The Disappearance Diaries of an Apprentice Hermit

Pilgrim: 1977-1998

1     in tight lines  a dozen houses  line the winter wheat –     already:     frail bungalows  with front lawns,  at the village edge;     homes, already,     transitory as inns,  and clamped  to a new access road  that slices  though the down.        diggers have quarried  the chalk -   upended it;  torn out the clay beneath - heavy, dark, greasy as abattoir meat embedded with flints, clewing to a long-departed sea.     in a web of cul-de-sacs, of silent gardens of chipboard walls   history is being forgotten;   the land is practicing how to die.   SNODLAND, MARCH 1977         2   clouds clog the river’s fallen level -   a dry day at the furthest edge of summer;   at the month’s almost-final, almost-end-point,   flat and still;   indestructible.     hay, cropped in silent meadows rests in long gold lines;   the battles to be fought are far away; nothing is corruptible;   now is all there is.   THE RIVER BEULT, AUGUST 1977         3   wade in the corn waves undisturbed;   come home - there is no toll;   the hip-grass will conceal and recall;   fearing no fall, the dusty green will restore the world,   its marks, its scars -    bring it to a field of sun -   to this home, crushed out within it.   NEAR CRANBROOK, AUGUST 1977       4   of course there are grander things than this Victorian rebuilding of medieval stone;   but not for me.   for eight years i have been its steadfast visitor,   a pilgrim of sorts, returning to a place where nothing is urgent;   where custom points,  like transepts, to the enfolding fields and woods first written in Doomsday.   THE CHURCH OF ALL SAINTS, BIRLING, MARCH 1978         5   amongst the few remaining leaves of last year’s autumn,   daffodils shake in a slight breeze;   they lord it over the wilderness -   the stone angel drowsy under moss;   the mausoleums, rectangular, preoccupied;   the crooked tombstones, dreaming of places other than this;   the sleeping columbaria spread between the shot green shavings of recent trees -    defiant, redeeming.   BIRLING CHURCHYARD, MARCH 1978         6   winter rain has darkened the hayrick’s sides;   now a nine-hour sun expands upon it,   restores it, saves it with lengthening days;   returning all.   SNODLAND, MAY 1978         7   only on the road between the trees;   only on Birling Hill do i evade the day;   slip the sun under leaf;   freewheel on the scarp,   believing only in Cistern Wood and Coney Shaw, in Stonebridge and Ley;   in the fields that flit by,   worshipping only the swift  dark woods,   the down’s allegiant oak, and beech, and chestnut -    saved by speed each time i turn into the ceaseless haze.   ON BIRLING HILL, JUNE 1978         8   now the cool weaves white;   the high day ends;   the ridge simplifies;   the downland tightens –   a narrow gate, darkly green -   trees open to an ageless sky;   a time for nightjars, nightingales, sparrowhawks;   and i am washed away.   TROTTISCLIFFE, JUNE 1978         9   this is a road for sunday walkers, wanderlusters who go just so far, their communion curtailed by an absence of magic,   fitted in between reading the papers and lunch,   as is customary now.   THE SNODLAND TO BIRLING ROAD, JUNE 1978         10   clouds shift;   over the hill the moon swells,   the grass, dark this side, lights up -   ignites a sudden thoroughfare showing me the way, night by night, as i cycle sections of the old pilgrim road,   all difficulties shattered,   past fields of clover, cowslip; past Blackbusshe, Badgells Wood,   past the Battle of Britain cross,

The Summer Fortress: 1979

TO RA AND REMEMBERING VERITY FORSYTH        I hear you still   clear, sure -   talking to me   now   as you would talk to me   then;   a corner of the garden room;   a long table laid for tea,   books piled up,   shadows of poets and painters   stirring;   listening,   as you hear me say   what I do not say;   as you tell me   what I need to hear   but would not:   I hear you still   I hear you now,   I hear you.      Skona, July 1997     DATE This cycle of poems was written in the Weald of Kent between March and September 1979; the last one 18 years later in July 1997, in Skona.   1 for this there is always time - your fragmentary will concocts hours where the day has none, etches a far horizon forever in the sun.   2 take only touch and that electric guess, hand to hand, till hearts rest within flesh; till your touch upon my face moves inside.   3 you would stretch out, draw me apart, for though you do not know it your time is mine. would you want more? would you change the tide that carries us, sand within a stream, toward the sea? evenly,   4 loving you: the picture safe in the cabinet - mine, the dare to remove; the white palms stick with sweat now summer comes.   5 knives cut - and death's unknowing, cells grow and bones will break, and still, the starting point - your face, ghosts all the change; leaves - silence, a space for shadows; a space to turn within; and lie at bay.   6 your cry hollows the hour, touches stars that won't explode: and break their hold. but can hurl javelins up at space   7 you may not believe it but, after the battle, rain washed the blood onto the village streets, into the Weald. night falls on the Bloody Mountain; a bird pulls against empty light; bats fold into the outline of trees, black on black. above us a harvest moon burns a circle in the sky.   8 let us stay, smoke awhile walk between the silver trees of the Cinders track. night holds us; we lie beside a water tank, listening; water dripping drop by drop waiting where nothing moves the moment on, where nothing moves. where the air is cool and grassy   9 your heart is high, sweeping high: tempers, slackens, on again, states of difference - not by joining I, in love, would move.   10 in your awkward beauty the landscape breathes with you; I rest I play; in skies the peacocks fly.   11 do not hold back; you should not fear you shine for you have the brightest light; and shine as life.   12 come, we will evade this, armour ourselves as night checks day; and a smooth sly light slides through the orchards. the last bird songs drain the day into a shoal of trees. we can evade all this.   13 we will become fond of these days; go over them tirelessly as armchair generals over maps. we lay down the living death like bottles in a cellar; effortlessly.   14 the abacus moves but I will not; its beads have a sort of rhythm, a pretended order. do not listen. silence has a safer sound; even calls the directions of a hidden road, easily missed.   15 i 'd rather not think; or imagine, know, or even suspect, grieve, celebrate, wonder. I want to live easy. why should I be troubled?   16 yours is the gift that brings together, that calls me in that keeps me here; your arms open; your imprint haunts your body, is a barrier of words.   17 the train passes places where nothing has changed, where life has gone on just the same all the time I have been so caught up. it will go on the same when this ends;   18 daily the state deepens and I concede to this round and to that the bets I place the game I play, the cards that fall far short of what I make.   19 you smile: the knife you wield opens the knot the quickest way, I saw you walking in fields, a dancer, naked, slender as a scorpion. dares all do you know what we do?   20 lost time is life's regret: death guilds its share, the days rob and bleed, and time smashes easily as glass. the calendar breaks a little more each day.   21 love in distance, and, all the time I know that behind me he kisses you; you do not know his blooded lips smear and conquer. each return you see gets closer.   22 you turn your eyes, catch up my glance; hold it like a mirror, distorting by all it cannot see.   23 he had made a plaything of fear; caught it in the mirror with the sun. autumn will rush before the Kentish hops to dredge his glass - and the image, unreflected, noiselessly dies out.   24 death kisses you; the offering of suns gluts in your heart; an unaccounting change removes your hand. you wake; but the rage for life sleeps on.  ...

Greater Still: 1979 - 1993

1.    NOT HERE        Still dark,   thin curtains resist   a taut March sky;       my room is uncompleted – unoccupied;    my possessions shrink beside books, clothes,    stuff left here by others –       and because you are not near -     not in this village or the next –  not in this thin doctored place so far from the southern Weald –    because we are not here – my body moves, a blind man,  proving the place, calculating distances  between here and there –   a bleak, discordant siren  enticing me to stay,   with a nonsense song:  that there is no other way.     BEDFORDSHIRE, MARCH 1979       2.             EDGE   Ploughed fields force me to the edge – a destitute land, barren and friendless – hedgerows of briar and blackthorn  stiff as razor palisades,   a slammer of bare trees, flooded ruts thick,  greasy, drowning mud and a thin, slashing horsewhip wind  to keep at bay my breakout.     BEDFORDSHIRE, MARCH 1979       3.             CEEDED   i Light haemorrhages, bleeds through brooding trees, though copse.  We await the storm.   ii Sound of the quiet moor –  small hours of dark certainties,  sleepless, terminal.   iii This, the toughest place, a night long anvil smashing  every dream that comes.   iv He has let the room –  and now a watcher steals  everything he knows.   v Come and commandeer this world, that world, take them all -  we have an excess.   vi Lift, scatter, dust, wind down the ragged station cold,  strangers ever stirring.   vii Blue electric crown – by the sky, I bring you close: it covers us both.     BEDFORDSHIRE, MARCH 1979       4.             CEASELESS A cloudless blue invites a house, long-lost, white - honoured guest, seated,   air still as whispers, friends dining in candlelight; a record playing, photographs shuffled -- as if a kindly cardsharp dealt redeeming kings     LANGOLD HOUSE, SUMMER 1979       5.             BOMB   Green fists of bud lurch towards summer –   bring me to Sussex downs laid on chalk, cut sheer - tracks to the sea.   I lie - toes out, following patterns on the waves;  following people spreading towels; following families sweating in a salty breeze – sun pilgrims, returning with plastic bags and floppy hats.   The day has killed their talk;  there is only the sexy grass beneath bare feet –  vast smooth fields below a prosperous sky – a measureless ocean – the smell of summer,  spreading like a blast.     BEECHY HEAD, JUNE 1981       6.             SCHOOL   Overnight, our schools have become strewn streets in ruined cities -   lessons taken by looted shops, gutted cars –   classrooms reached down roads burning with debris from the night before;   the playground, a hearth of petrol flames shared on television;  the curriculum recast by ragged warriors in cities north to south –   even unobtrusive towns have traded in their silence for slogans, as if all this could ever start a new term.     LANGOLD HOUSE, JULY 1981       7.             BUSTED   This room is busted –  this house is broken – bolted, a trail of bricks and masonry.   Barbed wire, red with rust, defines the edges of a disappearing drive   Birds call - boundlessly friendless.     LANGOLD HOUSE, JULY 1981       8.             PETITION   Forgive us – say a prayer – let’s dine on blood.   Give us this day our daily bread - the man haemorrhaging his life on bags of spilt basmati rice.    All kingdom come - unhallowed bodies bobbing downriver; lepers trespassing the garden gates (dry to the right, wet to the left).   The Power and the Glory - the corpse delivered from evil  on a jute bier of marigolds, weaving through traffic.   Ever and ever - scraps of horse and jockey minced on earth by a Naxalite bomb, bound for heaven,   Thy will be done.     LANGOLD HOUSE, JULY 1981       9.             TRIBUTE   i This makeshift air, choked. The dreams the old men held dear,  mountains poised to rise.   ii Tapers are unlit; the alter is empty now, its trinkets packed away.   iii Summer twists the knife –  leaves an unwieldly wilderness,  a wreath, remembered.   iv Still he assails, as if love would ever be  an explanation.   LANGOLD HOUSE, JULY 1981       10.           FICTION   Why let him dream when really – he cannot;   why let him think that he will live without end, that he will draw the flame from fire, that he can take it to the shadow – to the silver in the dim –  to burn forever more?     LANGOLD HOUSE, JULY 1981     <...

Border Lands: 1981-1983

march 1981     having this,   no fantastic hate   can rob you;   not devils,    not warriors,   not demons;      nor even angels,   spying from their steep slopes,      nothing, truly nothing    can rob you –       nor even this town,  that has a history  of theft and mutilation: the churches empty,   the homes neglected   the parks choaked with weeds.   you do not need to stay. you do not need to pay. april 1981 i’ve not words enough to say -  i saw you walking on the road today, nor eyes  prepared to follow: folly , prey. may i 1981 eclipsing streets, a steady shore, an ordered crash of waves; through sunlight,  shafts, marbled clouds a far, far out horizon, unreachable; unbreachable. may ii 1981 i am in envy of love; i am in envy of these two figures  strong as the sun. i am in envy. june 1981 how far do seas stretch? here, my love; beach,  sand,  dunes, and rocks,  rising,  cliffs, rising: we sit, hidden in stumpy heat-drenched grass; a high hollow, spread with towels,  a picnic, cigarettes: and two tight bodies curled like babes observing  visions. july 1981 on this shore –  on every shore the sea rolls,  spreads, swobs expands explains but we – you and i – we are fastened like limpets. we cannot  leave. september i 1981 the waves of last night’s storm linger, loiter insist endure:  they stir still; they stir now, white, wild, whipping the heavy sea is not becalmed; it slaps on jetties, smashes the sea walls, breaks up the boats; and we must shelter. september ii,1981 i have come to meet myself again – to catch up. find fault, find favour. it is the same homing, bleak sea, the same empty horizon blotted out by mist. my heart gives into it; beats like a forbearing tide. october 1981 behind me  a television tower feeds the air, feeds a hundred thousand unseen homes; feeds them all,  gannets razorbills,  gulls greedy as Ahab with a rattle of stodgy voices i cannot hear, mayday signals for the dying day for the yearning empty night. november i, 1981 november. the pebbles are smooth, grey, oval, wet; they slide, roll, rattle; children gather driftwood; build bonfires. the inlet –  south beach -  lies under a muscle of white cloud; wheeling waves whiten, spread a pale disappearing line; we breathe air no city has maintained; i sit on a washed up tree trunk greatest of all. november ii 1981 just above the line  thrown by the strongest wave; just at that point where the sand shelves, where it is wet, softer, darker just at that point –  that is where the people group  where the people watch,  where they walk throw stones; the pensioner too, in his fawn coat, we are just at that point –  each day, same time, same place beside the shifting sea. december 1981  hallo there. hey! hallo! i see my face under the street light; i see that when this passion has gone the shop’s glass window will remain reflecting it all back; everything bloody thing but hazy, sticky with salt, it is my father confessor my witness to others  who walk, like i catching their faces, in this unkind abrupt way long before they are ready  to own up;   catching their features too soon in the vast unending night. february  1982  lean mountains rise seaward, rock on rock; thin fields stretch, taut as canvass the first light gilds the couch grass across Swyddffynnon, fills the hollows from Pontrhydfendigaid to Ystrad Meurig runs gold over Cambria. march i  1982  unspeaking,  we’ve watched the day wake and slide  unfelt; old room in an empty house. our bodies lie still, unspent; under the huge grey sky there is no trade. march ii 1982  briefly i remember lying in your lap, my stock against the night electrically charged, incriminated; my fingers familiar each contour known as my own, the warmth and texture of your feckless flesh. april  1982 her eyes coil around a world i cannot see; in her head are the smiles of friends, and elders, smiling sadly, as they will smile when she is dead. may  i1982 living by the sea we have missed the first graffiti of spring, the scrawl of buds on bush the harsh soft hasty green the pebble beach is our park,  cold and hard untranslated, unpreserved, seen in flashes moment by moment without memory. childless, parentless. may ii 1982 but for this there is no other world; this is the magic of your face, the fascination, the hidden sea -  waves rearrange the light; currents coil beneath like massive ropes encrusted with barnacles wrenching the water dragging it this way and that dragging it into  a warren of rolling whitecaps. this is the only place for love; this time my heart  will take its ancient path unseen. may iii 1982 somewhere,  somehow,  something  will end; just not be there;  we’ll wonder why we ever looked; adjoin,  ajar, elude,  escape –  the door will never close again. will never. may iv 1982 remember that old image of summer; the blooming trees, heavy with green; the flower crowd and scent –  someone sitting near the house;  someone playing the music of old scores on the piano? it never was.   get up and go;  the door is open. may v  1982 i cannot see it in your eyes,  the lover, mistress, master -  it is only the ocean i see – the eternal cross of light dimming in the depths late as the latest  night-known dreams the trances and delusions –  the truth. june i 1982 this cold magic has –  as possession –  every length of time, has the fascination too, and the light it steals: oh, how it steals the light – dragging it beneath the waves with such dark grace only a fool would not follow. june ii 1982 stay in. we are cannibals together; adequate, sufficient. all we need is all we are. june iii 1982 she dreams with her eyes; shapes of ships  and long dark seas; a diviner, a first time diver, going places - such places as you never saw and being all he is, he is all hers and she dreams on. june iv 1982 apart from casual pain he will never walk disarmed, as if always into ...

Songs Without Music: 1985

So Watch   So watch  my flesh decay and see  how beautifully it goes; like something  asking to be loved; like you,  too shy to ask me to your room; marks that will survive  are marks on skin and mind: not you with me, not face to face; and only this, a last decay pitching to hide itself when each  has gone their way.     Cause   Under empty skies air finds no flags; people march  but the banners are burnt;   the world is bleeding into  hell, and into hell the world betrayed.   My fist is flat, the truth is traded; there is nothing left  to kill for or to honour.   the world is bleeding into  hell, and into hell the world betrayed.   Angel   I bought a glass palace in Paradise with a pool and fifty rooms; and off its slender flagstaff I can fly to the moon.   I’m god in the city, god in the town, I came from hell but I’m here; from nighttime to nightfall my parties do not end.   I’m alive and free so look at me I dream at the top of the sky; my fingertips are strips of jade - there’s no way I can die.   I’m god in the city, god in the town, I came from hell but I’m here; from nighttime to nightfall my parties do not end.   Welcome, roll up, welcome, watch kings and princes sigh; they beg to use my golden wings. they beg to learn to fly.   I’m god in the city, god in the town, I came from hell but I’m here; from nighttime to nightfall my parties do not end.     City of Fear   Last night I flew over the city of fear; dark coated people came down the streets; they had angel eyes and shrank from light; they looked at me and wished to fly - but they couldn’t grow wings.   And in the end it’s the end that living’ about; they do not know how to go they can escape no more they have turned to salt inside the doorways of this city of fear.   Moon high, my rocket feathers carry me free I see the late night-clubs open up, the curtains of private room drift apart; the battle’s over, but in coloured light, the battle starts again.   And in the end it’s the end that living’ about; they do not know how to go they can escape no more they have turned to salt inside the doorways of this city of fear.   People wait with wet wide eyes  but the gods have gone, the night goes on; coins rattle in their mouths the gates have closed.   And in the end it’s the end that living’ about; they do not know how to go they can escape no more they have turned to salt inside the doorways of this city of fear.     Heros   Come kill the heroes, tear the faces from the walls; there’s no misleading leads us closer to Hell.   In every street, in every room their faces stare, they take the air, they grin and cheat and stir us; they’ll do anything for us; live our lives the way we want, the heroes.   Pictures in magazines blow up their public lives; the roles they play kill for us and lie.   In every street, in every room their faces stare, they take the air, they grin and cheat and stir us; they’ll do anything for us; live our lives the way we want, the heroes.   Wars won in cinemas are all we never were; and all we ever are just turns  to dust.   In every street, in every room their faces stare, they take the air, they grin and cheat and stir us; they’ll do anything for us; live our lives the way we want, the heroes.     River   Night-time holds me down and empty open to the flood; nothing stops the river breaking in, stops the river breaking me.   Not sleeping, not waking, I’m trapped in the dark – cold shadows surround me closing around me; it’s the dream world of a lost world of a world that never was.   Faces, and the colours tasted turn the years I have not lived; take the lost road back, take the road unsaid.   Not sleeping, not waking, I’m trapped in the dark – cold shadows surround me closing around me; it’s the dream world of a lost world of a world that never was.       Cold City   In rooms and bars the city through I see you face the same; every word and touch we make recalls our needs again.   There’s no time for holding back no time enough for fear, and if you wait forever there’ll just be nothing there.   Yet when love moves and speaks its eyes are flat and closed; and every time we want to give it suddenly lets go.   There’s no time for holding back no time enough for fear, and if you wait forever there’ll just be nothing there.   We scare of loving, loosing dreams with this love that must not say with this love that cannot ever declare itself again.   There’s no time for holding back no time enough for fear, and if you wait forever there’ll just be nothing there.   So hold me on your fi...