Nicholas Hedges

Art, Writing and Research

The First Line?

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Reading Clive James’ Poetry Notebook, I find myself a little better prepared to tackle the task of writing a poem; something I’ve wanted to do since the start of the New Year. I’ve made attempts in the past which I might publish in due course, but reading the Poetry Notebook I see where those attempts were lacking, as well as where, in small parts, they might be deemed to have worked.

What I have tended to do in those past efforts was to allow language to take over, to become a thing in itself; words for the sake of words. Now however, I want those words to work – to convey a specific meaning. In my art, I try and articulate that which is often beyond prose, things which should be well expressed in verse form.

But what will my subject be?

With the centenary of my great great uncle’s death near Ypres (8th May 1915) fast approaching, I thought I would look there for my subject, and remembering his obituary, I read it again and found my first line (the last line of the obituary):

All present standing in silence.

It’s a moving line which, having been isolated from its initial context creates a question. Who – or what – is present and standing in silence? I thought of soldiers standing for roll-call on a Parade ground. I thought of trees… but the language doesn’t allow for their lack of movement; yes they sway in the wind, but they do not leave and return as being present would suggest the ‘all’ have done. The words speak of people who have come together as a specific group. Of course, in its original context, the ‘all’ were the relatives mourning the death of one of their own:

The meeting passed a vote of condolence with the relatives, all present standing in silence.

The all is a family which, in the small church, isn’t all present. Instead there is a raw space which the silence seeks to fill; a physical silence eclipsing the wake of the church as it mines the depths of the family’s grief. Even from a distance of 100 years one can tune-in to that moment; catch as on shortwave radio their internal dialogues. And just as one can hear the “references to the death of Private Rogers” made by several members of the Church, those speeches are made formless as if heard underwater. For us it’s the distance of a century that does it. For the family it’s the distraction of cherished memories whose shapes are knife-sharp and remembered by their bodies.

T.S. Eliot (2)

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Burnt Norton

And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them.

T.S. Eliot

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East Coker

There is, it seems to us,
At best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been. We are only undeceived
Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm.
In the middle, not only in the middle of the way
But all the way, in a dark wood, in a bramble,
On the edge of a grimpen, where is no secure foothold,
And menaced by monsters, fancy lights,
Risking enchantment. Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,

Roads by Edward Thomas (1878-1917)

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I love roads:
The goddesses that dwell
Far along invisible
Are my favourite gods.

Roads go on
While we forget, and are
Forgotten like a star
That shoots and is gone.

On this earth ’tis sure
We men have not made
Anything that doth fade
So soon, so long endure:

The hill road wet with rain
In the sun would not gleam
Like a winding stream
If we trod it not again.

They are lonely
While we sleep, lonelier
For lack of the traveller
Who is now a dream only.

From dawn’s twilight
And all the clouds like sheep
On the mountains of sleep
They wind into the night.

The next turn may reveal
Heaven: upon the crest
The close pine clump, at rest
And black, may Hell conceal.

Often footsore, never
Yet of the road I weary,
Though long and steep and dreary,
As it winds on for ever.

Helen of the roads,
The mountain ways of Wales
And the Mabinogion tales
Is one of the true gods,

Abiding in the trees,
The threes and fours so wise,
The larger companies,
That by the roadside be,

And beneath the rafter
Else uninhabited
Excepting by the dead;
And it is her laughter

At morn and night I hear
When the thrush cock sings
Bright irrelevant things,
And when the chanticleer

Calls back to their own night
Troops that make loneliness
With their light footsteps’ press,
As Helen’s own are light.

Now all roads lead to France
And heavy is the tread
Of the living; but the dead
Returning lightly dance:

Whatever the road bring
To me or take from me,
They keep me company
With their pattering,

Crowding the solitude
Of the loops over the downs,
Hushing the roar of towns
And their brief multitude.

The Expiration

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SO, so, break off this last lamenting kiss,
Which sucks two souls, and vapours both away;
Turn thou ghost that way, and let me turn this,
And let ourselves benight our happiest day;
We ask none leave to love; nor will we owe
Any, so cheap a death as saying, Go.

Go; and if that word have not quite killed thee,
Ease me with death, by bidding me go too.
Oh, if it have, let my word work on me,
And a just office on a murderer do.
Except it be too late, to kill me so,
Being double dead, going, and bidding, go.

Poem – The Crematorium

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And so to the crematorium
We’ll make our way again. This empty place
Full of names, shards like glass from broken
Window panes, and rain like thorns on roses.
To the waiting room where no-one sits
Where all the clocks have stopped to rub their hands
Where mourners recount the hour of the toll
And one by one swallow nothing whole.

Through the gates the headlights come, bearing down
On everyone who waits. Black slick night,
Shadows in no hurry for today or
Days that have passed. A nervous laugh
Hovers above the breathless chimney stack
A graceful scar upon the tumbling sky
The bird floats high by dint of searching eyes
And dives. Gone as if it never was at all.

We greet old friends and those still unknown
With half-suppressed expressions. Like uncertain
Lovers in love’s first encounter; a chain-gang shackled
By the things we should remember, we walk
Towards the chapel. We follow the pipes
That bellow death in gentle slumbered tones
And take our seats with strangers; our only
Child in common has seen the flame and blown.

We hide in the order of service
Words of hymns that nobody knows, rising from
The page like cat-pawed moths, flitting round a
Hopeful bulb. Then at last the curtains close
To hide the cheap illusion. Some close their eyes.
Some stand with hands clutching their tears
Like summer drinking rain. Then all go home
Beyond the flowers, until it’s time again.

© Nicholas Hedges 2006-20

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