by Pam Crane
Come, shelter by me, and
In warm double darkness
I'll stroke all your fears away under my hand.
O love, oh dear love, alone in the gaslight,
Lonely and longing I sing of you softly.
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IT IS UTTERLY FINISHED
And I can do nothing for you
But weep your tears,
Darken your fears,
And kiss your dry cheek
For all the terrible years
Of which you speak.
I am so weak,
And you so calm, in grief.
I cannot reassure you
Or give relief.
Our lives are brief
Enough, and may well end
Here, at the death of love.
You may depend
On your dearest friend
To bear the weight of your pain;
Do as you intend.
Empty your brain
Of music, drain
Your body of hope and sorrow;
The memories that remain
Will cloud tomorrow,
And I shall go
Uneasy to bed again.
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JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH
There is no getting through this wall of diamond ice,
There is no getting through.
There is no way to the centre of your world;
There is no way by the bright pole turned towards me.
A quick sun shakes out spring;
Unease and the wind close over the snows again.
Each crevice I want to explore is deep.
But I am the coward, now, and keep
My foot on the firm frost; I fear to be lost.
If my voice had power against the wind
(That blows me toward the sea) I would sow words
In the pitiless ice, watch them snap
Or sink under the snow.
And in that warmer place I could rest and think
In the bleak glitter of stars.
But that is no way.
The wind blows me seaward
Away from the seismic crust of musical ice
(Abandon its siren song)
Where my compass skips like an idiot
In the bright sleet from my eyes.
There is no getting through.
Hand over hand, into the throat of night
I would go down,
But who knows what stricture of rock would crack my veins
(And a slow weep of blood complete its journey)
What dank breath exhale me,
Or tonguing jealous flame leap from below,
Grappling with my fire?
It might thaw
The white rock and splinter the stars;
While these eyes run resinous into your past
And stick blind.
If it were glass
Between me and the mouth of darkness, a swift blow
Would end all circumspection.
I could look through, and touch,
Without tempting the malice of thin chasms.
My grief stares back from mirrors a mile deep,
My lips freeze against the ungiving ground,
The wind, the wind ...
Flying forever seaward calls me away
From the place where tears gel
And hair is a crisp horizon beyond the face;
There is no way through.
I must turn back to the yielding sea,
Or stay, and stiffen into a sad flag
Saluting failure, for others to find with sorrow.
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THE SILENCE
Out there a bell rings, over the car park ... Please,
Where are you going?
No answer.
Ring ... ring ...
The huts listen, deserted.
What will you do there?
Ring ... ring ...
Ringing, ringing,
no answer.
The boy with the face of a nun
sits at the table.
His eyes sloping. The white alp of his back.
His even limbs kept never to run.
He goes with a down-gaze,
a cool martyrdom.
Somewhere, a bell rings.
Time, child, for communion.
Come out of the walled garden,
Unlocked;
there is bread, and wine, and soup, and laughter, and love!
in the world outside the garden;
Out there the sun shines -
- and I!
The sun and the moon in the afternoon,
and the danger of dusk in a stumble field,
and a body like ice-cream.
And a wind loose in the hair;
and the creeping together of flame in the straw in prayer,
In prayer ...
A star falls,
the sky falls;
Time floats far and wide ...
Now.
Softly the bells begin to ring; my hands are untied ...
I speak to you.
Softly the bells start ringing out of my soul.
Softly the bells start ringing out of my soul!
- Too late. I hear a door close in the cloister.
No answer. Again. Mad God! There is no answer!
Only the tired sound of the fire dying,
and the dark peewit's dream crying.
My words and my despair
spilt among cold ashes of his hair.
With the night flapping battily about my head
I'll dig my half-memories a death-bed.
The stars float up in my soup ...
O, years later!
… Out there a bell rings ...
In here is a tumble of joy on the floor, in the air,
in your skyey hair, oh beautiful boy!
Over the tables!
… up and down in my soup ...
Over and over, scatter of roses, flutter
of hands, of wings, of songs,
of laughter, and silence; the heart bubbles on -
the ringing, the silence ... the silence ...
… Again, the silence.
Out there a bell rings. No answer. A troop
of stars drift in my soup.
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JANET AND JOE
1(a young actor deserts his childhood sweetheart)
Dear God! Not this raw cry of No! ...
The door shuts out her ugly misery.
Janet must have her Joe.
It’s like denying Christ. He walked out,
Her tears in his hair,
Utterly cold,
Undoing her sobbing hands from him,
While we and the walls listened to screams of Please,
Joe! Please! Please! out in the hall.
... By the fire her wine-cup left, half-drained
Once tasting of honey.
We heard the shutting door.
She fell into the room, a terrible, crazed thing
Dragging its hurt heart like a dead child,
Gasping, fighting the sweet party guitars,
Swaying amid a wilderness of faces;
Then sank in a corner to mourn among her hair.
In the kitchen now my eyes spring tears,
All my blood in prayer;
Raging, grappling with the ungenerous light,
Pulling the power down,
Pleading and swearing -
Out of the kitchen light
Into my tears,
Into my wet hands,
Into the wine-mess;
Till it had to come, the crisis, the last cry
To Him to know
Janet must have her Joe -
Janet, silent, dying among her friends,
Not with us, staring away from the fire, out of her hair
As whisper by whisper what once was a party
Ends.
Wha
t happened, Joe?
Here’s something of yours...
You look so pale now; looking grey, Joe.
Does the stench of a dead rose revolt you?
Her heart was a rose.
Her heart was this dead rose, Joe.
You robbed her of her tiny share of sun
In case she cast a shadow on your high summer;
But the heat’s on, Joe. And when in regret you turn,
All you will find is dust and shrivelled petals.
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SONNET
I am your champion! In the lists of love
It will be your favour that I wear!
With fire and pride I will throw down the glove
For your honour! Dearest, I will dare
To wrestle with the angels for the key
Of Heaven if they will not let you in,
Throw them down to Hell, and I shall be
Your guardian seraph, O my sovereign.
I would have you throned where the lark sings
In the blue room of the sky for love of you.
I'll milk the breast of the moon to bathe your limbs
Before you sleep the quiet darkness through,
And with the impulsive sun, O grant me this! -
To wake you from your slumber with a kiss.
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SUNDANCE
Give me a rough ring, with flowers round,
Let the sweetness grow on hard ground.
Fill the ring with gentle secret songs,
And draw those to whom my heart belongs.
He with slow forget-me-nots for eyes
In which his loose hair like a sunbeam lies.
Let him come.
He whose laughter bursts with glorious light
Upon the sun, and makes holy the night.
Let him come.
And he whose lonely daemon is the dark
Pride and brutal melody of the lark.
Let him come.
Ringing them round with gentle secret songs
I greet those to whom my heart belongs.
One will bring soft, living things to me
And fill my eyes with sky and the far sea.
One will stroke my limbs to trembling gold,
And give me the hand of God to hold.
One offers witch-wines to drink deep,
And act at last the fantasies of sleep.
Ringed round with gentle secret songs
I join those to whom my heart belongs.
To the first I give my golden limbs,
But he cannot learn my sun-hymns.
To the second one I speak the charm
Of darkness - but his light will come to harm.
And to the third I offer gentle things;
But he will bruise paws and tender wings.
So, in the wisdom of my secret songs
I share with those to whom my heart belongs
Three-thirds my kingdom.
One shall have my lands of wind and tree,
Of thoughts ranging free in the flight of stars.
One I bless with the sun and the moon in me,
The tread of angels lightly in golden grass.
And one must take this struggling rhapsody -
The night-wings beating behind bars.
Into my ring drawn and gently bound
With secret songs, the three healers are found.
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HOMES & DELIGHTS
A WALK TO THE SEA
The ship sailing above the town affects me
In a strange way; balanced upon roofs
It glides, too large, a curiosity
On the broad flank of a blue hill of sea
Opposite my hill, and me.
On the edge of England all perspectives suffer
This sea-change. The mapped line dissolves
Under the moon's wash; England’s lover
Must swear allegiance to many drowned miles
Or forfeit a whole isle’s
Sea-fingered wealth back to the covetous sea
And the undiscovered graves. But chiefly time
Can twist its meaning amid the uncertainty
Of a half-land where nothing is still, yet seems
A thunderous reef of dreams
Mounted in air - visible on the wind
To visitors trapped there and becoming time
As all dawns of the earth and dark-finned
Lives of things rise from cell to cell
With the ancient sea-smell.
People have come, and left part of themselves
To the mist and breeze, retracing the buried prints
Unthinking of their old sea-selves
In a pilgrimage whose human purpose none
Can fathom. And I am one,
Standing between the country and the sea,
Seeking to grasp in my need and love of the place
Above all things a sense of history,
And why, with the waters calling, I now stand
On these last inches of land.
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AGAIN THERE
(Remembering Blenheim)
O yes a cup of trees
a bowl of grass
outdistancing my running
wide arms
yes please o again
With dew in my toes
and a silver spoon overhead
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CERTAIN PARTS OF THE SEA
Like my fish I like to run in a bright shoal,
Need to feel the frost of salt on my skin
From time to time;
Behind the sky I want a cradle of wet weed
And great spaces. Only me and the moon
Is what I like.
And in my life, all that I touch and like is mine;
And so my house it is, the open wind,
And many hands,
Rocks, and fields of bright hair, and one bird
Are mine. Even the sun, and certain parts
Of the sea are mine.
What I desire and all I have are my dominion:
These with lovers unknown of windy moon
And sand I share
And fish that run in a shoal to know the sea - the far
Away things that I love and want are still
Mine, and await me.
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HERE WE ARE
Dear house.
“Home is here” you said, “if you will wait.”
And here we are, a year gone; our own gate,
Some flowers,
Nine windows,
The right number of walls, half a roof
To keep our treasure safe whenever the rough
Weather blows.
Outside,
Beyond our bottom fence the wheat moves
Like quicksand; a mile away the hooves
Of the tide
Race
From sky to shore; out on the marsh, under
A wheeling ceiling of birds, rain and thunder
Embrace
The flowing
Dykes, home of the eels and leaping pike.
And here on the land all the things we like
Are growing.
So may
We, so happy to find this kingdom meant
For us to people with our love, consent
To stay.
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SHORE, MORNING
Slim spars, shingle,
Sea.
Morning mist, seagulls. A sun-ribbon.
Me.
And a ship glides like a thought in the air
Towards that glittering angel,
Golden peace.
Dream, gliding away.
A dog call;
Crows in the mist, seaward sliding.
One mast pricks the sea’s heavy silk,
Slack weight
Unrolling into the morning.
Boats light up with the sun -
>
Scarlet and yellow hulls, blue and emerald
Dream of sisters
Slipping in and out of the sun’s net beyond the world
Like phantom mackerel,
Silver scales sent dancing up to the feet
Of the sleeping town,
My town,
My circling arm,
My sea-reflecting eye -
Boats, sky,
No passer-by.
My morning.
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WAITING FOR HIM TO COME HOME
Darkness.
Her mouth is dry.
Every faint sound in the night she hears,
Every distant whisper of wheels, one man walking
Miles away on a road without a name.
Her fingers scramble among the matches
To find solace in smoke.
Her throat is dry.
Darkness.
Out by the gate
She stood, bones slowly chilling, for five
Minutes, or ten, maybe more after the train
The last train to run, had rumbled away
Rattling crockery in the kitchen
And all the lights in the station
Yard went out.
Darkness.
The house is clean,
All the tiny, careful things that pleased him
Done, and ready for welcome; small son
Put to bed with a promise, Dad will come
And see you later on and kiss you
Goodnight, wearing his funny
Policeman’s hat.
Darkness.
The friendly flickering
Chatter of television clicks to silence.
The cats have fled noiseless into the moonlight
Among the hedgehogs and the milk-bottles.
Fires are out, the chicken-house door
Is jammed hard down
Against the fox.
Darkness.
Her eyes are dry.
To deaden the ache of fear he taught her reason,
Hard for a woman, a slow pill to swallow
When all is done for a tired man to sleep -
Milk boiled, bed warm -
This night empty of him.
Her heart is dry.
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CONCERTO IN D
(Ida Haendel playing Brahms)
