Mapping
the River
Tell
me how the days went down.
I
remember the chimes at home— in those days
we
lived nearly under the steeple of St. Paul’s.
I
remember a bell that could be heard for miles,
and
it shook the earth.
That
diva note drifts through the new Jerusalem,
serenades
our present state.
Grime
degrades the sculpted stone sprawled
lionlike
on the pedestal, ash of lost causes,
pretty
patterns in a sari-whorl of sky.
The
past is far enough. It is yesterday and now,
the
rocking-horse rhythm of the day,
cornflower
blue for the sparrow as it spires,
sprung
from invisible fashionings of air
rent
with that rocketing.
How
shall half a century answer? A driven life
without
tomorrows, the spill of sacrifice through time,
every
Jesus needs a Judas, every Judas
a
knotted rope: how else coax April
from
the chilly coverts?
I
am mindful of the weather. The boil of clouds
invites
events into our lives— rain, arrow winds
off
German Bite, the gales
succulent
with sea salt and storm tides’
greedy
scoop of beach and cliff.
Near
Clacton, a Junkers dumping bombs
against
dwindling fuel, the near-miss
then
a parade of quiet shops unlucky—
the
Hurricanes scramble to the radar,
riddle
tail-fin swastikas above cold green seas.
A
fishing smack hauls up the bodies,
the
pilot, twenty-two, from Hamburg,
in
the wreckage the snapshot blonde
dragged
down with the others: whose girl,
whose
wife commiserates with corpses?
That
same beach now— trippers wade and paddle,
windbreak
canes and cardigans; perhaps we won.
We
note in the margins the brassplate rigour,
our
finest hour replete with carpark passes.
Is
it really fifty years and now tomorrow?
The
flyers are buried in yew shade, easy
with
the English dead, among limestone slips
with
Georgian dates of death and birth,
hand
in hand with parish saints
to
serve and suffer without complaint.
When
we were children, time slipped away
in
the cricket dark, under heavy scent of earth,
summer,
and late to bed.
The
plane tree sloughed its curl of bark
for
ships that sailed the mill pond lanes.
Time
the river, sentiment of perspective,
time
the failed foothold, peacock plans
disappearing
on the current—
how
shall we serve, and what defend
when
knaves are shuffled with suited kings?
Zigzag
gables connect the houses.
The
Thames is matted in our hair, Ganges
a
cupped palm, China’s gold-weight bangle
and
the Mississippi’s tangle of upstream life
stream
down, a psalm of ooze, a tune less debonair.
I
row into the wreckage, through the scum of oil
a
face, a boy’s face and the body rolls and sinks,
coy
to meet the grapnels. It is my own face.
This
fisher life is charged, cast
along
a coveted anonymity.
All
those years, balanced on my own reflection,
a
reality poised on briefest light, sky
painted
on water and firefly stars
dripping
from the oars, time we teased
from
nothing, remains unknown.
Again
the hook, the catch-net keep
where
broad trees overhang the banks:
tell
me how the days went down. The anchor’s pull
on
painted planks proves the limit of the deep,
a
satin deadcalm stuttering with rain.
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