#WADOD – Day 28: March 28th 2019

March 28, 2019March 29, 2019 martyn crucefix autobiography, blogging, contemporary British poetry, creative writing, ecopoetry, Indian poetry, New British Poetry, poetry, political poetry, religious poetry, Romantic poetry, translation, writing A Sort of Killing, ashes, Brexit, Brexit poems, bridges all down, bronze age, Cumbria, displacement, frugality, Golden Age, handful of dust, Hesiod, hybridity, identity, imaginative projection, iron age, mourning, plenitude, scattering the ashes, silver age, Silver Bay, Speaking of Siva, the fifth age, Tom Rawling, Ullswater Lake, vacana poems, vigorous weed, Works and Days, Works and Days of Division

Works and Days of Division – 29 poems by Martyn Crucefix

Drawing on two disparate sources, this sequence of mongrel-bred poems has been written to respond to the historical moment in this most disunited kingdom. Hesiod’s Works and Days – probably the oldest poem in the Western canon – is a poem driven by a dispute between brothers. The so-called vacana poems originate in the bhakti religious protest movements in 10-12th century India. Through plain language, repetition and refrain, they offer praise to the god, Siva, though they also express personal anger, puzzlement, even despair. Dear reader – if you like what you find here, please share the poems as widely as you can (no copyright restrictions). Or follow this blog for future postings. Bridges need building.

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Thursday 28.03.2019

‘you are not looking’

‘There has to be / A sort of killing’ – Tom Rawling

you are not looking for a golden meadow

though here’s a place you might hope to find it

yet the locals point you to Silver Bay

to a curving shingled beach where once

I crouched as if breathless as if I’d followed

a trail of scuffs and disappointments

and the wind swept in as it usually does

and the lake water brimmed and I felt a sense

of its mongrel plenitude as colours

of thousands of pebbles like bright cobblestones

slid uneasily beneath my feet—

imagine it’s here I want you to leave me

these millions of us aspiring to the condition

of ubiquitous dust on the fiery water

one moment—then dust in the water the next

then there’s barely a handful of dust

compounding with the brightness of the water

then near-as-dammit gone—

you might say this aloud—by way of ritual—

there goes one who would consider life

who found joy in return for gratitude

before its frugal bowls of iron and bronze

set out—then gone—then however you try

to look me up—whatever device you click

or tap or swipe—I’m neither here nor there

though you might imagine one particle

in some hidden stiff hybrid blade of grass

or some vigorous weed arched to the sun

though here is as good a place as any

you look for me in vain—the bridges all down—

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#WADOD – Day 27: March 27th 2019

March 27, 2019March 28, 2019 martyn crucefix autobiography, blogging, contemporary British poetry, creative writing, ecopoetry, Indian poetry, New British Poetry, political poetry, religious poetry, Romantic poetry, translation, writing awkward anticipation, awkward nodding, Brexit, Brexit poems, bridges are down, bright-coloured kagouls, companionship, Cumbria, empathetic imagination, gravel beaches, hiking and walking, imagination, imaginative projection, low-lying paths, picnics, religious stations, the high road, Ullswater Lake, walking boots, Works and Days, Works and Days of Division

Works and Days of Division – 29 poems by Martyn Crucefix

muddy-boots

Wednesday 27.03.2019

‘on well-marked ways’

on well-marked ways like little religious stations

you bring me through gates and over rocks

skirting the insignificant gravel beaches

(though these are good places to picnic)

and I lay odds you are stumbling on tree roots

worn to a shine by the boots of others

worn perhaps by the passage of my walking

last year—or that was forty years ago—

and for once I don’t mind the bright-dressed people

(perhaps it’s their way of not getting lost

their way of signalling a companionship)

though today they are oblivious of me

so for me no more of that awkward nodding

or worse the awkward anticipation of a nod

that does not take place—do you remember

how the likelihood of acknowledgement

depends on altitude—the higher you climb

the more likely it is—this path is low and busy

as a city park—and so many bridges are down—

still you go on—you imagine a sure way round

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#WADOD – Day 26: March 26th 2019

March 26, 2019March 27, 2019 martyn crucefix autobiography, blogging, contemporary British poetry, creative writing, ecopoetry, Indian poetry, New British Poetry, poetry, political poetry, translation, writing boatman, Brexit, Brexit poems, Cumbria, empathy, Hesiod, Howtown, identity, imagination, imaginative projection, lend yourself to me, no difference, passenger steamers, religious stations, retracing on foot, Speaking of Siva, Ullswater Lake, vacana poems, Works and Days, Works and Days of Division

Works and Days of Division – 29 poems by Martyn Crucefix

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Tuesday 26.03.2019

‘one of the sounds you imagine’

one of the sounds you imagine is the boatman calling

this is Howtown— Howtown

the boatman calls as the note of the engine drops

and this is where I’d have you disembark

(for a while you lend yourself to me as if there were no difference)

and I imagine you turning back on yourself

along the lake’s edge in your boots of course you move easily

southwards back towards the sun’s post meridian

to the south retracing on foot the watery way

you have just come

along well-marked ways like little religious stations

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#WADOD – Day 24: March 24th 2019

March 24, 2019March 25, 2019 martyn crucefix autobiography, blogging, contemporary British poetry, creative writing, ecopoetry, Indian poetry, New British Poetry, poetry, political poetry, religious poetry, Romantic poetry, translation, writing Brexit, Brexit poems, Cumbria, empathy, identity, imagination, imaginative projection, kinship, People's Vote March, personal difference, RK Ramanujan, Speaking of Siva, storm, Ullswater Lake, Ullswater steam boats, vacana poems, Works and Days, Works and Days of Division

Works and Days of Division – 29 poems by Martyn Crucefix

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Sunday 24.03.2019

‘and the power of kinship’

and the power of kinship in crossing differences

I mean the power of likeness

means if I ask you to imagine late March you will—

or late April’s sunshine and showers

then you will lay down difference

and take it up to imagine your way towards it

to imagine taking me down to the water’s edge

down to Ullswater’s southern shore

finding—to begin with—the rickety wooden dock

where it strikes out into the lake

where the passenger steam boats still pull in

just a matter of days after the great storm

that swept away all the perimeter bridges

just a matter of hours before the next storm

what I’m saying is storm is our only certainty

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