John Cornwall
Photographs at Heptonstall 1976
One
On stone Yorkshire walls they sit,
four who have come expecting
surprise. The sky is blue, cloudless,
cows grazing. Buttercups
dispirit the grass, yellow smiles
nodded affably, oddly, intact
for no other reason than them
being there. And you are here
to entertain the dead or be entertained.
The one without smiles wears red shoes,
holds a fist of buttercups high
in remembrance of what there is around.
There is nothing around.
Stone Yorkshire walls black, jagged
as teeth serve an idle purpose:
that which has spoken cannot be contained,
no such isolation exists though there be
much whitening of bones.
Two
It is hard at nineteen to be electrified
by words lifting themselves from white pages,
have them eat themselves, always there,
always there.
It is hard at nineteen to be given words
you felt but could not have spoken.
I met you first at POETRY in a book shop,
lifted you down, nondescript, a little dull,
opened up and left myself.
I took you home, used you as lonely men
would use pornography, each word spoken
over and again.
I bored everyone with your brilliance.
At University professors said don't get too
attached, but it was too late.
In me your words rant rages
I have known, am knowing still, in me
your words tamper with a temper
too difficult to mention.
Three
The others said you've looked long enough,
come to the pub. I said go and I shall follow,
religions are not so easily vanquished.
I stood and looked, a kind of horror in my eyes,
grass and wild flowers beckoning,
the mentioning of names, Sylvia Plath-Hughes.
I could not leave without presents.
I had only buttercups
you knew so well.
I laid them down and said
these are not medicines
but are yellow, my way of smiling
at you, woman I never knew
but know now, then followed
the others long since gone.
Four
23 Fitzroy Road to dead slate.
Hitler gas, Christ's sweet crown.
No cross touches your dead head,
too raw and real to be alive,
beautiful as babies who first fix
eyes then smile as Beethoven
in the opening of his sixth.
I said vodka please and vodka please
and bored them with your brilliance.
I came with those who do not love you
as I love you, splendid mother dead
in your blacks.
They took me home but I stayed there,
grey and dull, miles from anywhere,
miles from home.
Five
Isis
mother of my being, I, too, know mirrors,
moons reflecting seas that devestate.
I, too, have known electric smiles
that dance away heartbeats,
the doctor saying I understand,
how do you feel, looking through
windows never cleaned
at something not yet there.
There is nothing ever there,
mother of the bible each night
I lay my head to fasten shut the eyes,
imagine somewhere dynasties
making golden moons, mirrors
that do not work, effigies of God,
Auschwitz, those places used
and then abandoned as history,
long and isolated mutterings
of black soul.
Six
And this is what I meant,
this is what I have always meant,
here with death, the cold,
the isolation of the wind cutting
skins, the terror of eyes
that see nothing, the mouth
fixed into vacancy,
then mumbling's of the past
coming like a lioness to kill,
efface the evening, dragging
language back to light the fire of God
here, Yorkshire, 1976, the cold magic
eye of fever informing the flowers,
the long passage of a love
passing through, the innocence
of soul, I wide-eyed at something
special now gone although spirits
haunt in their infancy.
Then vanish.
The last word spoken
in departure.