A Selected, new & unpublished poems 1980-2016

By Mervyn Linford

Selected, new and before unpublished poems 1980-2016

• Language: English
• Publisher: Littoral Press
• Release date: Mar 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9780957660847

Book preview

LAPWINGS

Sometimes, when spring, like a green idea

Dispenses with winter and its icy reason -

When the season’s instinct

Proffers a flower to enamoured bees

And leaves between showers

Whisper their secrets to flirtatious light:

Then may you see them on the skittish air,

Those careless plovers

Cresting their passion on erratic wings -

High, in their raptures of rhapsodic flight

As they climb, but to tumble

From the sun’s seduction;

Then may you see them in the wind’s embrace

As they cry, like derision

Over jilted pasture -

Where the sky, made frantic

By their fleet attention,

Clings, like a lover, to each thin proposal.

GLAUCOUS GOLD

There is a land that has a Saxon heart

Where language of the Latinate is least,

Where Nordic on a tongue of salt is cast

On level lines towards the northern seas.

And there am I, a pilgrim on the shore,

Abandoned by the stars that were my home

To form or fail, by what unwritten law

That leaves a man such solitudes to roam?

This ooze, that in the miracle of light

Can seem as though eternity in time,

Will sudden turn to dark on lowering sky

And leave the soul, so desolate, so blind.

And yet, these bleak horizons hold me still,

No risen scarp can move my leaden faith;

No undulating wealth of upland fields

Could buy the rich seclusion of this place.

This glaucous gold is all that I could wish,

The spirit’s voice on skeins of endless geese;

Alluvial, the though that through the mist

Attaches shape to solitary trees.

So here I wait the memory of tides

Where curlew call like echoes of the past

And over top the heron ghostly glides

Across the wide and moon-suffusive marsh.

BEACHY HEAD

This cliff has become a tourist attraction -

Not just for the lighthouse down below,

Or the chalk-blue sea. swirling over white rocks;

Not for the monkshood or the viper’s bugloss,

Not even for the purple thyme

Spreading its carpet at the foot of summer.

No-one watches the falcons;

Borne on the up-draught of a warming wind -

Touching their talons in pretend exchanges.

The clue is in the notice on the wall -

Nothing subtle, just ring the Samaritans,

It’s never too late, we’re always there.

So it’s here that we test ourselves;

Teeter on the edge, stare down the sheer face -

Are frightened by our own imaginations.

What would it be like, to fly like a jackdaw,

A black speck, curving on the salt air -

Feeling the thermals in the width of pinions?

We’ll never know, our kind is heavy;

We gravitate on darkness and despair -

The pull of tides, the moon’s psychotic phases.

MARKET LABOURER

Why do they laugh at me, I do no wrong?

I always sweep the market till it’s clean -

Run errands for their sandwiches and tea

And sing my songs to please and entertain them.

I am a man who always tries to please -

Perhaps my words belong on younger lips,

But can I help my lack of education?

I want to learn, yet cannot quite remember -

And yet I’m strong; I help them to unload

Their vans, set out the stalls with all they need,

And smile when they think it’s fun to goad me.

I do not understand, my face is red,

My hands are fat, my fingers thick and round.

I am so tall I cannot help but stoop

Instead of walking proudly, like a soldier.

I am a fool, but even fools need love -

Why is the world made lonely by their laughter.

LIONS AND LAMBS

The high elms snap wood

Against the March wind.

Elated rooks race and revel

In their spring debate.

A prowl of cloud

Rages in ferocious skies -

And the timid fields

Chase through the shadows

On a bleat of flowers.

LOOSE CHANGE

The snow came fitfully at first -

Its thin commitment

Minted in whiteness

Like a winter’s coinage.

Intermittent bursts

Of loose change

Flipping and falling

On the toss of air;

As if the sky’s investment

Held but a pittance

For the child’s interest.

THREE MILLS AT BATTLESBRIDGE

Here, the confluence of centuries -

three mills -

Three histories of quern and staple

Ground from their meaning by the tides of traffic.

One whose wheels were overshot by time -

Now but the grist for powder-paint and palette.

Three mills -

Three moments in the mystery of grain -

Steeped in the engine of revolving light.

One who knew of vacuum and steam -

Of spritsails that are ghosted by the quay.

Here, the confluence of centuries -

three mills -

Three entries in the register of man

Bound to the landscape by the chaff of seasons.

The last a husk of broken steel and weeds -

Now obsolete in dust and dereliction.

ESSEX SALTINGS

First time for decades

they say –

Ice in great white

plates

Turning the saltings

Into thoughts of tundra.

Memories of past

millennia –

Of lands created

At the frozen edge.

The teal cut coldly

On a wedge of wings –

Burning the substance

Of their own survival.

A thought swings

northwards

Through a nerve of air –

Touching the sinews

Of another age.

Notions of despairing

tribes

Skirting the limits

Of a vast moraine,

With the far blue

distance

Carved by serrations

Into slope and summit.

A curlew flutes

Its glacial refrain

And time’s slow music

Melts to the moment

And the mind’s erosion.

UNLOADING COCKLES (LEIGH-ON-SEA)

The cockle fleet uplifts the artist’s thumb

And frames itself in old-world atmospherics.

The sun loads light across the creek

And girls with skin like umber

Tease their impressions in a swirl of pastel.

We read the signs that vie for evocation:

‘Peter Boat’ and ‘Smack’

‘Old Ship’ and ‘Crooked Billet’.

Along the streets and cobble-dinted lanes

Shadows from houses

Angle like easels in a clash of contrast.

The sea beyond

Scumbles the skyline into blue opaquely –

Blurs into billows of diminished ochre.

A man with a heavy yoke

Changes perspective, like a print that’s faded –

Carries the burden of intense nostalgia.

CUTTING

How we loved that embankment -

To clamber through the hot, oppressive air,

Logging the numbers of the selfsame engines.

To lie contented in the grass -

Those bread and sugar hours,

With the great moon daisies

Nodding above us with an eye for insects.

There we would place our pennies on the track -

Heady with mischief

And the whiff of danger.

The smell of coal and tar -

Thick and pervasive in a glaze of light.

The whir of wires through rings and pulleys,

As the shifting signals

Clattered their message on the tilt of iron.

So far away, those ant-infested slopes -

Lizards and slowworms

Evasive with the loss of tails;

The passengers with time enough to wave

And the steam’s dank texture,

Cool and condensing, like the bloom on damsons.

TOLLESBURY MARSHES

Down on Tollesbury