The Wrecking Light

by Robin Robertson

  lock you in with the frozen myriad dead;

  and if you feel the brush of some gesture,

  the breath of a word,

  that, Arsenio,

  might be the sign — in this dissolving hour —

  of a strangled life that rose for you; the wind

  carrying it off with the ashes of the stars.

  DRESS REHEARSALS

  On the final evening

  headlights swarm down the hill like lava

  making brief beds

  of moving embers you can almost hear

  the night extinguishing.

  Darkness slides over itself, drawing down

  each of its blinds, then, hours later

  — even more slowly —

  opening them, and the world returns

  as a slur of ash and rumour, birds

  calling out their names to themselves,

  repeating their lines in their grey and hidden rooms.

  How many more days of twilight, nightfall, dawn?

  How many seasons flicked through

  like frames in a ciné-film,

  till the loose celluloid spins

  tickering on the spool? The summers stall

  in the machine and burn up;

  winter is a white wall.

  Years lurch,

  untangling: the fast-forward trees

  sprawl, in a week, from bud-burst to leaf-fall.

  How much more of this life and death,

  and these, their beautiful endless dress rehearsals?

  EASTER, LIGURIA

  Another day watching the ocean move

  under the sun; pines, wisteria, lemon trees.

  I darken this paradise like a sudden wind:

  olive leaves, blown on their backs, silver

  to razor-wire; cameras click in the wall.

  Everyone is going home, and I realise

  I have no idea what that means.

  I listen to the shrieking of the gulls

  and try to remember. How long ago

  did I notice that the light was wrong,

  that something inside me was broken?

  Standing here, feeling nothing at all.

  How long have I been leaving?

  I don't know.

  WIDOW'S WALK

  On the passeggiata,

  on the rocks

  at the Marinella Bar again,

  losing what remains of my language

  to a thickening rain,

  a week of rain

  that's almost stopped the sea.

  Trying to escape myself,

  but there's always

  someone

  wanting to sew my shadow back.

  The fisherman on his rock

  under the red flags

  has two fish in his bucket

  swimming nowhere, side by side.

  Lines of lacquered beetles

  are rowing boats

  turned upside-down;

  the sea, mother-of-pearl

  and broken shells;

  the furled parasols

  Madonnas in their shrouds.

  I walk here

  amongst the very old;

  we watch the paint

  flake from the hotel walls

  and I take note, once again,

  of the sign spelt out in English:

  BATHING IN NOT SURE

  FOR LACK OF RESCUE SERVIGE.

  I felt like going in,

  there and then,

  like a widow

  toppling forward at the grave;

  going in after myself.

  DIVING

  The sudden sea is bright

  and soundless: a changed channel

  of dashed colour, scrolling

  plankton, sea-darts, the slope

  and loom of ghosts, something

  slow and grey

  sashaying through a school

  of cobalt blue,

  thin chains of silver fish

  that link and spill and flicker away.

  The elements imitate each other:

  water-light playing on these stones

  becomes a shaking flame; sunlight

  stitches the rock-weed's rust and green,

  swaying, sea-wavering; one red

  twist scatters a shoal like a dust of static

  —a million tiny shocks of white

  dissolving in the lower depths.

  The only sound

  is the sea's mouth and the ticking

  of the many mouths

  that feed within it, sipping the light.

  Dreaming high over the sea-forest

  —the sea-bed green as a forest floor —

  through the columns of gold

  and streams of water-weed,

  above a world in thrall,

  charting by light

  as a plane might glide,

  slowly, silently

  over woods in storm.

  ABANDON

  That moment, when the sun ignites the valley and picks out

  every bud that's greened that afternoon; when birds

  spill from the trees like shaken sheets; that sudden loosening

  into beauty; the want in her eyes, her eyes' fleet blue;

  the medals of light on water; the way the water intrigued

  about her feet, the ocean walking her out into its depth,

  sea lighting the length of her from the narrow waist

  to the weight of the breasts; the way she lifted her eyes to me

  and handed me back, simplified; that moment

  at the end, knowing the one I had abandoned was myself,

  edging with the sun around the bay's scoop of rocks,

  rolling the last gold round the glass; that shelving love

  as the sun was lost to us and the sky bruised, and the

  stones grew cold as the shells on the beach at Naxos.

  AT ROANE HEAD

  for John Burnside

  You'd know her house by the drawn blinds —

  by the cormorants pitched on the boundary wall,

  the black crosses of their wings hung out to dry.

  You'd tell it by the quicken and the pine that hid it

  from the sea and from the brief light of the sun,

  and by Aonghas the collie, lying at the door

  where he died: a rack of bones like a sprung trap.

  A fork of barnacle geese came over, with that slow

  squeak of rusty saws. The bitter sea's complaining pull

  and roll; a whicker of pigeons, lifting in the wood.

  She'd had four sons, I knew that well enough,

  and each one wrong. All born blind, they say,

  slack-jawed and simple, web-footed,

  rickety as sticks. Beautiful faces, I'm told,

  though blank as air.

  Someone saw them once, outside, hirpling

  down to the shore, chittering like rats,

  and said they were fine swimmers,

  but I would have guessed at that.

  Her husband left her: said

  they couldn't be his, they were more

  fish than human,

  said they were beglamoured,

  and searched their skin for the showing marks.

  For years she tended each difficult flame:

  their tight, flickering bodies.

  Each night she closed

  the scales of their eyes to smoor the fire.

  Until he came again,

  that last time,

  thick with drink, saying

  he'd had enough of this,

  all this witchery,

  and made them stand

  in a row by their beds,

  twitching. Their hands

  flapped; herring-eyes

  rolled in their heads.

  He went along the line

  relaxing them

  one after another

  with a small knife.

  It's said she goes out every night to lay
>
  blankets on the graves to keep them warm.

  It would put the heart across you, all that grief.

  There was an otter worrying in the leaves, a heron

  loping slow over the water when I came

  at scraich of day, back to her door.

  She'd hung four stones in a necklace, wore

  four rings on the hand that led me past the room

  with four small candles burning

  which she called 'the room of rain'.

  Milky smoke poured up from the grate

  like a waterfall in reverse

  and she said my name

  and it was the only thing

  and the last thing that she said.

  She gave me a skylark's egg in a bed of frost;

  gave me twists of my four sons' hair; gave me

  her husband's head in a wooden box.

  Then she gave me the sealskin, and I put it on.

  HAMMERSMITH WINTER

  It is so cold tonight; too cold for snow,

  and yet it snows. Through the drawn curtain

  shines the snowlight I remember as a boy,

  sitting up at the window watching it fall.

  But you're not here, now, to lead me back

  to bed. None of you are. Look at the snow,

  I said, to whoever might be near, I'm cold,

  would you hold me. Hold me. Let me go.

  NOTES & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Silvered Water: placing a silver coin in a bowl of water or throwing it into a well is a traditional Scottish blessing, or preparation for a wish.

  Signs on a White Field

  sun-cups: hollows in ice caused by surface melting during intense sunshine.

  snow penitents: pinnacles or spikes of compacted snow or ice caused by partial ablation of an ice field exposed to the sun.

  By Clachan Bridge

  stone-baby: the medical term is lithopedion; this occurs when a foetus dies during an ectopic pregnancy, is too large to be reabsorbed by the body, and calcifies.

  The Plague Year

  observatory: the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles was the scene of the knife fight in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Pere Marquette: pronounced 'peer'.

  A Gift

  dwayberries: deadly nightshade - a poison, as are all the plants mentioned.

  Strindberg in Berlin

  Strindberg took a flat in Berlin in the autumn of 1892 and became a regular at Zum schwarzen Ferkel, where he first encountered Munch, Hamsun and the Polish writer and musician Stanislaw Przybyszewski. During his brief stay in the city he met, and became engaged to, Frida Uhl, while conducting an affair with a young Norwegian, Dagny Juel. Strindberg and Munch were rivals for Juel's attentions, but she married Przybyszewski. It was around this time that Strindberg's lifelong interest in alchemy began. mareld: (Swedish) sea-fire, also known in English as 'seasparkle': the phenomenon of bioluminescence, where high concentrations of plankton (Noctiluca scintillans) containing an enzyme called luciferas give off light when disturbed.

  Tinsel

  tinsel: the losing of something; the sustaining of harm, damage or detriment; loss.

  Leaving St Kilda

  This describes an anti-clockwise circumnavigation of the main island, Hirta, then Soay, followed by a clockwise turn around Boreray.

  Kalighat

  the Kali Temple, Kolkata.

  Pentheus and Dionysus

  from Metamorphoses, Book III.

  The Daughters of Minyas

  from Metamorphoses, Book IV.

  Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market

  'Oda a un Gran Atún en el Mercado' from Odas Elementales.

  Albatross in Co. Antrim

  'L'Albatros' from Les fleurs du mal.

  The Great Midwinter Sacrifice, Uppsala

  suggested by Adam of Bremen's Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum (History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, translated by Francis J. Tschan, New York, 1959).

  The Hammam

  Cağaloğ;lu Hamami, Istanbul.

  Unspoken Water: running water taken from under a bridge (over which the living pass and the dead are carried) and collected in a vessel that should not be allowed to touch the ground. It must be brought in the dawn or twilight to the house of the sick or bewitched person, and carried in complete silence. A wooden ladle containing a piece of silver is dipped in and the victim given three sips of the 'silvered' water. The remainder is then sprinkled over and around the body, or poured into a corner stone of the building or behind the fire-flag, naming the afflicted person. If the stone splits the illness or curse is fatal. In Scotland this is traditionally regarded as a powerful charm against the Evil Eye and for healing the sick.

  The Wood of Lost Things

  docken suit: a suit made of dock leaves.

  Calling Home

  'Hemat' from Sanningsbarriären; this free version was included in The Deleted World (Enitharmon Press, 2006).

  Ictus

  ictus: metrical stress; the beat of the pulse; a stroke, seizure. cack-handed: clumsy/left-handed.

  The Unwritten Letter

  'Su una lettera non scritta' from La Bufera e Altro.

  During Dinner

  Hawthorn flowers contain trimethylamine, one of the first chemicals formed when body tissue starts to decay, with an odour also said to be reminiscent of the sexual secretions of aroused women.

  Arsenio

  'Arsenio' from Ossi di Seppia.

  Widow's Walk

  the widow's walk: a high coastal walk or platform where fishermen's wives waited for sight of the returning boats.

  At Roane Head

  quicken: the rowan.

  Acknowledgements are due to the editors of the following:

  Archipelago, The Atlantic, Birtan í Húminu, Brick, Granta, Guardian, Little Star, London Review of Books, Manhattan Review, New Writing 15, New York Review of Books, Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry London, Poetry Review, Spectator, Times Literary Supplement.

  'Ictus' was commissioned by Carol Ann Duffy for Answering Back (Picador); 'Dress Rehearsals' was published in Raising the Iron (Cargo Press) edited by David Harsent.

  The latter stages of the writing of this book were supported by a welcome grant from the National Lottery through Arts Council England. I am also hugely grateful for the time spent at the Liguria Study Center at Bogliasco and, once again, at the Santa Maddalena Foundation in Donnini.