There were only four at the end, just four, To witness the last sad ritual; Oh, and of course a priest, Weary and perfunctory, With another office to perform in an hour. The guilty husband, the teary father, the angry son And curiously to some, the husband’s mistress; Gathered in the echoing empty crematorium, Each displaying various degrees of regret and distress As they contemplated the eternal mystery Of our human frailty and her precious departed spirit; Quia multum amavit.
We paused after we passed on the steps, To exchange the briefest of backward glances; A stranger’s eyes meeting mine, The merest hint of a smile; A smile of regret at the passing of too much time, Too many lies, Too many romances. It was only a flattering moment in the ship-passing night; Too little and yet too much for words, Everything already said that needed to be said; Just the fleeting acknowledgement of an understanding Of life’s mysterious circumstances.
I fell into midnight whilst I slept; Deep as clichéd oceans, Deep as eternity’s continuum Fathomless with starlight. I descended and wept for sweet pity; For as I fell, I fell in love with all I had known Or now would ever know; And helpless in the moment of that revelation, My dying tree sang a requiem for its crooked branch, And for me; A requiem of infinite recrimination.
Passing Kepler, I dreamed of romance. The twelve strokes of time Echoing in remembrance of sensation; From the first chime of caring To the sublime eternal dance; That glimpse of the divine, Bluer than Lapis Lazuli, Bluer than sea or sky, Bluer than that staring eye I pretended not to see, In the cold crescendo of my arrogance.
Searching the city my tears were legion; Its walls waltzing into sodium For the grail that was a heart, Alone in that crumbling Avalon; Dissolving like the remnant of a nebula Into its final oblivion. The everlasting solitude Of my sleep-fall to the unknown region.
Beside the clear brook Where Rossetti walked with Jane; Green reeded and banked with wild flowers, Fit for an Ophelia’s song; We strode through the rich grass in our sweat-shop shoes, Talking too much, Like guilty men who knew their wrong. The span of generations passed in a glance At the sun-honeyed stones set against the blazing sky; Long ago there was a vision of chivalry and romance, That filled this glowing garden and manor house close by With inspirations and creations as eternal as Avalon.
2.
Summer.
The river became the silver Arno in a mirage of hazy gleaming; A cool white hand lolled from the boat in its gilded water, Softly afloat in Oxfordshire, With Florence downstream dreaming. Capture the fleeting look with lines on paper, Punctuated or shaded, Beneath the trees of dark English root; Don’t move. Pocket-watches passing hours till the rose evening; Dressing and dinner and verse and wine, And dark velvet shadows Thick beyond the candlelight, As mysterious as the ticking of time.
I saw a crumpled Earth-globe in a window; Continents and seas Creased and folded, Divided by degrees, Imprinted with the marks of men.
The air had escaped to the air, Like water from a melting; A deflated ball Covered in garish colours to appeal to the child; Formed from a substance that will never perish, Till that it models has finally ceased.
No more knowledge needed then; Nothing new to map to a scale.
A hillside resounding with angelic praise of love, Ascending high through its ancient trees; Their fugue of branches splitting the sky In to shocks of light above; Triumphant and ecstatic And dancing to heaven.
And the black hawthorn shall reap the sun, To sing forth blossoms in a spring that will come; Then the mocking crown cut for a kingdom Shall magick glorious in its cruel blood, Another music.
I saw Eternity the other night, Like a great ring of pure and endless light.’
Henry Vaughan b.1622
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At the vanishing point of Caerau road, Take my eyes for your trophies And let the men lead me now; Singing along this rising ground By the Llynfi’s twilight waterfalls, Toward its springing hill. Where a prodigal child Will at last redeem its vow, Made in a green summer dreaming Long ago; Before such squandering seasons of my blood Left me wasting and wondering and wandering wild.
Profligate pink and blue flowers Linger on for the last dying light; Lying in blossomed comfort, Strewn blind beside this path to dawn Set among the rushes and bramble thorn, Fading softly into the slow-falling night. Where a weary blinkered boy once led Work-struck sullen ponies from the head, To run and rest in bruised silver fields Beneath the towering trees unholy writ; Black and ancient as the burning rock, Cut from the Devil’s own pit.
Now I shall cross again those meadows into the boastful shadows, So proud of their grabbing fear; That hide the raging Minotaur who knows only his labyrinth, Yet still kills without a tear. Hollow words will splinter in the crackling litter of myths Snapping below my tread, On this trail of broken promises and deceptions bitter kiss; The rhymes of bard and poet once more blazing in my head, As a manuscript of devotion illuminates this ascension To a final fiery crest; Where I will stand at last breathless with my brothers Under the holy stars that watch and bless the world; Till the mothering morning of lark song and hawk flight Breaks high above the shining land, And embraces us close with light, To rest.
Then was the girl in a white dress dancing; Dancing through cool silver trees, In slow motion depths of dark shadows And eclipse of stilled branches ease. Turning, Flowing, Wondering, Billowing, Fleeting ghost in heaven’s time running On moon-cast glistening beams; Flying on ribboned shoes caressing, Gentled by the measure of her dreams. Night birds begin to sing softly, High in their fan of sinuous vaulting, Flashing in lightning tracery gleams; As pavanes of angels cross the dimming sky With their spheres of light before them, To witness alone this precious haunting Evocation of the evening star.
(Lines written in The Lord Mayor’s Chapel, Bristol, on the afternoon of the 10th of November 2018, at a concert to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War.)
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High in the glowing stained-glass above the altar, I saw the shadows of newly arrived birds outside on the ancient tracery; And I thought that it was as if in their freedom they had come to listen to the songs and poems commemorating the fallen. Like dark winged spirits they had come; And how still they were now as those bitter psalms echoed in the consecrated air.
Driven drowsy by that most sweet indulgence; Under the glowing canopy, golden as a halo, We lay overcome by an indecent beauty. A perfumed zephyr crept discreetly through our chamber, Fluttering the veils of vermillion above the heavy damask And caressing the baroque marble like a dancing innocent; And wafting on its movement, I thought I could just discern The soft beating of the tethered gondolas, Gently riding at ease in the plashing night.
Paul Carpenter - Poet 