Such silence then before us, pinned against the wall,
Why need we whine? There is no way out, the birds
Will tell us nothing more; we shall vanish first,
Yet leave behind us certain frozen words
Which some day, though not certainly, may melt
And, for a moment or two, accentuate a thirst.
Louis MacNeice
© Graham Bowers 2017, 2019
First published 2017; 2nd edition 2019
All rights reserved
Published by BoD – Books on Demand GmbH, Stockholm, Sweden
Printed by BoD – Books on Demand GmbH, Norderstedt, Germany
ISBN: 9789178516384
As the morning haze thins
off the late-autumn field
the Canada Geese turn
and stretch towards the low sun.
And I understand their need:
Enter me, light and warmth!
From this slope I've scrambled up
I see
all the others on their slopes,
the scree
loose and shifting
beneath us all
as we fight to keep our feet
against the pull.
There is no open vista
to admire,
the pull means that
we're constantly unsure
of how to climb,
why there's no level ground,
and who the others are
on either hand.
No point in waving or shouting:
we all know
for all our scrabbling
there's just one way to go;
the valley where we started out
at dawn
is where the pull will
force us to return.
More departures than destinations on all the journeys we make.
We learn a bit, we don't-learn a lot, and are constantly forced to resort
to ad hoc navigation along routes we never sought,
paying for every wrong turn, and no clear charts to be bought.
We try to keep ourselves together, but we flake –
though this can help us take on board things we never thought
would be added to our baggage on these journeys that we make.
We like the idea of a meaning, but it's one we must forsake.
We try to keep on an evenish keel, but our keel keeps getting caught,
and the only feeling we really know is of generally falling short
on the stop-start, hit-miss, forward-backward journeys that we make.
Imagine if you could
round the corner
square all the angles
triangulate your position cleanly.
Co-ordinates under control,
no tangents to be spun off at,
able to stay
true to your origin,
unbisected, centred.
The little girl on her bike
goes round and round the yard between the houses,
round and round
for pure joy of being
able to do it,
in that way where, when you've mastered something
it happens through and with you
as much as you do it.
No destination or route plan
but pure bike-riding,
like a bird that has just learnt to fly
and is brim-full of the need
to swoop and zip.
Rapt in commitment, focus, balance,
as if she will be able to do this,
go on fizzing through the total present,
for as long as she likes:
not just till tea-time
but in an undemanding, time-free forever.
Snow – a long-term temporary thing,
grabs all the attention while it's here.
Comes late autumn, stays into spring,
so dominant you forget it's a temporary thing
till it's gone and the blanketless life can begin.
The hardness of the rock beneath can reappear
when snow's time's up – it's a temporary thing,
though it grabbed all the attention while it was here.
The things that I may say to you
have, of course, no special weight.
I do not catch and chain the truth,
I would not claim to channel light.
It's like when rocks in fields in spring
ache themselves from underground
up into view. Like landscaping:
you drag and shift the things you find,
you drain and roll, hedge and stumble.
And everything being resonant
with undertow and parable,
this simply aims to document
how in the things we do perhaps we're all
just trying to gain a grip on stone and soil.
If I could draw
I'd sketch your face, your form,
and nothing else, again and again.
If I could sing
I'd sing just the one song,
of your hardly-awake morning smile
when I bring you coffee in bed.
If I could build
I'd be Isambard Kingdom Bowers
and construct a fantastic feat of a bridge,
a span of praise
across which I travel to you every day.
Researchers using delicately calibrated
light-pulsing scanners from the air have found
old cities, canals, temples, all highly
developed and sophisticated,
swallowed by centuries of jungle
under the Cambodian ground.
Which goes to show:
All mankind's best efforts to extend
the boundaries, create and solve – the fruits