Opened Ground (3 page)

All I know is a door into the dark.

Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting;

Inside, the hammered anvil’s short-pitched ring,

The unpredictable fantail of sparks

Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water.

The anvil must be somewhere in the centre,

Horned as a unicorn, at one end square,

Set there immoveable: an altar

Where he expends himself in shape and music.

Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose,

He leans out on the jamb, recalls a clatter

Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows;

Then grunts and goes in, with a slam and flick

To beat real iron out, to work the bellows.

Bespoke for weeks, he turned up some morning

Unexpectedly, his bicycle slung

With a light ladder and a bag of knives.

He eyed the old rigging, poked at the eaves,

Opened and handled sheaves of lashed wheat-straw.

Next, the bundled rods: hazel and willow

Were flicked for weight, twisted in case they’d snap.

It seemed he spent the morning warming up:

Then fixed the ladder, laid out well-honed blades

And snipped at straw and sharpened ends of rods

That, bent in two, made a white-pronged staple

For pinning down his world, handful by handful.

Couchant for days on sods above the rafters,

He shaved and flushed the butts, stitched all together

Into a sloped honeycomb, a stubble patch,

And left them gaping at his Midas touch.

When you have nothing more to say, just drive

For a day all round the peninsula.

The sky is tall as over a runway,

The land without marks, so you will not arrive

But pass through, though always skirting landfall.

At dusk, horizons drink down sea and hill,

The ploughed field swallows the whitewashed gable

And you’re in the dark again. Now recall

The glazed foreshore and silhouetted log,

That rock where breakers shredded into rags,

The leggy birds stilted on their own legs,

Islands riding themselves out into the fog,

And drive back home, still with nothing to say

Except that now you will uncode all landscapes

By this: things founded clean on their own shapes,

Water and ground in their extremity.

The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley –

No kitchens on the run, no striking camp –

We moved quick and sudden in our own country.

The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.

A people, hardly marching – on the hike –

We found new tactics happening each day:

We’d cut through reins and rider with the pike

And stampede cattle into infantry,

Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown.

Until, on Vinegar Hill, the fatal conclave.

Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.

The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.

They buried us without shroud or coffin

And in August the barley grew up out of the grave.

He slashed the briars, shovelled up grey silt

To give me right-of-way in my own drains

And I ran quick for him, cleaned out my rust.

He halted, saw me finally disrobed,

Running clear, with apparent unconcern.

Then he walked by me. I rippled and I churned

Where ditches intersected near the river

Until he dug a spade deep in my flank

And took me to him. I swallowed his trench

Gratefully, dispersing myself for love

Down in his roots, climbing his brassy grain –

But once he knew my welcome, I alone

Could give him subtle increase and reflection.

He explored me so completely, each limb

Lost its cold freedom. Human, warmed to him.

When I had spread it all on linen cloth

Under the hedge, I called them over.

The hum and gulp of the thresher ran down

And the big belt slewed to a standstill, straw

Hanging undelivered in the jaws.

There was such quiet that I heard their boots

Crunching the stubble twenty yards away.

He lay down and said, ‘Give these fellows theirs,

I'm in no hurry,' plucking grass in handfuls

And tossing it in the air. ‘That looks well.'

(He nodded at my white cloth on the grass.)

‘I declare a woman could lay out a field

Though boys like us have little call for cloths.'

He winked, then watched me as I poured a cup

And buttered the thick slices that he likes.

‘It's threshing better than I thought, and mind

It's good clean seed. Away over there and look.'

Always this inspection has to be made

Even when I don't know what to look for.

But I ran my hand in the half-filled bags

Hooked to the slots. It was hard as shot,

Innumerable and cool. The bags gaped

Where the chutes ran back to the stilled drum

And forks were stuck at angles in the ground

As javelins might mark lost battlefields.

I moved between them back across the stubble.

They lay in the ring of their own crusts and dregs,

Smoking and saying nothing. ‘There's good yield,

Isn't there?' – as proud as if he were the land itself –

‘Enough for crushing and for sowing both.'

And that was it. I'd come and he had shown me,

So I belonged no further to the work.

I gathered cups and folded up the cloth

And went. But they still kept their ease,

Spread out, unbuttoned, grateful, under the trees.

The smells of ordinariness

Were new on the night drive through France:

Rain and hay and woods on the air

Made warm draughts in the open car.

Signposts whitened relentlessly.

Montreuil, Abbeville, Beauvais

Were promised, promised, came and went,

Each place granting its name’s fulfilment.

A combine groaning its way late

Bled seeds across its work-light.

A forest fire smouldered out.

One by one small cafés shut.

I thought of you continuously

A thousand miles south where Italy

Laid its loin to France on the darkened sphere.

Your ordinariness was renewed there.

The lough waters

Can petrify wood:

Old oars and posts

Over the years

Harden their grain,

Incarcerate ghosts

Of sap and season.

The shallows lap

And give and take:

Constant ablutions,

Such drowning love

Stun a stake

To stalagmite.

Dead lava,

The cooling star,

Coal and diamond

Or sudden birth

Of burnt meteor

Are too simple,

Without the lure

That relic stored –

A piece of stone

On the shelf at school,

Oatmeal coloured.

The lough will claim a victim every year.

It has virtue that hardens wood to stone.

There is a town sunk beneath its water.

It is the scar left by the Isle of Man. 

At Toomebridge where it sluices towards the sea

They’ve set new gates and tanks against the flow.

From time to time they break the eels’ journey

And lift five hundred stone in one go. 

But up the shore in Antrim and Tyrone

There is a sense of fair play in the game.

The fishermen confront them one by one

And sail miles out, and never learn to swim. 

‘We’ll be the quicker going down,’ they say –

And when you argue there are no storms here,

That one hour floating’s sure to land them safely –

‘The lough will claim a victim every year.’

A gland agitating

mud two hundred miles in-

land, a scale of water

on water working up

estuaries, he drifted

into motion half-way

across the Atlantic,

sure as the satellite’s

insinuating pull

in the ocean, as true

to his orbit.

                      Against

ebb, current, rock, rapids,

a muscled icicle

that melts itself longer

and fatter, he buries

his arrival beyond

light and tidal water,

investing silt and sand

with a sleek root. By day

only the drainmaker’s

spade or the mud paddler

can make him abort. Dark

delivers him hungering

down each undulation.

Lamps dawdle in the field at midnight.

Three men follow their nose in the grass,

The lamp’s beam their prow and compass.

The bucket’s handle better not clatter now:

Silence and curious light gather bait.

Nab him, but wait

For the first shrinking, tacky on the thumb.

Let him resettle backwards in his tunnel.

Then draw steady and he’ll come.

Among the millions whorling their mud coronas

Under dewlapped leaf and bowed blades

A few are bound to be rustled in these night raids,

Innocent ventilators of the ground

Making the globe a perfect fit,

A few are bound to be cheated of it

When lamps dawdle in the field at midnight,

When fishers need a garland for the bay

And have him, where he needs to come, out of the clay.

A line goes out of sight and out of mind

Down to the soft bottom of silt and sand

Past the indifferent skill of the hunting hand.

A bouquet of small hooks coiled in the stern

Is being paid out, back to its true form,

Until the bouquet’s hidden in the worm.

The boat rides forward where the line slants back.

The oars in their locks go round and round.

The eel describes his arcs without a sound. 

The gulls fly and umbrella overhead,

Treading air as soon as the line runs out,

Responsive acolytes above the boat.

Not sensible of any
kyrie,

The fishers, who don’t know and never try,

Pursue the work in hand as destiny.

They clear the bucket of the last chopped worms,

Pitching them high, good riddance, earthy shower.

The gulls encompass them before the water.

They’re busy in a high boat

That stalks towards Antrim, the power cut.

The line’s a filament of smut

Drawn hand over fist

Where every three yards a hook’s missed

Or taken (and the smut thickens, wrist-

Thick, a flail

Lashed into the barrel

With one swing). Each eel

Comes aboard to this welcome:

The hook left in gill or gum,

It’s slapped into the barrel numb

But knits itself, four-ply,

With the furling, slippy

Haul, a knot of back and pewter belly

That stays continuously one

For each catch they fling in

Is sucked home like lubrication.

And wakes are enwound as the catch

On the morning water: which

Boat was which?

And when did this begin?

This morning, last year, when the lough first spawned?

The crews will answer, ‘Once the season’s in.’

In ponds, drains, dead canals

she turns her head back,

older now, following

whim deliberately

till she’s at sea in grass

and damned if she’ll stop so

it’s new trenches, sunk pipes,

swamps, running streams, the lough,

the river. Her stomach

shrunk, she exhilarates

in mid-water. Its throbbing

is speed through days and weeks.

Who knows now if she knows

her depth or direction?

She’s passed Malin and

Tory, silent, wakeless,

a wisp, a wick that is

its own taper and light

through the weltering dark.

Where she’s lost once she lays

ten thousand feet down in

her origins. The current

carries slicks of orphaned spawn.

Unless his hair was fine-combed

The lice, they said, would gang up

Into a mealy rope

And drag him, small, dirty, doomed,

Down to the water. He was

Cautious then in riverbank

Fields. Thick as a birch trunk,

That cable flexed in the grass

Every time the wind passed. Years

Later in the same fields

He stood at night when eels

Moved through the grass like hatched fears

Towards the water. To stand

In one place as the field flowed

Past, a jellied road,

To watch the eels crossing land

Re-wound his world’s live girdle.

Phosphorescent, sinewed slime

Continued at his feet. Time

Confirmed the horrid cable.