Inside Out

Modern translations of St Paul said 'puzzling reflections'
in describing perception, with a taunting, haunting interplay
of light and shadow, never the same for two minutes together,
which made better sense to him than the King James image

To see 'through glass, darkly' was like tilting with a shroud
You couldn't tell what was on the other side of cloak and gesture,
whose storyline it was, and whose the wider plot, when to engage,
and how to abstract meaning from a colloquy already begun

He liked landscape art that shimmered through a summer haze,
nothing clearly defined, merely suggested, sketched and stippled
Precision was death, the vanity of nailing flesh to a cross,
hoping the spirit would not escape to recite its lore elsewhere

Whereas hyperrealism, all diehard hues, stirred menace by osmosis,
Magritte, Chagall, Picasso, hit the spot, dredging themes and schemes
from where it mattered most. Those artists knew a thing or two
about immanence, hypnagogic dreams and shapeshifting metaphor

Such designs granted form to feeling, which delivered its own relief
without any rationale, the need to decode, or the knife-twisting alarm
at having been jumped from behind into action that didn't fit the fable,
Hamlet and Hedda Gabler a Disney parody, the diapason trashed

Putting a foot in the wrong camp was a hazard of moving and breathing
There was seldom signage to say where you were, no cue as to what
came next in the pantomime of human exchange. You had to hang around
until the swirling atmospheres kindled a vision you knew meant business

One dusk, passing the Stage Door, he turned into the Square to confront
a revelation of community. There, in the foyer, under constellations of lamps,
theatre-goers were sipping and laughing and gesticulating behind glass,
no script, no hard and fast plot; the miracle of doors parting on proximity

Next thing he knew was a stifling warmth and billows of babbling energy
He’d thought to be among long-lost friends, in limelight, the jester at the party,
but the baffling palaver made him feel like a spectre, an outsider on the inside,
so that he fled into night’s embrace, all lacerating noise and winking alarms

from Mysteries of Light (collection in preparation)

#AutismAwarenessWeek

The first of two passages from Next Year In Jerusalem

Snow fell unexpectedly in my hopeful seventh spring. It made shadows of the bare boughs. It sent shivers down the spindly spine of young birch. It found out the eroded pointing in the brickwork. With a gentle insistence it gathered along the window-ledges, made portholes of the panes and silenced the astonished birds. Flake by flake, it settled upon the lawns Simms had already mown twice that season, and obliterated the paths as though it meant business. Soon it had created a ghostly monochrome world. A child’s world.

No one guessed it was coming. The weather forecast had been promising. It came without warning, this taste of winter in May; a thief in the night.

Mrs Simms, housekeeper at St. Mary’s declared: “Well, well, I never! That’s put paid to the picnic, then. Nipped our plans right in the bud, that has, dear.” She liked things to be orderly, predictable.

“Never mind, I suspect the children won’t be too disappointed,” Sister Joseph said in a pleasant rallying tone. “They’ll be just as happy making snowmen as picking cowslips. You can’t order the weather, I’m afraid.”

She was right. We whooped with delight and scrambled on to the sills to watch the sky come tumbling down to earth at last. We had longed for snow and felt cheated. Unlike its predecessor, the winter had been a sequence of lethargic days, of damp pavements and mild winds that never got off the ground. There was no cutting edge to it. No blade-bright December or January to sting colour into your cheeks and pinch your toes. Spring came unheralded, robbed of its magic. Even the snowdrops flowered unremarked.

But the advent of snow put a new complexion on things. It lent poignancy to the frail evidence of rebirth.

Throughout lunch that day, which included mortifying wads of bread-and-butter pudding I shall never forget, we agitated to be let loose on the sugar-frosted landscape and, as soon as it was over, crowded the exit noisily. We rolled in the snow, scooped it up and stuffed it by the fistful into our mouths, tobogganed in the dell where the oaks were strung with rubber tyres. Long earthen scars appeared upon its slopes. The air was thick with shrieks of glee and icy missiles exploding on ducked backs. Some built a fortress in the shrubbery, irrigating its mote with a length of hose burgled from Simms’ shed, until the brindled snow had turned to slush, the towers sank in ruins and the ramparts were no more.

“I know,” cried someone, “let’s dig for buried treasure!”

And as enthusiasm quickened among us, we fell to seeking our fortune in the swede patch Simms had painstakingly prepared for the new crop. The primary colours of our spades struck a contrast with the snow and with the cheerless garments thrust upon us in those years of rationing after another fullscale war. The world had not entirely awakened to its own survival.

Fortunately, Simms had gone into town on an errand for Matron, and was not around to see his beloved domain turned inside out, soil and snow and clods of clay flying from the trench. The going was tough. The purposeful were soon singled out from those in search of aimless distraction.

“The ground is hard,” complained the whey-faced Polish boy Matron fed with iron pills and spoons of loathsome fish-oil he spat out at her. “I try somewhere else.”
A groan went up from the rest of us. We knew him of old.

“Novak’s chickened out before we’ve started,” sniffed Thomas in disgust, a good-natured elderly boy of eleven who took command of all our enterprises.

“It’s all right for you, my spade’s too blunt,” the quarrelsome Lucy told him.

“Mine’s broken,” wailed little Humphrey, and the corners of his mouth curved down and the beads of moisture in the corners of his eyes filled out.

“Have mine, then,” I said. I was dizzy and my chest felt sore.

“You’re my best friend,” he beamed up at me. “You can have my pudding tomorrow. Unless it’s treacle tart!”

"Old Beaky says she's got a dicky ticker," Thomas informed them, mopping his overheated brow upon his sleeve. "Reckon he could be right. She's always out of breath."

Next Year In Jerusalem was originally published by Robert Hale Limited in 1980

 








...For time

to heal and feel and breathe
free air unlaced with taint of death,
to ponder skies of patent blue
and kindled clouds of sunset hue,
to savour moments where life lives
and know no situation gives
of itself and without cost,
for in pursuit true life is lost

...and space

beyond encroaching walls,
a banished need for shopping malls,
those boundaries of every kind
breached on land, in heart and mind,
and false divisions that enlist
a pledge that puts us to the test,
removes our footprints with the tide
of cross-hatched plots and national pride

 ...and place

where energies recharge,
a refuge from the world at large
so inspiration finds its wings,
hard-earned spoils each season brings,
where travel can reveal new cultures
but foils the money-changing vultures,
lends atmospheres that tell of history
and conjures legends wreathed in mystery

...and Grace

in time and space to find
a place within our heart and mind
of peace, emblem of that heavenly home
where pearls exchange for purchased loam,
furnished by One who pierced the gloom
and snapped the bondage of the tomb
and rose to greet a golden dawn,
a mystic presence in our form

from Mysteries of Light (collection in preparation)

'I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.'

Virginia Woolf

I know why the caged bird doesn't sing

And why God-given feather falls in spring

The ruthless month bespeaks regeneration

And flight from climes that temper inspiration

To climes where climbs the stallion sun

Envoy of death-blows dealt and done

Vaulting the hurdle of the season

Whilst overruling rhyme and reason

Reckless florescence bursts its stays

And bears blind seed of future days

Rain-sown in heat and glorious folly

Oblivious of winter's volley

For Sibylline November wreathes

The Hope that free midsummer breathes

It mulches cankered autumn sepal

Reveals the worm within the apple.

In gilded prison with wings pent

The linnet mourns his element

Preserved from naked thorn and frost

Whilst honeyed halcyon days are lost

Spent life can yield – the seasons show it

But the caged bird can never know it.




 

 Now available on Amazon Kindle

and yet...

'FROM my spirit’s gray defeat,

From my pulse’s flagging beat,

From my hopes that turned to sand

Sifting through my close-clenched hand,

From my own fault’s slavery,         5

If I can sing, I still am free.

For with my singing I can make

A refuge for my spirit’s sake,

A house of shining words, to be

My fragile immortality.'

Sara Teasdale