OXFORD FROM A PRISON CELL

 what road did I come by

poetry leads to a locked door and at the last deserts

the body it has used you come to me at the threshold

after seven days and you come as a faithless woman

though the sun coloured iris hurts it breaks towards the sunlight

Caltha palustris unearthed closes only to the dark

the body will fight to the death for its own dignity

while the mind more able to imagine a walled up tomb

than a room with a locked door the eternity of one

and the time of the other where the mind free wheeling can

recall only the absurd I sat once with my back to

another door learning Greek for the first time and the last

time learning Greek then you came with cups of kings you cannot

help me now let's go on together turn and turn about

I will make the songs and you shall grind them out

June 1985

In Memoriam Christine Blake

In memory of Christine Blake who died in her home in Fordwych Road a few doors away from the West Hampstead Day Hospital.

Christine  was denied this refuge.

(June 1945 – April 2002)

  1

When I summon together all the chance

Encounters that have existed between

Us, trying to weigh them with the distance

Of things unsaid, the unlit future seen

By you alone, there was so little to

Go on, you seemed to be living only

In the interval of time before you,

Slowly foundering, clinging to any

One who would listen, but we could not hear

Or see as you were swept by a current

Too far out to reach, something beyond fear

Failed to prevent what you finally meant,

Left to mutely disappear without trace

Suspended from a life you could not face.

 

7-11 April 2002

 

  2

Alone on Tuesday morning just thirteen

Weeks into the year, the first day after

Easter, you put an end to what had been

An unmanageable existence, where

Another afternoon another night,

Was not within your reason or the span

Of things, whatever intercession might

Have happened, it was too late.  As a fan

Too widely opened you could not get back,

The separate panels of your life were

Locked into place, a surface on the rack

Of being that yet could go no further

While the arc that held it all suddenly

Gave way to the last trace of its story.

 

11-12 April

 

  3

Even your death was as though for a crime

You did not commit, then left to hang there

Already too late, without enough time

Left over between before and after

Just to turn about and run the distance

Of your own road to the day hospital

Only yards from your own door, beyond chance

And equilibrium left unequal

To the task.  It would remain a journey

You would never make, even the words failed

Leaving you unable to ask or see

The day outside where darkness within trailed,

Something beyond fear was all you could hear

And the silence of it hurrying near.

 

11 April

 

  4

Our Lady’s Candles were still emerging,

Chestnut leaves unspread, recently broken

Under hazed green smoke, were slowly drifting

Upward through the grey pall of winter when

You suddenly turned away from it all.

A single candle in the space behind

You at the last lap of your funeral

Burned through the terminal silence, your mind

A plan, a last mechanical journey

Into an inferno that would enfold

You with intangible reality

As you passed before us into the hold

Of time where sunlight and material

Darkness broke from the cordon of April.

 

14 April

 

  5

Even meaning somehow seems to fall short,

Words that refuse to adhere to a page

Fear to bear the weight of the way you fought

To live or the uncomprehending rage

For the way you would die, all the panic

That happened that the years could not amend

And night and morning broken by the tick

And sound of a countdown right to the end

When you could then reckon on your fingers,

On one hand all the people still installed

In your day, a collective guilt lingers

And it will not go away, your life stalled,

Reduced to fashioning an open noose,

Oblivion from which you were cut loose.

 

25-26 April

 

  6

It was all over by the time they broke

Through the door and final as a cry for

Help that came too late, helpless in the spoke

Of light mutely entering the heart’s core

As someone began to knock on your door,

The only barricade against a world

You simply could not cope with anymore

Left to its silence with the end untold

And left for others to find or fathom,

To sound the days you could barely get through

As one by one all the things you had come

To depend on were kicked away from you,

Too weak to fight you tried to surrender

To ransom what you could not remember.

 

27-28 April

 

 7

Only thirty days ago was the last

Day of Easter and the long awaited

Opening impact of April, a mask

Beneath which you struggled unabated

As you went for a walk for the final

Time in Regent’s Park and where even while

Accompanied as on a casual

Outing your mind was trapped in a trial

For your life on your last full afternoon.

Who judged you that you should die by your own

Hand or ordered that your death come so soon,

Was there no defence as you stood alone

No one to witness your execution,

With no last reprieve after hope had gone.

 

1-2 May

 

  8

Who will pay Charon now for your spirit

Taken before its time without tender

Or absolution from a place unlit,

A closed unvisited ruin a world

Where hidden beneath unshifting bending

Girders exists a brief reality

Where the bewildered heart can find no rest

Or refuge, a surface without any

Vestigial foothold or anything

To cling onto, an interval after

With no origin, recurring untold

Without end where the spirit unrehearsed

Is left to its first silence, left to the

Shadows that lodge on the banks of Lethe.

 

1-8 May

 

  9

NO LAST REPRIEVE

You became just another unmentioned

Casualty of the drawn out chaos

Resounding around you pursuing you

Even to the mouth of the far harbour

Where you sought for refuge from a breaking

Storm gathering endlessly before you.                                                               

Found to be wanting, you were judged to be

Guilty, accused of using too many

Resources, the therapeutic structure

That had been keeping you afloat keeping

You from slowly drifting too far out was

Suddenly taken away from you, shunned

And left to an inexorable fate,

Left there to wait until it was too late.

 

 

21 June 2002

 

  10

Instinctively we kept to the distance

Left between us too afraid of being

A burden to each other but you were

The focus of a gravitational

Force which seemed to ebb and flow around you

Whenever you were there. I remember

An ordinary afternoon and you

Were talking about Art and Augie March

And almost seemed beside yourself with an

Overflowing feeling for everything

That day, you were so relieved to be there

It was as though you had been rescued from

Something left unmanageable, I see

You still in a crowd ineffaceable.

 

 

11 February 2003