Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

     It became apparent that even in childhood, the foreboding that had overshadowed the birth of the Moon-child had not been without foundation. The small dark skinned dark haired children that were his contemporaries sat talking in groups, played their ritual games among the rutted streets that ran between the ancient buildings. The child, born when the creeping sun had slid behind the swollen face of the moon, casting the world of peace into the darkness of haunted shadows, would stand apart. He could be seen resting chin on knees, face veiled by cascading hair, watching the men labouring amid the rice fields. Going about their contented, ageless toil, perhaps becoming spontaneously aware that they were under observation, they would shake their mystified heads. Again, by the shingle margin across which the fishers hauled their coracle-boats of wicker-work to the glass-tipped foam of the Sighing Ocean, he could be seen. Watching the men as they went, tailed by the mauve of their wake, edging the tracts of rushes about which the wind sang, to the still waters where they could cast skillfully woven silk mesh nets, that would gather up the plankton of life. All this the Moon-child would watch.

     It was upon the dawn of his twentieth year that first he suggested the idea. His dark eyes set, deflected those of his elders. He stood in the square choosing his time well. The fishers and the planters met to exchange their wares, to barter their fine intricate carvings, to trade spun cloth, to distribute the foodstuffs. The Moon-child stood upon the ancient worn marble steps that led nowhere, his back against an ancient stone cross painted against the mountains beyond the tundra wastes that were the edge of the known world. He faced the people and the Sighing Ocean that could be glimpsed through the carved rooftops of the town.

     He spoke softly, so that the wash of talk subsided to hear his words. He spoke of the many great buildings that lay in disrepair about the rim of the town, before it melted into the uniformity of the plain. He spoke of the great houses that were pulled apart to supply building materials for peasant hovels. Stonework defaced, woodwork hacked into fuel. He then evoked an elequent vision of their tall straight-backed ancestors who had striven to create the town, who had used their long-forgotten skills to build a lasting monument to their prowess that lived many centuries after their bones had returned to dust. This image puzzled both planters and fishers alike. They had thought of the town, when they had thought of it at all, as eternal. They had never conceived it as having been the product of a series of actions, as the rice harvest was the result of planting, separating and other ritual arts.

     They were again confused by the Moon-child’s pronouncements when he compared those men of the past with the men who stood in the square before him. “Do you”, he asked,” pass on anything to your children apart from a life of toil?”

     One of the elders answered, “We pass on the gift of contentment, the gift of rice and plankton to sate hunger, the gift of a roof and warm furs to shelter. What more is there to life?”

     Two days later the accident was discovered. The elder was found where he had apparently slipped and fallen, face down in one of the irrigation channels. His lungs were filled with water.

     Although the planters and fishers observed no religion beyond recognition of the universal life-force, they regarded the incident as a form of omen. A confirmation that the words spoken by the Moon-child were true. After days of discussion, rumour became alive. Several of the older men spoke to the strange youth about his ideas.

     “People in the past who have found discontentment in the town, and there have been a few, built themselves large coracles with painted sails to catch the wind. They journeyed then across the Sighing Ocean to find new lives”, suggested one of them hopefully.

     The Moon-child showed no sign of having understood the hint. His passive arrogance was at once as intimidating as his words were evocative. His plan was, as he explained, for the town to create a monument to their skill, grander and more lasting even than their most distant ancestors had attained. Even before he had finished talking it had become obvious that his hypnotic spell had been cast.

     So it was that four men, half the number asked for, were delegated to the Moon-child to help construct the monolith he had created so vividly in words. For two weeks the group were to be seen exploring the deserted villas that lay cocooned in weed and decay about the town. Mapping, their leader pointing, noting the intricate lace carvings that frescoed the corridor walls, the serenely bizzare splendour of imagination that flaunted itself through the facade of decay. As the creeping sun slid cancerously behind the mountains, pointing gaunt pyramids of umbra and penumbra across the trackless tundra, they could be seen at various points taking sightings of shadows, of light.

     The planters on their dawn path to the rice fields, hair held back from foreheads by multi-coloured bands, would pause for a moment in time to watch the strange activity with a kind of awe. Fishers hauling their coracles over the shingle to beyond the high water level, rested to regain the breath that hung as wraiths about their labour, would see the Moon-child’s disciples accompanying their leader between the crumbling lines of ancient villas. A frown of concentration would crease the peasant face before returning to more immediate problems.

     Then, one evening, the ochre radiance of the sun as it set found a rival to paint westward looking rooftops, to crimson silhouette trees and ruined buildings, to reflect each tip of the ripples on the rice-fields and the Sighing Ocean. At a carefully positioned, clearly defined site just beyond the town, a riot of tangled vegetation was ablaze. When dawn came the Moon-child’s disciples worked upon the giant, perfectly ascribed symmetrical circle of ash, damping, then hammering or rolling it down into a hard crust. Covering, strengthening with layers of fine shingle.

     An extra force of labourers, recruited at the request of the Moon-child, then began to haul on rollers, great identical blocks of stone from where they had lain for centuries among the debris of ruined villas, located and marked during the preceding weeks. They were positioned laboriously in deep channels prepared for them in the cleared area, to form a perfect square. Each side of which was longer than three men were tall. Upon these secure foundations were placed a second layer of stone blocks creating a walled enclosure that was shoulder high.

     So the people of the town watched in awe as, in a short space of work days, a construction was created mightier than any that had been attempted in the memory of ten generations. The awe rapidly turned to wild enthusiasm. The Moon-child stood back, arms folded, watching the young unmarried girls garlanding the walls with flowers, vying with each other for the attention of the constructors.

     His eyes showed neither exultation or pleasure; partially hidden behind the wild cascade of midnight hair, they mirrored only the incomplete structure that stood before him.

     As the sun lengthened the long shadows behind the stone walls, selecting his hour with the same accuracy that he had supervised the building, he turned. His four over-seers noticed, followed him to the place where first he had announced his ambition.

     He had seized the time when the people would have given him anything he requested. He used the time to advance his power. The four disciples, silhouetted by the setting sun stood behind him with folded arms, almost menacingly someone observed. Behind them, atop the marble steps that led nowhere, the gaunt cross was dark.

     Just two slight extra hours, he coaxed, by every man in the town, be it time spent planting, separating, reaping, grinding rice, or preparing, launching circular coracles into the Sighing Ocean to reap the food of the sea. Just two small extra hours would spare more hands for construction, would feed and clothe them while they worked to perpetuate the memory of the town for ever.

     “Will the monolith house small children when they cry from the cold. Will it sate the hunger in their bellies, or clothe their backs?”, asked an old man.

     His voice was drowned by the cries of approval endorcing the Moon-child’s ideas.

     The next dawn saw the men of working age divided into thirds. A party moved to the sea-shore, a second party, augmented by elder men, women and children, moved to the rice fields, the last party gathered about the construction.

     This group was again divided. Each of the four disciples, who had now followed the example of the Moon-child in abandoning the sweat-band, allowing their hair to dance over face and shoulders, took a squad of eager workers. The most skilled of the workers began to carve delicate, intricate patterns of lines and curves on the already existing walls. A complex fresco made up of words, pictures and symbols which they copied painstakingly from a master-plan. A second group began to scour the derelict mansions and acres of rubble for further stone blocks of suitable size for the construction. Another group began to erect a series of long low huts of wickerwork and clay around the monolith. Long dormitories in which the work squads were to take their meals, and also sleep. It was explained to them that such a degree of regimentation, only to be enforced during the construction work, would save valuable time spent previously travelling from the town to the site each morning, and back again come dusk. The last group constructed elaborate lifting devices of gears, ropes and pulleys that towered high above the stone-work.

     As these days of preparation turned into weeks the initial enthusiasm was dulled by hard, repetitive labour. The men moved into the drab dormitories, the workers in the rice-fields, the fishers in their coracles, tired of their extra work, rumours of dissent began to spread. It also became obvious that the hut set aside for the Moon-child and his four disciple overseers also housed a group of unmarried women. Rumour had it that despite the town’s monogomous tradition, the girls were being shared.

     Much later, one of the girls who had shared the Moon-child’s room, was to tell of how his paces measured the length of the floor each night, as if impatient for dawn, eager for another day’s work. She would tell of how occasionally his arrogance would melt, and he would talk softly of his fears. In gently hypnotic tones he would tell of the town and its past, the history that his searches into the crumbling tombstones villas had pieced laboriously together. He would explain how, with each generation that passed, the town grew smaller, its people fewer. The huts humbler, as the peasants used the stones from crumbling villa walls to construct their hovels. He explained how, in a few short generations, the town would be empty, its streets silted with memories. The warm winds of summer, the cold winds of frost blowing down from the mountains, over the tundra, to a sandy, empty space where once had stood buildings, where once tended fields had flourished, and coracles had put to sea. Yet, even if he could not reverse the trend, at least he could span the centuries to those who would surely come later. Those learned explorers beaching tall ships from distant lands, in centuries to come. It was to those future men that the monolith was dedicated. They would notice its position, how it pointed its shadow to the sea at dusk, and to the particular tall mountain at sunrise. They would recognise the angles of its construction, its symetry, its majesty. They would use the language keys within its frescoed walls to read of its history, its creator. So would the essence, the will, the intense loneliness that knew no bounds, of the Moon-child, reach out across the centuries to those distant men of the future who would be his equals.

     When he talked no more the girls, who had heard, but not understood, knew only of the power of conviction of the words, would cringe into the half darkness as the man stared into the night, as if the future were open to him, and centuries no more than a few days wait away.

     It was at this time that the Moon-child became aware of the whispered dissent, and decided to put his new-found power to the test. A worker was selected, one known for his highly vocal dissatisfaction. He was seized by two of the disciples and marched to the square of the town where the people gathered uncertainly.

     Unflinchingly arrogant the leader returned the peasants’ stare. “The actions of this man”, he said “have been judged by the peoples of the town, and found to be detrimental to their greater good. He must be punished accordingly”

     The stone cross, remnant of some ancient, long forgotten building, stood pointing its arms parallel to the shore.

     The dissenter was stripped and tied securely to the cold stone. The people watched the tabloid develop in hypnotised, unbelieving silence. The man known as the most ardent of the disciples stepped forward with a length of knotted rope. The silence was a live thing coiled about the crumbling town, enveloping town, enveloping its suddenly frightened, confused people, a silence that vibrated with fearful apprehension.

     The hiss of the rope, its impact upon bare flesh was clearly audible, as was the gasp of pain, even to the most distant observer.

     The Moon-child’s arrogance revealed no sign of his inward torment. The knowledge that his power, his vaunting ambitions lay on trial, and could be destroyed by a single rallying protest, a single utterance to break the reverent trance of the audience. Yet no such action showed itself. The punishment over, the groaning man fell to the sand within the shadow of the cross.

     The work progressed rapidly from then on, vocal dissent muted to an incoherent whisper. The construction grew to twice its height with the aid of the elaborate lifting devices. Twisting stone stairs began to snake about its interior to a second, then a third level. Each large chamber at each level was draped with rich tapestries, filled with strange objects torn, at the leader’s command, from certain of the most ancient villas.

     As the sun sank, the shadow of the tower creeping taller, the Moon-child could be seen circling, gazing upwards at the slender finger of stone, as if worshipping.

     During the long days the labour passed in silence. Sometimes men working in the rice-fields would pause to glance at the construction, then beyond to the mountains where the winter was gathering its icy powers for the seasonal invasion.

     The four disciples had been augmented by a second echelon of eight sub-overseers, who in turn watched over a further sixteen squad leaders. All carrying out single-minded will of the Moon-child. It was here that trouble developed. One of the newly promoted squad leaders, glorying in his new found power directed insults and blows at the workers delegated to him. One of the peasants turned, hurled a steel spade which he had been using, in a vicious arc of sudden anger. The overseer was struck, fell bleeding to the ground.

     Redress followed immediately. The peasant was hauled to the square. This time, as the victim was secured to the stone cross the lines of disciples and overseers were all about the square. Their uniform ranks a grim reminder of the power that had grown about the Moon-child. The silence as the blows were administered was now that of resignation.

     At last the dissenter hung upon his bonds, body cruelly marked by flowing blood, lapsed into unconsciousness. A disciple stepped forward with a knife to cut him loose. At the last moment the Moon-child raised his arm. The action was cut short.

     “The dissenter will remain where he is, an object lesson to any others who may try to redirect the united energies of the people from the task that will bring them glory”.

     “But he is badly hurt — he could die”, argued the disciple.

     The silence again tensed itself.

     “He will remain”.

     “But he has been punished enough for what was, after all, an almost justifiable act of anger to which he was provoked”.

     The Moon-child ran his cold eye over the disciple who was defying him. “He will remain”.

     The argument was over. The crowd dispersed leaving only the victim bonded to the stone cross. The sun set behind the distant mountains. The workers lying in their long dormitories lay awake reflecting awhile before sleep overtook them. The whispers that had been muted during the long night wakened to the dawn, to play about the heads of the planters in the field, the fishers directing their coracles among the navigable channels of the weed-bound sea, or the workers labouring to erect yet another level of giant stone blocks upon the tower. It burst angrily with contained power as the news filtered through the squads that, during the night the dissenter who had been bound and unconscious, had vanished. The second story, that the disciple who had stood up to the Moonchild had also vanished without trace, inflamed dulled imaginations.

     At midday the Moon-child selected a group of particularly loyal followers, who armed themselves with knives and staves, then moved off in procession until they were lost to sight in the tundra. The town, as if a single organism waited with baited breath until, as dusk fell, the party returned with the lifeless bodies of both escapers.

     Once more the town settled down to uneasy peace. The stories that grew, spread and died were many, speculations and half-truths handed from worker to worker, group to group. One tale suggested that the disciple, defying the Moonchild’s will had freed the tethered dissenter and together they had tried to escape into the wilderness. Another, that the dissenter had revived, freed himself by chaffing his bonds on the rough stone. His having escaped, the Moon-child seized the opportunity of ridding himself of the rebellious disciple by shifting the blame to him. The third story suggested that, in fact, there had never been an escape at all. The search party and its ‘find’ being part of an elaborate hoax to cover up the cold-blooded murder of the two men who had opposed the leader’s will.

     There was, however, no single resolve, or resulting action. Autumn drew in. The workers voiced the hope that once the last of the rice had been collected and stored, the work of construction would be shared out among a larger group, thereby relieving the individual of much work.

     But this hope proved false.

     As the tower was by now so high that it dwarfed every other structure, taller by far even than the greatest of the still-intact villas, many of the cranes and lifting devices in the early stages of its construction were too small to be of further use. These were used by the free hands to begin the second of the Moonchild’s projects. A great hail of wickerwork and thatch was created by the shore of the Sighing Ocean, where the largest channel access through the crust of reeds led to the open sea. Within the hall work commenced, not on small coracles, but, at the Moon-child’s supervision, large, ocean-going craft took tentative form.

     It was then, as the immense tower clawed at the sky, nearing completion, and the first of the ships took on dimensions, that winter prematurely burst as a torrent over the distant mountains. Flowing with snow, beaten by violent winds it crossed the tundra to engulf the town in a freezing embrace. The snow drifted about the giant pointing finger of the tower, covered the debris of ancient villas beneath uniform whiteness, confined work group and overseer alike to their dormitory of hovel. Whiling away the time with tales, songs that had been passed down from generation to generation, games of skill or luck. All the while the Moon-child paced, containing his anger and impatience badly.

     For weeks the snow lay. The waters of the rice-fields were covered with a thick layer of ice, the reeds moon-frosted to silver. Then the thaw began, turning to slush beneath feet, the intruding winter melting back into autumn almost as swiftly as it had come.

     Immediately work squads re-assembled about the site. Huge blocks of stone, newly emerged from their nests of snow, were hauled over the slushy ground, lifted on cranes powered by sweating labourers, into the frosty air, to their rest upon the tower.

     Many versions of the final phase were circulated later. How the great block of stone was being balanced on its pulleys, moved into position, when the rope snapped. Others said that it was the result of deliberate sabotage.

     One of the last stones to be moved into position, however, got out of control on its final descent, fell several feet to crash into the floor of the chamber directly below, which collapsed beneath the sudden weight.

     The Moon-child, white with apprehensive fear, clad in heavy furs to keep out the cold, mounted the winding stairs three at a time, to inspect the damage. There followed a kind of pause in time. Then the upper section of the wall coved in with the sound of apocalypse. Weakened as it was by the damage already done, sections of masonary followed, as if in time-frozen slow motion. A kind of dread implosion that held the audience transfixed with awe and fear.

     When the terrible, gradual, destruction was done, the hollow shell of the strangely stunted tower, empty amid the desolation, had become the cairn for its creator, buried deep within the rubble.

     A long, cross-like shadow cast over the stillness pointed to the sea.

     Winter, that had relaxed its grip momentarily, returned with renewed fury. As it blanketed the landscape the disciples argued fiercely within their building in the sleeping town. Two of them said that, when spring relaxed winters hold, they should repair the damage to the tower, and complete it as the Moon-child would have wished. The others favoured the second project, the great ocean-going ships, to explore distant lands. So they agreed, and when the snow finally vanished, did nothing.

     And the town gently lapsed back into the fatal slumber from which it had been rudely awakened.