Poem 348

One of the very earliest poems I’ve kept … I think I was twelve or thirteen when I wrote this … it was part of something longer, the first of a sequence of four poems but the others couldn’t sustain the feel of what I’d started here … it was maybe the first time I felt a kind of resonance from something I’d created, that slight shadow of the numinous that once discovered keeps you chasing it in your writing …

… my mum was always on at us to write to our grandparents so I included this in a letter I sent them … my grandfather sent it back corrected and also expressed concern to my mother that I was starting to write like ‘all this modern poetry that we dislike so much’ … I overheard my mother telling my father ‘he should be able to write what he wants’ – nothing could have stopped me doing that anyhow but thanks for the support Mum! … I should point out that I don’t come from a literary family and I didn’t take my grandfather’s as informed comment – he had a lot of books but most of them were about hunting …

… Kate Bush wrote The Man With The Child In His Eyes when she was fifteen so if this is not as good as that it’s because I was two or three years younger …

( I like the word skywashed, and the morning of blue and gold haze still has visual power in my imagination … I’m not even going to try to defend turquoise eyes – just go with it … )

Elysian Blue

At seven he ran lonely
over the skywashed fields of rye
and was gone
                              chasing through the morning
of blue and gold haze
he flew over the green hills
and felt the limpid wind run with him

on the beach
                           the wind and he played
timeless and alone
he shouted with the surf
                                                   exhilaration
and sunbaked savagery
wandered to the ragged clouds
the pulse of the night

the child with the turquoise eyes
saw
        but did not understand