The Poem Tree - complete reading

The Poem Tree - complete reading
recording lasts 45 minutes


Synopsis

It is 1844 and Joseph Tubbs, a local man, is climbing up to the top of Castle Hill, Wittenham Clumps to carve a poem into the bark of a young beech tree. As he makes his journey he reflects on the nature of the countryside and the people who live and work in his village. He meditates, too, on the nature of walking.

In parallel nature itself is given a voice and becomes aware of its own existence. As these various monologues develop they enter Joseph's conscientiousness and gradually a conversation ensues and an agreement is made with one particular tree on which Joseph will carve his poem.

As Joseph begins to carve his poem into the tree's bark he has a vision of the events that occurred on the hill many centuries before, events which resonate across the years and enter the text of his poem, touching his presence, and which subsequently touched the presence of this author some 150 years later.


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Landscape painting V

Landscape painting V

Scraping away the layers of earth's ochre and ore
From beneath the level of a long forgotten field,
Where primed and primeval origins are concealed
On a canvas under layers of pallet-knifed impasto.
Colour heaped on colour burying sketched outlines
Rendered in charcoal dug from an ancient fire pit
And found with shells bearing traces of green,
Ultramarine and gold mined from precious seams.
My brush reveals such details from among the debris.
Then, lifting from the pallet the unearthed fragments
And assembling them in situ it seems
That I touch upon a latent sense of lineage
That my painterly marks like pottery shards
Have a similar potential to awe.


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VELIKI OTPAD - BIG RUBBISH

VELIKI OTPAD - BIG RUBBISH

Anticipated like an annual migration
The nervous wait is finally broken
By the first few, exhausted arrivals
Washed up on the grassy shore

After an epic journey begun
In some distant, forgotten country
A sofa appears by the road's edge,
Its tail feathers torn, an arm seems worn.

Then, a rare balloon-backed chair
Lands awkwardly and a second leg snaps off.
Blind windows having lost their site
Stagger clumsily over the growing mound

Of carcasses. A flock of aged, bald headed Michelins
Alight in the field, their tarnished, black plumage
No longer impress the lesser breeds.
A nest of boxes stuffed to the brim

Spill their guts on impact with a downey,
White feathered fridge. By nightfall vans draw up
Furtively and with a flapping of wings
Relieve themselves of the burden of all our failures.

Then the scavengers descend in search of scraps
Sinking their hammer-claws into anything
Showing even the vaguest signs of potential life.
And when they leave they leave nothing
Nothing more than the wreckage of all our lives
Of our own pathetic journeys.

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A London Symphony

A London Symphony (1993)

It was such a familiar sound
I had heard it often, earlier today in fact
When I passed through Parliament Square.
I passed in bright sunshine and hardly noticed
That slow hollow chime above the cacophony
Of traffic and running feet.
Though it arrested my attention monetarily
I soon forgot about it.

Later at night, and at home
I turned on my radio at random
In the middle of 'A London Symphony'
And heard those very same notes
The three quarter hour rippling across the Thames
Spanning 80 or so years.
But what I heard in the music
Was no more than an echo
Of the moment Vaughan Williams stood on the Embankment
And committed that phrase to paper.
And I thought, 'What momentous events are contained
Between these two incidences
These bookends to our century.
This sound, this shared experience we both made a note of.

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Last Weekend

Last Weekend

The weather has been glorious again
But I think it will be our last weekend
Before we close the house for winter.
The last inhabitant of the oldest house
Has left.

Our kindly neighbours gave us a bottle
Of their home made brandy, and they promised
Us some meat when they slaughter their pig.
The last inhabitant of the oldest house
Has left.

We're both sad for the loss of our hedgerow
And several trees in the orchard since
The workmen widened the village road.
The last inhabitant of the oldest house
Has left.

You know that rare black squirrel I mentioned
Before, well, it's been seen again hiding
In a shadow in the tallest pine.
The last inhabitant of the oldest house
Has left.

On Sunday we wrapped up all the young
Fruit trees to protect them against frost and
Deer, before clearing the lawn of leaves.
The last inhabitant of the oldest house
Has left.

Next year we are thinking
To enlargen the garden.
The last inhabitant
Of the oldest house
Has left.

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sitting on a tram

sitting on a tram
and over hearing
a conversation
beginning, 'imam
feeling,' mixing two
languages each word
understandable
plainly and without

thought. But it was the
combination that
confused and left me
momentarily
wondering which one
was my mother tongue.

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SPRING RITUAL from Field Songs

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Spring Ritual

Three figures approach the house all dressed
and made up and plant themselves in the garden.
The boy has a tambourine tapped to
a certain rhythm accompanying, on cue,
his two female companions,
who link their arms
and roundly dance
in one direction
then the other
back again
holding their hats
and ruffling their skirts
at every turn.

A melody is faintly audible, a soft murmur
picked up by the breeze carrying the sound
across fields and into the embryonic ears of the
soonly-sprouting corn and the blossoming buds.
They have been waiting all winter for this.
It should be a good season, they tell me.

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from FIELDS SONGS

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