Boscastle, after the flood
We're off on holiday tomorrow to sunny Cornwall, where we lived for some years round the turn of the millennium. My eldest daughter is staying behind to hold the fort (she has a good job at the moment and is saving towards university, so quite rightly didn't fancy the idea of two weeks in a crowded tent with her parents and assorted siblings). But the rest of us will be stretching out in the glorious rain ... I mean sun ... for the next couple of weeks.
Meanwhile, here's a Cornish poem from my forthcoming collection, Camper Van Blues. It's never been published before, even in a poetry magazine, so I thought Raw Light could have it before it becomes crystallised in book form.
This poem, 'Rain', is a sister poem to my shorter poem 'Flood at Boscastle', which appeared in Poetry Review a while back.
'Flood at Boscastle' came out of notes I made a few years ago whilst in the Bull Ring in central Birmingham (and reading Robin Robertson's book 'Swithering', interestingly enough). I expanded those initial notes over several months, remembering what it was like to live at Boscastle before the flood, the devastation it had caused compared to the memory of the neat little village that we had in our heads, then pared that material down to create 'Flood at Boscastle', which is available to read on my Salt Publishing page.
It was only in late 2007 that I returned to the discarded notes and began cutting away at them, moving sections, adding new pieces, experimenting with various different forms, and eventually ended up with this much longer poem, 'Rain', presented in couplets. Please note though, since I'm not greatly skilled at HTML and don't have time to fiddle with this, that in the book each second line is indented. Here they both sit snugly against the left-hand margin.
Meanwhile, I hope you all have a great summer, and for my own part, that it doesn't flood again while we're back in Cornwall!
Jx
*
RAIN
I
First, there was a rustle of frogs
unseen in bracken, parched
singing for rain
like all the frogs of the Amazon, for rain
like the beginning of things
over tired roofs and gutterings, for rain
deep and steady
over cliff paths and gorse
where workers once held land
strip upon strip
shining under the deluge, for rain
in the blown-out ford
slung black with, waist-deep in water
from these hills
hard-beat-against, untenable, for rain
falling through bruised light
grey-purple onto fishing nets
like giant spiders’ webs
draped in gleaming strands
across the wet stone quay
her cobbled streets back-lit
with a silver tattoo, with RAIN
the sheer thirst of it
the first of it
a rustle of frogs (unseen in bracken)
parched, singing for rain
like all the frogs of the Amazon.
II
I came there most days in search of sea,
blind with it,
that salt blue slap of the cliff’s edge,
shy gaggle of houses
curved like a woman’s hips
about a sleeping river, her upturned face
beautiful (though wrinkled in summer;
mud ruts in high grass)
and still the rustle of frogs
parched, unseen,
singing for rain
like all the frogs of the Amazon.
I came for the gravestones, stern
under the downpour at Forrabury
already furred black with,
bolted with water
swelling the river
at the hard mouth of the harbour
its wrung neck
and sling-shot exit a jostle
of water against rock, narrowing
and funnelling,
churning
and trammelling up RAIN.
Perched antediluvian,
that’s how I remember it,
grey stone and Cornish slate
from that prehistoric crater at Delabole,
wind turbines
white noise in the dusk
and the sharpish approach to the harbour,
its corniche turns
and wind-sheer drop, gorse bright,
from the cliff edge
where I would come most days
in search of sea
(rocking the child inside, imagining flight,
that first curious step).
Most days I came in search of sea,
the constant boom and suck
of water on rock
like the beginning of things,
like salt, like rain,
like frogs, unseen in bracken,
singing, deep and steady,
thalassa/sea
like all the frogs of the Amazon.
III
And where the stifled river met
the dirty tide
it threw up bones of things, oddments
and fish, and wood adrift,
torn branches still in bud,
salted wet-black spars
and plastic bottles, bags,
arrow-tips of glass
rubbed down to frost
and always the rain
freakish in summer,
the frogs singing
and surging the blind river
down to the sea, down to wild water,
to that filthy driven flood
breaking its banks
and punching through walls,
bouncing campers and cars
and houses aside,
that old dirty tide
alive with rubbish and blossom
white as cottages
and whole trees, blown green to the sea,
a stone bridge cracked
and tossed in the long surge forward
EXCEPT
No hands were lost –
no hands were lost, even as cars bobbed off
sea-drunk into brickwork, crumbling
as cars weaved
battered and jobbed
and the edge of a building broke first
then the rest shot free into the foam
swept loose
by the blank untenanted ark
of a mobile home
and love poured down like rain, unseen,
and the frogs sang on
like all the frogs of the Amazon.
