The Poetry Society

 

I crush the whistling track that twists

Inland towards the smoke of home

Past outcrops, bracken, yellow furze,

Past skittish twilight-gilded sheep

With faces black as fallen angels,

And down our blessed Columba's hill

Until I reach the welcome of the vallum,

Solid beside the foaming shore,

The humming cells

Loneliness in the marrow.

The chapel bell remains asleep

Yet poised to ring of terror, prayer;

Across the sound the mountains grow

Spring colours from the shrinking ice,

The sea rejoices with a roar of light

And west winds soften our nerves.

I creep inside my dimming hut

And try to pray and incubate

The peace of God I know cannot be willed

But only watch my puffs of breath

And hear the abbot start again:

 

'Start with a vision. Fill your lungs

To bursting with the air of joy

And let the images emerge.

Picture the whole, and feel it as

A sun that's burst a new horizon,

An anchor made of gold or silver

Hauled from a sea of buried light,

Crystalline notes plucked from a harp

Or birdsong coaxing up the dawn,

A comet swept across the night

Like the feather of a swan,

A cross that blazes in the sky –

In its sign you too shall conquer.

 

'Make it coruscate and spin

With Ezekiel's wheels yet keep

The rooted stillness of a tree.

Make it shimmer with angels' skin

Or scales of fish, but be deep

In the well of its own sobriety.

Ideally it should show its secrets

As a peacock's tail staggers open

And it should be an ark for all

Creation, beasts and human beings,

For vines and flowers of the fields

For the otter and the salmon

And creatures of the dusty corners –

For rats, cats and scattering mice –

And for the angelic presences

And deft intelligence of lines

That curve and flow and twist, and clothe

The unseen energy of God.'

 

His voice was always undramatic.

His eyes could never hide the rapture.

 

Finding the start, that's the toil.

The virgin beckoning pages smile

Deceptive in their innocence –

For there's a beauty in the nothing

The slightest stroke of ink despoils.

I revel in the blankness

The promise of the not-yet born

And the relief of no commitments

When possibilities diverge

And leap like porpoises from the sea

Free to suck the air and celebrate

The joy of weightlessness

Or rise as tendrils into sunshine

Supple and potent, charged with life

Revelling in unbounded space.

 

I can't make up my mind about

This place: God-blessed or just forsaken?

The thousand pitfalls of the rule

The burden of illumination

Accentuate brutalities

Of gales, fog, the quill stings of rain.

For days I'm hampered by a mist

That stultifies imagination;

But then a sunburst from the cloud

Leafing the rocks and fields with gold

Or a shift in contemplation,

A lifting of the layers of guilt,

Rebuilds my sense of being called.

 

I sought a refuge on this island

Because my life was failing fast,

My hair growing grey and sparser,

My ankles swelling up with wine –

Devotions just a surly task;

Each painting a part-withheld confession

Of dreams I was too frightened to fulfil.

I needed – need – to grasp, to grasp

The immaterial beyond

The surfaces of colour, touch,

I needed a place of flinty light

To take me past the limits of my self;

Yet every picture I complete

Mocks the infinity I crave

And makes me fear my soul unravelling:

For what am I apart from paintings?

What value do I hold for God

Except a flair for detail, shape?

And when my final picture comes to light

What purpose will be left in me?

 

I had to leave, but I miss my home.

The Slievebloom mountains,

The abbey of the Field of Oaks

Soft suns and constancy of rain

The woolly browns and greens of hills

Fellowship, good-natured jokes –

They all still send me to the shore

To shelter from convulsive grief.

 

This island is a shipwreck, adrift

But never headed for the coast

Of any country on this earth,

The brothers scratched by thistly winds,

And some unhinged by isolation.

Harshness grates the spirit, yet

Instils a tingling in my body

That I have never known before.

 

I light a lamp. Smell the oil

And contemplate the vellum.

Again I shelve the moment

Take refuge in craft not inspiration,

The careful pricking out of holes

In ghostly frames of line and margin

And curves of circles, semi-circles.

No matter where I start the work

I cannot stray from symmetry;

No matter how chaotic

It must reflect the map of heaven.

I watch the structure come to light

Appearing of its own accord

Simultaneously within

My mind and on the polished hide;

It's like a preexisting pattern

That's pressing for an incarnation.

 

The flow begins to feel like loss

Of self – I panic, stop, get up.

The bloating sun simmers seaward.

Tomorrow I shall start in earnest.

 

Night wipes clean the slate of day;

I walk the shore to fill my mind

With waves, their rush and draw.

A strip of moon is poised to fill

The ample shadow of its shape;

At first the darkness is complete

But then, epiphany of lights

The skeleton of Orion

Materializes out of nothing,

Its belt of triple stars all still

And silent, gazing like the Magi,

Christi autem generatio ...

And in the timelessness of wonder

The oceanic dark gives birth

To other stars that spark like flints

And gradually a cornucopia

Of tiny diamonds, sapphires, pearls

All scintillating, breathing life –

A sudden silken thread of light

Is jerked from point to point

As God reveals upon his parchment

The interlinking of creation.

 

I leave the lamp-black sea, return

To find the night within my cell.

These days I feel the pressure building

And squeezing in more evening light;

I feel a power fattening my bones

Nightmares blossom through my sleep

Recurring like a warning bell

Serpents skimming through the sea

Serpents with giants in their bellies.

 

The morning comes as a relief

Until the dawning of God's work.

I shake out pigments from their pots

Mix egg white into copper green

Then lapis lazuli and chalk,

Prepare the golden orpiment.

The hide is gleaming like a rock pool

And in its glass I see the abbot;

He's speaking; I listen carefully.

 

'You are shepherds of the blind.

Eschew the derivations

The separate instances of nature.

Withdraw and contemplate, find

The primal paradigms of God

Untouched, untouchable, dazzling –

This world is just an imitation.

To paint the shadow of creation

Will simply multiply the error

Deceive and drag the spirit down

Into the dark gathering of matter.

 

'True art derives from meditation –

A moment when the mind can make

The interference disappear;

Just as the stars intensify

Their points within the darkening sphere

True likenesses will clarify:

Fix them unflinchingly until

Your soul becomes so full of light

It has to overflow its witness

And pour itself in temporal moulds.

Empty yourself of self, induct

The labyrinth of eternity

The sinuous flow of energy

Connecting all creation

In spirals, loops, entanglements

In which the alpha and omega

Are everywhere and nowhere

Because there is no start, no end,

But just one seamless truth.'

 

A blackbird opens up his throat.

The omens are propitious.

I sit and gaze. The pages gaze

Out of a burning pool of light.

 

The moment holds its breath.

 

Procrastination pleads with me

Doodling an otter in the margin

And then I hear the whispering:

Don't think of the enormity.

Unwind and let the spirit surge

Into the emptiness.

But how can I consign the spirit

To the inertia of a pigment?

How can the Incorruptible

Be rendered by corrupted vision?

The questions multiply

To stop the panic and the dread

Of self-annihilation; and yet

A chance to paint eternity

To consummate my begging talent –

But how can God be mediated!

He lies in every wave that breaks

From formlessness to formlessness.

How can I cage the glory?

Stay in the frame, concentrate

Let inspiration blow; freewheel,

Unravel ingenuity –

Be selfless in this holy work

Unknown to man but loved by God

For every single cherished stroke.

Dip the brush and let it rove

Invest your faith in it, and go

Into the waiting void –

Just make the start, the rest will flow:

First the Chi, and then the Rho.