a point of view

A POINT OF VIEW

poems by Charles Hadfield

CLARITIES

whenever the morning

( shifting on the river

tides running in, running out

perhaps

or not

ii)

let the light linger

on empty sea

(any boats hidden in haze

blank sun beating)

ants

dust

let the words fall where they will

iii)

to set that glance

or the taste of the sea

a mirror shows as much

the balance of words, sounds

meanings

how dreams sound

why light lingers

or the scent

yes?

Another

(in a new frame it shines

even cracked)

and then again

how these changes

reveal

shift

show how the sense lingers

slips

slows right down

till the sea freezes

iv)

the bell

twang of a

and the scent of summers

it was a moment

is a memory

the grass still prickles

don’t deny it

the smile was real

so long ago and only

if you had but

I understand

trains rattle beneath the mountains

we waved and waved

As is and is

or where if and maybe

so if

or when the was

it could have been

if anything else had been

is was

NO MORE

no more to look to the peaks

the snows are all gone and the blue

blue blue is now fixed in its glare

& the glinting icewalls on the sheer black rock

are all dead waterfalls

& the delicate cornices

are long blown away like spindrift

along a long deserted beach where the surf hardly bothers to unfold any more

& the clatters

of exploding scree

as the faces collapse

mean the highest mountains are now flattened into limitless plains & the beds of the seas

are even further down below there now than anyone before us could ever have dreamed

the limit

of my world

was once

just

the top

of that tree

glimpsed

through a gap

the bedroom curtains

HOLIDAY SNAPS

And when the wind changed

I felt a single raindrop

ending our summer.

Woods in silhouette:

whatever the weather now

these shadows remain.

THE CLIMB

It fits my knife like a glove, this hand scarred by so many slashes and scrapes,

the accidents just waiting to happen to a boy years ago

who has nevertheless survived until

now. Just now

I found in my pocket again

this dear old friend

my knife. My life

plays back to me as I open the blades

one by one

flashing in the sun

each scratch and nick

in the stainless teeth

recalls one hack, one chip of my axe

on the long climb up the ice

dark north face of this winter mountain

whose top sways dangerously close now through the cloud

so when I look back

down

into the sparkling green

of my childhood valley

2000 metres

and 54 years below

I don’t know

whether to fall or fly

to grin or to cry.

FURTHER IN

All along they knew:

that altered light on the far peaks.

The shift in the forest sounds.

How the streams’ dialects changed

as they moved further in.

How the birds flew lower and lower.

How flowers changed colour

looked at from different angles

and that’s all it was

the way flowers

clouds hiding the tops

no way to

after two weeks

lost the ability to count?

lack of light emphasising their pain

AND NOW ?

All the silences between us

filled with deeper nothings

and darker dark

than I could have dared

in all it is then

and or

as when if

but then the way light flashes on the opposite bank

the way mists evaporate over the water

and how the gulls hang on the dawn

all these simplifications of words

and the dangers of trying

ALMOST THERE

Is it the rain or again

was it the snow

or now will it be

a rainbow

in the soul

or can we ever recapture

that freedom of sunshine

(the lakewaters are mirrored

in our eyes as we drift

across this spring into summer)

but if all memory

is mist evaporating

where will we meet again?

NO END IN SIGHT

Such a long silence. Failure to jot a thought. The worries.

Now spring again: primrose, catkin. For this relief…

…barred gates. Warning signs. Smoke, cold, rain.

The empty moors, closed lanes, now seen in context.

TE WAKA MOANA

All the meanings of words

and rhymings of lines

and spellings of facts

the tangles of grammar

blown away by the huge blue horizon

beyond the breakers

STEEP BLUFFS AHEAD

Time to start again

all’s well

no real wrench

the stone buddhas are still watching

the cathedral gargoyles

have not stopped laughing

and the prayerflags

still flap

in the dry winds

you turned off the highway

onto an unsealed road

through dense bush

alongside hidden streams

and up over a cold saddle

keep hoping

all the time

you drive on upwards

these trees, all the time

slowly

they are growing

towards this

very

moment

COURSE CORRECTIONS

The shiftshape colours of dawn

light on whorls of cloud

sunburst over islands

hieroglyphs of fern fronds

the hidden alphabet of leaves

AS YOU KNOW

Whatever the ragas tell

(nightfall, the pattering drumbeats

the endlessly flowing river)

it is an insistent tale

an improvisation on eternity

and there is nothing to be done

at all

WELL, WELL

All alone

the tree

on the skyline

& no one else to notice

TRICKS OF PERSPECTIVE

Which is if not itself

the one maybe other

there and on all

daybreaks, endings

last flashes

of starlight

here where

you are

if not

itself

it is

at least

a way in

away out

there

ever

brighter

Moon

in close up

so run the tunes

so flow the airs…

A POINT OF VIEW

As the sea on those rocks the light crashes into

and a blue that no binoculars or telescope can fix

still less a paint box – blank white stippled watercolour paper

(a sighing of trees, suddenly

felled)

not a sound now across this endless midday

but who to hear, anyway?

that perfect light pinned to the kitchen wall

and glanced at now and then

on a dark winter morning sky spitting again in the westerly

the way the sea arched against your thoughts

or was it just the absence of sound

I could hear

the light crashing on the rocks

but saw no sound from the cloudless skies

which had stretched for day after

day after day through the end of the year

and on into another new year summer

summer after summer.

SO: to impose the story – any story – on a scene like this.

Take a landscape / seascape / cloudscape to task.

Ask it questions. People it with problems.

Tease its described features – sea swell, tree,

dune, hill, birdcall, chimney stack, cloud, telegraph wire –

into a pattern. Force a plot onto the picture.

Prise apart the prose from the poem and the poetry

from the science: be EXACT (but leave room

for another question too) list all the usual FAQs, and nag

until something gets done. Don’t stop

until enough is far too much. Don’t be satisfied

until every premise has been dismantled.

Keep asking ‘Why?’

and what if

or if the sky suddenly open to your

full gaze and questionings

blue as it ever was and would be forever?

So savour the sea salt, the grass,

the full moonlight silvering the water

between here and our island.

This summer will be different!

No phrase will be neat, no sentence

will end where it should…

(not so much the view itself as its absence…

WHERE TO NOW?

we shall run and run and run

and reach home dripping with sweat

and drink your lemonade from huge jugs

on the trestle tables planted in the shade

and then as the sun begins to linger

behind those huge trees on the skyline

we’ll have more time to chat, perhaps,

and if the moments like this remain to us,

we’ll share this memory and that

and think of others in the fading light

at the end of the long summer skies

as the mosquitoes start to bite

HOW IT HURTS

Or when your state of mind

the yearn the look

the duck wheeling over

the dusk

and the late trees dark in

the sounds of winter

it hurts

the way you

it helps

come to terms

a burbling oystercatcher on the rivermud

the owl of long long silences

punctuating your sleep

AFTER ALL

When the tops show through the high cloud. Then.

And the forest thins. It is.

Or when a mean light grazes the sea

below a darkness you thought unbreakable.

Or a sound in the tunnel indicates

an opening round the corner as you trip

and tumble waving your hands in front of your face

There’s a chair by a lake in a forest in the mountains which stretch forever. Snow falls, the chair disappears, the snows melt and the chair sits in the forest with the sounds of the streams and the cascades echoing across the valley, beyond which stretch mountain after mountain and it would take a lifetime to walk a quarter of the distance. Snow begins to fall one autumn afternoon as the leaves turn by the lake which ices over soon enough and the chair by the landing stage disappears again into the silent dark as the nights lengthen and as the snows

the trees fill with fog

the weight of white air

look for the other side

and when the tops show through. Then.

And the forest thins. It is.

Choughs float through the snowflakes

or when a thin light slices the skyline

below a darkness you’d believed

unbearable….

GRID REFERENCE

The bird sits on the fence.

The fence runs along the field.

The field is on the hillside.

From here I can see

the hill, the field, the bird,

all in my imagination.

This bird, this field, this hill

only exist if you will

read them .

What is the bird's scientific name?

Which farmer put up the fence?

What do they call that field?

The answers are all

there

and here

written in the landscape

its histories

but these too

are

WHERE WAS I?

Far continents echo in my head:

drums, muezzin,

rains on thatch

and all the new colours of birds.

So the possibilities are clear.

But how then are

all these endings already in place?

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