Message in a bottle
Message in a bottle
When inner voices claim they’ve glimpsed a seam
his psyche would prefer were not exposed,
he tells them “Fuck you Freud, hands off my dreams:
a tree is just a tree, a rose, a rose.”
But one can almost know a thing for years
(and meanwhile know it too, of course) and so
he leaves himself small clues he catches here
and there – joins up the dots – until he knows:
describing every day as “wet” or “dry”,
a traveller passed out in a park, from “stress”,
champagne for breakfast by the riverside,
sipped whisky standing for reflectiveness,
the journalist whose soul’s too numb to mourn,
Judas and Jesus drinking through the night,
the drunken farmers dancing in a storm,
self-portraits with a glass just out of sight,
long games of poker in the airport bar
then incoherent flights through jagged time
and waking unsure where or who you are
to scratch away the null with wine, with wine, with wine…
---
This poem appeared in Watching The Moon Landing.
It might be simpler than you think
Another poem from my 2024 book, Guerrilla Country, poems about peace and conflict.
It might be simpler than you think
You're asking what would make
things closer to OK.
It might be simpler than you think.
To live again in space
once wrenched away, and sing
again: the songs we wish to sing.
The Beaufort Scale
I wrote this poem after attending the Service for the Faithful Departed at St Paul’s Church, Rusthall in Kent, celebrating All Souls Day, 2024 – a year ago.
The Beaufort Scale
A wind is molecules unsettled by
a gradient of warmth and weight.
Light Breeze is wind that rustles leaves,
is felt upon your skin, and on
the Beaufort Scale sits just above Light Air,
which merely hints at ripples on the sea,
and that a plume of smoke may slightly drift.
They walked, together but alone,
towards the altar, where
a host of candles had been placed
on a table, in the shape of a cross.
Unwilling to raise their eyes
from the floor, or the task,
each took the lighted taper in their turn.
She lit a candle, remembered him clearly
and returned to her pew,
unable by then not to watch
as others focused wholly on
the act of lighting, and sobbed
or quietly cried, or appeared straight-backed,
detached from or at one with the rite.
The smoke rose vertically at first,
with barely a trace of drift.
But as the vicar completed his prayer
beside the burning cross, she felt the touch,
the heat and innocence of all the dead
in all the distant lands we pray for,
Sunday after Sunday, on her face,
and fancied she heard the autumn leaves,
not yet fallen, awaiting a first frost,
rustling suddenly outside,
beyond the stone walls and stained glass,
whose images of Saviour, prophets and saints
were dark and hardly visible
against the night.
The two experiments
In this poem, taken from my collection Guerrilla Country (Flight of the Dragonfly Press, 2024), I play with the idea that Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), often accused of setting us off on the road towards environmental catastrophe with his image of ‘putting Nature on the [torture] rack’, was in fact more far-sighted than we gave him credit for. The poem is intended as being in his voice.
The two experiments
Nature to be commanded must be obeyed…
For it is no more but by following and as it were
hounding Nature in her wanderings,
to be able to lead her afterwards to the same place again.
—Sir Francis Bacon (Novum Organum & The Advancement of Learning)
That I accepted gifts
as due by virtue of
my offices of State
is not in doubt. The only
question that remains
is did they move—or stay—
my counsel to the King?
And therefore I propose
a pure experiment:
had I accepted gifts
so those who proffered them
might not be found at fault,
then gifts and Innocence
would surely correlate.
The facts show they do not.
The Histories will show
I put the needs of Prince
and State above my own.
But offices can hang.
Let us devise instead
a durable experiment:
we strive to master Nature
by our art and hand,
by turning how she works
to serve our measured ends,
then count the years till springs
and riverbeds run dry—
until she masters us.
Ceasefire
Ceasefire
When the lake is pewter, like today,
reflecting leafless trees,
russet, bracken hills,
and a motionless cloud,
we look to the west,
from where the weather comes,
where winds will gather again
to rain in sheets incessantly
and drive wave after wave
to batter and wrench the meadow’s edge,
uproot these leaning willows or
surround and cut them off from shore.
The Command
This poem, inspired by a visit to the site of the 1919 massacre in Amritsar, and also referencing the Troubles in Northern Ireland, Peterloo and Tienanmen Square, and with an epigram from Rwanda, is in my collection Guerrilla Country (Flight of the Dragonfly, 2024).
The command
‘An order is heavier than a stone.’
The magistrate, for fear
his fear will come to pass,
sends formal notes to regiments.
The chief of police, sure they
wish bloodshed over peace,
calls out the words that make it so.
The soldier puts in play his plan
to teach these people
what he understands.
***
A simple mark,
a sound or gesture
sets in motion—everything.
Block exit gates with bayonets.
Cut through the crowd.
Fire tear gas, baton, then live rounds
above their heads—
then lower. Aim at where
the densest groupings are.
Don’t shrink—redouble your resolve
when they begin to flee.
Send in the tanks.
***
Inside,
the image of the golden sanctum
barely shimmers,
pilgrims walk in silent circles,
heel to toe, around
the sarovar.
***
How certain must they be,
who utter these commands,
the stage they stand upon
and laud and idolise
is crumbling in the sea?
Where do their shadows go?
And where do ours,
who fail to prevent
their words?
After the forest fire
After the forest fire
Because we were four
and I only had strength to carry one
and knew no other way
I carried the one who called out loudest;
threatened us most.
You two were left to walk behind
in the dust of hot, dry summer and
the heavy mud of winter and spring.
Perhaps I thought you’d learn the land –
more likely, I just hoped we’d be OK.
That morning found us silent, slumped
among the charred remains of trees.
The flames, too, were spent after such a night.
But the undersoil still burned, untraceably,
towards where uncharred trees remained.
Social engineering
Social engineering
For desert dunes it’s 34°,
but 44 for sand dunes in the rain;
and 45 for sulphur, dynamite,
asbestos, rubble, ash, quicklime or bones;
a range from 32 to 43
for mining spoil, and 38° for snow.
At steeper angles, slopes begin to slide
as shape and gravity and time combine
with unforeseen to turn a trickle into
slump, collapse or avalanche. So mind,
for all you touch or near, the need to know—
and not exceed—their angles of repose.
————
Note: The angle of repose is the steepest angle relative to the horizontal plane at which granular material can be piled without slumping. At this angle, the material on the slope is on the verge of sliding. Any steeper, and it will collapse. The angle of repose differs between materials, for example it is 25-30° for gravel, 38° for snow, 34° for dry sand and 44° for wet sand.
“When loose particles are tipped from above, as they are in a crane-tip or a child’s sandcastle, they come to rest in a regular conical shape. The angle at the base of the cone (the angle of repose) varies with the composition of the material. In the case of the material forming the tip at Aberfan this angle was about 35°-37° to the horizontal. When the particles are dry or only slightly moist they do not stick together, as even children building sand-castles soon learn. If the material is wet — but not too wet — the particles will stick together and may stand up at an angle of repose greater than that taken up by dry material; if the material is very wet the angle of repose will be reduced, and perhaps greatly reduced. This is because the space between the particles is filled with water. This water is under pressure which varies with the height of the heap and the volume of water within it. The effect of the presence of this water is to reduce the dead weight of the heap downwards and this also reduces the resistance to lateral movement. Water is almost incompressible and if it cannot escape from the heap it acts much as a hydraulic jack in tending to lift the heap upwards. When the heap is on a deep slope the effect of gravity is to pull the heap not only downwards but also sideways. If the material starts to move on a slope it will continue downwards with less friction than normal, becoming almost fluid. The effect of adding very fine grained material (such as “tailings”) to a heap is to permit the material, when dry, to stand at an angle of repose greater than normal. But if additional water is added, whether from above by rainfall or from below by a spring or watercourse, there will be a collapse, just as a sandcastle collapses when a child empties its bucket of water on it.”
Welsh Office, 1967: Report of the Tribunal appointed to inquire into the Disaster at Aberfan on October 21st, 1966.
Shifting the rubble
Here’s another poem, Shifting the rubble, from my recent poetry collection Guerrilla Country, available from the publisher Flight of the Dragonfly Press.
Were we to blame? To know, we’d have had
to go back to before it all began.
But everything was broken. We
were victims now — hungry and cold;
and scavengers, each finding warmth
and sustenance whereby we could;
unable to name who’d made us do______.
nor find the words for what we’d done.
Instead, we piled broken stones
and bricks where shops and homes had stood,
lit fires with beams and window frames,
swept clean the littered, pitted roads;
then formed an endless chain we handed
debris, piece by piece, along
unbid, returning every brick
and stone to the pile we’d picked it from.
We paused, subdued, as convoys passed,
then walked the streets we’d cleared — and walked
before — and stood to regard the ruins,
soaring, quiet; beautiful
in evening light: cathedral windows
opening the sight of sky
to sky; fragile memorials
to_______;
and wished them to subside.
Guerrilla country
The title poem from my recent poetry collection. (Available from Flight of the Dragonfly Press.)
Guerrilla country
You climb the final rise, and reach the ridge.
A winter sunlight catches ribs and hollows
rippling out across a world that’s green—
and bleached where pain has washed the land in waves.
Touch hands with those who made these marks with stones
or picks or ploughs; with fighters, fearful how
their day would end; and those who made a mark
by ending here—in traces we can’t see.
The ground’s as new as its most recent rain,
or wind that last blew soil grain on grain;
and old as stifled cries of children hidden
in folds, or homes on hilltops, built and burned.
Be still, and listen where the quieter traces
too, of play and laughter can be heard.
Phil Vernon 