Cusp E-Book

Graham Mort

• Herausgeber: Seren
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 71

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

'Cusp', this new collection from Graham Mort, features many of the qualities readers have come to admire; keen observation, a feeling for the natural world that echoes and enhances the human interactions in his poems, the sense of the individual as part of a larger society of which we are implicitly responsible. New here is a different sort of line, which alternates short and longer lines in a step-like formation, a terracing which propels the narratives along. Also included is the remarkable, ambitious long poem, 'Electricity', fizzing with riffs on its theme. Morts formal rigour, instinctive compassion, and warm humanity shine through in this new book, the first since his acclaimed Visibility: New and Selected Poems.

Leseprobe

Seren is the book imprint ofPoetry Wales Press Ltd.57 Nolton Street, Bridgend, Wales, CF31 3AE

www.serenbooks.com

The right of Graham Mort to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

© Graham Mort 2011.

ISBN: 978-1-85411-616-1 (EPUB edition)

A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

The publisher acknowledges the financial assistance of the Welsh Books Council.

Cover photograph by Helen Brock. Ebook conversion by Caleb Woodbridge.

for Maggie

Graham Mort

Cusp

Metalwork

Water’s gleam is pewter

     the woods’ alchemical copper

bronze and gold stripped

     from the trees’ base-metal

that iron-old assertion

     showing through as frost scrapes

back what is rich, trivial

     and new to some lost, deeper

trope. Everything becoming

     something else: lamentation

hope, the river falling into

     its own brass throat. Sea trout

and salmon – lashing silver

     tongues that tease the weir all

night – wait unpronounced

     in the lacquered pool where

drab trees reach and meld

     across the straits below and

days of tainted foam go by

     their dappled flux always unstill.

Now it’s seen me, the heron

     will unweld: all elbows and knee

joints it ratchets the uncouth

     contraption of itself into a

nickel-plated sky. Flight

Dowser

In his gawky teens he was the butt

     of wit: cack-handed, ginger, skenning

aflame with acne and a half-fledged Billy

     Fury quiff. What marked him was the lore

of hidden depths, a wire swan dipping

     on his palms, doing it for Woodbines or

 Park Drive. Then full grown, runt-arsed

     a hazel fork rearing in his fists; he could

dowse anything from lost drains to

     old foundations’ buried lines of stone.

Too wayward for mill work or regiment

     he never had a job, paid tax or pension;

he loved the ferret smell of cash. On

     wet days they found him in taprooms

hunched over cadged pints, talking

     elvers, ways to bait nightlines, trap moles

kill rats, lure eels with a drowned cat;

     or he’d be darting it with lads from the

cattle mart, moleskin jacket adrift, one

     eye closed to find treble six. He fished the

Greta for sea trout, poached salmon

     from the Lune, kept a sawn-off 4-10 for

snaffling grouse, started a feud over a

     man’s wife at Mallerstang, divined a Roman

well at Wray and when they dug it out

     spat sour black water at his own face.

Once he found a dead girl for the police

     face-down in a foot of peat that had the

dogs thrown. It got him into bother when

     they found the gun and pheasants in his

van, when his Jack Russell bitch went

     nuts and bit a copper’s hand to knuckle

bone. They let him be in the end seeing

     as he could neither read nor write nor

Drought

It seemed a double vision: the

     natural order split along a focal

plane, those white clouds piled

     at Dunsop Bridge, May blossom

lush below, boiling from trees

     occluding them, even shrouding

that fractured half-dead thorn

     with life.

     I drove through aisles of

cream mantilla lace; a deer

     ran from its murder of young trees

a kestrel turned above a stricken

     spire of ash, hedgerows babbled

foam – burst hydrants dousing

     green fires in the bough – until

the car whined clear, revving

     climbing, stalling, froth-specked

where the moor’s drift of khaki

     grass began.

     Then sunset’s welding torch

at the screen showing a

     new elevation: ridges and rivers

roughcast in pollen-dusted

     bronze where insect corpses pock

 the glass like stammered rain

     that fails us.

     And below, ducking under

blossom that soaps each

     slender branch’s arms, Lonsdale’s

wide groove pulls this tributary

     down, draws out this moment the

way all things are instantly lived

     and past and lie as unremembered

futures. Then we die, and they are

     tides of a parched mind flooding

with old prophecies: those gulls

     stacked above an empty farm, its

churns dry, its first miraculous

     enamel bath a drinking trough, its

heaps of knackered chain and

     seized pump.

     Now the home run’s glimpsed

the soul’s metal bead aimed

     at sunset’s rust-streaked filaments.

The Work of Water

We lie awake before

     the day breaks its wafer of

light, before making love;

     we listen to the rain, a panting

 dove, to the work of water

     washing away gardens, its

supplications, its drowsy

    insinuations that saywatercourse

valley, rill, stream, gulley, beck

    andgill (our local word

for this world-over thing) –

     all tributary to the hurried

flow of fingertips and breath.

The dove’s cry comes

     again, through the flood’s

garbled pronunciations

     pouring from the watershed’s

ridge to the arched spine

     of the river bridge, deepening

with each moment of

     rain, each drenched syllable

deliquescing on its tongues.

Before this flood of thirst

     and touch, before there was

flesh and longing and

Triora

The house overhangs

     a valley of ruined vines

olive trees gone wild

     in their silver capes.

Soil flows to the sea

     to another century and

can’t be terraced back –

     the river sucking its

mineral tang of sweat

     to another tongue. That

fleeting baffle on the

     balcony – its almost sense

of touch – is breath

     of swifts’ wings, their

lungs eternal, their

     blood’s fulminate of

oxygen stoking tiny

     hearts molten in the

mindless fission of

    everything:strega

their eyes black

     keen as if they know

all history, all futures

     in speed, in a spasm

of procreation on

     the wing, their un

anchored forms

     shearing seams of

air between the

     valley and church

where their young

     are learning this.

Siege

I watch ant columns enter as you sleep;

     shouts of Castilian are fading in the street

           as they advance to their redoubts; a

forward party’s raiding at your knee

     their armour gleaming in faint light

           that buckles in the shutters above me.

Night-heat brings them marching to

     the bed and now a war is starting over you.

          Oh, innocent America! Conquistadors

well led! On your shoulder skirmishers

     advance to put your nipples to the

          sword or arquebus or glittering lance.

Those mortars open up a breach close

     to the dimpled back part of your knee

          whilst elsewhere, courtiers in silken

hose fawn on the gravid queen who

     cannot contradict their plot, but lays

          more grubs, endures her royal lot.

You don’t wake to see them braid your

     hair in ropes that bridge the opal of each ear.

          I watch the conquest of your skin: that pair

of muleteers are bringing fresh supplies

     those sappers following a vein of blue, that

          sentry guards the closed lid of your eye.

My hand alone could clear these hoards

     scatter your spine’s outriders, scouts and spies –

          consign whole armies to the skirting boards.

Instead, I watch, conspire, betray

     by stealth. There’ll be rich pickings at the

del Torrente Mandancio

Fish shadows over

     gravel, their blockage