Cassandra Voices

Tag: Nicholas Battey Cassandra Voices

  • Poem: Lovely Dead

    Lovely Dead

    If I were to let you go
    who would I show this garden to;
    who would be there to tell me ‘no’
    it’s not enough to say it’s blue

    in June, when echiums greet the bees
    (just as later they give finches seeds)
    and turns yellow in summer sun,
    burns to red with heleniums

    in autumn. I leave their raw
    shaggy stems all through winter now —
    food and shelter for birds and mice,
    hope and remembering too — but more
    for the texture they bring to cold light;
    though to say it’s not enough, I know.

  • Poem – ‘Psalm’

    Psalm

    The light and the wind on the water these wild winter days are breath of it
    The cardinal sun below cumulus flaring up skybeams a pulse
    Gathers the gloom but high in the east celestial moon unhides behind heart-racing clouds
    All in the arms of physics and this is heaven we are blessed to happen in

    Feature Image: Daniele Idini

  • Waking Up

    Waking Up

    He had thousands of kodachromes
    when he died. Nowadays they’d be snaps
    stored on the cloud, given back
    tritely as memories by some iphone.
    Anyway, they went in the bin,
    regardless of what they meant to him.

    I have chameleon words, collections of notes,
    playing the same role: tie it down —
    capture it. What? You, me, the sound
    it makes to live; not bringing old stuff close
    again (that was bad enough back then),
    but the dazzle of being able to comprehend.

    Of course, insects don’t waste being alive
    worrying about themselves;
    they continue to batter themselves
    against windows, the life of the hive
    before their own; or fanatically nest
    under stones, enslaving aphids and the rest.

    And rabbits are the same, chewing and getting rattled.
    All have better things to countenance
    than their own permanance.
    It’s baffling that we are so saddled,
    knocked over by the whole picture.
    What it says in the Scripture

    at the start — about Adam and Eve:
    it’s not really about sex and so on;
    it’s about seeing yourself, alone.
    Waking up. To what you may believe.

  • Nicholas Battey: April Light

    April Light

    I’ve let the world of people go
    in favour of growing
    spring evenings,
    what all the buds know,
    the jonquils and the willow,
    the prattling birds,
    water chasing water to river,
    fold of showers.
    What sage said April is the cruellest month,
    the year’s promise
    in its tall shadows?
    Let the world of people go.

     

     

  • Poetry: Nicholas Battey

    Last Breath of Leaves

    Cup a pear, hear it abscise,
    number the days until ripe;
    the river chuckles with swollen pride –
    back to a ditch by six,
    drained away to the scaly, selfish sea.

    At dawn there’s steam across the water,
    a cloud of egrets scuds over;
    old and waiting, mud for water,
    leaves for a last breath
    of wind, tremor, helical free fall –

    after life, lope and leap
    to nattering heaps; then left
    to turn to mull, down horizons sift,
    forgotten shades of ochre,
    lignin nets over rheumy, russet stones.

    Fish the shilletts from their dark homes
    in the deep, brown ocean;
    grateful, cosseting crumbs swirl in,
    close and ready for roots:
    succouring limbs of bulb, corm, meristem.

    Here my mulling days are numbered,
    pride in appearance doomed;
    hares teem across the water,
    while clouds of regrets scud over;
    for I am old and loping after life.

  • Poetry: Nicholas Battey

    Leaf-ladder to the Sky

    Dusk drums down the harbour,
    Seagull sirens sound alarms,
    A quiet motor sings;
    Shards of mingling words slip away
    Where huddled houses hug the bay;
    A fish flops on the scalloped sea,
    Ripples spreadly ring,
    Ring, and ring, diminishing, to me:
    Here are all enchantments reined,
    Stowed within this compassed, solitary brain,

    Haven to the slopes of coastal trees
    Quiffed by parching westerlies;
    Also, yellow leontodon,
    Speckled on banks like sodium stars,
    Where dreadlocked gorse gives way to grass;
    Sheep-clipped sward; sun-lidded eyes; Doppler flies;
    Various winds playing on and on,
    While brambles leaf-ladder to the sky:
    Here are all enchantments lain,
    Meaningless, but marvellous, just the same.

    Half-moon, bling of eventide
    Hauls on saps which flow in time
    To an ancient pulse;
    Wyrt and weed together hear
    The chuckle of the inner sphere;
    Clackery of wind in rigging
    Sees strait waters salsa,
    Slap; soon sea-swells serry unforgiving:
    Here are all enchantments made;
    Out there, the consequences born, and paid.

    Roses like suns arise and grow
    Across the ramshackle brow;
    A heavy scent
    Swallows on the drooping air,
    Is gone, recalled as summer
    In the addled world behind,
    Where wishes, sentiment
    And bamboozling nature recombine;
    Hence are all enchantments lulls,
    Hummed by puzzled gardeners of the skull.

    Featured Image: Daniele Idini