Friday 2 September 2016

Relic Environments Trilogy: Book II, Part 1.viii

from Book II, Part 1, Studies in Caesura

Variations on a Theme of Romantic Character

1. Weather as a Device of Pathetic Fallacy


Low on the hills, a shank of cloud, and farther off

tin-rattling thunder jumpstarts yellow bolts

by Peldon fields.


The storm draws down, its boiling greys

stacking to a deeper black, the air

itching with current.


Someone struck might live, telling yet

what world the fusion makes −

skull rimmed in fire, fire drilling

soles and belly, through mossy seams

or gravel underfoot, lastly into clays.


Never twice, no second strike

to find you standing same and same again,

or how could we abide, again and again the same

short straw…?


In the field, a spool of barbed wire glints post to post,

but it’s the grounding flash

that urges livestock

in a press, under wind-snap branches.


Here is light’s perfection, pure products

of melted sky hammering

bone and memory, the broad oak sullied,

before this earthed expectancy,

everywhere, bright sheets of skimming rain.



2. The Exquisite Regard for Common Things


I walked the afternoon on the fells

with William and Coleridge, clouds eye-level

with the view, the wind abrupt by rocky verticals

helmed beyond the physical, in a first knowledge of spring,

on the stones a paint of lichen

as a grim regard of altitude, a toughness

we climbed to meet.


Time itself appeared dislocated. Birches rooted in granite

above the wreath of high lakes, waves

lapped in light, the changeful colours

of larch, or the lank habit of pine

studding the foreshore, affirmed wet dark days

were spent – closed in yet by clouds, Ullswater,

chased in butter flower and buds of alder.


We continued beyond Gowbarrow Park, the woods

twigged in purple, and along the path

wood-sorrel and anemones. Then by

the water lane, daffodils, a few, then further by,

yellow belts the width of a turnpike

thinning to knots of colour, stragglers

among the stones, the wind off the lake

lifting the heads, ever glancing, so, and so –

a view of simple unity we all remarked upon.


William went before us, that he return

to the building of the orchard wall – our bower –

begun the Wednesday, intended

as our shady spot amidst fits of thrush song

and ravens passing. I walked on with Coleridge,

speaking sweetly of the disposal

of our riches.

We stopped awhile in the meadow,

by then in twilight, with Jupiter, Venus,

and a perfect boat of moon between

just by the distant farms.


Discovering the cottage below, we could see William

sat by the open window with his books.


We returned upon the mountain road, observing

our shadows just visible before us, and, beneath glossy hollies,

these nameless, scarlet flowers. 



3. Charles Lamb: a Letter


Speak no more to me of poetry

and vanities of that kind.

Bees at clover are wiser than sonnet writers

in their generation – I charge you leave me out of any publication,

or if so, without name or initial.


I will here have done with praise and blame,

I have written so much…

a deal of stuff on tenderness, imagination

in poetry of the highest species, and London too,

its squares, the room where I was born,

life awake

in watchmen, rattles, the dirty crowds in Fleet Street,

the city itself a masquerade unrivalled

in Cumberland groves.


Forgive me, my habits are changing. Writing now

familiar letters on common subjects,

I am reminded of Keswick, and Coleridge

receiving me so warmly – his kindness to Mary, too,

she being then improved somewhat in her mind –

his study large, antique, with folios

scattered about upon an old sofa… the Æolian harp…

the house itself set within a net of mountains, even then

it was London I thought of, its playhouses and pantomimes,

the motley Strand.


Coleridge gone now: it is said

he has left behind him

forty thousand treatises in metaphysical critique, none complete –

what destiny now, to wrap up spices – to Wordsworth, too, adieu,

and in the churchyard poor Godwin, his theories

six feet deep in Cripplegate mould.


Gather up your reliques, my friend, and come home,

that we should sup again with Ariel, in liquor

through Silver Street, on his shoulders

up Parson’s Lane, the neighbours

from their windows shouting, Pray, Sir, what o’clock?

In the finest movements

of the moment hand, a little present of eternity −

I think now we lost our time, looking what the time was,

lines in the Mad Scene, in a play now

out of fashion.



4. Lines from a Journal


I lived and died in drawing rooms, the English

indiscriminate between the prodigy

and monster, Life in ottava rima.


That which I invented, its wit

and roguery, the stanzas of stolen glances, lust,

invective, the simplicity, the largeness

of humanity mocked, raw, eclipsed

their petty ambitions.

I have no memory of my follies or crimes,

only that my delinquencies required a voice;

they looked upon my cantos as upon the Alps.


It was that nobler insight

that instructed my misery − the mountains at Jungfrau,

the air and lakes, and Shelley, a balm for my disquiet

and my changeful corruptions.

Are we other than scribblers, dreamers and spectators

of apathy, affecting that rhyme

prevents disorder? Against their scruples, I would mark

the naïveté of the Venetian dialect, always

pleasing in a woman’s mouth.


High winds out, across the sky, clouds in appearance

like milk blown from a pail.

Today I saw the remains of Actium, near which

Antony lost the world – of it

only a broken wall to be seen… I too would have the news,

the deaths and defeats,

that I may know the evils I avoided, preferring instead

to speak tolerable Greek

to Greeks, or to swim Sestos to Abydos,

with as much immortality as may suit

up to the present moment, writing six minutes

before eight o’ the clock – French hours, not Italian.


I am in love with a girl of twenty, like Caroline

but not so savage: her eyes almond-shaped, dark,

the eyelids tinged in the manner of the Ottomans.

Her husband is sixty, and returns with her

to winter in Ravenna, to keep her safe… too late, I think –

on her thigh a birthmark, the inky dribble

of a sparrow in flight….


Against my nature, une ame qui se tourmente, un esprit violent,

I was the true noblesse of patience.

Such prudence is tiresome enough, but a fallen spirit

must maintain it to be saved, as of my life to say,

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.



5. Walking to Helpston


Who sowed the sun, that I might reap its bright rays,

or fall to hedges

sleepy under powder stars, pledges of dreams

more sweetly taken? A counsel I keep

with wrens, with derelicts and wander-men,

who showed me from Essex woods

the homeward road.

Here a simple thing, a simple thought

that went before me, but which

I might not grasp,

and how shall a thing be called, if not itself?


The dormouse chumbling root-scrape

makes napping room, so too I

set me to the cart lane

and my cottage under elm, in this journey

my own nature cured

of itself, to say, Here’s thy comfort, Solitude,

though my mind escape a little, and I am frighted

where my shadow drags, before this old deformity.


Perhaps tomorrow, kindness. Today the chaffinch pinks… pinks…

and vanishes.


A book I had me once, of seasons

and weathers, and a mighty pretty thing it was,

upon it a name

some said was mine.


The firestart looks to its bluey clutch.


It is a fine day for walking. 



6. Of Time, and the Persuasion of Dreams upon It


In a previous lesson, I bested my master −

a blockhead with little Greek − and came down

from the Grammar against my guardian’s wishes.

From there to Wales, and wandering, in one pocket

a favourite English poet, in the other

Euripides, and a few guineas lent me

by my Mother’s friend.


Roofless all those days, beneath

the heaviest misconduct of weather, my meagre goods

no match for hunger when it bit,

I made acquaintance of the money-lender, Dell,

and hence to London, to a house of his tenancy

where in that gift

against the fleshly ills of cold, I stayed two months

in stupor of want, in fitful dogsleep,

in silence but for rats or ghosts

scuttling on the stairs.


In time, I came to Soho, and Ann, a prostitute

in age not more than sixteen years,

whose kindness in my fainting state − the violent aching

of my person assuaged with warmed, spice port −

reminds me yet my debt to her,

near the dreamy lamps

and barrel-organ airs of Oxford Street,

the fatal necessity of her wage.


These images return in laudanum.

Each day, in the ruby-coloured quart

the thousandth drop extracts from memory

the rose and chimney soot, the pole star

summoned in the chancery of dreams.


The recollection stirs, and again

I am in those roads, gone now thirty years.

Pale and piteous again she walks…

intuition clothed in her attendant circumstance.


Feeble Time, commanded in this tincture!


In this sleep the world is fire,

mazes, the pulse of secret rivers, in sleep

rehearsing these annihilations, in shuttered rooms

the coarse nerve soothed, dreamer,

painting on the darkness

these heraldries.



7. My Thoughts Have Turned Lately This Way


I write nothing of late, and probably shall write

no more, for I am offended

that my name is classed among those

who have no name.

I had rather be nothing, and not run

with the Literary, that most vulgar of crowds.


Each of the moderns governs his petty state,

and knows the count of straws

swept from causeways, and coppers

scoured to a worthy brightness − not so the Ancients

in their vast dominions, the cup justly given

to only one of an Age.


I think of Keats, and the promise of excellence

lost to us now.


Having sought to avoid system

and mannerism, and the infirm desire for fame,

I find too little certainty in the future, too little

satisfaction with the past, unlike Byron,

who fashions every word as a wing-beat

brushing immortality:

he is here with his falcons, a tame crow,

and a lady of rank, maintaining he’s done with

the degrading habits of Venice; he rises at two….


My inclinations were not to meet with him

or that set again… he understands many a beautiful thing,

but in explanation exercises such curious manners

that taste and self-love are offended.


As with Hunt, through which all things

become petty, I grow now indifferent

to Mozart and white busts.


My mind is a pack of scattered cards,

and I feel it worse upon opening any book.

I have an habitual feeling of my real life having passed.

Mrs Shelley and Clare rode out this morning,

but their pleasure was spoiled by the guides −

complete savages uttering horrible cries

and no one knows why.


I can scarce bid you goodbye, even in a letter;

I always made an awkward bow.


P.S. I am going to see the ruins,

the first day the sea is waveless.



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