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Patrick Early

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Aude Landscape with Frost

Million-fuelèd, nature's bonfire burns on Gerald Manley Hopkins


On a winter's day at Stonyhurst,
he might have seen the countryside
in the grip of a freeze just like this –
a frost so pitiless it padlocks
everything in its tracks,
except the onward rush
of his own blood beating,
except the rhythm of his own breathing.

And the poet might have swung his blackthorn
and cracked the face of a puddle
staying to note how delicately
the iron surface splinters,
and, bending over to take a closer look,
crouch there in his curate's black,
arrested in a kind of rapture
for he can see heraclitean fire forms in the ice.

I pause by the roadside,
thinking of frost and the forms it takes –
the downward creep of ice-flowers
over rocks, ( they droop like Dali clocks, )
snow-drips harden into crystal,
as though hours were caught
just this side of terminal collapse,
and pinned down by the freeze.

But fire burns, ice loosens.
Look closer, look inside,
for even now behind the glass,
a tiny trickle flows.

 

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