Odersfelt
(A poem in three parts)
1. Deer Hill
a vibration starts up, vague and insistent
The west wind's singing through the ling,
a curlew weeps its notes, the millstone grit
against my back bears scars
of masons' wedges, of the unnamed men,
scavengers of stone, weavers
of fleeces and salubrious dreams
who slaked the thirsts of hunger
with thin ale, the women racked,
bent, blinded at the wheel,
the childrens' fingers raw
and blistered.
And I happen to know that
the young blonde and brunette
in the Rose & Crown are discussing
the merits of the car ferry from Hull
or Dover if you're going to Belgium.
The old man in the corner moans
how things ain't what they were,
and that is the lie of it.
Deer Hill sleeps in the sun.
Someone is renovating a weaver's cottage.
Interest rates are rising.
Kiwi fruit
is on offer at Tesco's.
In Odersfelt Godwin had six carucates of land for geld where
eight ploughs can be. Now the same has it of Ilbert but it is
waste.
There's water dogs about,
they scurry over Buckstones Moss
and Garside Hey, licking
at Goat Hill, they course the sky
off on a run past Birchencliffe
and Ainley Top, a straggling pack
of grey-backed hounds without a voice
or whipper-in, but sure as hell
as Billy Prest might say,
the wild horsemen of the rain
will follow as night falls
on day.
All through the wind shout
voices from the past, grey cottages,
grey chapels, ruined mills;
a hooter's morning moan,
crack of a bargeman's whip,
clatter of looms, whine
of wheels, hum of spindles,
serpent hiss of steam.
But just for now
shafts glint on the reservoir
at Blackmoorfoot and light
the catalogue of roofs
beside the valley of the Colne
right down past Cowlersley
and Paddock Brow
to Huddersfield. And Sextus Tupper
with his whippet, Quick,
are headed for the Warren House,
the new one that replaced the old
up on the moor, where William Horsfall
on his horse, was felled
by the Luddite bullets of George Smith
and William Thorpe and died
the day after in the pub.
Quick has his special corner in the bar.
I asked of everything
if it had
something more,
something more than shape and form,
and so learned that nothing was empty -
A dog-day sweating under the sun, Quick
sniffs a morning turd donated by Caress,
Constance Enwright's dappled bitch, beside
the towpath of the narrow boat canal (disused).
Sextus pulls out his silver box to take
a pinch of snuff, snorts, sneezes, wipes
his nostrils with a bunch of flowers
imprinted on a handkerchief. The whippet
padding by his human's side, they tow
their images through those of trees, walls,
foxgloves and crouching fishermen and clouds
that loiter in the redundant water. Sextus
gets dreaming of cool frothing beer and counts
the pennies in his purse, then dreams again
of tomorrow and his pension cheque, the pub,
the butcher, then to cook pigs' livers
for Quick's weekly treat, an afternoon racing
in the betting shop, more beer, the chippy
and a choice of dominoes at the Liberal Club
or darts in The Wheel to lay the day away.
He day-dreams what he's trained to dream,
his other worlds are hoarded for the night,
when Quick will twitch, whimper in his sleep
and Deer Hill silver under a cautious moon.
Sadness, I need
your black wing.
So much sun, so much honey in the topaz,
each ray smiles
in the fields
and everything is light around me,
all an electric bee in the sky.
She's breasted the ramparts, panted
her way up Castle Hill to cool her lips
round a pint of bitter which
she shares, in an ashtray for Caress,
who stretches on the turf beneath
a bench and shaded from summer
by the folds of Constance Enwright's
flowered frock. They say that this
was once the fortress of a queen,
where Cartimandua reigned
(or was it Aldborough, by Boroughbridge?)
and anyway the lady and the bitch
are regal in their quiet content.
Connie takes out her backy box
and rolls herself a cigarette. Sucks
in the smoke, breathes out a fog
that's lazy in the stationary air.
The finger of the Emley mast
points to a passing jet, which
sweeps her off her feet and out
of now to a lost February package deal
to Benidorm; laughter of the bars,
the beach, but most the day she saw a sea
of almond blossoms, smelled their smoke.
Caress decides it's time to leave,
licks at the nearest flesh to paw.
Poetry is pure white.
It comes out of water wrapped up in drops,
it wrinkles, piles in heaps,
the skin of the planet must be stretched,
the sea's whiteness ironed;
Often the subjects of Sextus Tupper's dreams
are distant mountains plumed with clouds,
nursing deep sky-blue lakes within their folds
and creases swathed in conifers and green
as the sea-grass in a Cousteau film, bursting
with pine cones amber brown, shiny as a vixen's coat.
On other nights he might take off to the desert,
ride a roan mustang along the tracks of antelopes
between the pillars of red cliffs, his Springfield
rifle slung across his back, a wide sombrero,
boots and spurs, slitted eyes alert for smoke
and other Indian sign, or circling birds.
He likes the ones about steam trains he drives,
the white-winged ships he sails, but there are
those that make the sweat glands flow and some
so blue he doesn't dare tell them to the dog.
Everything was alive,
alive, alive, alive,
like a scarlet fish,
but time
with a rag and night
kept rubbing out
the fish and its heart-beat:
The mist is fired
with esoteric light,
fills the Colne valley foot,
from Crow Trees Road
to Spring Wood Hall,
as high one side
as Hazelgrove,
the other
to Scar Top.
By Lees Mill Farm
the air's so thick the world
becomes a catalogue
of sounds and smells;
clover and nettle,
magpie and bus, thud
of a football, shout
of a train. Water
has the mouldy scent
of death or lichen
on gravestones,
and boy and girl
and bird and dog
inhabit a white night.
The mist condenses
on the stones, the cars,
a horseshoe nailed
above a door,
on time itself,
on silent bells,
impatient hearse,
abandoned font,
an anvil
in the breaker's yard.
Above the mist
it's open sky,
sharp shadow,
mirror clean,
and purple
shot with granite grey
on the shoulders
of Deer Hill.
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