The Poetry
Julian Wolfreys wrote this beauty after he and Monika came to stay:
Shard shivering silver cloud light,
To sever, cleaving closely the covering tumult,
Cumulus delirium; illuminate the blazon
Ocean sibling, sundering en morceaux
The lower world as, heaven tending,
Gull torn, cry the ascending sails,
In billowing--bylgja is the old Norse
Once heard across the golden cap,
Astounded at the sight—bellying undulate
Those rent and rendered silks,
Electrifying, even those, yes,
Those more common colours
Come to sense, teal touched,
Gun metal greys top tarnished
With spittle whites fast flecking,
Tacking wave wind withy,
Ocean's osier working the waters,
Weft and surge, winter anticipate
At autumnal equinox,
Suggestive of silent depths,
The winter light of dark seas
Still to come in this not yet, so soon arriving
Dead, desert season, drowned in the pitch,
Though aiming now, ahead of time's delivery
At cliff's edge, by ammonitic strand,
A sigh, a sough, dissecting day's late grace.
Groping for the object implies time,
Deferral the supplementary process taking place
Because the programme dictates before we think
The habitual, the shapes wherein our memories take form,
Those dwellings we inhabit, thinking incorrectly
We have made those shapes, those structures
That house our unrestrained perceptions,
Giving god-like order in perspective; necessary depth,
Focal field, as if the seeing were so much;
As if acuity of ground the everything that mattered.
The photograph, the memory, making manifest
The search, the undertow that, reaching after
Instant’s truth, supplies in recollection
Of experience, the clearing
Those known by their clothing, as if this were their name--
Ulfheðnar, descending down, the mouth’s corruptions,
So many wolves in sheep’s clothing--
Once walked precarious the escarpment’s edge,
Stepping out into the sky, skirting the scree,
The shale, the slip surrendering, to step
Out of time, from off Stonebarrow, into Cernemunde,
Settlement at the stony river.
Curious the fate, observes the unknown poet,
Whose lines survive, anonymous, to prove his point:
These bruised, stone broken walls, without name,
A ruined fortress, decaying, crumbled and withered,
The purpose all lost, utility’s fortune; while
Bee balm or brassica, rapeseed or mustard,
Lark song or warbler, sweet bergamot scent,
Pass on undiminished;
as gathered by westerlies,
Hook bearing flowers, Burdock’s dispersal,
The coat of a passerine carrying the seed
To take, to transplant, either side of a hedge;
Sedge rooted, in bird song, redstart or redshank,
Describing Cain’s Folly, in whistles or shrills;
Black Ven, Upper Greensand, belemnite lodging,
The early Cretaceous, the ammonite beds.
Time just is this rhythm, you observe,
Striated chalk or limestone, punctuated diacritically
In unvoiced indenture, offering to teach,
If you would care to read, the writing in landscape lessons,
Proofs serving incontestably mutability’s permanence.
We sit, side by side, observing in silence,
The undulate cows who slow,
Gathering at a signpost
Offering different directions,
To which they remain indifferent,
Before sitting, as if in protest,
At the pointless energy expended
By those who, having only two legs
Feel the need for artificial limbs,
Prostheses for the arms,
With which to drive their gait.
A bell sounds briefly, breeze shaken,
A hive over the wall is all activity
In the unlooked for warmth
Of the equinoctial day;
There is much gathering of goodness
Preparatory to battening down the hatches,
In the collection of nectar, of which,
Mouth to mouth passage makes much,
Becoming the distillation apprehended
In the following equation:
Eight lifetimes in a teaspoon.
The wing’s refrain plays counterpoint
To the passion play of late summer’s motion,
The air remarking with insouciance
Such unexpected idle pleasures.
Bill Evans sits somewhere in the past’s background,
Having had, for the previous two years,
Nothing new to say (he said, when asked).
Block chords, the use of pedals, belying
The fluttering of notes, in which the melody hides.
Should it matter that we are hearing 1958,
The year a mere haunting travelling this impossible space?
Should I mention the progression
From Cmaj7 to G9sus4,
As if this had some pertinence
To the cows or the birds,
Or might I confide to you that the term ‘ostinato’
Means repeated motif, rhythm or phrase,
Out of which comes the fantasy, the improvisation?
Or that Evans refused to play this tune live
Relenting just once, to accompany dance?
Perhaps that Jaques Réda, the poet and critic
Once wrote a poem on this very same piece
Invoking the exalted trill of a thrush?
No. From Satie to Shankar, the footnotes irrelevant
So I remain, with you,
Silent in the moment, as the music unfolds,
In the midst of ecstatic sounds
Written on terrestrial things,
With the time, the day, the season’s end,
At the quiet heart of joy illimited
In this small walled place
The simple, the complex, the polytonalities
Cross rhythms increasing until our resolution is reached.
Our music is this place, this time, its motions reconciling
In the lateness of the day, as we catch the cadence,
Modulating in harmony with the world.
Shard shivering silver cloud light,
To sever, cleaving closely the covering tumult,
Cumulus delirium; illuminate the blazon
Ocean sibling, sundering en morceaux
The lower world as, heaven tending,
Gull torn, cry the ascending sails,
In billowing--bylgja is the old Norse
Once heard across the golden cap,
Astounded at the sight—bellying undulate
Those rent and rendered silks,
Electrifying, even those, yes,
Those more common colours
Come to sense, teal touched,
Gun metal greys top tarnished
With spittle whites fast flecking,
Tacking wave wind withy,
Ocean's osier working the waters,
Weft and surge, winter anticipate
At autumnal equinox,
Suggestive of silent depths,
The winter light of dark seas
Still to come in this not yet, so soon arriving
Dead, desert season, drowned in the pitch,
Though aiming now, ahead of time's delivery
At cliff's edge, by ammonitic strand,
A sigh, a sough, dissecting day's late grace.
Groping for the object implies time,
Deferral the supplementary process taking place
Because the programme dictates before we think
The habitual, the shapes wherein our memories take form,
Those dwellings we inhabit, thinking incorrectly
We have made those shapes, those structures
That house our unrestrained perceptions,
Giving god-like order in perspective; necessary depth,
Focal field, as if the seeing were so much;
As if acuity of ground the everything that mattered.
The photograph, the memory, making manifest
The search, the undertow that, reaching after
Instant’s truth, supplies in recollection
Of experience, the clearing
Those known by their clothing, as if this were their name--
Ulfheðnar, descending down, the mouth’s corruptions,
So many wolves in sheep’s clothing--
Once walked precarious the escarpment’s edge,
Stepping out into the sky, skirting the scree,
The shale, the slip surrendering, to step
Out of time, from off Stonebarrow, into Cernemunde,
Settlement at the stony river.
Curious the fate, observes the unknown poet,
Whose lines survive, anonymous, to prove his point:
These bruised, stone broken walls, without name,
A ruined fortress, decaying, crumbled and withered,
The purpose all lost, utility’s fortune; while
Bee balm or brassica, rapeseed or mustard,
Lark song or warbler, sweet bergamot scent,
Pass on undiminished;
as gathered by westerlies,
Hook bearing flowers, Burdock’s dispersal,
The coat of a passerine carrying the seed
To take, to transplant, either side of a hedge;
Sedge rooted, in bird song, redstart or redshank,
Describing Cain’s Folly, in whistles or shrills;
Black Ven, Upper Greensand, belemnite lodging,
The early Cretaceous, the ammonite beds.
Time just is this rhythm, you observe,
Striated chalk or limestone, punctuated diacritically
In unvoiced indenture, offering to teach,
If you would care to read, the writing in landscape lessons,
Proofs serving incontestably mutability’s permanence.
We sit, side by side, observing in silence,
The undulate cows who slow,
Gathering at a signpost
Offering different directions,
To which they remain indifferent,
Before sitting, as if in protest,
At the pointless energy expended
By those who, having only two legs
Feel the need for artificial limbs,
Prostheses for the arms,
With which to drive their gait.
A bell sounds briefly, breeze shaken,
A hive over the wall is all activity
In the unlooked for warmth
Of the equinoctial day;
There is much gathering of goodness
Preparatory to battening down the hatches,
In the collection of nectar, of which,
Mouth to mouth passage makes much,
Becoming the distillation apprehended
In the following equation:
Eight lifetimes in a teaspoon.
The wing’s refrain plays counterpoint
To the passion play of late summer’s motion,
The air remarking with insouciance
Such unexpected idle pleasures.
Bill Evans sits somewhere in the past’s background,
Having had, for the previous two years,
Nothing new to say (he said, when asked).
Block chords, the use of pedals, belying
The fluttering of notes, in which the melody hides.
Should it matter that we are hearing 1958,
The year a mere haunting travelling this impossible space?
Should I mention the progression
From Cmaj7 to G9sus4,
As if this had some pertinence
To the cows or the birds,
Or might I confide to you that the term ‘ostinato’
Means repeated motif, rhythm or phrase,
Out of which comes the fantasy, the improvisation?
Or that Evans refused to play this tune live
Relenting just once, to accompany dance?
Perhaps that Jaques Réda, the poet and critic
Once wrote a poem on this very same piece
Invoking the exalted trill of a thrush?
No. From Satie to Shankar, the footnotes irrelevant
So I remain, with you,
Silent in the moment, as the music unfolds,
In the midst of ecstatic sounds
Written on terrestrial things,
With the time, the day, the season’s end,
At the quiet heart of joy illimited
In this small walled place
The simple, the complex, the polytonalities
Cross rhythms increasing until our resolution is reached.
Our music is this place, this time, its motions reconciling
In the lateness of the day, as we catch the cadence,
Modulating in harmony with the world.