Autumn’s Eve by Putney Bridge

Grey light over the undulating tress of the Northbank

As the river flows to the darkening East.

August 30^th, and sullen mood

Or defiant glee grips the passers-by,

Here on the South.

The workers are returning to throng

In the crowded city

With tans fading to memories

And a chill wind blowing from

Tropic Hurricanes.

Do not go my love.

You shone so fierce

So soon ago,

Unwitting of your warmth.

You remain,

Hidden behind the sky I see,

That was yester blue.

But night will come, and then

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

Creeps like dawning hope through night

To break red or gold or hidden again

On the whim of the wind.

The Evening Star

She will come as a vision in the meadow:

As the summer's evening sun

Trickles down the westward sky.

She will come gently in her loveliness,

Beautiful and slow.

She will come as a bright day's warmth

Amidst the winter's chill;

As the February hour that steals

Another minute's light from the dark.

As a peace after the tumult,

As birdsong in the spring's morn,

As a brook in the fastness of the forest,

As the whispered promise of dawn,

She will come,

And past pains will rest at last

Sleeping deeply with present joys.

She will come at her own time,

Upon her own day, at our own rhythm,

When the steps of the dance are such

As to unite us out of this heady swirl.

She will come as a lone star

Peering through the dark clouds of the night,

And by that slender, shimmering light,

She’ll lead me home. Home. Home, again.

Hard and Fast

The District and Circle

Are filled with prepubescents tonight –

Awkward, oblivious & nervous

In their youth.

And am I not a little envious?

Well,

Happiness is fleeting,

Unless it comes

Once in a while.

I’ve envied passers-by more
When they were with friends

Than when they were with lovers.

Your lover’s not my lover

After all.

Though she may share the same body

As mine once did,

Her face is somehow different.

And mine is waiting behind some other visage now –

By good grace, I hope,

Less mercurial than before.

There’s a reliability –

Sweet Reliability! –

In the laughter that has no other requirement

Than that you

(and it could only have been you)

Said that:

When people value not

That you have been funny,

But that you have been

You.

These friends I see,

Unknowingly across from me,

May not last,

But their memories will endure –

Through thick and thin,

Sickness and health,

Richer and poorer –

Hard and fast.

The 17:00

Fair Waverley, nestled in the ‘Burgh,

‘Neath castles and bridges,

A hidden gateway to the carnival above.

Fair Waverley sends us trickling, then trundling, then hurtling

Into the views of cliffs and forests of fir

And past rivers and seas quietly rippling.

Stirrings of magic here,

In the age-old glacially sculpted hills.

Wisps in the trees?

Endless childhoods of boundless imagination,

Flit past the eye as the train gathers speed

And a stirring brews with this quickening -

The heart rushing to keep pace.

Then, ‘cross the Tweed,

Into the elegant North,

The proud North,

The grand North:

Forged by its sons and its daughters

Into a breathing Turner,

A multi-dimensional Constable,

Replete with castles and cathedrals of stone and steel.

Teeming Newcastle gives way to stately Durham,

And vistas tumble forth like dreams

As the Lark ascends.

Onwards! Southwards!

Towards Summer’s heat -

Away from Summer’s sun.

Then comes the lingering warning.

Yorksire is undulating beauty, from Godliness to grimness,

As men spurned the divine for devilry,

Senselessly building Drax, Goole and Donny.

The clouds are gifted a corona of early evening sun,

And the violent, vivacious land revels below – majestic to the brim –

But steadily, imperceptibly declining.

The Midlands: pleasant monotony,

Dimpled and disturbed by small peaks and troughs of homes and hills.

A tame, mellow pastoral symphony –

Troubled by the rushing onward,

Onward,

To the metropolis.

As it draws closer, the dull accedes.

Dull, dull, flat, flat, flat,

Dull Anglia.

Flat Anglia.

Anglia – a melody of nothing

Save the cacophonous spouts of man’s unimagination.

And dull Anglia’s “jewel”: direst Peterborough.

Plastic, grey, vividless.

City of dark in the light.

Scented with all pervading hopelessness.

Saved by the sunset and the moon was Anglia.

Crescent glaring down on the Rothko painted death of day.

Divinity saving humans from men.

Then dark outside, and nothing to be seen, until,

Suddenly, Finsbury,

Before rolling stock slows respectfully for Islington,

So as not to disturb the middle classes,

Or clandestine, ill-fated political deals.

And finally grand but homely King’s Cross, and journey’s near-end.

What a vibrant mausoleum this is.

Filled with memories, once sweet, now bitter –

Or perhaps now mercifully bittersweetened

By the calming truth of life’s contradictions accepted.

The lark has now descended,

And a gently smoking saxophone teases through the night,

Under the looming lights, beneath the glass and steel.

Where are the stones and the hills?

Left some hours behind and

Buried beneath some years ago.

Only painted memories live here now

And, when time comes, merciful portals of escape,

To a splendour too crudely spent,

To a wealth that cannot be measured,

Beyond the accountant’s towers.

Equinox

Blue light on the leaves that fall

As they twist and turn on the breeze.

Past glories sadly admitting to present beauty.

The descent a slow and final dance.

Where is the heat of the sun?

Only remembered, in the ghostly forest –

Grey overhead and brown underfoot.

The promise is whispered in the branches

Of new roses coming into bloom –

But not now.

For when the sun breaks through bright

It shines cold on the skin.

Spark

My head turns to catch it,

But it is vanished in the trees.

There! Again!

This time it is truly glimpsed –

A floating ember slowly turning to flame,

Before flitting to nothing between the evergreens.

Again! Again! Again!

Like a will o’the wisp

And ever swifter.

It smokes into a blaze and disappears –

Dances through the forest

Abandons all paths.

It gains a voice,

Resonates with song

Echoing off the trees.

And, imperceptibly, the flame billows into form.

She glances over her shoulder –

Laughing, teasing with delight.

She promises everything.

She guarantees nothing.

Growing.

Consuming all sight.

And all the while vanishing,

And reappearing.

She lights all.

Devours none.

Then

Fades into song alone.

Leaving all alone

With nothing but fragments of music on the wind.

And the dimmed day upon the fallen leaves.

The Sun on the Horizon

Surely, I have been dreaming.

Which way is west?

Which is east?

All I see is the sun on the horizon.

Does it rise, or does it fall?

Say it rises:

What glory awaits when that red turns to blue?

We shall see the ocean from the height of the hills,

And beauty in a blade of grass,

And dance and sing and play

And play

And play,

As lovers smell roses in the garden.

Say it falls,

And all turns to dark.

What glories still await.

A canopy of stars, swirling in the cool of the moon,

Shall sit atop the madness of our night –

A madness of laughter in the forest

As friends join hands to walk toward the return of the dawn.

The sun still hangs on the horizon,

Neither ending nor beginning -

Simply a herald of whichever glory is to come.

This Present Moment

Under soft sunshine and sweet songs,

The cares of day disappear,

And all the worries of past and future,

Give way to present glories.

There is no sorrow in the springtime heat.

The white snows are beaten,

And summer’s reign is heralded

By the white of blossom.

Peace is all that the noon allows.

The sun is early to rise

And late to depart,

And its generous time with us,

Lends we beings an immortal illusion –

A faith that the sunlit seconds will roll on

And on, one to another without cease,

Until the sunset comes at our bidding,

Giving way to clear, beautiful, lyrical night.

Farewell care and farewell fear.

Let the birds be as sirens to you,

The budding flowers as rocks in your sea.

Run your fearsome ship of yesterday

Onto the coast of beauty,

And never into a tomorrow sail again.

© Jack Blackburn, 23rd April 2013

After the Thaw - Original Version

This poem was composed after an exercise at drama school, where I performed a character in a long-term improvisation for three days. The improvisation was set in 1649, and my character's name was Emmanuel, a veteran of the English Civil War. This poem went through many different versions as the writing was subsequently incorporated into a performance piece in a play. This is the Emmanuel version.

_________________________

After the thaw, the sun was shining,

And the warmth had returned.

He had been alone, and he was happy alone.

But then he was changed.

He sipped from a sweetly poisoned cup.

And thirsted forever more.

Before, he would briefly encounter

And then release without regret.

Now,

Her stillness. Her intensity.

This was not mere satisfaction.

It was a joy he did not understand.

It grew in him,

Beautiful and cruel.

When he woke, it was night.

And the heat of the day,

Had been flooded by the cool of the moon.

And he was alone.

And in his solitude he felt

A feeling from the heat of battle.

He was afraid.

© Jack Blackburn, 21st April 2013

My ever-skipping heart

My ever-skipping heart,

That flirts with pain on every beat,

That urges me to foolishness,

That turns the merest glance received

Into an oasis of illusory delight,

That seeks out joy in the most hopeless of places,

That twists and turns from day to day,

And risks fearful misery in every waking hour:

May you never be stilled.

For every pain you dare to endure,

Is as nought to the joy that you dare to find.

© Jack Blackburn, 19th April 2013