Part 22 (2/2)

They snarled if the day was dark or too much chalk had made the vellum bland or too little left it oily.

Under the rumps of lettering they herded myopic angers.

Resentment seeded in the uncurling fernheads of their capitals.

Now and again I started up miles away and saw in my absence the sloped cursive of each back and felt them perfect themselves against me page by page.

Let them remember this not inconsiderable contribution to their jealous art.

Holly

It rained when it should have snowed.

When we went to gather holly the ditches were swimming, we were wet to the knees, our hands were all jags and water ran up our sleeves.

There should have been berries but the sprigs we brought into the house gleamed like smashed bottle-gla.s.s.

Now here I am, in a room that is decked with the red-berried, waxy-leafed stuff, and I almost forget what it's like to be wet to the skin or longing for snow.

I reach for a book like a doubter and want it to flare round my hand, a black-letter bush, a glittering s.h.i.+eld-wall cutting as holly and ice.

An Artist

I love the thought of his anger.

His obstinacy against the rock, his coercion of the substance from green apples.

The way he was a dog barking at the image of himself barking.

And his hatred of his own embrace of working as the only thing that worked the vulgarity of expecting ever grat.i.tude or admiration, which would mean a stealing from him.

The way his fort.i.tude held and hardened because he did what he knew.

His forehead like a hurled boule travelling unpainted s.p.a.ce behind the apple and behind the mountain.

The Old Icons

Why, when it was all over, did I hold on to them?

A patriot with folded arms in a shaft of light: the barred cell window and his sentenced face are the only bright spots in the little etching.

An oleograph of snowy hills, the outlawed priest's red vestments, with the redcoats toiling closer and the lookout coming like a fox across the gaps.

And the old committee of the sedition-mongers, so well turned out in their clasped brogues and waistcoats, the legend of their names an informer's list prepared by neat-cuffs, third from left, at rear, more compelling than the rest of them, pivoting an action that was his rack and others' ruin, the very rhythm of his name a register of dear-bought treacheries grown transparent now, and inestimable.

In Illo Tempore

The big missal splayed

and dangled silky ribbons of emerald and purple and watery white.

Intransitively we would a.s.sist, confess, receive. The verbs a.s.sumed us. We adored.

And we lifted our eyes to the nouns.

Altar-stone was dawn and monstrance noon, the word 'rubric' itself a bloodshot sunset.

Now I live by a famous strand where seabirds cry in the small hours like incredible souls and even the range wall of the promenade that I press down on for conviction hardly tempts me to credit it.

On the Road

The road ahead

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