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Life on the Fens After Robert Lowell |
Before the dawn: no demands, except existence in a form
He beat a life from the dry biblical dust with his boots and hands
He was as invisible as the air and fleeting as the morning mist
His life: structured around the seasons tongue-and-grove
Upon the division of his realm within its mitred parts
An unimaginable alchemy of dust, soil, air, water and sweat
The need of his stomach tursury to his children’s, and his nation's
Drove the thankless task ever onwards to him a - nil
I wondered what thought or dream or manifestations could be?
Were the makings of the man I could never be
Nor would I be. Nor would I be able to fill the boots
As I stood and stared in awe. I could never be he
The infant I see sat on the tractor playing out his future
Will never know his actual pain but shall feel his torture
The wind is soulless unforgiving, and remorseless
As a banshee howls or some female classical legend in angst
Salt can be tasted ‘so they say’ in the wind tears of sailors past
The turquoise sunset dreams the birds away
An evening star with Hesperus breeze
The soil sleeps now the drains flow by
The time like everywhere takes on its own mantle
and can still be heard in the breeze
My father once said “stop” his hand on my little shoulder
“Don’t say a thing just listen to wind” the silence is huge
I heard his voice decades on cascading through the years
‘You don’t listen, do ‘ya boy, no not never to me’
I turned my head it was silence. Then an owl broke the sunset.
copyright 2013
Jonathan
Beale |
