Small Things

Small Things

  Jonathan Barnes

  Copyright 2012 by Jonathan Barnes

  SCRIBE

 

  To begin with confession:

  this love affair

  with my own pen.

  How could I not adore

  this rapier tip

  that scores the page?

  This roving point

  that moves in unison

  with my own thoughts?

  With one quick scratch

  what did not live

  is given flesh,

  and lies there

  on the page

  in fossil form

  for those who follow.

  Consider:

  lamplight, murmur, leaves, a bird.

  As each word rises off the page

  it flares,

  each like a struck match

  in an unlit cave,

  and has its brief life

  full-lived, fleshed,

  a taste inside the mouth

  as full as summer.

  My pen,

  my noble scribe,

  who lays down good and bad

  with equanimity,

  who never judges nor extols,

  allows me at the least

  to farm the words

  which move the mind,

  to reach beyond

  my own arm's length,

  and at the best

  to lay those perfect footprints

  in the sand.

  THE BLUE DAY

  Today I long for the gentlest of sounds:

  the voice of a piano from another room;

  a bee, after leaving its swaying flower,

  passing me by in the afternoon.

  These things remind me that the world

  Is composed of others’ lives, and that

  packed together like the stems of ripe wheat,

  there is only the solace of a peaceful mind.

  In through my ears comes the clear blue day,

  where the sunshine unclenches the knotted leaves.

  Nothing is quieter than the coasting clouds

  till the woodpecker hammers in the silent wood.

  I have searched for sanctuary

  In uncertain places, and found it in streams

  where the green water slides

  with the sound of a jug perpetually pouring.

  LARK SONG

  Man has always

  envied larks;

  their voices,

  far too full

  of jubilation,

  travel through

  an afternoon

  like whispered words,

  and leave man rooted

  in the soil

  as dull as rocks.

  But man is hunger,

  and to win the day

  he hunted larks

  with mirrors

  planted in the soil

  like stars.

  The innocent

  made easy meat;

  their flesh

  became his own

  as blood absorbed it.

  But their song

  of life

  he could not keep,

  for as with joy

  or love or art,

  the fist

  destroys it.

  THE URGE

  The way there

  is the narrowest road I know,

  perhaps no wider than a single word,

  and the journey is a lonesome one.

  Those who persist

  discover the road goes on and on.

  It does not return.

  It affords no rest.

  There is no reward

  for those who travel it,

  beyond the virtue

  of moving on.

  A MATTER OF DEGREE

  He is no different from the rest;

  like every man who ever lived,

  he must have water.

  Each day he drinks, and takes his quota,

  oblivious or otherwise to the constant duties

  of his kidneys year on year.

  The chemistry of nerves and brain

  depend upon the longing of this cells

  for water.

  He dreams of it: the seas, the rivers,

  placid lakes, the rain-soaked moss

  and summer showers, the clink of ice,

  his cleansing bath, even the lush

  abundance of moist leaves.

  He thirsts, and his thirst is that

  of all mankind.

  He is bound by it, like gravity,

  by the laws of physics, the story

  of creation.

  His body knows, if he does not,

  that lacking it, he is but dust

  and minerals on a desert floor.

  And yet one day, at leisure

  in a shallow pool, he drowns.

  FROM THE HILL

  The sky

  took its shape

  from the sound

  of bells.

  They rang

  with the blue light

  of evening

  slanting into

  the sullen pines.

  They rang

  with the voice

  of five hundred years

  and all that

  had passed there.

  They rang

  till the barley

  grew still

  in the fields,

  and went on

  ringing,

  the incessant

  solemn

  monotony

  of bells,

  shaping the shadows

  on the hill,

  and the one

  who watched there.

  ORANGES

  They come from the south,

  arriving like migrating birds,

  bringing locked in humid flesh

  a flavour bright as the songs

  and the sunshine of their land.

  To hold one is to have at one’s command

  a teeming world of succulence

  and colour, a tiny planet

  divided into seas and waterfalls

  of sweetness as sharp as brittle glass.

  Nowhere in the realm of man is anything

  so clear as citrus, painful almost

  in its vibrancy and sting of life.

  The orange fell from heaven, bearing in

  its bounty, keys with which

  to unlock daylight in our dark.

  MOONLIGHT

  Unannounced

  and quiet as snow the moonlight comes.

  Over the resting land it finds its way,

  and paints the pastures and the towns

  with colours which we give no names.

  Serenely still

  or racing through the wind-borne clouds,

  its stealthy light seeps into us

  and quenches there a thirst we did not know.

  We turn our heads, but the moon remains.

  THE MEETING

  How did they spend

  those final hours?

  Did they, as I had,

  simply watch the road unwind

  like tape laid out across the fields?

  That day – benign and softened by the sun –

  had made it easy to believe

  that life was fine.

  I like to think they’d spoken kindly,

  laughed and held each other’s hands,

  but had they bickered

  or complained, or felt resentment

  for some lack, it’s all the same;

  the road must end.

  I came upon them in their tomb,

  their sepulchre of steel,

  boxed in and crushed beneath a wagon

  weighing tons.

  The f
lames had died,

  the scorched earth round the wreckage

  marking out the spot

  like punctuation on the land.

  Not for me the phone calls and the tears,

  the long transition into different lives

  and states of being. No.

  I had been blessed, that day at least,

  and given all life has to give:

  the chance for more.

  SNOW

  Today

  the world

  must be redrawn;

  snowflakes

  have settled

  white on white

  and wiped away

  the green markings

  of the land.

  Today

  birds labour

  through pale sharp air.

  Sound

  has departed

  into the earth,

  drawn down softly

  amongst the roots,

  the slumbering seed,

  the unimaginable dream

  of summer.

  Darkness too

  has bled away,

  drained from the shadows

  beneath the trees.

  The land and the sky

  are sewn together.

  Only my feet

  continue their racket,

  those noisy companions

  punching their imprints

  into the snow.

  Alone

  I trudge the barren glare,

  a crawling dot

  on a bleached

  white page.

  I am

  the heartbeat

  in the ice,

  the frosted breath,

  the striving pulse,

  for in this pitiless well

  of winter

  I am the living.

  WIND AND ROSES

  The wind-tossed garden,

  walled, entire, and restless

  as a great green sea,

  is paradise disturbed,

  shaken by the testing air

  to find what lives

  and how it’s fastened

  to the world.

  I too am part,

  my hair like grass

  examined by

  the surging tides.

  I listen to what

  makes me listen,

  search the turmoil

  of the trees

  to find my

  own pulse there.

  I am alive.

  I am alive

  in wind and roses

  under the burgeoning sky.

  JUDGEMENT

  From fire to water

  and to earth,

  we need it all.

  If man could choose

  he’d build a hell,

  not because

  he’d wish it so,

  but thinking that

  he knows what’s best

  he’d disregard

  the vital grit

  that makes the pearl.

  So tell me,

  is it dirt or soil?

  Man knows the difference,

  and only man.

  MIRROR

  There is something of the moon in mirrors,

  silvered and unfathomable,

  a place of cold hard mineral and dreams.

  No arm was ever long enough

  to reach that land beyond the glass.

  No winds blow there,

  no sunshine warms, no showers fall,

  no trees, no living thing performs.

  That world that you are looking at

  does not exist.

  Yet again and again our eyes return.

  How ardently we long for those lost questions

  that the moon and mirrors must retain.

  THE OLD PLACE

  Before you

  there were many generations.

  My doors

  have opened and closed

  on a multitude.

  A throng of voices

  have argued and sung,

  wept and whispered

  inside my walls.

  There were young and old

  each acting out

  their measure of life,

  each finding in me

  that private retreat

  from the scrutiny of eyes.

  At night they slept

  with my arms around them,

  and peace overtook them.

  They valued my care.

  They may even have loved me.

  But I never belonged to them.

  Then you arrived

  with your tools

  and your noise.

  My rafters and joists

  were eased and altered

  and light reached into me

  where darkness had been.

  I heard your tread

  on my stairs all day.

  You came and went

  like the passage of the sun

  and I came to know you.

  But I was never yours.

  Now, silent once more,

  my rooms are filled only

  with dust and shadows.

  Ivy reaches across my panes.

  A green gloom invades me.

  But soon more will come,

  and I shall bloom

  once again

  in another summer.

  Laughter and tears

  will spill into my interior

  and I shall hear their voices

  like the boom of waves.

  I shall be reborn,

  and the life of others

  will flood me with meaning.

  In time they too

  may come to love me.

  But they shall never possess me.

  ICARUS

  It died alone –

  the tiny bird

  not yet a fledgling –

  crashed like Icarus,

  its wings too feeble

  and unformed

  to save it from

  the hard cold earth.

  Its lumpen body, clumsy,

  pink and luminous as wax,

  was laid on gentle leaves

  and petals brought down

  by the storm,

  as if displayed

  for mourners who might come.

  But only I would witness it,

  the pity and the pitiless

  that makes this world.

  I stood and watched it

  for some time – this voice

  that never would be heard –

  and did the only thing I could:

  remembered it.

  PHOTOGRAPH

  It tumbled from a dusty book –

  this captive from a dimming world

  in black and white.

  A man is standing on a bridge,

  intent on crossing, though for forty years

  he has not moved.

  All history is stopped. All breath

  and being is locked immobile

  in a piece of paper microns thick.

  The figure – lean, dark-haired –

  is trapped inside its small eternity,

  an insect in an amber stone.

  And there it lies, cut from the space

  between bright molecules, an image

  like an old coat left to hang.

  And yet it resonates down all those years,

  for he is me, his form the shape

  of every echo, every nerve that ever rang.

  Each thought, belief, sensation, taste,

  was given birth inside that outline –

  black and white – which stands

  and waits perpetually in silent air.

  AUTUMN PIECE

  October’s call:

  a cello

  spilling into

  mournful air

  its soft

  brown voice.

  The odour

  of things past

  settles in us,

  and we lean

  towards the e
vening

  made of orange

  flame and

  cool blue glass.

  Now,

  now we recall

  the music

  of the bees

  and hot wild

  perfume.

  But the leaves

  pour down,

  and we cannot stay.

  The dark earth

  bares itself,

  and we – frail beings –

  must creep into

  the long dark night,

  and hope for stars.

  BENEATH THE TREES

  What kind of comradeship was this:

  this boy-shaped shadow in the trees?

  What form of comfort did he draw

  from those deep roots: the elm, the beech?

  Year after year the seasons were at work

  in the wood. Bees were distributed

  amongst sweet blossom, and at night

  the stars sat perched in the branches.

  He wanted it to be like love,

  this honest passion, simple as the

  colour green. And it was so, for

  where men trod was not so true.

  Inside his bones the language of the leaves

  was heard: an ancient voice.

  Beneath the boughs he felt their great hearts

  Pulsing into patient lands.

  IN UTERO

  I came from the deep,

  from the night-deep nursery

  of the undreamed,

  cradling inside me

  a dark star of love.

  A river runs through me.

  An ocean of tides

  beats in my ears.

  Soon I shall know

  the vision of air;

  my coral bones brace

  against the clamour.

  I shall come.

  I shall be.

  Steeped in my moon-dark

  cell of water,

  I am growing the seed

  that will become my heart.

  BRIGHTON SONG

  I came from the station with its slamming of doors,

  with its drumming of diesels as they made ready,

  and I headed off down the long straight hill,

  for I longed to be close to the deep dark sea.

  The lampposts lit my way to the shoreline,

  handing me on like a chain all the way.

  Their sour light showed me the streets of the city,

  but it could not uncover the deep dark sea.

  Then came the zest of salt from the blackness,

  and the suck and hiss of surf on the strand,

  and all the works of man were as nothing

  to the sound and the smell of the deep dark sea.

  I had come at last to the final barrier,

  where the stones of the beach and the road converge,

  and I filled my lungs and my head and my heart

  with the size of the life of the deep dark sea.

  DREAM WOMAN

  How glorious

  to breathe your