In The Poetry

The pieces I’m now going to read come from a journal I kept on and off over a number of years. Mostly they concern events on a farm in the middle of Devon. Farming being the absorbing business it is I’ve never written about it systematically but occasionally, after some striking happening, I’ve goaded myself to set down the details. The idea of such notes is to get the details down fresh, to make an archive of such details that might someday supply material for something more considered. Like most journal keepers, however, I’m remiss: idleness isn’t the only obstacle. Very often what stands in the way looks like conscience: over several years of collecting these pieces, I made only thirty or so entries. They’re written in rough verse. To begin with I used the ordinary journal prose, the shorthand, sort-of jotted details, relying on these things to bring the memory back. Then I happened to write one in rough verse and at once discovered something that surprised me: in verse not only did I seem to move at once deeper and more steadily into re-living the experience, but every detail became much more important. I experimented, switching to and fro between verse and prose, and it was a curious thing to note the physiological change in myself at the switchover. After that I stuck to verse. The pieces make no claim to be poems of any kind. When I wrote them, as I say, I had no thought of ever publishing them and it wasn’t until a year or two ago when someone asked me for a pastoral poem and I went back to these entries to see if I could dig up anything that might lend itself to re-shaping into a poem that I discovered what had happened. It wouldn’t be too difficult to take a passage, such as these are, assault it with technical skills and make of it a reasonably acceptable poem in one of any number of styles and my first idea, in the poem I chose, was just to tighten it up, try to find better words and so on. What I discovered immediately was that no matter what I did I destroyed the thing I most valued; the fresh simple presence of the experience which, since it was my own, I didn’t want to lose. So I let them lie in their rags and tatters…Most journals are full of what goes wrong and mine was no exception. Of all the mistakes a lamb can make the worst is having got himself conceived inside a rather small mother, then to grow too big before being born. He can compound this error in the crucial birth moments by neglecting to keep his front feet up under his nose so he can dive out slowly and gracefully into the world. If his feet trail behind, his shoulders come up behind his mother’s pelvis and are trapped and he will end up with his head born but his body unborn and stuck. His mother can’t help and if the good shepherd isn’t nearby it’s the end. If he is nearby then he catches the mother and with a gentle hand feels in past the lamb’s neck to find maybe a crooked leg or a half-way hoof – so with this he can help the lamb out. If he can’t find anything down there, then the technique is to push the head back inside and feel around in there for front legs, work them into position and so lead the lamb out with the mother’s help naturally. But if the good shepherd’s a little bit late the lamb’s head, trapped at the neck, will be too swollen to be pushed back in – the shepherd can still try to find a hoof but if he’s not very quick, he’s much too late and the lamb is dead. This happens now and again and then the lamb has to be got out of its mother. The setting here is a high slope looking south towards Dartmoor on a very nasty February morning.

February 17th

A lamb could not get born. Ice wind
Out of a downpour dishclout sunrise. The mother
Lay on the muddied slope. Harried, she got up
And the blackish lump bobbed at her back-end
Under her tail. After some hard galloping,
Some manoeuvering, much flapping of the backward
Lump head of the lamb looking out,
I caught her with a rope. Laid her, head uphill
And examined the lamb. A blood-ball swollen
Tight in its black felt, its mouth gap
Squashed crooked, tongue stuck out, black-purple,
Strangled by its mother. I felt inside,
Past the noose of mother-flesh, into the slippery
Muscled tunnel, fingering for a hoof,
Right back to the port-hole of the pelvis.
But there was no hoof. He had stuck his head out too early
And his feet could not follow. He should have
Felt his way, tip-toe, his toes
Tucked up under his nose
For a safe landing. So I kneeled wrestling
With her groans. No hand could squeeze past
The lamb’s neck into her interior
To hook a knee. I roped that baby head
And hauled till she cried out and tried
To get up and I saw it was useless. I went
Two miles for the injection and a razor.
Sliced the lamb’s throat-strings, levered with a knife
Between the vertebrae and brought the head off
To stare at its mother, its pipes sitting in the mud
With all earth for a body. Then pushed
The neck-stump right back in, and as I pushed
She pushed. She pushed crying and I pushed gasping.
And the strength
Of the birth push and the push of my thumb
Against that wobbly vertebrae were deadlock,
A to-fro futility. Till I forced
A hand past and got a knee. Then like
Pulling myself to the ceiling with one finger
Hooked in a loop, timing my effort
To her birth push groans, I pulled against
The corpse that would not come. Till it came,
And after it the long, sudden, yolk-yellow
Parcel of life
In a smoking slither of oils and soups and syrups -
And the body lay born, beside the hacked-off head.

I love the fact that the name Adam comes from the Hebrew word Adomah, which means earth or ground. He was given the name of the substance of which he was made. If the soul is in the name, then there’s a wonderful unity of body and soul.

Adam Means Earth

I am the man
Whose name is mud
But what’s in a name
To shame one who knows
Mud does not stain
Clay he’s made of
Dust Adam became –
The dust he was –
Was he his name?

At several times in my life I’ve suffered from depression – I’ve found that giving the depression an identity helps to deal with those feelings of loss and desolation. It’s a case of naming your enemy in order to fight your corner more powerfully. I call depression a thief.

Thief

He will steal it, whatever you possess.
Whatever you value, what bears your name,
everything you call ‘mine’, he will steal.
Everything you have is frail and will be stolen from you.
Not just watch or bracelet, ring or coat,
bright objects, soft splendours, gifts, necessities,
but the joy that bends you easily and makes you feel safe,
your love of what you see each different morning
through your window, the ordinary seen as heavenly.
Your child’s power, your lover’s touch, will be stolen
from under your nose. He will steal everything.
He will take everything from you. You will never see him.
You will never hear him. You will never smell him.
But he will destroy you.
No surveillance is close enough, no guard clever enough,
no lock secure enough, no luck good enough;
the thief is there and gone before you have sense
or breath to cry out.
He has robbed you before, a hundred times.
You have never seen him but you know him.
You know his vermin smell without smelling him,
you feel his shadow like deprival weather, grey, oppressive.
You know he watches from far away or from just round the corner
as you regather your little hoard of riches, your modest share
of the world, he watches as you build your shelter of life,
your hands raw from working day and night, a house
built out of bricks that must be guessed at, groped for,
loved, wept into being; and then upon those walls
you and your people raise a roof of joy and pain, and you live
in your house with all your ordinary treasures,
your pots and pans, your weaned child, your cat and caged bird,
your soft bestiary hours of love,
your books opening on fiery pages, your nights
full with dreams of a road leading to the red horses of Egypt,
of the forest like a perfumed pampered room wet with solitude.
You forget the thief. You forget his vanity,
his sips and spoonfuls of greed. But he watches you,
sly in the vaults of his wealth.
Shameless, sleepless, he watches you.
Grinning, he admires your sense of safety.
He loves all that you love.
Then, in disguise with empty pockets, his fingers dirty
and bare, rings of white skin in place of gold bands,
he comes like a pauper on a dark patchwork morning
when summer is turning round and robs you blind.
He takes everything.
He is the thief in whose gossamer trap you have been floating
all these years. He comes and takes everything.
Your house is empty and means nothing, the roof falls in
and the walls of love dissolve, made of ice;
the windows no longer watch out over heaven, the bare wooden
floors show their scars again and ache for the forest.
He takes everything you have, this thief, but gives you one gift.

Each morning you open your eyes jealous as hunger, you walk
serpent-necked and dwarf-legged in the thief’s distorting mirrors,
you go nakedly through the skyless moonless gardens and pagodas
of envy that he gives you, the thief’s gift, your seeding wilderness.

Choosing a Name

My little son, I have cast you out
To hang heels upward, wailing over a world
With walls too wide.
My faith till now, and now my love:
No walls too wide for that to fill, no depth
Too great for all you hide.

I love, not knowing what I love,
I give, though ignorant for whom
The history and power of a name.
I conjure with it, like a novice
Summoning unknown spirits: answering me
You take the word, and tame it.

Even as the gift of life
You take the famous name you did not choose
And make it new.
You and the name exchange a power:
Its history is changed, becoming yours,
And yours by this: who calls this, calls you.

Strong vessel of peace, and plenty promised,
into whose unsounded depths I pour
This alien power;
Frail vessel, launched with a shawl for sail,
Whose guiding spirit keeps his needle-quivering
Poise between trust and terror,

And stares amazed to find himself alive;
This is the means by which you say I am,
Not to be lost till all is lost,
When at the sight of God you say I am nothing,
And find, forgetting name and speech at last,
A home not mine, dear outcast.

One called ‘Big Wind’ – a grisly(?) one this, getting into the corn(?) routines at the moment in spite of all my… This appeared in a magazine with just ‘Big Wind’ and then the typographer put in almost equally big words ‘Theodore Roethke’ not ‘by Theo…’ (laughter).

The Big Wind

Where were the greenhouses going,

Lunging into the lashing

Wind driving water

So far down the river

All the faucets stopped? -

So we drained the manure-machine

For the steam plant,

Pumping the stale mixture

Into the rusty boilers,

Watching the pressure gauge

Waver over to red,

As the seams hissed

And the live steam

Drove to the far

End of the rose-house,

Where the worst wind was,

Creaking the cypress window-frames,

Cracking so much thin glass

We stayed all night,

Stuffing the holes with burlap;

But she rode it out,

That old rose-house,

She hove into the teeth of it,

The core and pith of that ugly storm,

Ploughing with her stiff prow,

Bucking into the wind-waves

That broke over the whole of her,

Flailing her sides with spray,

Flinging long strings of wet across the roof-top,

Finally veering, wearing themselves out, merely

Whistling thinly under the wind-vents;

She sailed until the calm morning,

Carrying her full cargo of roses.

Blunden: Although the words may have been put down after the war, the poem was actually composed in my mind almost at the moment we came out of our own concert to see quite a different concert on the horizon.

Interviewer: Yes.

Blunden: ‘Concert Party: Busseboom.’ It relates to I believe the London Division’s concert, which was open to us and we were for an afternoon or two in billets there, or in huts within sight of the battlefield, easily only three or four miles east and, of course, not far from Ypres.

Concert Party

The stage was set, the house was packed,
The famous troop began;
Our laughter thundered, act by act;
Time light as sunbeams ran.

Dance sprang and spun and neared and fled,
Jest chirped at gayest pitch,
Rhythm dazzled, action sped
Most comically rich.

With generals and lame privates both
Such charms worked wonders, till
The show was over – lagging loth
We faced the sunset chill;

And standing on the sandy way,
With the cracked church peering past,
We heard another matin

This is the last of the ‘Wire Through the Heart’ poems – it’s called ‘Malenki Robot’ which in Russian, or rather in the Hungarian version of the Russian phrase, ‘malenki robot’ is ‘a little light work’. The Red Army rounded up about a tenth of the men and put them in camps for what they described as three days’ light work. Some of them were there two, three years, many of them never came back. This is about a man I spoke to who had this experience and this is what he said.

Malenki Robot

‘Over there in the other country
my sister had daughters I’ve seen once
in forty years, nor visited my dead.
It’s too late now, they’re poor there,
and here I’m just an old working man,
and the only thing left for me to do is die.

‘These are my blunt carpenter’s hands,
and this on their backs the frost
that gnawed them at Szolyva, three winters,
two years I was a prisoner there.
Monday I build doors, Tuesday put on roofs.
Roofs. Doors. My life. Vodka.
It was the priest told me to go,
three days he said, a little light work,
malenki robot, two years building roofs,
and that because I had a trade.
I survived wearing the clothes of those who died,
after a while I survived because I had survived,
and then came home and here the border.’

The wire runs through the heart, dammit,
therefore we will drink cheap Russian vodka
in Janos’ kitchen, and later take a walk
down to the border and look back
into the other world, the village in the mirror
that is the other half of us, here,
where the street stops at the wire
and goes on again on the other side,
and maybe the Gypsies will come to serenade us.

My husband and I took up ballroom dancing and a whole series of poems emerged because of that, forming the nucleus of a book that is called American Smooth. I will read that title poem for you.

American Smooth

We were dancing – it must have
been a foxtrot or a waltz,
something romantic but
requiring restraint,
rise and fall, precise
execution as we moved
into the next song without
stopping, two chests heaving
above a seven-league
stride – such perfect agony
one learns to smile through,
ecstatic mimicry
being the sine qua non
of American Smooth.
And because I was distracted
by the effort of
keeping my frame
(the leftward lean, head turned
just enough to gaze out
past your ear and always
smiling, smiling),
I didn’t notice
how still you’d become until
we had done it
(for two measures?
four?) – achieved flight,
that swift and serene
magnificence,
before the earth
remembered who we were
and brought us down.

‘Mr and Mrs Scotland Are Dead’ concerns things I found on a local dump – where I shouldn’t have been because one’s not allowed to play on the dump but I’m a grown-up woman and I can go there if I want. I found a lot of personal effects and of course I couldn’t resist but look at them, and there were letters, cards and what have you – and they were addressed to “Mr and Mrs Scotland” and I thought, “Thank you God.” This is a sort of state of the nation poem if you like.

Mr and Mrs Scotland Are Dead

On the civic amenity landfill site,
the coup, the dump beyond the cemetery
and the 30-mile-an-hour sign, her stiff
old ladies’ bag, open mouthed, spew
postcards sent from small Scots towns
in 1960: Peebles, Largs, the rock-gardens
of Carnoustie, tinted in the dirt.
Mr and Mrs Scotland, here is the hand you were dealt:
fair but cool, showery but nevertheless,
Jean asks kindly; the lovely scenery;
in careful school-room script -
The Beltane Queen was crowned today.
But Mr and Mrs Scotland are dead.

Couldn’t he have burned them? Released
in a grey curl of smoke
this pattern for a cable knit? Or this:
tossed between a toppled fridge
and sweet-stinking anorak: Dictionary for Mothers
M:- Milk, the woman who worries…;
And here, Mr Scotland’s John Bull Puncture Repair Kit;
those days when he knew intimately
the thin roads of his country, hedgerows
hanged with small black brambles’ hearts;
and here, for God’s sake, his last few joiners’ tools,
SCOTLAND, SCOTLAND, stamped on their tired handles.

Do we take them? Before the bulldozer comes
to make more room, to shove aside
his shaving brush, her button tin.
Do we save this toolbox, these old-fashioned views
addressed after all, to Mr and Mrs Scotland?
Should we reach and take them? And then?
Forget them, till that person enters
our silent house, begins to open
to the light our kitchen drawers,
and performs for us this perfunctory rite:
the sweeping up, the turning out.