A POINT OF VIEW

poems by Charles Hadfield

 

 

 

 

CLARITIES

 

i)

 

         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

 

 

v)

 

As is and is

       or where if and maybe

             so if

or when the was

   it could have been

if anything else had been

       so

             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

                                                                                              in

                                                                                                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

 

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

 

    no

    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

 

no

 

     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?

 

 

 

 

 

 

  © Charles Hadfield 2018

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