{"id":117,"date":"2007-08-13T10:37:22","date_gmt":"2007-08-13T17:37:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/?page_id=117"},"modified":"2023-10-02T11:26:40","modified_gmt":"2023-10-02T10:26:40","slug":"farm-hands-radio","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/?page_id=117","title":{"rendered":"Farm-Hand’s Radio – 1996-2000"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"flin.jpg\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

FARM HAND’S RADIO<\/strong><\/p>\n

Poems 1996 – 2000 OXFORD<\/p>\n

dedicated to Ivo Charles Belcher (1932-2004)<\/em><\/p>\n

THE CLOUD FACTORY<\/strong><\/p>\n

Also available as a separate pdf download click Cloudfactory link:
\nCLOUDFACTORY<\/a><\/p>\n

1. The Plough Reversed
\n2. The Spanish Squirrel
\n3. Sea Ravens
\n4. The Stone Code
\n5. Farmer’s Lung
\n6. Turners
\n7. The Bird Painter
\n8. The Shadow Book
\n9. Flickering Fields
\n10. Canals
\n11. Sepia
\n12. The White Cross
\n13. The Glass World of The Blashkas
\n14. The Cloud Factory<\/p>\n

FARM HAND’S RADIO<\/strong><\/p>\n

15. Zepaniah Grace’s Dreams 1-3
\n16. St. Birinus
\n17. Splitting Logs
\n18. A Fence Down
\n19. The Fairground Prize
\n20. The Cattle Wagon
\n21. White Fish, buy viagra<\/a> July 1967
\n22. The Farm-hand’s Radio
\n23. Bottled land
\n24. Black Barns
\n25. The Grain Bin
\n26. The Green Track
\n27. The Peasant Poet’s Grave
\n28. Flint Fields
\n29. Foxe’s Barn<\/p>\n

SPANISH CHRONICLES<\/strong><\/p>\n

30. The Given Ground
\n31. Black Bulls
\n32. Sueno
\n33. Bridge of Stone
\n34. Pigeon Houses<\/p>\n

SKELETON AT THE PLOUGH<\/strong><\/p>\n

35. Oral Histories
\n36. The Chained Book
\n37. Skeleton at the Plough
\n38. The Clearing Houses
\n39. Tracks
\n40. Bear Pit
\n41. Straw Parliament
\n42. Blank Canvas
\n43. Hired Man
\n44. Firebirds<\/p>\n

THE CLOUD FACTORY<\/strong><\/p>\n

THE PLOUGH REVERSED<\/p>\n

It is a strange path we are taking,
\nnot quite chosen, in this lurching coach.
\nA path between glens, burns, marshland
\nand wooded highland sown for profit.
\nWe slide to rest on forecourt tarmac.<\/p>\n

Half asleep I awoke to bright stars
\nand Aussie voices discussing the big dipper.
\nA world upside-down hung in the air
\nas frost built upon fern and dock-leaf.
\nPennine hills blacked out the horizon.<\/p>\n

Sleeping limbs fidgety
\nthe motorway dragged us to London.
\nMidland cities slid by, blurs of neon
\nabove industrial units shut for Christmas.
\nCanals lidded with ice, hospitals steaming.<\/p>\n

The glare of each conurbation erasing stars
\nI sat and waited for each clear dark.
\nThe plough faded into dawn and London,
\na web of sodium laid across the estuary
\nglowing like track-side cinders.<\/p>\n

Somewhere north between fizzing pylons
\nand cooling-towers feathered with steam
\nI’d stepped out of the coach
\nand stared at a sea of frosted tarmac,
\nislands of shattered ice on brigand charts.<\/p>\n

THE SPANISH SQUIRREL<\/p>\n

Tributaries of Ebro splash through pines,
\nsand-filled water tumbling by roots
\nas winter sunlight, bright as an English spring,
\ndazzles through the Parque Grande fountains.<\/p>\n

Re-treading your past like a pond-skater,
\nspinning around your city, dizzy with language,
\nI skitter past a bronze statue
\nof an open-mouthed singer I’ve never heard of.<\/p>\n

Grass recovering from the last scorching summer
\nit is still the greenest space in your parched birthplace.
\nSpawned amidst a tangle of Thames Valley woods
\nwhere even in summer drenched fern steams<\/p>\n

I find it hard to take in this dryness.
\nA dust-blown treelessness that surrounds us.
\nBut amidst the burning sands and buckling rails
\nthe white tracks of the possible extend links<\/p>\n

that spread below our circling plane
\nlike cow-spittle dripping away from the water-trough.
\nBelow us sheep and goats cloud remote paths
\nand baking lorries glint on the auto-pista.<\/p>\n

From up here the green of the river-plain
\nis as snicked and trim as any suburban privet.
\nBeyond the treeless desert and mountains
\nI think of that squirrel, caught mid-air forever,
\nnever landing.<\/p>\n

(Fable has it that Spain was once so densely wooded that
\na squirrel could cross the country jumping from tree to tree.)<\/em><\/p>\n

SEA RAVENS<\/p>\n

Climbing a shale and pine scarp
\nmid-afternoon. Loch Doon, July 1986,
\ngrey clouds brimming on quarried peaks,
\nI left our party skimming stones<\/p>\n

and plunged upward, breeze flicking
\ndust across rock, fern and bramble.
\nA water-smooth branch from the shore
\nhelping me to balance.<\/p>\n

My boots slid on pine-needles
\nat a plantation’s eastern limit.
\nBeyond me a thousand acres of pine
\nlaid out like a bed of nails.<\/p>\n

Two cormorants basking on a ruined tower
\nmid-loch took fright, flapped northwards
\nas jets screeched across choppy water,
\nrehearsing for a war un-scripted, un-run.<\/p>\n

The stick I kept, took south to England
\nwhere it lay in my dad’s garage
\nthrough another war over oil and borders
\nthen it crackled to ash, one 5th of November<\/p>\n

THE STONE CODE<\/p>\n

A flood plain half-wild, half mown
\nbetween timber barns and flint walls.
\nPlaces where I found violets when small.
\nA field of headstones, iron crosses,
\n(poor copies of a gentry’s Celtic fashion)
\nis still dew-damp with river-mist.<\/p>\n

We linger and talk
\nas we visit stone after stone
\ncommemorating Belchers and Didcocks
\nas if the whole village was only two families
\nand no others had been born,
\nworked or died here.<\/p>\n

Some questions I never ask.
\nThe church register remains blank
\nwhere my grandfather’s name should be.
\nWe stand in a rich harvest of names
\nstrung across the meadow like bales.
\nCut flowers wilt in the shadows.<\/p>\n

By a cathedral in Spain I paused
\nto watch students brushing dust
\nfrom row upon row of unearthed skeletons.
\nThe compressed bones of medieval monks.
\nFragments of skull, splinters of bone,
\ndelicate as a book of pressed flowers.<\/p>\n

No markers, discovered by chance
\nin a restoration project,
\nnow each was being carefully disinterred
\nand age, position, rank plotted.
\nHere my father and I and inscriptions
\nthat reveal nothing.
\nFARMER’S LUNG<\/p>\n

A cracked sepia print of a harvest gang,
\npre-war, a steam-engine behind.
\nFive men posing for a last shot.
\nBehind them the fields of my youth.
\nA football-pitch of daisies buckling in heat,
\nas molten tar ebbs and flows,
\nsizzling across layers of dust, grain
\nand straw before condensing to highway.<\/p>\n

In the Machine-Man Inn candles spit,
\nfroth slides down glinting glass,
\nhard boots clack clay tiles.
\nIrish and Geordie accents sing
\nas brass darts clatter double 19
\nand a guest stumbles to a creaking bed.
\nMoonlit sheets shine like chalk paths.
\nWater in jug and bowl shivers.<\/p>\n

June 1974. A dappled football twirls,
\nrebounds from scuffed shoes
\nas I thwack it against a barn door.
\nIt bobbles away down a patched road
\nbetween overgrown verges, thickets of bramble.
\nThunder clouds blacken the downs.
\nBarn empty, thatch sodden,
\nrain glints on a rusted harrow.<\/p>\n

Beyond the mown pitch a new sewer-works
\nand a cardiganed figure dragging washing in.
\nOn both sides of the river people working
\nand my grandad carrying bales to cattle
\nas workmen remove old signposts.
\nA region changing boundaries, losing markers.
\nI lever the barn door open with a stick
\npeer into a stale dark silence.
\nEaster 1996. A return. Barns revamped as homes.
\nThe farm is now converted to a joinery,
\nat least not another craft centre or pottery.
\nMy dad and the farmer, recently retired,
\ndiscuss death as sawdust speckles their shoes.
\nThe farmer wheezes, points at his old fields
\nsuggesting “a good dose of chemical’s what’s needed’
\nfor the new nature-reserve’s crop of mouldering wheat.<\/p>\n

I have abandoned this village, followed tracks north
\non the back of mass education, a ‘booming- economy.
\nThat old world of cattle-sheds and straw ricks
\nfades in the mirror, a shoe shed for better pay.
\nBut some nights that barn dark returns to haunt me.
\nRats screech, hares bleed, the barns canker spreads
\nto bronchi, leaf and stem, culled meat.
\nMaggots drip from skulls swinging in the trees.<\/p>\n

*(*0ld Thames anglers method of pre-baiting a river to attract fish.)<\/em><\/p>\n

TURNERS<\/p>\n

My dad a boy, feet raised, pedals spinning,
\nsplashing along a road under water,
\nsix inches of Thames mud and leaves
\nfrothing around his stainless rims.<\/p>\n

Banks burst, road become river
\nhe slices a line toward a brick bridge
\nlapped by swollen torrents.
\nA broil of water sweeping south from Oxford.<\/p>\n

The pike, belly-up, wriggling on tarmac
\ngleams as white as his choir-boy cassock
\nas he clips its tail, skids to rest
\nand toe-pokes it toward deeper water.<\/p>\n

Between tank-traps and crumbling fences
\nthat road is still there, a commuter rat-run.
\nThe astonishment has faded, the water calm,
\nconfined by weir, lock, regulation.<\/p>\n

Except one May morning, river misty,
\nwhen I saw a white horse standing there
\nhalf-submerged beneath willows
\nwhilst my dad, eyes on the road, missed it.<\/p>\n

The picture stays, sparkles still
\nlike that fish he saw.
\nSomehow signalling another path
\nbeyond chalk tracks rising to meet cloud.<\/p>\n

Every winter trees slide into the flood,
\nspin toward the sea, branches churning silt.
\nBelow us chrome wheels spin too,
\nreflect nothing, spokes empty creels.<\/p>\n

THE BIRD PAINTER<\/p>\n

A breeze ruffling the neck feathers,
\nhead and beak disjointed
\nby the sudden impact,
\nthe bird rests on the artist’s table.<\/p>\n

Having battered my way to 30
\nand an uneasy alliance with a press
\nI find myself sat in the shadows
\namongst printer’s ink and type<\/p>\n

attempting to capture its likeness.
\nLaid flat, barely six inches long,
\nthe vibrant green of its plumage
\nbright as any museum specimen,<\/p>\n

I scrape with pencil and rubber
\nat an outline on white paper.
\nBeyond the silence of the converted stable
\nwind thrashes the chestnuts<\/p>\n

and lorries spill grain as they trundle
\na harvest away to the malt-house.
\nI stare out at the patio window
\nwhere this bird’s last image was taken<\/p>\n

one split second before impact.
\nA perfect shot, Audobon’s negative.
\nAbove me the printer’s colour chart sang,
\nhues flaring like a chest of hummingbirds.<\/p>\n

I struggle to hold a likeness
\nas fake Bewick’s flutter on the wall.
\nMy heart is not in it, the sun setting,
\nI leave the drawings, latch the door.<\/p>\n

As I scoot my bike up the gravel path
\nI turn and look at the glass plate
\nand imagine that bird’s last fatal attempt
\nto smash through its own image.<\/p>\n

Instead of clear blue sky
\nit slithered into a reality of dust and brick.
\nI ended up back in my father’s truck
\nchopping away time in a trench.<\/p>\n

I left Oxfordshire, left pencil and paper behind
\nveered north, washed out my brushes
\nand now, five years later, return
\nmind sharpened, feathers bristling<\/p>\n

to stab again at that still warm heart
\nof a country I only saw reflected
\nin a series of mirrors as I left it behind.
\nThat woodpecker,my totem, re-animated<\/p>\n

drills through the barren years,
\nall the misconceptions,to a clear,bright beginning.
\nI see again the roadside bushes seething
\nwith a harvest of berries, a thousand Redwings.<\/p>\n

THE SHADOW BOOK<\/p>\n

In the ivied, wasp-hollow webbed
\nspace between hoe and net
\nspilt the damp, yellow-stained
\npages of the home encylopedia.<\/p>\n

The ‘big book’ that I pulled
\ndown on summer Sunday evenings
\nas bells tolled across the village
\nand my grandfather smoked,<\/p>\n

pigtails of white smoke
\ncircling the velvet lampshade
\nwhere flies buzzed
\nafter circuits of tea-stained saucers.<\/p>\n

I’d be leaning against the shed’s warm black tin
\nimitating diagrams.
\nFingers contorting to ‘get’ the ‘horse’s head’
\n(with eye) – the difficult part,<\/p>\n

or else the ‘rabbit’ or ‘spider’.
\nA hand’s shadow thrown by setting sun
\nacross corrugated tin wall
\nrippling like shadow on water.<\/p>\n

What has not crumbled or mouldered
\nhas been swept clean or replaced.
\nA memory of my sister echoes off tin
\nand chickens still scratch up dust.<\/p>\n

While we were playing other shadows
\ncrawled southward, domestic spats
\nmixed with landlord’s veiled threats
\nas wallflowers shivered and fumed.<\/p>\n

The black wallflowers flap and tremble
\nat the first sign of thunder.
\nIndoors phlegm catches
\nsomewhere in his sunburnt throat.<\/p>\n

The dog yawns, chain rasps the table.
\nSaliva dribbles on bare tiles
\nand only the clock ticking and a shadow
\ncreeping like a hand along the gable.
\nFLICKERING FIELDS<\/p>\n

Only now, windows open,
\ngulls toppling, swifts twirling,
\nagainst the blue sky
\ncan I see as clearly<\/p>\n

as a summer twenty years back
\nwhen gliders, motes of dust, hung above me
\nas I lay on daisied grass
\na bycycle wheel still spinning<\/p>\n

after the ride up the chalk track.
\nProbably still panting from the effort
\nto rise beyond estate, by-pass, garage
\nand the razor-wired nuclear perimeter gates<\/p>\n

to a vantage point, sun scorched chalk.
\nBeyond beech clumps a haze of smoke
\nand the faint rumble of trucks on rails.
\nThere a silence, flicker of pasture in breeze.<\/p>\n

Now, eyes tired, back aching
\nI daydream a release from the monotony of
\nnumbers littered across a computer screen
\nlike a hillside of baking pig-pens.<\/p>\n

Not born to this life of accounting
\nfor a stream of information
\nthat bobbles by like cans in water
\nor flickers like fences from a train,<\/p>\n

I lift my eyes to the window
\nas office blinds rattle me back into place.
\nThe daydream of field, chalk hill, poppies splinters
\nand I’m left with those swifts still soaring.<\/p>\n

Beyond this institution’s walls
\nI can feel the streams spate,
\nsense the ripple of tail feathers in a thermal,
\nbut here as papers flap lazily
\nI concentrate on two figures, soon I’ll be 3+8.<\/p>\n

CANALS
\n(for Norman McCaig)<\/em><\/p>\n

Pigeons jink in high air,
\nremote, perfect formations
\nsparkling in April sun<\/p>\n

as the streams seep
\nthrough reed-beds to the Thames
\nand a mason’s chisel chips<\/p>\n

hours away across the river.
\nWe walk through dew-wet clover
\ntoward a rickety bridge<\/p>\n

and stare down at
\na potter’s blue glaze of fish
\nand our own reflections.<\/p>\n

A lock wheel clanks
\nand froth spumes through timbers
\nlifting a barge skyward.<\/p>\n

The past floats back to me now
\nlifted like cornflowers
\nplucked from the field-side
\nthen buckling in our fists.<\/p>\n

Now a barge clangs
\nonto another level, between tenements,
\nsluggish water choked with weed.<\/p>\n

\"farmers.jpg\"
\nPhoto above shows Alfie ‘ Commie’ Filer and ‘Curly’ Didcock, Long Wittenham, Berkshire 1955 .’Curly’ was my step-grandfather’s brother.Archive photo from Reading University Agricultural Museum\u00c2\u00a0used as cover of ‘the Rural Life Birthday Book’ 1994.<\/em><\/h6>\n

SEPIA<\/p>\n

The way a cracked sump bleeds
\nfrom a tractor onto sacking
\nand the dust and straw sticks,<\/p>\n

that’s the way the real past
\nclings to these reassembled bricks
\nbrushed clean and relaid<\/p>\n

in neat patterns under trellis
\nwhere once pheasants hung,
\nblood trickling on mud.<\/p>\n

These words are a clearing
\nof the wheat from the chaff,
\nan attempt to see clearly<\/p>\n

chapped fingers, and inches of ice
\nlidding the horse-troughs
\nbeing smashed with bare hands.<\/p>\n

A past of blistered horse-flesh
\nflayed by leather straps,
\nmen head down hobbling through clay.<\/p>\n

Now that past has been sepia-tinted
\nadorns a flowery birthday-book
\nto sit on home-county bureau.<\/p>\n

Still harbouring illusions,
\nromantic horsemen at dawn,
\nlike the Victorian print you left me.<\/p>\n

Easier that image
\nthan to reflect on you bent double
\nstaggering through hail, hacking phlegm.<\/p>\n

Horses skidding on snow
\nchurning mud,straw,flint
\ninto a murky brown slush.<\/p>\n

THE WHITE CROSS<\/p>\n

Two and a half feet
\nof brilliant white stone,
\nit gleams, freshly laid
\nin an old family photo.<\/p>\n

The grass around it
\nstill seeded dirt,
\nthe inscription still sharp,
\ndays after it was chiselled.<\/p>\n

Now it is weathered
\nby rain and car-exhaust
\ntangled with briars
\ncobwebs and a tinge of mildew.<\/p>\n

Somewhere my step-greatgrandmother still weeps
\nfor the man it commemorates.
\nThis single white cross
\nstands for a body lost in Flanders.<\/p>\n

The only one for one man,
\nthe sole casualty of this small village.
\nThe last marker of a sorrowful
\nand vanished pastoral age.<\/p>\n

His bones have splintered
\nunder the raking of ploughshares
\non some featureless plain,
\nsomewhere that is not England.<\/p>\n

\"blas.jpg\"
\nTHE GLASS WORLD OF THE BLASCHKAS<\/p>\n

Frills of concentric glass
\nbillow and twirl from delicate fingers
\nand another Spanish ‘Medusa’
\nglints to life beneath a monocle.<\/p>\n

In a suburb of Dresden, behind blinds,
\ntwo brothers spin ‘Snake Locked Anemones’,
\n‘Trefoil Muzzlets’, and ‘Sand Pimplets’
\nonto desks polished to honey.<\/p>\n

Then their pirouette and dance
\nis shipped westward sealed in wood
\nto the Edinburgh Natural History Museum
\nwhere they lay in darkness 1944
\nas the sky above Dresden
\npulses with tentacles of fire.<\/p>\n

A baby already alight
\nis sucked from its mothers arms.
\nIt twirls and spins in the firestorm
\nbeneath a hundred quivering crosses.
\nThen it is gone.<\/p>\n

Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka made glass models
\nof jellyfish and other marine life for Dresden
\nNatural History Museum. Specimens are currently
\non display in Edinburgh Natural History Museum
\nand were purchased between 1866\/1913.
\nTHE CLOUD FACTORY<\/p>\n

Strange, to feel a country slip away,
\nas if a fault line was opening gently up
\nand sticks, feathers, stone walls and oaks
\ntumbling head over heels into the abyss.<\/p>\n

Half way down the motorway I felt the change.
\nWalls whitewashed or stone giving way to brick.
\nThen the faces,fairer,redder,less open
\nas if caught staring from behind net curtains.<\/p>\n

As the sun glinted across the lakes I breathed deeply
\nand plunged into the leafmold and chalky flint of England.
\nBehind me flakes of the Forth Bridge wet with dew
\nflapped and sailed out on the tide toward Norway.<\/p>\n

Our van groaned on the inclines then swept into Oxford
\nwhere you noticed that the trees were encased in brick walls
\nand that the river was slower and inaccessible.
\nI clung to the family ties that made an ugly town familiar.<\/p>\n

Lost in thought one evening passing the cooling towers
\nI glanced up into a rose-tinted Blake etching of clouds
\nthe steam engulfing the cold concrete in beautiful spirals.
\nThe flickering lights, vapours rising.<\/p>\n

I hold your hand and whisper, you look bewildered
\nfor this is the strangest and ugliest place you’ve been.
\nTrust me a little longer for I am casting a net into old water
\nand I cannot dredge up lost coins without this familiarity.<\/p>\n

When the wind whips water droplets from those towers
\nacross these parched fields and rows of lace-curtained houses
\nI am really dreaming of the might-have-been. These rusty oaks
\nbehind the Tesco car-park that haven’t even shed their leaves,<\/p>\n

this tepid pond covered with a layer of foam, these grey reeds,
\nsing with a cold air that only land so far from sea breathes.
\nThe land gulls know that there is no return from their journey
\nand that the harrow’s spirals are their new sea, corn their beach.<\/p>\n

Hardy remembered the dead sailors who returned to haunt the land
\nin the guise of gulls wheeling forever in the dawn.
\nNow I too wheel around my home ground, staring at the worn edge
\nof people and places from whence I once came.<\/p>\n

The lakes here are false, submerged gravel workings,
\nbut the geese and swans that jewel them each winter are real enough
\nand contain how many dead souls and strange wandering intuitions.
\nTrust me now, trust my homing instincts, I feel the cord rewinding.<\/p>\n

That cord looped around my neck at birth tight but not strangling.<\/p>\n

FARM HAND’S RADIO<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"crow.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Zephaniah Grace was a Shepherd and Photographer from
\nBlewbury,Berkshire who lived in the second half of the 19th Century.<\/em><\/p>\n

ZEPHANIAH GRACE’S FIRST DREAM<\/p>\n

I first started dreaming during the cold winter of ’43
\nAt first no-one in the village understood my ramblings. They blamed drink.<\/p>\n

I dreamt I saw wonderous carts with no horses to lead them
\nand huge flies that buzzed and shone like silver above the fields.<\/p>\n

Then I felt as if I was floating through the houses of the village.
\nPast the pound, the thatched walls and out onto the downs at dawn.<\/p>\n

I felt like a small animal, a rat or mole. I could feel my claws.
\nThen came the thunder and the chalk paths turned to milky sluices.I awoke.<\/p>\n

I am in fear for my life if this becomes known to the neighbours.
\nThey already fear me for my dabbling with the chemicals and machinery.<\/p>\n

They do not understand the flash of magnesium. The preparation of plates.
\nTo them the whole idea of photography is of some vile invention of Satan.<\/p>\n

I cannot blame them though for my dreaming is so real to me apparently
\nI can be heard across the street. Mrs Thompson has administered potions.<\/p>\n

She is the village quack and would not let me forego this foul ‘medicine’.
\nIt has not calmed me though and the dreams are becoming more frequent.<\/p>\n

ZEPHANIAH GRACE’S SECOND DREAM<\/p>\n

I awoke at three in the morning in a cold sweat, screaming.
\nThe woman across the road ran over brandishing a stick.<\/p>\n

I saw myself as a hare with gold fur dancing through the corn.
\nThen an infernal engine like those rail machines bore down on me.<\/p>\n

I was so disorientated I tried to fight off my neighbour
\nand only three men with strong arms could hold me like a sheaf.<\/p>\n

They told me I was shouting about witchcraft and half-crazed
\ntried to escape to the road where I was going to battle the machine.<\/p>\n

Even now I shudder at the thought of it and hear a high pitched whine
\nas if an animal had been trapped in its wheels.<\/p>\n

Now people in the village have started talking about me.
\nThey say I have a demon inside me with all my dreaming. I am deeply scared.<\/p>\n

Others have said it is because of the infernal trickery of my flashes
\nand all the other machinery of the photography. They say it is devilry.<\/p>\n

But I felt strong as that golden hare.Yesterday I saw one in the stubble.
\nI have tried to catch it with my camera but to no avail. I sleep ill.<\/p>\n

ZEPHANIAH GRACE’S THIRD DREAM<\/p>\n

Last night the torment began again and not even the medicine helped.
\nI was convinced I was a bird. A white crow wheeling over the fields.<\/p>\n

I found myself lying in the muddy street outside where I’d crawled.
\nI awoke with a knife and fork in my hand that I’d stabbed the door with.<\/p>\n

In the dream I’d been battling with a flurry of rats that surrounded me
\nbut I am scared to relate this to my neighbours. They talk of me.<\/p>\n

There seems to be no escape from these torments. I a cursed. Am I crazy?
\nYet still I feel a deep joy when I vanquish these enemies.<\/p>\n

In the village there has been much rejoicing of late. Two births.Prosperity.
\nNo-one can remember such a good harvest and even the miser smiled today.<\/p>\n

I will have to buy new clothes as my best were shredded in the night.
\nThe furniture is scratched and broken from my nightd^ne torments.<\/p>\n

Always the dream involves these silver engines and paths of gleaming tar.
\nLast night I dreamt I saw a huge building billowing smoke and fire.<\/p>\n

The golden hare reappeared yet I was not it. I am becoming confused.
\nI am beginning to believe that some righteous force is directing me.
\n( based on The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth
\nand Seventeenth Centuries by Carlo Ginzburg, Anne Tedeschi available from Amazon)<\/em><\/p>\n


\n<\/em>St. BIRINUS.<\/p>\n

Forking west across wet grassland,
\nhorse fences neat as stitching bind
\nthe downs into a fretwork pattern
\nof green and gold squares.In the gale hawthorn slaps tin
\ncorrugation, dew damp, now rain wet,
\nwith a snare-drum clatter
\nand the straw flicks off branchesflies up into the air, flecks the tractor.
\nHands red, wet, slipping on the wheel
\na farmer struggles up the rutted field
\ndriving the plough deep into fresh soil.<\/p>\n

I’m stationary, hair blown back by the gale
\nletting the rain wash into my eyes
\nuntil the tractor, field, barn dissolve
\nin a blur of wind and rain.<\/p>\n

I can taste salt, sea salt from west
\nblasted inland, cross Wiltshire,
\na fancy,but then again maybe not,
\nno stranger than St.Birinus preaching<\/p>\n

on that tumuli on the skyline.
\nPacing a roman track, gulping in the gale
\nas he defied these downland squalls
\nclutching the sodden wool to him<\/p>\n

and staring into a thousand miles of woodland
\nall gone now, sliced into rafters and beams
\nand the hulls of a thousand ships.
\nMe, a snotty ten year old with rusty gears<\/p>\n

on a Raleigh with stickered forks,
\nstanding near that spot and not knowing
\nnothing about religion, politics, trees
\ncome to that. Just the feeling of storm<\/p>\n

pressing against the chest, cold rain
\nrunning in streams down the chalk.
\nSome kind of inspiration all the same
\nand now reflection and the tear and crash<\/p>\n

of generations severed, tin powdered to dust
\nand woods moldering from the silt
\nof traffic on the by-pass.
\nA track forking west, a raised place.This roadside verge.<\/p>\n

Nothing. Everything he
\nsaid mouthed against the storm,
\ncoming back later to roost like battered larks
\nin nests of wire, plastic and thorns.<\/p>\n

SPLITTING LOGS<\/p>\n

8am, sky blue, jet trails feathering
\nbetween rooftops, grass glistens
\nas I kick the wood-block over
\nand position it beneath the chopper<\/p>\n

the blunt and rusted blade chings
\nas it rebounds off a knot
\nthen finds a split, creaking
\nthe wood splinters and snaps<\/p>\n

and another stick joins
\nthe pile scattered across the path.
\nThe scent of new wood rises
\nand a transparent moon above me.<\/p>\n

Later the darkness seeped back
\nand candles guttered in the bedroom
\nshone like planets in mirrors
\nspun rings onto ceilings<\/p>\n

outside the dead power station
\nthe braziers warmed meteorite faces
\nand we were kids, this game
\nplayed out over our heads<\/p>\n

never left a trace
\nuntil ten years later
\nthe braziers flamed again
\nand this time I saw<\/p>\n

the backs of council houses like mine
\ntrampled by police horses
\nand heads split open, bleeding
\nand an adult rage kindling in damp seams.<\/p>\n

A FENCE DOWN<\/p>\n

A clock ticking on polished wood
\nthrough crisp lace a barricade of runner-beans
\na backwater shining like a sickle blade
\nfresh from the whetstone<\/p>\n

the river that was washing banks from below us
\nas we fished until close to dusk
\nthen the hand burnt by the tank
\nof a bike left in the sun all day<\/p>\n

your stockman’s tea staining the tea-cloth
\nand flies swarming in the outhouse
\nand fields through the window brimming with poppies
\nas the dust swirled in the porch<\/p>\n

plan, position, exact location
\nthe banks crumble as I get older
\nthe barn tears itself to pieces
\nand the mud buries the landing stage<\/p>\n

even the mortar too long in the sun crumbles
\nand the bricks tumble in the nettles
\nwhere there were animals now there are roses
\nand fountains, goldfish, ornamental gates<\/p>\n

but this morning there’s the glory of scudding cloud
\nshooting across these borders
\nand best of all this collapsed fence, river rising
\ncows crashing across the patio, shit everywhere.<\/p>\n

some kind of retribution for what’s gone before.<\/p>\n

THE FAIRGROUND PRIZE<\/p>\n

Coconuts wedged in battered tin cups,
\nthe ‘chock’ of wooden balls crashing against them.
\nMoist fingers gripping polythene pools
\nflickering with goldfish
\nas wind sliced through the rim of poplars.
\nBank holiday on the village sports field
\nand diesel blacked white lines of an old season,
\nI rattled the lip of a bowl, then it fell,
\nand I hollered with joy,
\nthen dissapointment as the stallholder handed me a razor,
\nand me not big enough to reach the mirror.<\/p>\n

That evening as the lace curtains breathed August
\nand pollen fell on the tiles
\nI swapped the razor for my grandad’s comic annual,
\npassed on from the ‘big-house’,
\nbecause he could barely read.
\nA man who could herd cattle,tend horses,
\nand carry a hundred-weight on his shoulder.
\nI was reading better than him.<\/p>\n

I was handed the book like a talisman,
\nto read through and beyond,
\nits pages a route through servitude, compliance
\nand the dawn tramp round the stockyard.<\/p>\n

A buzzing tannoy leaking Beatles tunes on the wind.
\nStraw mired with the mud and slime of animals.
\nA red cross fluttering above the rows of stalls.
\nI can’t distinguish the route I followed,
\nbut every year I seem to circle the jar again,
\ntracing the chink of hit and miss,
\ncoming slowly to the still centre.<\/p>\n

Below a bobbing float.
\nAt the centre of the marked target, a trace of fury and anger.
\nThat bloody-minded struggle against the weight on the shoulder,
\nthe fenced land beyond the poplars
\nand the cemented order.<\/p>\n

WHITE FISH – July 1967<\/p>\n

The Morris Oxford’s cream bonnet
\ncovered with blossom and pollen.
\nThe weir frothing but the river low.
\nSlicks of dead leaves,twigs, mud
\nspin slow into eddies beneath willow roots.
\nA radio buzzes from across the fields.<\/p>\n

Air streaked with jet trails, high cloud
\nas the sun sets through the bankside trees
\nand pigeons wheel and loop.
\nThen silence, just slop of water lapping
\nas he fumbles with her bra strap
\nuntil she pushes him away, knocking the ashtray.<\/p>\n

Ash, cellophane, cumbled packet, butts
\ncover the car mat uder her feet.
\nThe wrapper twinkling like the fish
\ntwirling to the fisherman’s hand in fading light.
\nShe watches him struggle with the hook
\nthen the flash as it is thrown back.<\/p>\n

Caravans light up in the park below the bridge
\nas a full moon ghosts into view above the trees.
\nThey sweep the ash onto the damp grass
\nand light new cigarettes as the dashboard glows
\nthe engine fires and the car trundles back to tarmac
\nbefore rejoining faster currents, different routes.<\/p>\n

THE CATTLE WAGON<\/p>\n

Dead Oxford English chokes me
\nas it choked in the craw of thousands more.<\/p>\n

Who, stood in line, cow-towed, groped, starved
\nas they gave their stage impressions of the ‘people’.
\nAlways on the margins, always dependable,
\nawaiting their chance to be roped in, cajoled, cheated
\nor to get a chance to end up dangling on a scaffold
\nsome frosty morning.<\/p>\n

Now, blurred steeples and angels
\nrecede in the mist of a damp evening
\nand the river starts to thicken and stink
\nwith its slow fermentingbrew of algae and piss.
\nWeed, vivid pure green slick of it
\nslops against the lock gates<\/p>\n

as a cattle wagon buffets up High Street.
\nHot breath misting the cold wire cages
\nand splatters of shit spilling onto the tarmac.
\nThe stench of a hundred years past
\nwafts up the Examination Hall’s marble steps
\nas a cleaner stoops to rinse her brushes.<\/p>\n

I am sick with words.<\/p>\n

They tangle like empty bottles in the slack.<\/p>\n

I cannot chew the cud and stay silent.
\nLike a lickspittle, curmudgeon, or a ne’er do well.<\/p>\n

A rat-faced hawker of ballads and filth
\nOne day I’ll fill the streets with my stench.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile staying silent and
\nsaying nowt is your best bet.<\/p>\n

Stare and best of all slouch
\nthe best defence.<\/p>\n

BOTTLED LAND<\/p>\n

(for Tess Gallagher)<\/em><\/p>\n

I come from an acre of land
\nno more.
\nA patch of ploughed clay, chalk and flint
\nringed hawthorn, nettles and brambles.<\/p>\n

Wet sloes flecked with dust
\ndance one against the other
\nin my gran’s wicker basket<\/p>\n

as the first spots of summer rain
\nbleed the chalk dust from the dock leaves
\nand set the swifts twirling.<\/p>\n

But I cannot return to that acre of land.
\nthe blade has sliced the bare roots free
\nand the soil has been raked clean of flint and bone.<\/p>\n

Where once a tin barn clattered.<\/p>\n

Silence.
\nOnly this ache of remembrance
\ndistilling the seconds
\ndrip by drip through the fingers.
\nIt ferments in that dark sideboard
\nalong with the sloe gin.
\nMy distilled land turning to vapour.<\/p>\n

BLACK BARNS<\/p>\n

Black barns littered my childhood like abandoned cars
\nor sinking ships clinging to the skyline.<\/p>\n

They moaned as sleet skidded off their rooves
\ncreaked as horses sheltered under their rusted beams.<\/p>\n

But now they slip into disuse, foam with patches of nettles
\nor disappear completely under hawthorn and bramble.<\/p>\n

Some days I catch a glimpfle of one still in use
\nas I travel southwards toward my parent’s house.<\/p>\n

Its beams still upright, tin roof still sound
\nand a gleaming tractor being cleaned by the farmer inside.<\/p>\n

It stands like a mirage as the agrobusiness combines
\nand contractors lorries squeeze the rest of the land dry<\/p>\n

and of course it only stands there for a minute
\nthen I open my eyes.<\/p>\n

THE GRAIN BIN<\/p>\n

I can still taste the grain bin.
\nFeel the rasp and chink of the tin mug
\nagainst the steel bin.
\nStill hear the clang of the lid
\nas a cup brimning with barley was pulled out.<\/p>\n

I’d plunge my thin boy’s arms in next to my gramp’s
\nas he stooped to fill it again and again.
\nI’d feel the liquid grain swallow my fingers
\nas it flowed around me,
\nthe dust billowing onto my hair.<\/p>\n

Then he was away
\nto spatter the hens with their feed
\nas I stayed to play,
\npouring handfuls back into the bin
\nwatching it pour down like water.<\/p>\n

As I grew up I heard stories.
\nHow men drowned in grain.
\nOne slip inside a silo and you were gone.
\nBreathing barley instead of air
\nand swimming in a thousand tons<\/p>\n

Sometimes I had nightmares,
\nsaw him spilling from the bin,
\nhis eyes and ears choked with barley.
\nDead as a plucked hen, just laying there
\nas they tried to pump the grain out, air in.<\/p>\n

THE FARM-HAND’S RADIO<\/p>\n

Silent,
\nwatching the moon,
\nthese trees<\/p>\n

I rewind the dial
\non my grandad’s radio.<\/p>\n

A dial like a compass or target,
\nHelsinki, Paris, Geneva, Madrid..
\ncircling unknown cities
\nlistening to distorted voices.<\/p>\n

Here, now, in the Spanish bar,
\nloud voices and pinned to the wall
\na radio its dial pointing homewards
\nAthens, Stockholm, Dublin…London.<\/p>\n

The din at the bar grows louder
\nas the home team scores
\nand a globe is picked from the net.
\nOutside trees, a full moon<\/p>\n

and air filled with the buzz of insects,
\nthe crackle of leaves underfoot, like straw.
\nHolding your hand I stare across the city
\nlights flicker like cinders in a burnt field<\/p>\n

as my grandad slumbers and I spin the dial
\nand trawl across Europe, Barcelona, Lisbon, Rome….<\/p>\n

THE GREEN TRACK<\/p>\n

Fringed by parsley and nettle
\nand the rattle of stock gates.
\nStretching a mile toward a river
\nand half way along an old pill-box<\/p>\n

now barb-wired and green with moss.
\nIts gun-slits boarded up with tin adverts
\nfor Cadbury’s chocolate and motor-oil.
\nBehind a rusty tractor, fences, farmhouse,<\/p>\n

We’d walk the green track on Sunday evenings
\nMy family, my grandparents and the dog.
\nMy gramp always whistling the dog to heel
\nas it chased off after pheasants in the hedge.<\/p>\n

The green track that led straight as a die to the river
\nwhich shone like silver in the evening sun.
\nAs we talked pleasure cruisers would float by
\nbouyed up on the fields of corn.<\/p>\n

Id hack at nettles with a stick
\nas these ‘invaders’ from the city slid through our world.
\nBy the time I was sixteen I could hit their hulls
\nwith a well-aimed fishing lead<\/p>\n

But I never saw the invisible enemies
\nthe pesticide leaking from a can in the hedge
\nthe planners drawing topping and tailing that green track
\nand worst of all the learning, learning to be polite,
\nlearning never to question the drawing of lines.<\/p>\n

THE PEASANT POET’S GRAVE<\/p>\n

( for William Neill )<\/em>
\nEvery weekend they come back
\nusually in estate cars or mini-buses.
\nWending their way up the track
\nto this riverside cemetery<\/p>\n

Half an hour to walk around,
\ntake a couple of pictures, eat snacks,
\nthen back on the bus
\nand off to Windsor or Stratford or..<\/p>\n

Never once noticing that slight ridge
\nwhere the poor of the village rotted away.
\nNoting only the bell-tower, the arranged flowers
\nthe flock of doves and clotted cream.<\/p>\n

But that was the peasant poet’s grave too.
\nThe powder of his bones, the thread of his jacket
\nall that’s left now save an amended line or two
\nin a townie’s anthology of country verse<\/p>\n

But return to that ridge in the grass
\nas the shadow of the tower starts to creep
\nor when the grass starts to glisten at dusk
\nand you will find the sharp-eyed fox gnawing at a dove.<\/p>\n

FLINT FIELDS<\/p>\n

It all gets pissed away
\nlike the drizzle of old Alf relieving himself
\nat quarter to midnight against the barn.
\nThe hiss and froth of beer against tin.It all seems so pointless.
\nThe dragging of the harrow over flint and chalk,
\nchemical pellets scattered like shot
\nwhilst maggots seethe in the dangling crow’s ribs.This is a rich land grown poor
\nthrough centuries of tilling and reaping.
\nGeneration upon generation sucking at the soil
\nuntil now we force plentywith additives and pesticides.
\nThe bags fume in the barn’s rusting carcass.
\nWhen it runs out the chalky soil will dribble from the hills
\nlike semen.They knew it forty years back,
\nbent double, mulching horse manure into the potatoes.
\nHalf-hearted protests waved aside by fertilizer salesmen
\nintent on reaping the highest bonuses.Now the barn’s lung has collapsed inward
\nonto a stench of absent pigs and
\nthe water tank is filmed with diesel.
\nDitches brim with drums; lids leaking.<\/p>\n

Drivers stare out their windscreens
\nat brimming fields, fizzing in heat
\ncloaking dry dirt beneath.<\/p>\n

FOXE’S BARN<\/p>\n

The black barn by the cross
\nwhere he lay hidden for three months
\nblood from the pig carcass
\ndripping through the slats<\/p>\n

and all the time
\nthe sacks of rotting meat
\nswaying above the river
\ndripping maggots to the fish.<\/p>\n

His eyes became hollow
\nlike the remnants of horse skull
\nlapped at the river edge
\nbefore crushed by cattle hooves.<\/p>\n

He measured days in the stench
\nby the tolling of the church bell
\nuntil finally a hand rattled the chain
\nand he emerged blinking<\/p>\n

into a daylight that singed
\nlike the pigs skin.
\nHis hair was grimy with feathers and dust
\nand his beard lousy.<\/p>\n

The china bowl chimed with water
\nas the landlord helped him into the room.
\nThe font had been turned to shot they said
\nand been blasted deep into Marian hearts.<\/p>\n

He clutched the bowl to him and shook
\nas horses galloped past the windows.
\nThey were headed west toward the mountains
\nleaving headless torsos to stain the water.<\/p>\n

SPANISH CHRONICLES<\/strong><\/p>\n

Also available online through the
\nPoetry Library Magazine database
\npublished in FIRE magazine number 8.
\nTHE GIVEN GROUND<\/p>\n

Mountain water coloured with mud
\nspills around uprooted trees
\nyellow water full of bones and gravel
\ndrags seawards through bare fields.
\nCollapsing walls held by roots and branches
\nfinally topple in a spray of soil
\ninto the cloudy water
\nas gravel banks shift and reform.<\/p>\n

From Fraga northwards the light slipped away
\nand the land soaked itself in darkness,
\nroads sparkling with truck lights.
\nThe thin soil gave way to green
\nand the woods grew thicker by the passing mile.
\nA derelict barn, a ruined castle on the heights
\nas we entered rock outcrops, uncultivated slopes,
\nand the hoe gave way to the gun.<\/p>\n

Windscreen still pulsing with passing lights
\nsmall towns glistened and were gone.
\nA strip of bare wall, a lit bar or auto shop
\nor a blazing garage on the outskirts
\nbefore the night seeped back in.
\nI tried to find my bearings on a map
\nbut drifted back to sleep as your brother
\nfollowed his memory. I dreamt of England.
\nBLACK BULLS<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m listening to American Music
\nsat at a Spanish typewriter
\nas rain pulses across the Monegros
\nand the Ebro, swollen with storm
\nthrows trees and rocks at the desert
\nas it scours a snake through Aragon.<\/p>\n

Throw a book in these waters
\nand it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be pulped and shredded
\nbefore it has reached the paper factory
\na couple of kilometres downstream.
\nAs the dawn light rises above the mountains
\ncarreteras sparkle and writhe.<\/p>\n

Any road out of Zaragoza will take you into dust
\npast a roadside motel with twenty trucks bathing in this light.
\nThere are no signposts, just the gentle curves of the roads
\nbetween identical hills of scrub and rubble.
\nA black bull gently rusts to red
\nand I squint at black words fading from my pen.
\nSUE\u00c3\u2018O<\/p>\n

I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t marry you but I took your language for better or worse
\nand now I carry a heavy bag full of American slang, realism
\nand musical clich\u00c3\u00a9s that slow me down as I try to absorb meaning
\nfrom this romantic culture\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s blood and stone surrealism.<\/p>\n

I keep my heart well hidden under an English duvet of dollars
\nwhilst here hopes get dashed like blood across marble steps.
\nWhitewashed and glaring like a noon-day village street
\nthere are walls here I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll never cross over.<\/p>\n

Better men than I painted them on bloody afternoons
\nafter their frail utopian ideals were sliced to the root by blunt blades.
\nBurdened by an Oxford past of limestone, ermine and falsevictories
\nI feel enlivened by the air of freedom from servility.<\/p>\n

I run up the hill looking for the moment when the shutter falls,
\nlooking for the wind, the cierzo, that can dry blood in an instant.
\nIt is curling through the hills, picking holes in liars tongues.
\ncreeps through my sleeves and around my passionless gut.<\/p>\n

One day like Cromwell I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll go back to Oxford and circle it with another noose
\nand lob words like cannon shot into the quadrangles and gardens.
\nThen we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be married on a High Street whitewashed and full of geraniums
\nas the ghosts of the International Brigade march past singing.
\nBRIDGE OF STONE<\/p>\n

Five years ago we slid across this bridge at dawn
\nafter a long hot drive from Barcelona.
\nI kept waking up on the back seat to see factories
\nflaring orange against the black hills.
\nAs we entered Zaragoza I saw the basilica lit up
\nby floodlights that caught the dust swirling in from the desert.<\/p>\n

I woke with that dust in my teeth, sweating
\nwhilst you lay there perfectly cool and calm.
\nWe carry our countries in our blood, habits, instincts
\nthat carry us back to the same places in our dreams.
\nNow I catch you sleeping again; winter, the Ebro rising,
\nI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sweating but still the air here tastes different.<\/p>\n

Every winter for five years we have swung back across the bridge
\ncircling your past through the sparkle of christmas lights.
\nWords have crept into my vocabulary as I struggle with Spanish
\nbut I still get caught like an uprooted tree on the double r\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s,
\ntongue snagged against the bridge supports whilst you sail away
\nfloating on the native rhythm of your language as I submerge.<\/p>\n

I stare at the back of another car doused with torrents of rain
\nas tail-lights burn in the wet roads and palm trees swirl.
\nI stare at the roads as they flood easily,
\na summer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dust and dirt clogging the drains.
\nWhen we met I was washed away on a torrent of affection.
\nNow we stand on the bridge five years on
\nwind catching dust, staring into a flood that moves beneath us.<\/p>\n

PIGEON HOUSES
\n(Parque de Castillo Palomar)<\/p>\n

As spring rain dripped from the pines
\nwe sat and drew the remains of that Edinburgh dovecote
\nruined from years of neglect, the laird long dead
\nand the estate he owned now a nature reserve
\ncarving a green swathe through the council estates.
\nJoggers ghosted along the woodland path.<\/p>\n

Vegetation so rich we slipped on the damp moss
\nas we clambered over the storm-wrecked pines
\nwith hardly a care for the green around us.
\nNow we walk on this park\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s threadbare grass
\nnurtured by municipal watering
\nand sit in a caf\u00c3\u00a9 built around a tree too precious to cut down.<\/p>\n

Walking there today, a compressed spot of green in a yellow city
\nI saw a boy carrying a couple of birds in tiny cages stop,
\nand on the steps of another ruined castle, gently water them.
\nToo precious to be released they flashed in their gilt cages
\nas my thoughts spiralled back toward meadow and dovecotes
\nand a patch of grass, and my father scything an unkempt green.<\/p>\n

SKELETON AT THE PLOUGH<\/strong><\/p>\n

Inspired by the reading of ‘The Painful Plough’ edited and selected by Roy Palmer.
\nA collection of folk songs and ballads related to agricultural labouring in the 19th Century.
\nIt also contained passages from ‘The Autobiography of Joseph Arch’ a ploughboy
\nand later MP who helped form one of the first Agricultural Labour Unions in 1872.<\/em>
\nORAL HISTORIES<\/p>\n

Idiot retrievers of a fantasised past
\nclutch their sticks and bells to their hearts
\nand dance their idiot dance of the fully researched
\non the steps of the fully refurbished authentic bar.<\/p>\n

The lineage is correct, the cut of the trouser ordained
\nby quality researchers , a scholars parade
\nwith pockets full of photos and oral history tapes
\nthey advise on the correct parts to be played.<\/p>\n

While sitting inside in his usual place
\nas the decor changed from formica to pine(stained)
\nsits the last repository of the old folk ways
\nsticking Elvis on the jukebox to drown out the charade.<\/p>\n

When the music finishes he bicycles back
\nto his damp two room crumbling estate pre-fab
\nwhilst the Morris-dancers climb into Volvos and Jags and
\nwheel out of the car-park blaring out Fairport tracks.<\/p>\n

THE CHAINED BOOK
\n(Bodleian Duke Humphrey Library has chained books)<\/em><\/p>\n

I am illiterate, dumb, cleft palette
\nand trussed up like a bale.<\/p>\n

The thrushes and spatter of sparrows are more
\nvocal than me.<\/p>\n

The words I had are sunk in the mud,
\nsplintered off the cart-wheels rim.<\/p>\n

Vowels are trickling from the sacks
\nletters seeping through the grain seive.<\/p>\n

Out on the down-land ridge clouds bleed
\ntheir icy message through the beech trees.<\/p>\n

Ice lodges in my hair, crisps my eyelids
\nfreezes the reins to the brittle leather.<\/p>\n

When I return in a blizzard to the horse trough
\nI can see a new page of words.<\/p>\n

Cracking along the yard’s frozen surface
\npage after white page folding out,field upon field.<\/p>\n

And me and this horse, unwritten and
\nunread, its slow moving script.<\/p>\n

We crawl along the spine of the hill
\nwriting and rewriting ourselves under our master’s hand.<\/p>\n

THE SKELETON AT THE PLOUGH<\/p>\n

Rattling more than the clack of brass and leather
\nthe skeleton at the plough is my grandfather<\/p>\n

bones clicking inside his muddied boots
\nfingers twisted inside the reins.<\/p>\n

The horse trudges off line, its teeth champ
\nas the skull sways silently with the tossing head.<\/p>\n

They move on through the biting hail
\nsteam rising from the horse’s dribbling piss<\/p>\n

turning the straw back under in perfect lines
\nto corrugate a whole field in an afternoon.<\/p>\n

Later, stood by the barn door, tapping his pipe out
\na knot of tobacco drifts away like tumbleweed.<\/p>\n

I turn to smell the aroma of Rolled Virginia,
\ncan see the tobacco catch and glow in the bowl.<\/p>\n

Then I open my eyes to a late sun
\nand a five-bar scoring lines across his gravestone.<\/p>\n

THE CLEARING HOUSES<\/p>\n

I am afraid of my own writing.
\nStumble and shake at the path it is clearing
\nbetween nettle-bound sheds and
\nbroken down fences.<\/p>\n

For each unexamined wreck of a house
\nroof blown open to the wind
\nreveals an ash-pit
\nof the missing or unknown dead.<\/p>\n

This village is an icy vault
\nof severed tongues and bludgeoned servants.
\nThe ones who feasted on fly-blown fish
\nand stone bread.<\/p>\n

Slicing with the scythe and hook of pen
\nbundles of lies crisp with the convulvus vines.
\nBridled horses and stooping peasants
\npass the black framed windows<\/p>\n

time after time after time.
\nTracks<\/p>\n

Homeless I shake
\nwith the bitter cold of leaving
\nuntil now
\ndelving into the rich, moist earth
\nthat spills from the mole’s tongue
\nI feel the tremble of lives
\ndragging off through tunnels
\ntoward the wells that
\nbubble up into song.<\/p>\n

Blind I fall on the beat
\nand tremor of heart and lips
\nsinging out for the harvest
\nlike a mole returning along
\nthe path I created
\nguided by the vibration
\nof barn door, clack of tin roof
\nor like a fly circling the quiver
\nof trapped paws.<\/p>\n

A congregation of gentles*
\ngathers in the cathedral
\nof a deer’s carcass.
\nHarvest home.<\/p>\n

(*gentles = maggots)<\/em><\/p>\n

THE BEAR PIT<\/p>\n

Council grass-cutter smooth
\nthe sliced hay and clover ferments in warm bundles
\nin the crest and dip of this depression
\na hundred yards short of the churchyard entrance.<\/p>\n

The old building has fallen to dust
\nliving only as a memory of a shadow at dusk.
\nHere the cocks once beat a flurry of blood and feather
\nand the shackled bears were unchained.<\/p>\n

Later those bears danced, shifting in their chains
\nas the first generator spluttered into life under the chestnuts.
\nThen it was teeth and claws, a rowdy entertainment of
\nblood soaked pelts and simple wagers.<\/p>\n

The clay beneath this hollow has drunk
\nup its four hundred years of dripping blood.
\nIt has fed into the roots of every blade of grass
\nthat now lies as smooth as fur
\na cloak of lost bets, shattered bones and fears.
\nThe Straw Parliament<\/p>\n

Can poetry re-ignite the lost
\nlike that bundle of straw
\nclasped in your hand
\none mid-summer evening
\nbeyond the mist of riverbanks
\nand silted eddies
\nwhere pleasure steamers buffeted
\nthe landing stages.<\/p>\n

Talking to the dead now
\nI whistle your dog back
\nfrom the cemetery
\nthrough the sweet-peas and gravel
\nof redevelopment
\nand half expect the glint of your pipe-
\na bowl of lit tinder-
\nash falling and flecking
\nyour waistcoat.<\/p>\n

If it can ignite then let it whoosh
\ndown these heaped rows of spent corn
\nuntil it has written its black lines
\nacross hill after hill
\npage after page.
\nYeats said all a nation needed was
\na cemetery and a library.
\nYour shelf held comics unread
\ntoo difficult for many –
\nthis village’s unlettered silent tongues
\nare my tiny nation’s library.<\/p>\n

The cemetery is dark tonight.
\ndew-damp with river-mist
\nas the ghost ferry clanks its wheel
\nand the bales are brought home.
\nWe carry them one by one
\nto the site of our new parliament.
\nGhost rioters dance
\nthe reel of the surrendered ideal to
\nthe clack of the Squire’s boot and sword.<\/p>\n

THE BLANK CANVAS<\/p>\n

“Suppose I ask a man whether he thinks it is an easy thing
\nto drive a straight furrow over a ten-acre field…..why it is
\nhard work as painting pictures”
\n(Thorold Rogers. Agricultural Union Meeting. Oxford 1878)<\/em><\/p>\n

The sun streams through the Alexandra Palace windows.
\nBelow cars glint on the North London roads
\nas I dribble pigment down the course weave
\nof a bare white canvas.<\/p>\n

Not knowing that every pencil line, every brushstroke
\nwas no more than craft, no more impressive
\nthan the lines my father and my father’s father
\nhad drawn across acres of Berkshire soil.<\/p>\n

I was going up in the world, beyond all that
\na big city boy with letters to his name.
\nExhibiting would bring a better life
\naway from the sucking mud.<\/p>\n

On that summer’s day in 1978
\nit was still as fresh as a blank canvas
\nno failures, no missed lines
\nno blurred ambitions, no paint unrun.<\/p>\n

So marking targets with an artist’s eye
\nI picked out the far trees and set a line.
\nThen started to spiral upwards in my fruitless career
\nlike a pheasant with
\na farmer’s trigger finger close behind.<\/p>\n

FIREBIRDS<\/p>\n

“A man with the weight of many masters
\non him learns to be dumb and deaf and blind,
\nat a very early hour in the morning”
\n(Joseph Arch)<\/em><\/p>\n

The squires sons are dancing on the college lawns.
\nThe farmer’s sons drinking in the Oxford bars.
\nBut our bones are restless
\nbeneath this sodden clay, the twisted roots
\nour ghosts clammer at the stone walls
\nour eyes flaring with each firework flash.<\/p>\n

Every year before the laws condemned it
\nthe fireworks of college balls would be surrounded
\nby a greater ring of stubble fires
\nas the labourers celebrated the harvest.<\/p>\n

A reminder lest we forget
\nof the flash of Cromwell’s artillery
\nlike the embers flickering in the cold black ash
\nacross the empty downs.<\/p>\n

Like tinder for firebirds
\nour ghosts tend the college lawns.<\/p>\n

SHAUN BELCHER \u00c2\u00a9 2006<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FARM HAND’S RADIO Poems 1996 – 2000 OXFORD dedicated to Ivo Charles Belcher (1932-2004) THE CLOUD FACTORY Also available as a separate pdf download click Cloudfactory link: CLOUDFACTORY 1. The Plough Reversed 2. The Spanish Squirrel 3. Sea Ravens 4. The Stone Code 5. Farmer’s Lung 6. Turners 7. The Bird Painter 8. The Shadow…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":141,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-117","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P6nhh-1T","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2706,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/117\/revisions\/2706"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}