My dog found something in a graveyard, was it a bone I wonder? Chomp went his jaws, bone or whatever it was consigned to oblivion, to rumble and tumble in a canine’s stomach. Then out again, back to the ground, from the earth we come and to the earth we shall return.
The melodious voice of Suzanne Vega. A flick of a switch. The music fades as I too one day will fade and be no more.
Dark thoughts on a bright day. The sun warms my face, brightness mingles with darkness on this spring morning.
Birds sing gladdening my heart but, underneath the sorrow remains.
A child’s voice full of joy calling “mummy, mummy”. My mood lightens, there is love and innocence in this world of tears.
I was saddened to read in today’s Daily Telegraph of the death of Tony Benn, the veteran Labour politician at the age of 88. Whether one agreed with Benn’s politics or not he was a powerful speaker and I have memories of listening to his oratory on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions? I also recollect sitting in the college library leafing through “Writings On The Wall” edited by Benn, http://www.amazon.co.uk/Writings-Wall-Socialist-Anthology-1215-1984/dp/0571133355. A political giant has gone to that country from who’s bourne no traveller returns and politics will be the less vibrant for his departure.
I came across this poem several weeks ago on Youtube and have meant to post a link to it for some time. The link is to the Poetry Foundation rather than Youtube partly owing to me not being enthused by the rendering of Larkin on Youtube, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178054
Susie gazed out at the atlantic. Great waves crashed against the cliffs . A gust of wind caught the girl almost knocking her off her feet. She seemed not to notice, her eyes remained fixed on the wild sea. Unbidden the words came to her
“Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble,
Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink,
Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble
The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink,
Here now in his triumph where all things falter,
Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread,
As a god self-slain on his own strange altar,
Death lies dead.”
Susie’s salty tears mingled with the sea water which the ever increasing wind blew into her eyes.
“I’m not crying, it’s the sea water making my eyes sting” So what if I am crying? All this will pass and go. Long after I am dead this will remain, the uncaring ocean buffeting the cliffs as it has for millennia. Eventually the cliffs and the surrounding habitations will be claimed by the sea. Out of the sea life came and to the ocean humanity will return.
But I’m 20, I don’t want to die”.
All flesh is dust a mocking voice intoned. Susie whirled around. There was no one save for the gulls which wheeled and screeched overhead.
“Yes I will die but please god not yet. I have my whole life to look forward to” Susie said burying her face in her hands.
“Stupid girl” the voice, like some insidious demon crept into her brain.
“Shut up, shut up” the girl wept sticking her fingers into her ears attempting to silence the tormentor.
“Stupid slapper. Silly whore” the voice said undaunted by Susie’s attempts to silence it.
Doing her best to ignore whatever devil was taunting her Susie reached into her coat pocket. She felt the plain brown official envelope.
“I can’t, I won’t open it. I’ll throw it away. Better not to know”.
“Ignorance is bliss, little miss a coward is” the voice sneered.
“Fuck off, fuck off” Susie screamed. Her words where lost in the howling of the wind and the crashing of the waves. Susie became aware of the crumpled envelope in her hands. In her agitation she had screwed it into a ball. How easy it would be to rid herself of the thing. One flick of her wrist and the letter would be lost forever in the depths of the Atlantic.
“Coward, coward” the voice taunted.
With a supreme effort Susie unscrewed the envelope and with trembling hands opened it. Reluctantly the girl extracted a crumpled letter.
“I can’t read it, I can’t” Susie wept. “Why did I do it? God let it be good news. Please, oh Christ I can’t bare it”.
Susie’s mind went back 4 months. She was drunk. She had never been so drunk in her entire life. The thump, thump of the music transported the girl into a world where only she and the beat, beat of the bass existed. She danced wildly letting herself be taken by the music to another realm.
Susie didn’t remember him arriving. One moment she was dancing alone, the next Susie was spinning around in the arms of a total stranger. Later that evening Susie recalled having sex in a cubicle in the gents toilets. Susie thought that she had consented but she had been so drunk she wasn’t sure.
“Christ, no condom. How could I have been so bloody stupid. I went to a good school, got all the right exams and I’m now at uni. I should have known better”.
Susie had gon to the hospital on the following day and had been tested for sexually transmitted diseases.
“You have herpes but that can easily be dealt with by antibiotics” the nurse had said.
Susie breathed a sigh of relief.
“You will, however need to come back in 3 months time for a HIV test”.
“Can’t I have that today?”
“The HIV virus can take upto 3 months to manifest itself so any test conducted today would be extremely unlikely to show whether you are, or are not carrying the virus”.
Susie had thrown herself into her studies for the next 3 months. When not studying she partied hard. Alcohol helped her to forget for some of the time but, in the early hours of the morning she would wake up sweating.
“What if I am infected? Christ only knows how many other girls that bloke slept with before we had sex”.
Eventually the 3 months passed and Susie returned to the hospital for her HIV test.
“You can call in for your results in a few days time or, if you prefer just telephone the number on your card quoting your clinic number” the nurse said handing Susie a small slip of paper.
Susie had meant to call. She really had. However there always seemed to be something preventing her from making that call. There had been her friend’s wedding, her mum’s birthday and so, so many other things.
“Don’t make excuses. Of course you could have found a few minutes to make such an important telephone call” the insidious voice whispered in her ear.
“Yes, OK, I could. now fuck off back to whatever rock you crawled out from under” Susie shouted.
Slowly Susie raised the paper to her face.
“Dear Miss Armstrong,
I refer to your visit of 4 July and the test conducted on that date. We have, unsuccessfully attempted to contact you on several occasions. Having been unable to do so I am writing to inform you of the result of your test for HIV. I am pleased to advise that the test is negative (I.E. you are not HIV positive).
Should you have any queries regarding this letter please call the number above and quote your clinic number to the health adviser.
Yours Sincerely “.
Susie wondered idly why doctors signatures almost always resembled squashed spiders. For the first time in many hours she smiled.
“Thank you god. Thank you”.
The gulls screeched overhead, the icey wind buffeted the girl and the great waves continued to crash against the crumbling cliffs. Susie no longer cared. She embraced the storm for it represented nature of which she was an integral part. It felt good to be alive. Susie took deep breaths. The touch of the wind on her face was wonderful. She smiled as her long black hair blew wildly in the sea breeze.
“If you exist god, thank you, thank you” Susie said.
The autumn sun slanted down through the branches of the great oaks which lined the woodland path. It was a wonderful place to run and Tony relished every moment of his runs in Barclays woods. The scents of autumn and the feel of the leaves beneath his pounding feet made it feel good to be alive.
From time to time Tony glanced at his watch. At first glance it was an unremarkable timepiece, a cheap digital watch which you might pick up in any store which stocked watches. On closer examination however it became clear that this was no ordinary timepiece. The date and time features where augmented by a counter which showed the anticipated demise of Tony Parkin. Imperceptibly as the growing of grass the counter moved towards “death day”.
Tony had filled in an online questionnaire regarding his medical history and that of his family. Once completed his age was deducted from the results to predict his “death date”.
Tony felt the sheer joy of being alive coursing through his veins. Neither he or his family had any history of heart disease or any other serious medical condition. While he enjoyed the odd drink, 6-7 pints of mild beer consumed over a week could in no way be viewed as excessive. Tony ate all the right foods and ran every day. There was no reason why a man of 24, in peak condition as he was shouldn’t live well into his 70’s or longer. Indeed the watch predicted that Tony would draw his last breath at the age of 81.
As he ran Tony became aware of a young woman running in the opposite direction. Tony had a girlfriend but this had never prevented him from admiring other women. There was after all no harm in looking. Tony gazed approvingly at the girl’s shapely long legs in her skimpy running shorts. She really was a looker.
He never saw the tree trunk which had fallen across the path. Even had he spotted it the speed at which he was running would, almost certainly not have allowed him sufficient time to avoid the obstacle. He fell head first over the log. There was a crack like a bough breaking.
The girl stirred in horror at the prone man. Even without her training as a nurse the impossible angle at which Tony’s neck was twisted clearly indicated that Tony Parkin was no more.
(The above story was prompted by a recent article in The Daily Mail which can be accessed here, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2448539/Tikker-watch-shows-countdown-death.html).
The sun has chased the rain away here in Crystal Palace although he is no doubt waiting in the wings for an opportunity to pounce again.
Autumn has come early. The ground is strewn with leaves and the air is perfumed with the scent of rich earth. Damp ground and newly fallen leaves mingle to delight the senses.
I love autumn. A gentle sun combined with the sound of leaves crunching underfoot, who could ask for more? Autumn reminds me of the cyclical nature of time. The growth of spring and summer is superceeded by the slow retreat into death of autumn which culminates in winter. The dying of the year is exquisetly beautiful, melancholy intimately mingled with profound beauty, perhaps symbolic of life itself.
Something intangible is passing, perhaps it is long since gone. Walking among these trees, I feel sadness carried on the breeze. Something great and profound has vanished, forever lost in the mists of time. Soon the leaves will fall to the ground, rich golden brown. Something is gone, impossible to express or define, that which is destroyed by time.
I can not express what I want to say, words fly erratically away. Trees representing permanence stand but something is lost, I only dimly understand.
I first came across Swinburne’s “A Forsaken Garden” while listening to BBC Radio 4’s Poetry Please! It is one of those poems to which I return frequently and lines from which pop unbidden into my head
—
In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,
At the sea-down’s edge between windward and lee,
Walled round with rocks as an inland island,
The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.
A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses
The steep square slope of the blossomless bed
Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses
Now lie dead.
The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken,
To the low last edge of the long lone land.
If a step should sound or a word be spoken,
Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest’s hand ?
So long have the grey bare walks lain guestless,
Through branches and briars if a man make way,
He shall find no life but the sea-wind’s restless
Night and day.
The dense hard passage is blind and stifled
That crawls by a track none turn to climb
To the strait waste place that the years have rifled
Of all but the thorns that are touched not of time.
The thorns he spares when the rose is taken ;
The rocks are left when he wastes the plain.
The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken,
These remain.
Not a flower to be pressed of the foot that falls not ;
As the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are dry ;
From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not,
Could she call, there were never a rose to reply.
Over the meadows that blossom and wither
Rings but the note of a sea-bird’s song ;
Only the sun and the rain come hither
All year long.
The sun burns sere and the rain dishevels
One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath.
Only the wind here hovers and revels
In a round where life seems barren as death.
Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping,
Haply, of lovers none ever will know,
Whose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping
Years ago.
Heart handfast in heart as they stood, ‘Look thither,’
Did he whisper ? ‘look forth from the flowers to the sea ;
For the foam-flowers endure when the rose-blossoms wither,
And men that love lightly may die―but we ?’
And the same wind sang and the same waves whitened,
And or ever the garden’s last petals were shed,
In the lips that had whispered, the eyes that had lightened,
Love was dead.
Or they loved their life through, and then went whither ?
And were one to the end―but what end who knows ?
Love deep as the sea as a rose must wither,
As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the rose.
Shall the dead take thought for the dead to love them ?
What love was ever as deep as a grave ?
They are loveless now as the grass above them
Or the wave.
All are at one now, roses and lovers.
Not known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea.
Not a breath of the time that has been hovers
In the air now soft with a summer to be.
Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons hereafter
Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now or weep,
When as they that are free now of weeping and laughter
We shall sleep.
Here death may deal not again for ever ;
Here change may come not till all change end.
From the graves they have made they shall rise up never,
Who have left nought living to ravage and rend.
Earth, stones, and thorns of the wild ground growing,
While the sun and the rain live, these shall be ;
Till a last wind’s breath upon all these blowing
Roll the sea.
Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble,
Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink,
Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble
The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink,
Here now in his triumph where all things falter,
Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread,
As a god self-slain on his own strange altar,
Death lies dead.
K Morris - Poet 