I do think of it as my first poem, but then I also think of 'The Blickling Hall Poem' as that, and sometimes 'G - the Pataphyscial Sonnet', from my even earlier pamphlet Dedicated to you but you weren't listening, in different moods. I suppose there are other candidates too. But here it is, in one of its revised forms. Another of its forms (a recent one) is a sonnetised 'remode' of part one, in a series of sonnets called 'Miltonics'. (See end of post.) Like the first poem of 'Tombland', it was composed on his 24th birthday.
Tombland
Wet, golden-leaved
pathways.
Past
the Agency, the pub,
the coinshops, the new
community bookshop….
Poet,
on his twenty-fourth birthday,
shelters in yards and doorways,
to write:
Past
Talbot’s Cafe, where men
play dominoes, set
before repeat afternoon television.
Passing the old man
headed there; his tartan hat
beacon of you-know-what;
as he says to all passers,
‘Are you now all right?’ spastic-
paralytic fingers twitching.
Answer yes to his eyes,
nothing to nothing.
On;
to the
watery Back-of-the-Inns, and round
past Tombland at early dusk,
late-autumn afternoon,
wet leaves stuck to cobbles
under homing feet.
Monday morning gathers
its tired programme
against a late-winter dawn,
church bells eased by crosswind and traffic.
You hear her
gathering the routine necessities for the day;
half choosing this role, it chooses her.
The great
shell
of the house
breaks open
as she
leaves, door slamming.
Silence
gathers in the hollow.
You wait as
grey forms,
not yet
object and shade,
emerge
against a
weatherless sky.
Night’s
shadow.
Winds swell;
the cementless slabs
of the wall
rock.
The loose tatters
of plastic bag in the empty window frames
suck and blow….
The wind wants to force an entry,
picking at crevices,
to prise
this shell open,
to declare this place derelict,
to fill it
with rushing absence.
But we, the people,
won’t let it,
huddled close to electric fires.
We won’t let it.
It draws them here,
drunks with cider bottles,
the old graveyard now an
open space, a double
tombland, where punks
rehearse their truant rituals
of belonging.
You settle into the seat,
sealed
by your snap decision
for the journey.
You speed from the city,
through breckland and
forest. It’s not escape.
It arrests you,
the difference between cities.
Only the transient
flickers, the distance
between cities, release
you. A parallax trick
between image
and mirror.
Either
the image breaks
or the reflection shatters.
After the day, you plunge into darkness and fog, driving
into the heart of the forgotten counties. Near Bury St. Edmund, you pull over
onto the shoulder, out of petrol, where the unfinished motorway yields to the
narrower road.
You join
the three o’clock society of the twenty-four hour transport cafe, witness the
one-armed-bandit entertainments of the Norwich
to London lorry
drivers, over their sausages and chips and highway gossip.
You count
out the pennies: enough for one cup of tea and a bar of chocolate.
Five o’clock, after an hour of mist and straight, narrowing
road, square miles of darkness packed in close, you enter the scattered
outskirts of Norwich.
Houses thicken, either side of the road. You find the others home, who set off
on foot into the freezing dark, hours before.
You go to
bed. The first bird sings the ridge of dawn.
They cannot be folded
onto their own history
these places haunted
by my ideas of them
voices rise inhabit dead
arches choirs of angels
above grunting crumhorns
angelus against dirge
1979-80 (revised often since; completed 2007)
This poem was published in its first version in my The
Frightened Summer (Pig Press 1981). I would like to dedicate it to the
memory of its publisher Richard Caddel, who it is often forgotten, had East
Anglian origins. It was also broadcast as part of a BBC Radio 4 programme on cities in the 1980s, produced by Sue Limb.
Here's the 'Miltonics' remode:
Here's the 'Miltonics' remode:
Tombland: How soon
hath Time, the subtle thief of youth
‘Wet, golden-leaved pathways. Past
the Agency, the pub, the coinshops, the new
community bookshop… Poet, on his twenty-
fourth birthday, shelters in yards and doorways
to write:
Past Talbot’s Cafe, where men play dominoes,
set before repeat afternoon television. Passing
the old man headed there – his tartan hat beacon
of you-know-what – as he says to all passers,
paralytic fingers twitching, “Are you now all right?”
Answer yes to his eyes, nothing to nothing. On;
to the watery Back-of-the-Inns, and round past
Tombland at early dusk, late-autumn afternoon,
wet leaves stuck to cobbles under homing feet.’
Milton Sonnet VII:
1632/1979/2007/Remode 2014
