholeheartedly will

make

plans

enough for the vitality

hidden in your

C26^

sleep.

To be human is

become

to

visible

while carrying

what

is

hidden

as a gift to others.

To remember the other world in this is

world

to live in

your

true inheritance.

You a

are not

troubled guest

on

this earth,

you

are not

an accident amidst other accidents

you were invited from another and greater night

than the one

from which

you have just emerged.

Now, looking through the slanting light

of the morning

window toward the mountain

presence

C27l]

of everything that can be,

what urgency calls

you

to

your

one love? What shape waits in the seed

of you to grow

and spread its

branches

against a future sky?

Is it

waiting

in the fertile sea?

In the trees

beyond the house? In the

life

you can imagine for yourself?

In the

open

and lovely white page

on the waiting desk?

C20

THE WINTER OF LISTENING No one but me by my hands burning

the

fire,

red in the palms while the night

wind

carries

everything away outside.

worry

All this petty

while the great cloak

of the sky grows dark

and intense

round every

What

is

living thing.

precious

inside us does not

known

care to be

by the mind in

ways that diminish

its

presence.

What we

strive for

in perfection is

not what turns us

into the

we

lit

angel

desire,

what

disturbs

and then nourishes has everything

we

need.

C20

What we

hate

in ourselves

what we cannot know

is

in ourselves but

what

true to the pattern

is

does not need to

be explained.

Inside everyone a great

is

shout of joy

waiting to be born.

Even with summer so far off I

feel

it

grown

now and

in

me

ready

to arrive in the world.

All those years listening to those

who

had

nothing to

say.

All those years

forgetting

how has to

everything

its

own

voice

make

itself

heard.

C

so

3

All those years

forgetting

how

easily

you can belong to everything

simply by listening.

And

the slow

difficulty

of remembering

how is

everything

born from

an opposite

and miraculous otherness.

Silence and winter has lead

me

to that

otherness.

So

winter

let this

of listening

be enough for the I

must

new call

life

my

own.

CsO

Every sound has a

home

from which

it

has

come

to us

and

door

a

through which

it is

going

again

out into the world

make another home.

to

We

speak

only with the voices

of those

we

can hear ourselves

and the body has

a voice

only for that portion

of the body of the world it

has learned to perceive.

It

becomes

a

world

by

itself

listening

hard

way

for the it

belongs.

There

it

can

learn

how

it

must be and what it

must

do.

C32 3

And here in the tumult

of the night I

hear the walnut

above the

child's

swing

swaying its

dark limbs

in the

wind

and the

come

now

rain

to

beat against

my window

and somewhere in this cold night

of wind and the

first

stars

whispered

opening of those hidden

and

invisible springs

that uncoil

in the

still

summer

each yet to

be imagined

rose.

C33 3

air

THE WELL OF STARS Blue

on the runway

lights

like stars

on the surface of a well which I fall each night from the

into

emerging through the tunnel door of the jetway, and the black waters of the night, in the

cities

of America.

rooms of glass and

In the

lit

in the

still

and

steel,

secret towers,

under the true

stars

hid by cloud

and the steam shrouded roofs of the mansions of money and hope, I

come with my

my

insistence,

quiet voice and

and

my

stories,

and out of that second and deeper well blue

stars

see again those other

I

and

that other darkness

closer even than the night outside,

the one

we

the darkness

refuse to mention,

we know

so well

inside everyone.

I

have a few griefs and joys

I

can

call

my own

and through accident a steadfast faith in

and

that's

matters

what

when

I

it

seems,

each of them

will say

the story ends.

CsO

sky,

But all

takes a

it

while to get there,

little

the unburdening

down

and the laying

and the willingness to really tire

and then

of yourself,

step

by

step

the ways

the poets through time

generously gave themselves to us,

walking

like pilgrims

through doubt,

combining

their fear

their fierceness

And you

and

their faith.

now,

in the front of the

room

under the florescent

by the

reflected

hiding

all

light

window

the stars

you have forgotten.

One more member of the prison population

whose eyes have caught the open gate at last. You are the one for whom Keep and

that

the gift was made.

look in your eyes

you'll gladly

grow

C35 3

tired

of your

reflection.

All this

way through

the great cloud race between

here and Seattle, just to look beneath

There, for

all

the well of

your

face.

to see,

stars,

and the great night from which you were born.

C

36

3

THE JOURNEY Above

the mountains

the geese turn into the light again

painting their

black silhouettes

on an open

sky.

Sometimes everything has to be

enscribed across the heavens

so

you can

find

the one line already written inside you.

Sometimes a great

it

takes

sky

to find that

first,

bright

and indescribable

wedge of freedom in

your

own

C37^

heart.

Sometimes with the bones of the black sticks left

has

when

gone out

someone

has written

something new in the ashes

of your

You

life.

are not leaving

you

the

are arriving.

C38]]

fire

C"0 BELONGING TO PLACES

YORKSHIRE

I

love the dead

and

their quiet living

underground and

on

And I

love the rain

I

my in

face.

childhood

wind moors

loved the

on the

that carried the rain

and

that carried the ashes

of the dead like a spring

sowing

of memory stored through

all

the winters past.

In the dark

November

onset of the winter in I

which

was

I

was born,

down

in the

of that land

folds as if

set

belonged

I

and in

that

first

there,

night

under the evening shadow of the moors and most

likely

with the wind in the west, as it

would be

of my growing

CO

for

most

life

I

was breathing in the tang

and troubles of that immense and shadowing sky as

was breathing the shadows

I

of my mother's body,

who

learning

and

how

What

great

abstract

lent

and what was close

could belong.

I

and

power

me

to those

particularities I

know

cannot

but body

and soul were made for that belonging.

Yorkshire as a

as

is

hard

spade-edge

but the underpinnings

of the people and the land in

which we

lived

flowed and turned river

The

I

knew

my

like the valley.

blunt solidity of my elders

floated like

on

in

mountains

the slow but fluid lava

of their

history.

C42 3

But on land

I

this solid yet floating

must have been

as Irish as

my

mother

and amid the

straight certainties

of my

Yorkshire

I

felt

father's

beneath the damp moor's

horizon the curved lines that

invisible

drew everything

together, the

underground stream

of experience that could not be quarried or brought to the surface but only dowsed,

felt,

followed

or intuited from above.

Poetry then became the key,

my way

underground into what was hidden by the inept but

daily coverings

of grown-up surface speech.

Something sacred was

left

in the land

unsaid in people's mouths

but was written into our inheritance

volume of Thorn Gunn's youthful poetry from and

that small

the library's high tiptoe shelf

was the

angel's gift to

Opened and young it I

read in

me.

my

boy's hands

revealed the

first

code

sought and needed to begin

speaking what

I

felt

had been forgotten.

C43 3

Full stretch

reached again

I

along the spines and touched

another other

life,

pulling

down into my hands The Hawk in the Rain. Ted Hughes' dark book

own

my

child's

full

of northern omens

my

hovering above

shadow on the ground,

heart and

mind

caught in those written claws

and whisked into the sky

The

rush of poetry's

first

extended arms

a

complete

abduction of my person.

That was the beginning.

The

line

first

of my

new

on

life,

the

open page

the rest

would be more

difficult

but that was the

soil in

I

which

would grow, and that was the which I would grow,

life into

blessed and badgered by the northern

sweeps of light and dark

and the old entanglements to

which

on the

I

was born. Always

the wuthering gifts

of the

who

and

moors

stories

and poetry

unknown and

unvisited dead

brought their history

to the

world in which

C40

I

grew.

Orphaned by poetry from

my

first

home home

to find a greater

out in the world I

wandered from

and began

that land

to write

youthfully and insubstantially,

slowly real

making myself

and seeable by writing

myself into an original world

which had borne and

grown me

so generously

Belonging

to

so I

much by

one old land

birth

learn each day

what

means

it

be born into

a

now

to

new

land

and new people. The open

moor of the American mind gusted and shaken by imagined new worlds and imagined new clouds and the

fears

and

griefs

of

the peopled and unknowable distances

of a vast land, and

still

amidst

everything, an innocence

which

survives here

amidst a

untouched

difficult inheritance.

C45 3

my

Let

be

history then

a gate

to a

new

and not

unfastened life

a barrier

my becoming. Let me find the ghosts to

and

histories

and barely

imagined future of this world,

and

let

me now

have

grow shadow or

the innocence to just as well in

by what

is

light

gifted

in this land as

the one to

which

C40

I

was born.

ELDERFLOWER White amongst the is

the deep green,

midsummer

air

of memory

round each blossom

for

me.

Their glimmering scented

innocence swirling the quiet past to

So

that rising above

the leaves and I

life.

crowded

faces

see in the mind's eye

my

mother's

wine

A

new

elderflower

lifted to the light.

pale

and humble North

Country sherry sappy and

full in

was

that

the mouth,

the chest with

filling

cool green vowels

grown

straight

from

that

familiar land

where

first

I

walked,

then loved, then wrote.

Even

in the forced

immediacy of taste and memory, speech

is still

speechless

to describe

the subtleties

by

unmasked

that quiet stream

on the silenced tongue.

C47^

A

unspoken

clear,

and granted magic

drawn

yearly

from the yeasting bottle in the pantry

On

bottom.

the lane to Hartshead

the elder trees

themselves

from year

live

still

to year

like a bright

avenue of bridal posies a continual celebration

of some other-worldly marriage through which I

walk each year

on

my

They

return.

my

flank

through

walk

the years

all

of memory

summers

and

all

and

fullness

the

and

arrogant innocence

of that youthful inheritance.

They as

live in

they

me now

live in

the world

growing and flowering and then retreating

C48 3

when to a

them

forget

I

mere

silhouette

in the chill winters

when

cannot

I

recall the

June

air

in Yorkshire.

But

from

that scent

the lifted glass

of my mother's

making is

a

pure

memory

of summer made

and the old

round

new

faces

the table

welcome me

back,

nodding and talking to the

music

of gathering,

my mother tipsily at

laughing

our

repeated congratulation

and time stopped

by the

stirred

plangency

of the blossom in the wine, that taste

my

overwhelming

present

C40

and the bottle passed round

once more and

handed back

down

the years to me.

So

away

far

now

but for the cool sibilant taste

of what

is

gifted to us

through time flowering again in the

memory

moment

to present

moment.

CscO

TEN YEARS LATER When

the

mind

is

clear

and the surface of the

now

now

still,

swaying water

slaps against

the rolling kayak,

I

find myself near darkness

paddling again to Yellow Island.

Every spring wildflowers cover the grey rocks.

Every year the sea breeze ruffles the

cold and lovely pearls

hidden in the center of the flowers

as if

remembering them

by touch alone.

A

calm and

lonely, trembling

that frightened

Now

how and

how

in youth.

their loneliness

feels familiar,

I've

me

beauty

one small thing

learned these years,

to at

be alone,

the edge of aloneness

to

be found by the world.

CsO

Innocence to

is

what we allow

be gifted back to us

once we've given ourselves away.

There

is

one world

the one to utterly,

we

only,

which we gave

ourselves

and to which one day

are blessed to return.

C52 3

FOUR HORSES On Thursday

the farmer

put four horses into the cut hay-field

next to the house.

Since then the days

have been

with the

filled

sheen of their

brown

hides

racing the fence edge.

Since then their

I

see

curved necks

through the kitchen sailing like

window

swans

past the pale field.

Each morning their

hooves

fill

my

open door with an urgency for just

and

something

beyond

I

spend

my

grasp

my whole

day in an idiot joy writing, gardening,

and looking for

it

under every stone.

C53 3

I

find myself

wanting to do

something stupid and lovely.

I

find myself

wanting to walk up

and thank the farmer for those

dark brown horses and

him

see

stand

back laughing in

his

grizzled and

denim wonder

at

my

innocence.

I

find myself wanting

to

down

run

like

First Street

an eight year old

saying,

"Hey!

Come

and look

at

the

new

horses

in Fossek's field!"

And

I

find myself

wanting to ride into the

last

hours

of this summer bareback and

happy

as

the hooves

of the days that

drum toward me.

CsO

I

hear the

whinny of

their fenced

and abandoned

freedom and

feel

happy

today in the field

of my

own

making,

writing non-stop,

my

head held high,

ranging the boundaries

of a birthright exuberance.

C

55

3

THE HORSE WHISPERER Ireland's the ghost-horse all

right,

rearing out of history like the at

wraith-herd seen

Fanore.

After the events

of Bloody Sunday,

and

peace

after the

thrown away, and the guns

still

hidden,

and the red hand taking the ghostly reins again,

we saw lights

the tiny twinkled

of violence

from every townland.

Looked

lamp of

in the

one another's eyes, felt that

animal presence riding the

night fields again and the

encroaching

loss

of control in the village that

we knew

heralded

the ancient panic.

C

56

3

now

So

as

they were waiting

autumn

in the

rain,

they used to wait,

by the

crossroads,

gathered on both sides to see to

be

what was a miracle,

though

at first,

their eyes

knew

anticipated

everyone averted

from what they

to be, in these times, too old

and too innocent

a

magic

to believe in.

The beast somehow

caught

and led between everyone

and the man waiting in the

His

hushed

hysteria.

mouth moving

close to the ghost ear

they saw a hand pass over the twitched shoulder

and

felt

the

first

frightened shudder of the horse pass

back through the crowd

like a

wave breaking.

C57 3

'For Christ's sake give

him room."

Then

they strained to hear

what they knew could not be heard, in the silence they

could only wait, their split hypnotic faith

now joined as

involuntary

they watched

the calmed violence fall

away,

caught in the animal body

of his

first

word.

C58n

TIENAMEN (The

On I

Man

in

Front of the Tank)

way from Kenmare remember the old man

at

the

the roadside

his casual

thumb following

the lane's

curve

for the length of a hillside.

Shopping bags

leant

two

against his knees, the

circles

jutting with milk, sugar, tea, half a loaf of oat bread

cut straight

down

The one hand

the middle.

lifted in

thanks

and the other tipped

to the cap's

before he dropped

to the

it

lifted his

bags into the back

and took

his seat in the car.

edge

door handle

That easy lack of obligation in the

swing and pitch of the bags

hitting the I

sensed in

back

him

seat.

his far-west

inheritance passed

down

the long

centuries of rain and cold wind, into his body.

I

felt

how

easily

he belonged, coming out of any weather, rain or shine to the stranger's hospitality.

CsO

Just after the close of the

you could smell the cut

(My

faint breath

great-uncle

coming

in

from the garden,

now

porter,

for fifty years)

But the

familiar

was on

me now

I

of porter.

Davy

though never the teetotal

grass

worn wool,

on him, the well and the

door

Sunday smell and

drove slowly,

matching the long ease of the miles he'd walked

from the country shop.

At the

we

final

hit the

curve of the

hill

keen wind

and wide sky above

his fields,

the swaying light-swept land a

patchwork of leaning

walls,

and rusted

gates,

scrub, scruff

and

at

found

the farm track's end his cottage,

the walls a cracked gray spider's

web edged by

C6CO

blue.

I

walked

in

with him then for the

proffered tea. The oiled tablecloth

puddled with sugar and rimed with cup

corner by the

rings. In the

cracked sink

pulled

a television

round on the draining board.

Above

the sink a shattered

window

pane, and beyond, a curlew

spiralling over the

He

sat

me down

green

and

on the blue

the kettle

barley.

set

gas flame

talked of his son

and when he might come back to these

"Set

I

broken

them

walls.

straight,

by God."

thought of loneliness,

how

it

works

at

the edge

of all experience.

He

filled

set

down

the teapot,

the milk jug,

the sugar, the cups, rattling the saucers

with

a

shaking hand.

C60

About

to say

something

more, the name of his son half-formed on his

lips,

he stopped himself

and looking round for a help that

jabbed the

was not present

television's

waiting button.

I

waited one half second

for the particular

unwanted and

distant

form of oblivion we were about to join on the screen. I

preferred silence,

conversation, and the view

through the cracked window,

when

suddenly the image of

a great

crowd and tumult,

and in the kitchen something ancient between us recognized the hysteria of confrontation and at

the other end of the distant square,

an enormous emptiness.

A

line

of tanks was pushing

slowly into the emptiness, as if

working through

a

pliant powerful barrier,

but there was only a single

man

holding them back, his silhouette leaning as if

bowing

forward

to the tank.

C62 3

The

old man's hand shook

holding the pot

and the thick black

my

My wrist to

tea scalded

outstretched hand.

came

fast

my mouth and my tongue I

pushing

But

I

couldn't take

and involuntary glowing welt

bit the

against the heat.

my

eyes

from the man in front of the tank, his

head bowed but unmoving,

as if

the

confronting

god hidden

The

old

man

at last,

in the metal altar.

stood stock

then turned, looked

my

at

still,

me,

scalded hand,

the screen, the

young man

in front

of the tank. His eyes narrowed. His faced changed to a helpless fury. "There's a picture

for the

my

whole fecking

son's

and

century,

out in the world

God knows what

in front of

he's standing

now, but whatever

it is,

Jesus Christ, look at these fields he'll

and

never

why

come back

should he."

C63 3

03 BELONGING TO THOSE

I

KNOW

BRENDAN Jupiter in the western sky

my

and

son walking

with the wide

arc

of the sea behind him.

Above

his

head

the fishing pole

bent

as if to

catch

the day-lit star

hovering

on the broad horizon.

The mere

shape of

him

in silhouette I

love so

much.

The whip of his and

wrist

rascal slant

of his cap

like

some

hieroglyph

of love

I

deciphered

long ago

and read

to myself

again and again.

C67H

When him

I

first

heard

in the fluid darkness

before his birth, calling to his

mother and

I

from the yet unknown and unseen world to

I

which he belonged,

could not

know

that

particular

of his

slant

face or hand.

could not

I

how to

me.

Our

love then was

for an

unknown

but just

as

promise,

strong

the promise was

as if

May

all

from

now

be just as

know

he would speak

our promises

as

strong

they are hidden.

C60

known.

For no imagining could have shaped you as

I

my boy now

shape you

with the eyes of a fatherly love that

shaped

If

I

by your growing.

was asked

what I

must be

itself

my

had been

gift

should turn

to

look

at

you.

You and your beloved fishing pole

casting for a

star.

C60

EDWARD Aquiline, yet youthful, resembling still

the photograph you

of the father I

see

showed

me

could never meet,

I

your face

now

set against

the evening glow of hills. Your lit profile to me well-loved and familiar like each

Cumbrian crag and steep to which I brought you that first summer of our friendship. I

hear your laugh

dark of a

from

a

fellside,

thousand

and summer

now

in the quiet

our limbs feet

tired

of rock

heat, the gold light

of fireflies haunting the

trees

below

and the ground's embracing

warmth like a loving dream, no talk but the sound of our feet on the quiet path to the valley floor.

We

live in

memories in the

the as

shadow of those

we sometimes

live

shadow of those with

extraordinary are generous

gifts.

Sometimes the days

and miraculous

in

what

they can bestow and sometimes a life

must be measured

against a certain

when

remembered epoch

the veil between heaven and earth

C

70

^

was thin

as

gossamer and the shared

experience close to the angels, for

I

felt

our winged

flight

above the valley floors

roped in one another's care brought us to that earned necessity

which we look back and name

as love,

know now

to

we

and

that out

of that towered

landscape of rock and cascading

we

fell

forged our friendship for a lifetime.

Each warm summer then

for years

we'd take the long drive north talking together, letting speech

and renewed friendship merge the year we'd spent apart,

our voices

warm and

our eyes

following the sun's low track in the

evening

sky, until

our

stories

grew

darker and quieter like the evening ground,

and the shape of those

hills

once more resembled the silhouette of our familiar and imagined

Our a

silence in the car

arrival.

by then

pure anticipation of that heaven

of grey and lichened stone to which

we

drove. The

dormant and sleeping

ropes of perlon coiled in the back

waiting to be

unwound

of a Cumbrian

cliff face,

CvO

into the upper light

you

at

one end,

me

at

the other,

two minute

on

their ascent

figures intent

into the shadows

between the

formed

sun-lit

upper

roofs of rock, ourselves exultant

glowing in the evening

and

light, far

above

the sheepwalk of the waiting ground.

For

it

me

seems to

that always,

even under grey and solid cloud,

our stalwart and quiet resolution

on on

the journey up, watching the rain the windscreen

would earn

its

just

reward in weekend sun, the great amphitheaters of rock

our

silent stage,

become

long climbs following

the evening rays step by lighted step into the upper shadows

of the coming night. For you

and

I

in

my memory

are forever

framed in sunlight, our newly youthful hearts full of that impossible

and

vertical

learned to

Now,

world

call

putting

looking

east

we

our own.

down

the phone,

over these once foreign, familiar,

window

through the

now

mountains toward you,

your voice receding into darkness over six thousand miles of land and turbulent water,

C72 3

I

feel

you

at a great

movement,

crossroads of

hesitant

moment before new and unknown life

only for a this

shaping before your eyes,

and eyes

I

remember you

intent,

narrowed and searching,

watching the curve of the cliff

above you, one arm kept limp

beside your waist, saving

its

strength

while the other holds you balanced.

Feet barely touching rock, the black edge of your climbing

shoes smearing across the airy nothing of a wafer ledge,

you

tiptoe across the

hanging

arch and disappear from

I

view

watch the rope pay out into

sunlight and wreathed mist

and see your reappearance in the

columned

The way you

roofs above.

loved to

work

slowly up a long groove

escaping through a daylight gap barely visible below,

while

I

paid out slowly

the lengths of patient rope.

C7-0

I

now

watch you

and mark your ascent into this other

more

difficult territory,

each step your own,

but to

me

still

careful

watch you,

and your progress, the rope

between us like a living

bond

and you thankfully unaware, intent

on

my

brother,

the passage

not seeing (in the closeness

of that

living earth)

the terrors of the

height to which you

C70

step.

DOUGIE

My

uncle Dougie

was

killed

on Sword Beach, the 6th of June,

nineteen hundred

and forty

four.

The cadence of the date slow chant

like a

in

my

father's

mind

round the one central

memory.

Dougie taught him how to swim before he died.

There still

in

are other

words

said

unassuming

reverence

when our over the

heads bend

letters

and you remake and

relive

C75 3

the familiar

loss,

as if

forging his absence

new

again,

each phrase measured

by

its

careful

placement in

silence.

His regiment,

The East Yorkshires I

remember

since

childhood and, your Grandma and Grandpa didn't

and

know for

now

months,

in final silence

the bleak

unnatural

and

late arriving

telegram

folded

and unfolded

down

fifty years.

Sometimes

my a

father

I

know

is

young boy again

and Dougie, teaching

him how

to swim.

has suddenly turned away as if in a

dream

and looks toward France.

on

Then he

is

low down

in the water

near the horrific shore

and

my

father's

arms

so recently taught

to live in that element are reaching

to pull

him

back.

But the weighted surge of his elder brother's

pack and

rifle

much

pull too for the

young

Now

remember

my

I

father's

boy's arms.

repeated

weekend need for the ice cold waters

where he taught

how and

to

swim

his fatherly

satisfaction at

the slowly

growing

strokes

that kept his son

above water.

Cw3

me

I

could not

know what

was being given then not knowing

how as the years pass we must always strike boldly to save those close to

hold them

above the drowning water

with our words, so they live again,

if

not the man,

then the loved

memory, father to son,

brother to brother,

hand dipping

in the

water

toward shore, saving

now as we

them could not then,

phrase by repeated phrase.

C78^

us,

THE HAWTHORN The

crossed knot

in the

hawthorn bark

and the stump of the sawn off branch

hemmed

by the roughened

trunk. In that

omniscient black eye

of witness I

no-growth

see the dark

of what has passed grown round by what has come to pass, looking as if

So

I

at

could speak.

much

good

me

that

was

in her,

much in me, cut off now

so

from the future in

which we

grew

together.

Now window new house of my

through the

that hawthorn's

crooked

faithful

trunk round an old and broken

growth,

on

my mouth dumb and Dante's voice instead of

mine

from the open book Brother, our love

has laid our wills

Making

to rest.

us long

only for what

is

and by no other

ours thirst

possessed.

Our

not lived

life

together

must live

still

on

apart,

longing only for

what

ours

is

alone,

each grow

round the missed branch as best

we

can,

claim what

is

ours

separately,

c«