THE OTHER SIDE OF COUNTRYSIDE
Brought up in a Suffolk village, I well appreciate the beauty of the countryside but never, ever be fooled that the big landowners and landlords are gatekeepers of this beauty for they are the ones eager to destroy what is not profitable! I have seen the other side of countryside: twice I witnessed the hunt rip foxes to pieces (once in my school playground). I have seen mountains of dead fish pulled from the River Stour.
It’s not thieves and arsonists who have scrubbed out hedgerows and burnt the straw. It’s not poisoners who fill the earth with pesticides and poison the rivers. It’s not some crazy people who trap animals and shoot birds.
In this first poem, Blood Brook, I try to bring the two sides of “countryside” together. It was written in 1979 and came fourth in the Hammersmith Open poetry competition in 1980. After I read it at that big church in Hammersmith, the kindly judge said I would have won the competition if he had heard the poems, not just read them. No money in fourth place though. Oh well. It was subsequently published in the volume ‘Suffer Suffolk,’ 1987
BLOOD BROOK
I mistook the cold dark birds
for terminals on the distant power lines,
my thumbs all bone, wrapped in fingers
and pressed into my palms.
They caught the tiny flying dot, the fox,
in a ditch between two fields of newly cut furrows;
caught and shredded the fox
like the unrubbed tobacco Old Bill
would break in his palms,
pressing down the wire-fine ends
into the bowl of his old pipe with a thumb.
Hooves pass on tarmacadam
as I unthaw my hands on a bathroom radiator,
eyes dazzled by scarlet.
I place crusts, fat and nuts on a table
for thrushes, tits and sparrows,
and listen to them above a frying pan
spitting flecks of agitated fat
from sausages and liver.
Plates of ice hang outstretched
above the shallow Chiltern Stream,
running vermillion from the slaughterhouse
with the blood of horses and cows,
where Suicide Jack hung up his boots
above black cobbles a year before the Cod War.
The cold dark birds are huddled tight on the wires
as dusty fingers of snow spread into the corners
of our backyard. I tell myself that my hands
are clenched to improve the circulation, and indeed
the blood is warming, the blood is furious.
This next poem ‘Darker Hearts’ was written in the early 1980s and in some ways is quite nostalgic as I’d left Suffolk and was studying in London. However, with nuclear war on the agenda, the dark side stalks the light. It was also published in ‘Suffer Suffolk.’
DARKER HEARTS
Flies pepper the curling skins of marrows
on the compost
as jets cast fleeting shadows
over the acid green
of leaf beat newly risen from the plot.
Worms spaghetti the lawn with casts
and gently turn the earth beneath wigwams
of peas and runner beans,
hanging from nets like a mass assault
of toy marines.
Hedgerows deckle lanes; thrushes and sparrows
of undergrowth’s mosaic
stroke the sensibilities of the middle-ear;
woodbine spiral binds wild rose stems;
flowers, like city litter, shimmer;
beads of water
glitter on broad waxy pads on the Stour.
Cherry tree stumps, held down by tar,
subversively spread their roots beneath
the summer house
in soil as dark as hearts still pumping.
Moon’s chilling chiaroscuro catches
swans on the mill pool
and makes ghostly snow of apple blossom
which stirs across the path.
Behind horizon’s lip an electric storm
wells up, alludes to battle in a nearby town.
Dawn breaks: a black kite over corn
cracks its sail
and colludes with a pulse of orange
from a rotating drum
to startle rooks on their first light raid.
Above the curling skins of marrows a jet
trails its mark upon the sky
and life is taken underground to burrows,
bolt-holes, to the darkness under leaves,
to hollows in sand, between the bark and its tree.
Only the farmer in his Land Rover is unaware
of his susceptibility.
This third poem is shorter. Seasons of the Axe. This was written in the late 1970s and included in ‘A Road to the Sea,’ Magic Pen Press 1989
SEASONS OF THE AXE
Footprints in the snow on Little Box Meadow,
Lovers loping up Leather Bottle Hill in winter,
Courting beneath conifers in the steamy cold,
Burning bare fingers on railings round the green.
Metallic axe in the shop window
In a fat-saturated sycamore block
Poised to portion meat, come tomorrow.
They stare.
She holds in her hand a wedge of flint
from which they unfold an entire community.
Back home, her black mac drips
Onto ice blue linoleum. Love tightens.
Her hands fill with face and impending Monday.
The flint is so sharp, beautiful.
The sycamore weeps fat.
Blood money.
This last poem Stubble Fires is a rant. Though stubble burning was banned in the 1980s, I’ve used the image. It is a poem very much of its time – the brilliant struggle by the Greenham Women to halt cruise missiles being stationed here – for instance.
‘Stubble Fires’ was published in Suffer Suffolk, 1987, and later used (in part) as an element of narration in my BBC Radio 4 play ‘Overspill,’ 1993.
STUBBLE FIRES
It’s dirt and grime and nine to five,
Commuters in the city. But in the country:
Rolling fields and river weirs;
Greene King pubs and village dances;
Lorries rolling, blister-holing;
Factories slack as board room stomachs;
Camouflaged trucks and barb-wire fences.
Christmas card blackbirds on a wire
And frogs caught leaping in stubble fires.
Roller coaster, walks in Cromer;
Clare and Kersey and Sizewell B –
A giant toaster on the coast!
Rainy days in caravans on golden sands;
Foxglove and cowslip and Cherry B
At a “Vicars and Tarts” Bar-B-Q”
In a tent behind the Boot and Goat;
The Sauna solarium was once
The old umbrella mender’s;
CAUGHT NUDE BATHING,
A Suffolk Free Press shocker;
Through pesticide alley
Mother walks her cocker;
Suffolk pinks, rude, nostalgic faces ale-glazed;
From Spalding to Great Tey, Everest double-glazed;
Gentle undulations, contours of home improvements:
TEXAS – the Big One!
ANDREX – the Soft One!
Eight green wellies for family nuclear:
Public Enquiry – tick “good works well done;”
Christmas card blackbirds on a wire
And frogs caught leaping in stubble fires.
Francis Bacon, home from home in Wivenhoe;
Lorries rumbling down a lane
With strike-break coal and mountain grain;
Missiles overhead and in the fields;
Out of the woodwork, in a council chamber,
The old “independent,” a farmer,
Will last forever – for forever’s for the dead;
Yields per acre, profits per tonne;
Nitrogen Brook, an adventure for the young;
Cavity insulation, cabbages in tins;
Midnight greasers on farting bikes;
Stag night, stag shot, shotgun loves;
In Bell Hotel, drinking “champers” to the fox’s blood;
And there are wild life craters in the wood;
A platoon on night patrol in Thetford;
U.S. Airforce skimming overhead;
Haywain’s haywire, around it tourists cruise;
“Bugger you kids – I got my B-Reg;”
Telecom vandals aerosol loos;
Happy homes, pine-stripped, waxed in a pledge:
Turtle wax from Sainsbury’s will fulfil our desires!
Candles burning, women dancing, cutting wires;
Frogs caught leaping in stubble fires;
Keep hearts burning, keep on dancing, keep on keeping on…