Part 29 (1/2)

To Hampton Court, they were nearly sunstruck.

She with her neck bared in a page-boy cut, He all dreamy anyhow, wild for her But pretending to be a thousand miles away, Studying the boat's wake in the water.

And here are the photographs. Head to one side, In her sleeveless blouse, one bare shoulder high And one arm loose, a bird with a dropped wing Surprised in cover. He looks at you straight, a.s.sailable, enamoured, full of vows, Young dauphin in the once-upon-a-time.

And next the lowish red-brick Tudor frontage.

No more photographs, however, now We are present there as the smell of gra.s.s And suntan oil, standing like their sixth sense Behind them at the entrance to the maze, Heartbroken for no reason, willing them To dare it to the centre they are lost for ...

Instead, like reflections staggered through warped gla.s.s, They reappear as in a black and white Old grainy newsreel, where their pleasure-boat Goes back spotlit across sunken bridges And they alone are borne downstream unscathed, Between mud banks where the wounded rave all night At flameless blasts and echoless gunfire In all of which is ominously figured Their free pa.s.sage through historic times, Like a silk train being brushed across a leper Or the safe conduct of two royal favourites, Unhindered and resented and bright-eyed.

So let them keep a tally of themselves And be accountable when called upon For although by every golden mean their lot Is fair and due, pleas will be allowed Against every right and t.i.tle vested in them (And in a court where mere innocuousness Has never gained approval or acquittal.) Wheels within Wheels

I.

The first real grip I ever got on things Was when I learned the art of pedalling (By hand) a bike turned upside down, and drove Its back wheel preternaturally fast.

I loved the disappearance of the spokes, The way the s.p.a.ce between the hub and rim Hummed with transparency. If you threw A potato into it, the hooped air Spun mush and drizzle back into your face; If you touched it with a straw, the straw frittered.

Something about the way those pedal treads Worked very palpably at first against you And then began to sweep your hand ahead Into a new momentum that all entered me Like an access of free power, as if belief Caught up and spun the objects of belief In an orbit coterminous with longing.

II.

But enough was not enough. Who ever saw The limit in the given anyhow?

In fields beyond our house there was a well ('The well' we called it. It was more a hole With water in it, with small hawthorn trees On one side, and a muddy, dungy ooze On the other, all tramped through by cattle).

I loved that too. I loved the turbid smell, The sump-life of the place like old chain oil.

And there, next thing, I brought my bicycle.

I stood its saddle and its handlebars Into the soft bottom, I touched the tyres To the water's surface, then turned the pedals Until like a mill-wheel pouring at the treadles (But here reversed and las.h.i.+ng a mare's tail) The world-refres.h.i.+ng and immersed back wheel Spun lace and dirt-suds there before my eyes And showered me in my own regenerate clays.

For weeks I made a nimbus of old glit.

Then the hub jammed, rims rusted, the chain snapped.

III.

Nothing rose to the occasion after that Until, in a circus ring, drumrolled and spotlit, Cowgirls wheeled in, each one immaculate At the still centre of a lariat.

Perpetuum mobile. Sheer pirouette.

Tumblers. Jongleurs. Ring-a-rosies. Stet!

Fosterling 'That heavy greenness fostered by water'

John Montague

At school I loved one picture's heavy greenness

Horizons rigged with windmills' arms and sails.

The millhouses' still outlines. Their in-placeness Still more in place when mirrored in ca.n.a.ls.

I can't remember not ever having known The immanent hydraulics of a land Of glar and glit and floods at dailigone.

My silting hope. My lowlands of the mind.

Heaviness of being. And poetry Sluggish in the doldrums of what happens.

Me waiting until I was nearly fifty To credit marvels. Like the tree-clock of tin cans The tinkers made. So long for air to brighten, Time to be dazzled and the heart to lighten.

from Squarings

Lightenings

i

s.h.i.+fting brilliancies. Then winter light In a doorway, and on the stone doorstep A beggar s.h.i.+vering in silhouette.

So the particular judgement might be set: Bare wallstead and a cold hearth rained into Bright puddle where the soul-free cloud-life roams.

And after the commanded journey, what?

Nothing magnificent, nothing unknown.

A gazing out from far away, alone.

And it is not particular at all, Just old truth dawning: there is no next-time-round.