WHAT LIES BENEATH

The recent news that the dramatic shrinkage of water levels at a reservoir in Southern Mexico have uncovered a 400-year old church built by Spanish colonisers prompted me to dig out this old poem featuring a submerged village.  
In Britain there are a number of valleys that have been commandeered to facilitate the creation of reservoirs and the abandoned habitations beneath their still waters intrigue me, as does the surreal image below.  

  

SUBMERGED

Beneath unclouded summer skies
a narrow, flooded valley lies.
Beneath the water surface, still,
deep, deep in silent, icy chill,
streets and houses stand arranged,
submerged but otherwise unchanged
since every house was occupied,
before the living village died.

Now doors stand open, currents creep
through gaping windows, fathoms deep;
like pennants waving, currents thread
through silent houses of the dead;
now empty rooms wait as they must,
where fishes move in shoals, like dust,
past walls and gables, mountain sheer,
and all is silent, silent here.

The light is most peculiar where
it fills this place, devoid of air.
Along one subterranean street,
where water-weed and granite meet,
a great fish moves, majestic, slow,
dispersing smaller fry below:
with silver fin, unloving eye
and scales like armour, passing by.

Its stately movement, in the deep,
recalls a human mind asleep:
a dreamer in that precious land
we love, but do not understand.

Click here for media report and images of the drowned church at Nezahualoyotl, Mexico.

POETS' CORNER

Documentaries of two great Twentieth Century poets recently featured on BBC television and both films are still available on BBC iplayer.
For those unfamiliar with iplayer, it's a catch-up service easily accessed through a computer, enabling you to view selected BBC programmes for several weeks after they're first broadcast.
The life and works of former Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes and the enigmatic genius, Philip Larkin, were each examined with considerable insight in two very different documentaries.
Both provided a perceptive glimpse into the life and times that shaped the poet's work.
I recommend you seek them out while they're still available or simply click on one of the links below:-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06j7pkl/ted-hughes-stronger-than-death

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06hhlyl/return-to-larkinland










It’s good to see that the BBC continues to champion verse and the work of poets in an age where so many other arts forms are vying for media attention. 
Here on the island, where our newspapers and magazines are notoriously unsupportive of poetry, BBC Radio Guernsey continues to provide a showcase for local poets, notably via their popular morning radio show hosted daily by Jenny Kendal-Tobias.  

 

THE BURROWERS

The last vestiges of Indian Summer have vanished from the island and Guernsey is looking decidedly autumnal.
Our absence of woodland makes this an unspectacular season and a fitting prelude to the long grey winter that will shortly come creeping round the corner like an old bedraggled cat.
Time for Jane and I, warm-weather creatures that we are, to gather pullovers about us, turn on the central heating, burrow into a warm blanket of books and hibernate till spring.
Here’s a short poem to match the season.


 
END OF THE AFFAIR

The heating gets switched on;
sandals build nests in the boot-box;
the old straw hat sleeps, purring,
on the shelf where, overnight,
hats become cats;
jumpers sidle out
like pale young vampires in early dark.

The game’s up.

Summer’s finally cleared off somewhere else
as you always knew it would:
a false friend, 
a good lover gone bad.

TALKING PICTURES

I've just returned from a visit to Belfast, a city which, when I left it twenty-something years ago, was enmeshed in strife and despondency.
Nowadays, post-Troubles, the area is a vibrant and dynamic hub with much to offer in terms of craft and culture.
My daughter and I visited the Cathedral Quarter and were greatly impressed by the many examples of public art, not least the amazing wall murals, one of which is pictured below.
(Lest there be any confusion, I'm the person sitting on the only three-dimensional object in the picture, a red bench.) 

Photo by Carolynn Forster 2015

Another wall in the same courtyard is adorned with images of a group of famous Ulstermen.
In a massive, if unlikely, gathering, C S Lewis rubs shoulders with Kenneth Branagh, Seamus Heaney, George Best, Van Morrison, Liam Neeson, John Hewitt, Rory McIlroy, Brian Friel and many others, while another gable -end depicts scenes from Belfast Shipyard where the world famous liner Titanic was built.
I particularly liked one corner where muralists have elected to display the well-known local rhyme, The Ballad of William Bloat.
The ballad is a classic example of Ulster black humour, dark and rich as a pint of Guinness.  

Photo by Carolynn Forster 2015

The Ballad of William Bloat – Raymond Calvert

In a mean abode on the Shankill Road
Lived a man named William Bloat;
He had a wife, the curse of his life,
Who continually got his goat.
So one day at dawn, with her nightdress on
He cut her bloody throat.

With a razor gash he settled her hash
Oh never was crime so quick
But the drip drip drip on the pillowslip 
Of her lifeblood made him sick.
And the pool of gore on the bedroom floor
Grew clotted and cold and thick.

And yet he was glad he had done what he had
When she lay there stiff and still
But a sudden awe of the angry law
Struck his heart with an icy chill.
So to finish the fun so well begun
He resolved himself to kill.

He took the sheet from the wife’s cold feet
And twisted it into a rope
And he hanged himself from the pantry shelf,
‘Twas an easy end, let’s hope.
In the face of death with his latest breath
He solemnly cursed the Pope.

But the strangest turn to the whole concern
Is only just beginning.
He went to Hell but his wife got well
And she’s still alive and sinning.
For the razor blade was German made
But the sheet was Belfast linen.

Click here: Famous Ulstermen

HOSE WERE THE DAYS

As we slip inexorably into Autumn, let’s pause to remember the wondrous days of summer: both summer past and summer long ago.

HOSEPIPE

We scattered, screaming, laughing too,
not really wanting to escape
the chill, refreshing water spray,
like dazzling rain, the hosepipe threw.
My brother giggled like an ape:
in bathing togs, we danced away,
then, panting, watched the water spew.
With Father, we would laugh and jape
while summer days drifted away
and we, like watered lupins, grew.

IN THE GARDEN

There’s much to be said for manual labour, and high among its virtues is the role it plays as an antidote to writing, which is, by its very nature, sedentary.
Anyone who has a garden will be familiar with the physical chores that accompany the changing seasons and it’s my good fortune to still have the energy and enthusiasm to engage in most of them.
My wife, Jane, is the horticulturalist in our home and I function as her assistant, providing brute force when required.
Our garden is largely her creation, a credit to her vision and expertise and a wonderfully peaceful retreat.
Now and again it inspires a poem. 

LADDER

A steel ladder spears the old tree,
a centurion’s silver blade
driven up through green foliage.

No mercy cut this; husbandry
requires minor amputations.

We choose gnarled branches, lop and saw.

One holds the ladder while, above,
the other cuts and passes down
dead limbs,

like ancient manuscripts

with hieroglyphs of bird and bone. 



Click here for Van Morrison singing In The Garden

OLD GHOSTS

I’m about to make a return visit to Northern Ireland, home of my childhood and, as always on such occasions, ghosts await me.
Looking back on the Nineteen-Fifties, there can be no doubt that children enjoyed an innocence and freedom denied to youngsters today.
In many ways my formative years were idyllic ones but, in the Calvinist environment of Fifties Ulster, even the most innocuous activities held the potential for condemnation by those stern Presbyterian adults who policed our childish world.  

 

JUDGEMENT

They taught me to imagine it
as standing in some lofty hall
while some austere, almighty Judge
would stare at jottings on the chit
I’d brought with me: a hasty scrawl
of  awkward facts I couldn’t fudge,
then, with abrupt, dismissive ire,
condemn me to eternal fire.

I’ve spent my life unlearning things:
discovering that black was white
and vice versa; that we don’t get
happy-ever-after endings;
that things don’t always turn out right;
but somehow this grim childhood threat,
imposed on me like Holy Writ,
won’t be unlearned: I’m stuck with it.