I read this set of poems at a recital at Lanercost on the 21st July 2013
I read these poems by kind invitation of the Cellist Maja Bugge see: majabugge.com
The Poem Must be Spoken was the Title Poem of my first collection available at Amazon.com
The Church of the Sunday Jazz
The church of the Sunday jazz
gathers on the first Sunday
of each month to worship
at the altar of funk
Whether in heaven with Stephan
or playing classics with Stan
the time signatures
with a modernist twist
worship at the altar of funk
The church of the Sunday jazz
gathers on the first Sunday
bringing cool to the borders
New York sophistication
to worship at the altar of funk
Playing the blues, paying their dues
players keep their rhythms strict
as they divide time between sets
honouring the heroes of jazz
at the altar of funk
Placa de Pablo Neruda
Today on a whim
we walked west
past Placa de Tetuan
on past the Placa
de Toros, Monumental
to the Placa de Pablo Neruda
We longed for so much more
We longed for a statue
For metaphor. For rhyme
For sonnets or cantos of love
But all there was
a sign, that we dutifully
photographed, a woman
and two barking dogs
Like the poetry you called for
in the Green Horse, there was sweat
exhaust fumes, a smell of stale wine
a tramp in food stained clothes
unshaven, feeding the pigeons
But wait ………
The young couple, picnicking
beneath the trees
eating bread and jamon and cheese
squeezing the fleshy tomato
Biting, she takes the bruised fruit
from his tender hand
Lovers in Placa Neruda
a metaphor we can understand
Creed River
Turbulence of peat
Brown water, Salmon
Sing their spawning song
Tuned to the rivers
Symphony the chorus
Rises like psalms
Gaelic echoes, language
As old as these hills
As the spawning memory
Of these gallant
Majestic fish, lissom
Silver in the peat brown water
St Olaf, Balestrand
A sanctuary on the Sognefjord
A ginger bread house of prayer, below the mountain
Where, even in the summer, snow reflects on the fjord’s shore
By the Rathuis, of Balestrand Kommune
At prayers on an endless summer’s night
The view through the window’s plain glass
Sings of the glory of creation shaped by
Tectonic force millennia before the Glacier
Above the altar the Saints window
Shows Olaf with his escorts, Bridget and Helena
Here also Margaret, Columba, Swithin
Celebrated in this land of Saints and Sagas
My Sunday words were broken
As was the bread, the wine
Was spilt and the story rehearsed
In this land of mid-summer fires
In the migration period before the glacier; mothers
Stored their secret gifts: the key, the whetstone
The loom weight ………………
The Poem Must be Spoken
Each day we plan careful progress
Some days are faster
Most are less
But now flowers grow where once there were none
A signature has
Replaced anon
In our garden we plant radish beds
The leaves come first
And then the heads
Each day we attend the newly planted garden
But after rain and sun
The ground begins to harden
But still the miracle is renewed
A delicate tracery
Of roots and stalks force through
The ground is hard and must be broken
As the poem, to be heard
Must first be spoken
Requiem
The surreal quality of the light
the air, the sounds of the night
echo in the square
The complex history of shadows
the interplay of earth and blood
the winter sun
the passegiata fills the busy
streets with crowds
In our attics high above pigeons bring
messages with greetings
from those we love
Lanercost
Approached gentle through the woodland
That stands guardian in the valley of the Irthing River
Flowing trout rich towards Eden and Solway
The long nave of the Abbey Church its sandstone
Chasuble gathered around its long skirts
As the Canons offer a time stretched liturgy
Settled into a soft landscape in a hard County
Where saints settled to sing their psalms
Which rise like wood smoke from winter fires
Their plain chant rises above the valley
Echoing the Irthing’s rippling songs
As it washes over the stones on the rivers bed
A half spent house of prayer, sacked
But retained as Parish Church
Where now the prayers and hymns of lay folk rise
Week by Sunday week, where
The marryings and birthings are solemnised
Where sins are forgiven and forgiven again
A Celtic Church built from Roman Stones
Looping across high fells from Coast to Coast
A curtain of definition, setting boundaries
Lanercost this quiet place where only the echoes
Of past conflict is chronicled, Priest’s raise the Sacrament
The bread and wine beneath the plain glass
Of clerestory windows that reflect the grass
And stone of the heritage beyond, a shadow nave
And sanctuary, a higher altar still to God
Whose presence has remained a steadfast rumour
Of the possibility that meaning lies here
