Opened Ground Part 22

I yearned for the gannet's strike, the unbegrudging concentration of the heron.

In the camaraderie of rookeries, in the spiteful vigilance of colonies I was at home.

I learned to distrust the allure of the cuckoo and the gossip of starlings, kept faith with doughty bullfinches, levelled my wit too often to the small-minded wren and too often caved in to the pathos of waterhens and panicky corncrakes.

I gave much credence to stragglers, overrated the composure of blackbirds and the folklore of magpies.

But when goldfinch or kingfisher rent the veil of the usual, pinions whispered and braced as I stooped, unwieldy and br.i.m.m.i.n.g, my spurs at the ready.

The Cleric

I heard new words prayed at cows

in the byre, found his sign on the crock and the hidden still, smelled fumes from his censer in the first smokes of morning.

Next thing he was making a progress through gaps, stepping out sites, sinking his crozier deep in the fort-hearth.

If he had stuck to his own cramp-jawed abbesses and intoners dibbling round the enclosure, his Latin and blather of love, his parchments and scheming in letters shipped over water but no, he overbore with his unctions and orders, he had to get in on the ground.

History that planted its standards on his gables and spires ousted me to the marches of skulking and whingeing.

Or did I desert?

Give him his due, in the end he opened my path to a kingdom of such scope and neuter allegiance my emptiness reigns at its whim.

The Hermit

As he prowled the rim of his clearing

where the blade of choice had not spared one stump of affection he was like a ploughshare interred to sustain the whole field of force, from the bitted and high-drawn sideways curve of the horse's neck to the aim held fast in the wrists and elbows the more brutal the pull and the drive, the deeper and quieter the work of refreshment.

The Master

He dwelt in himself

like a rook in an unroofed tower.

To get close I had to maintain a climb up deserted ramparts and not flinch, not raise an eye to search for an eye on the watch from his coign of seclusion.

Deliberately he would unclasp his book of withholding a page at a time, and it was nothing arcane, just the old rules we all had inscribed on our slates.

Each character blocked on the parchment secure in its volume and measure.

Each maxim given its s.p.a.ce.

Tell the truth. Do not be afraid.

Durable, obstinate notions, like quarrymen's hammers and wedges proofed by intransigent service.

Like coping stones where you rest in the balm of the wellspring.

How flimsy I felt climbing down the unrailed stairs on the wall, hearing the purpose and venture in a wingflap above me.

The Scribes

I never warmed to them.

If they were excellent they were petulant and jaggy as the holly tree they rendered down for ink.

And if I never belonged among them, they could never deny me my place.

In the hush of the scriptorium a black pearl kept gathering in them like the old dry glut inside their quills.

In the margin of texts of praise they scratched and clawed.

They snarled if the day was dark or too much chalk had made the vellum bland or too little left it oily.

Under the rumps of lettering they herded myopic angers.

Resentment seeded in the uncurling fernheads of their capitals.

Now and again I started up miles away and saw in my absence the sloped cursive of each back and felt them perfect themselves against me page by page.

Let them remember this not inconsiderable contribution to their jealous art.

Holly

It rained when it should have snowed.

When we went to gather holly the ditches were swimming, we were wet to the knees, our hands were all jags and water ran up our sleeves.

There should have been berries but the sprigs we brought into the house gleamed like smashed bottle-gla.s.s.

Now here I am, in a room that is decked with the red-berried, waxy-leafed stuff, and I almost forget what it's like to be wet to the skin or longing for snow.

I reach for a book like a doubter and want it to flare round my hand, a black-letter bush, a glittering shield-wall cutting as holly and ice.

An Artist

I love the thought of his anger.

His obstinacy against the rock, his coercion of the substance from green apples.

The way he was a dog barking at the image of himself barking.

And his hatred of his own embrace of working as the only thing that worked the vulgarity of expecting ever grat.i.tude or admiration, which would mean a stealing from him.

The way his fort.i.tude held and hardened because he did what he knew.

His forehead like a hurled boule travelling unpainted s.p.a.ce behind the apple and behind the mountain.

The Old Icons

Why, when it was all over, did I hold on to them?

A patriot with folded arms in a shaft of light: the barred cell window and his sentenced face are the only bright spots in the little etching.

An oleograph of snowy hills, the outlawed priest's red vestments, with the redcoats toiling closer and the lookout coming like a fox across the gaps.

And the old committee of the sedition-mongers, so well turned out in their clasped brogues and waistcoats, the legend of their names an informer's list prepared by neat-cuffs, third from left, at rear, more compelling than the rest of them, pivoting an action that was his rack and others' ruin, the very rhythm of his name a register of dear-bought treacheries grown transparent now, and inestimable.

In Illo Tempore

The big missal splayed

and dangled silky ribbons of emerald and purple and watery white.

Intransitively we would a.s.sist, confess, receive. The verbs a.s.sumed us. We adored.

And we lifted our eyes to the nouns.

Altar-stone was dawn and monstrance noon, the word 'rubric' itself a bloodshot sunset.

Now I live by a famous strand where seabirds cry in the small hours like incredible souls and even the range wall of the promenade that I press down on for conviction hardly tempts me to credit it.

On the Road

The road ahead