SYPHON

SYPHON


Long-ago, through
night and day
linked to now,
film-frame by frame:

a car door slams,
an engine runs,
sometimes there are voices,
sometimes none,

the long rumbling
of a train,
the almost-no-noise
of a drawer opening.

Silence like water-drops
suspended through walls
or ceilings, a click,
a throat cleared.

Summer is staying awake,
nightly responding;
Summer is opening
the lens of your eyes.

Second by second,
where rail-yards meet
the estates and part-buys,
the city’s pulse fades fast:

light is beginning
all over again
in a kiss, an embrace
that never stops.

Ballad of Lost Objects 2

Ballads of lost objects
(ii)

With a roll of Kodak Tri-X in my Praktika,
camera concealed and disguised in canvas rucksack,
I came to the Café Nero on that Autumn day
When the sun drenched the plate glass window in light and heat.
We talked of illnesses and work and what retirement
could mean with low spending, Arts, London and Freedom Pass.
We stopped with the coffee drinkers and newspaper readers
for less than an hour, walked up towards the Tube,
the young fashion-wearers in their old high heels looking good,
and parted on the corner of Flask Walk, to walk
further into the fine day, I to shoot my roll of film.

Gingerly at first, framing the shops and then the Flask,
my shoot got bolder, quicker, aiming for contrast and shape.
Go for the cool word “Ginsberg” on the name of a close,
get down close to the cobbles for texture, low f-number.
Walk up, turn left, circle back to the Tube and fire off
the rest of the film at the branches of dusty trees
by the bus shelter; “ride” the 46 back home.

Rewinding on the couch with curtains drawn, there’s a snag:
Tri-X is ASA 400 – I’d forgotten
about the ISO settings, so used to automatic!
Back in the’70s you had to set the beast.
I’m 4 stops out and, disgusted, bin the film:
those bleached out prints would be money down the
drain.
Later, the nagging thought appears and won’t go away –
Those 4 stops out could well have been the key, a door opening..

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N.B. Kodak Tri-X is a black and white film still favoured by some photographers over digital. Some great B&W photos have succeeded precisely because of their high contrast “burned in” through aberrant exposures.

German Poem

German Poem


Recently I came across this German poem. It was printed on an end-of-term exam paper from 40 years ago, in that type-written Roneo system, that made 25-30 copies before the copies became so faint they were of no further use.

There is no title and it seems to be identified by its first line which is underlined. The exam question asked us to read the poem and offer a prose translation of it. I vaguely remember that someone in our class foolishly and facetiously translated “grungolden”(umlaut on “u”) as Golders Green. The German teacher was not amused.

I can’t imagine why I kept this old paper. Perhaps the poem moved me in a way I did not grasp fully at the time. Or perhaps it is just my archaeological filing system which preserves and conceals at the same time. Now, re-reading it after the long interval, I hope the translation I offer - with the help of my Collins German Dictionary - is better than the one I did for the exam.

The name at the bottom of the poem is H.Heinze, which I assume is a typo for Heine. I’m not sure. There is a Helmut Heinze, who wrote novels and plays – perhaps it is him.


Grungolden und goldfarben leuchten die Blitzen auf…


Green-yellow, yellow-green
The lightening flashes
Suddenly across the sky:

I can’t be sure
Whether that’s you across the street,
As out of a charged cloud,
Heavy rain splashes down.

The heavy rain
Makes people run for cover –
Anywhere to find
An awning or a doorway.

While, I stand stock still
Alone on the pavement,
My Summer shirt stuck close,
The rivulets washing my back.

I saw you there,
From two Summers ago:
The love I lost.

I saw you
With your dark blue eyes
And pale smooth skin,
As the lightening flashed
Yellow-green, green-yellow,

And the rain,
In rivulets, anoints me
With your blessings
From two Summers ago.

German Poem

German Poem


Recently I came across this German poem. It was printed on an end-of-term exam paper from 40 years ago, in that type-written Roneo system, that made 25-30 copies before the copies became so faint they were of no further use.

There is no title and it seems to be identified by its first line which is underlined. The exam question asked us to read the poem and offer a prose translation of it. I vaguely remember that someone in our class foolishly and facetiously translated “grungolden”(umlaut on “u”) as Golders Green. The German teacher was not amused.

I can’t imagine why I kept this old paper. Perhaps the poem moved me in a way I did not grasp fully at the time. Or perhaps it is just my archaeological filing system which preserves and conceals at the same time. Now, re-reading it after the long interval, I hope the translation I offer - with the help of my Collins German Dictionary - is better than the one I did for the exam.

The name at the bottom of the poem is H.Heinze, which I assume is a typo for Heine. I’m not sure. There is a Helmut Heinze, who wrote novels and plays – perhaps it is him.


Grungolden und goldfarben leuchten die Blitzen auf…


Green-yellow, yellow-green
The lightening flashes
Suddenly across the sky:

I can’t be sure
Whether that’s you across the street,
As out of a charged cloud,
Heavy rain splashes down.

The heavy rain
Makes people run for cover –
Anywhere to find
An awning or a doorway.

While, I stand stock still
Alone on the pavement,
My Summer shirt stuck close,
The rivulets washing my back.

I saw you there,
From two Summers ago:
The love I lost.

I saw you
With your dark blue eyes
And pale smooth skin,
As the lightening flashed
Yellow-green, green-yellow,

And the rain,
In rivulets, anoints me
With your blessings
From two Summers ago.

Picnic

History Society Picnic with Arthur Cubit

The celery dipped in salt,
no pepper, and the wine
chilled in the river, not
from the fridge. Sticking
to documented foibles we
laid the patchwork cloth
on the short grass, sloping
with the sun undulating in
and out across the Downs.

These moments feeling right,
we praised the books we knew
he loved, and his own re-
examination of Auden, in the Star;
and it seemed the atmosphere
pleased our distinguished guest.
Someone derisively
cracked a joke about his old
adversaries, the second Phalanx –
the first splinter of
the Socialist Collective.
Laughter spread through
the occasion from those
who could not see his face,
his eyes darkening; then

he spoke: “Is that meant to be funny?
What gives you the right
to mock the heroic, my
companions in struggle –
insult to the Working Class.”
Silence arrested our flow;
from behind me came
the scrunching of a plastic cup;
clouds undulated
across the Downs, like sheep
entering a pen.

I was glad I’d asked
Cubit to sign his poems
in the pub before the picnic,
in the safely atmospheric
wood and glass interior
where we have our
Saturday morning meetings
every other week.

Picnic

History Society Picnic with Arthur Cubit

The celery dipped in salt,
no pepper, and the wine
chilled in the river, not
from the fridge. Sticking
to documented foibles we
laid the patchwork cloth
on the short grass, sloping
with the sun undulating in
and out across the Downs.

These moments feeling right,
we praised the books we knew
he loved, and his own re-
examination of Auden, in the Star;
and it seemed the atmosphere
pleased our distinguished guest.
Someone derisively
cracked a joke about his old
adversaries, the second Phalanx –
the first splinter of
the Socialist Collective.
Laughter spread through
the occasion from those
who could not see his face,
his eyes darkening; then

he spoke: “Is that meant to be funny?
What gives you the right
to mock the heroic, my
companions in struggle –
insult to the Working Class.”
Silence arrested our flow;
from behind me came
the scrunching of a plastic cup;
clouds undulated
across the Downs, like sheep
entering a pen.

I was glad I’d asked
Cubit to sign his poems
in the pub before the picnic,
in the safely atmospheric
wood and glass interior
where we have our
Saturday morning meetings
every other week.

Ballad of Lost Objects

Ballad of Lost Objects


The homing signals they once sent out
have stopped transmitting;
and though Earth’s orbit swirls gently,
and the road banks steeply to the right,
and we encounter the disc of the sun
dropping into a sea of mist,
there’re not for finding now; they’re gone.

Most years ago, some just the other day
lost without trace or track;
each one opening another crack
in my painted shell of property –
none washed up, none brought back
to the beach of life expectancy.

Lost like props or stage tableaux,
once at my side or in my hand,
these shadows: chiaroscuros
assembled in another land,
a cloud bank where I cannot go;
a glass that chance filled up with sand.

The road banks steeply to the left;
its tar picks up a cool dampness,
and we encounter the disc of the sun
rising out of a sea of mist
as if by chemical legerdemain.
The lost objects spinning in their orbits,
no less, phantasmagorically exist.


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