GENTLEMAN OF THE ROAD

Poems of a Wanderer

D.W. Myatt

It is so cold ice has formed
In my boots while
Frost-bitten snow crunches
When you walk the short
Distance to water
Gathering ice in a pail

Ochre, the morning sun lies shrouded
By mist, casting no heat
As the birds do not cast
The imprint of their feet
Upon snow:

The rose cutting juts
Above white there
Where last week I buried
That car-killed cat and where a leaf
Unfurls in
Intimation of Spring

Over the tree, a crow
Calling:
Nothing answers
Awkwardly I amble through the cold
While ice forms on my face:

Slowly
A crake awakes
To life

My tent is cold - I have to huddle
Again
Within wool. Outside
It is strange, this layer of white
Which covers long grass;
Never before the snow which
Covers deep green.

There is an unutterable silence
About the land; nothing stirs
Only air, and the blackbird
Whose perch was my pole
Will have to unlearn to learn
To eat bread.

It is strange - this windy desolation;
There is a voice within the wind
A sign written by snow
And I have come to recall
Through sitting huddled like an old man
Each meaning which strands together
Life:

I will die here
Says the wind
My poems covered
By snow.

Sun, broken by branch, seeps
Into mist
Where spreading roots have cracked
The stones, overgrown, perhaps,
For an hundred years

        Mary
Relict of William

And a breeze, stirring again
This year
The leaves of an Autumn's green-gold

It is a cold dawn in Spring
When the red disk rises
Above hill
And the frost-layered village
Still sleeps.

Only I walk
Where silent trees rear up
Beneath blue.
No sound
Not even birds.
In the valley, mist swirls
Cold.

While on the hedge
Neat-trimmed and almost dead
Slivers of crystals cling
As my feet become frozen
Within boots.

On the green, a glaze
Of white as in a field a horse
Runs steaming
To free the cold of night.

Nearby, a car awakes to ruin
This peace and life

So much neglect
Even the platform has dirt:
The young - they talk as they stand
Seeing through themselves
Each other living life
In moments

Appearance for them seems forever
Reality:
Nowhere a word for compassion
Only destination signs.

I do not beg
But rise from the bench
To sit awhile, smiling.
There is no haste
While sunlight warms.

People come, rushing
While I sit with my sack
Gathering strength to spend
A few pence for a tea.

So much neglect
Even my boots have a hole

I am the two faces of God -
Vox Patris Caelestis -
Within, within, a lewd Satan grins
Playing at Change:
My pieces are human who cried
At my hurt.

I am alone, the cry
While Treble voices sing
Echoing, and strange shadows long dead
Dance too briefly along the cloister wall.
There is pain as I stare
Past dying sun and a valley
Winter cold
Trying to believe while stars break

And a crescent moon
Glowing like the whore's eyes
In that dark room
Jibbers over the heavy breasts
Of the hill:
No cloud
To veil her shame.

No one, nothing
Answers. Only
Air, and I sit, still waiting
And remembering prayer.
In the ruins, my dead self comes to life
Rising slowly, worm-slowly
To the first singing blackness
Of night.

No answers, nothing:
Only this tramp sheltering
In the ruins of a church -
And memories, yes there are memories
Glowing
Like the lies of my life

I wander aimless along a road
Fresh food to allow me thought:
Ahead, a dead thrush
Its carcass decaying
While in the hedge above, bush buds
Burst with life.

Even the wind seems warm
As I walk
Watching the White Horse on its hill
While streaming streaks of high cirrus
Cloud
Fleck the changing blue

Remember the ones whom you killed
You, the poet, in your youth?
They brought a unity, those memories,
A pain that possesses all things
Bringing with their dread remembrance
The field of connection grown
From deep Space:

What was concealed is seen
As what is felt is possessed into Word
Through the possession of the consciousness
That connects all life to itself
Because it is life through the origin
Of growth
And brings the tranquillity of age.
There is remembering: the forgetting,
The little goals to pass the days
Between the next remembering

I see little needed in life:
No books, houses, fine clothes or cars,
Since this connectedness that makes
The poet a child
Makes him a place to rest awhile
Between the troubled strophes of life.
He, the forgotten values, seeks
Only sufficient shelter
Food enough to fill his gauntness
For a day -
All else is insufficient and inauthentic
As he himself is an admission
Of a god's weakness
For Man.

All life is divine:
Each field, each tree,
And he the poet carries this message
Gently, like cloud its rain.
There is nothing special, unique:
He is only the half-remembered aspirations
Of his age
Forgotten when they to whom connectedness
Was a lie from birth, live in power
Within the boundaries of a State.

There should be no preaching, no faith
Without the connectedness of consciousness
That uncovers divinity as the divine
As there should be no guilt or sin
While the

tireless worker for the Cause
Stalks the streets of the chosen
City. There was a sunset
As he walked the hill home -
A plethora of colours magnified
By cold caught his eye
Briefly, for the wound on his face
Hurt. But he got them,
The bastards, and next time
The Party will be strong

For each Cause defines a Goal
To overturn the gods
Creating illusion in expiation;
There is no connectedness, only division
And divide

Words will not end this
Or any other admission of how we forget
To remember
As sublime music is not a premonition
Of peace.
They are only reminders of what is
As my past is a reminder of what I
Once was;
And there are still enigmas, many questions
Unresolved.

There is a natural balance between
The outward challenge
The inward look of age
That decays with each present passing
Week
There is self-survival
The question of inner Space

Words will not end
But only the middle way between
The word and the act
Where desire is the poet's desire
For passive divinity
Can begin the remembering
Of the connectedness that is divine
Without the ending that is another's
Death

Waves of rain beat
Upon this tent, wind rucked
In wildness:
I have no illusions

Cold the comfort of this bag
With its dead duck down.
Sometimes a little sun
Brightens
While boots dry
And tired muscles rest

Cold, I watched the moon
Rise, until with weary body
I settled down to sleep.

It was a bitter night
And frost greeted me
As I climbed through the glassless window
To stare with bleary eyes at the School:
No one came
And I was free to drink
From their stream

When shall I learn peace?

Tuesday's rabbit is gone
And, weary and sleep inclined,
I sit by some stones
Wishing the warmth of a home

When shall I learn peace?

Rain, falling heavy as rain does
In storm.
It is beating down
While I wait in this cold tent
For the light of dawn

I am alone, as I came, to this clearing
Within trees:
Trying to live the moments that are those
Moments between the walks I walk
Upon roads:

Rain, beating heavy as the pain in my leg:
I have no rôle to guide me, happy, toward
My death
Only a wish for some warm soup
To suckle my soul.
There is instead rain with no fuel
For the stove

Is rain the seed, the sun the sower
For the fecund planet called Earth?
Am I one seed who by silence alone
Can breed a flower of Thought?

Clouds fastly moving across
A Winter's sky:
No rain, only a breeze
Warm after the solstice-week
Of ice;
No one to hear as I tread a path
Bent by sack and memories
That make a rhythm
For my feet.

There are no answers within me
As there are no cars to despoil
This empty border glade
And I am only a division because divided:
Freedom is no one and nothing
To care for - and no one
Who cares
But I have grown used to sleeping
Ill within a tent
Since pains are a Winter in my life.

Yet there was love
Broken by the dreaming and the doubt
And I that rainy Spring
Left the passion and its pain
To find this kind of peace:

I am torn, still, between
Dreams, pride and the reality
Of this road-walking life,
But most miles tire
And bring a kind of sleep.

There is music in me
Which grows as I grow
But I cannot compose
And have only these words to sculpt
From this crumbling rock
My images of sadness and of joy.

Clouds
Fastly moving
Over a remembering voice
That someone in some future
Might recall as me -
But like a cloud
I am born to quickly fade
And die

No longer the low sun which caught
The brown, hedged field under hill
To show the covering of spider's silk
Weaved, slow:
Instead, twilight and clouds,
Transforming

I cannot walk when such beauty
Stops me -
There is then a sitting by some stream,
Perhaps a fire
To warm the body that desire wearies
By walking

No wind, now, to chill
Or take me to some shelter:
There is instead my small fire of wood,
The peace brought by stillness;
All journeys were a sign
To this place
While, on the distant road, some car
Blares its horn
In haste

Dawn's magickal moment when dim light
That strains the eye
Bursts upon a horizon still
Clutching the mist of night:
I was awake, experiencing,
Trying to hold through sleepy eyes
The silence that gave me for a moment
God;
Then the birds, thrusting their song
In the wind
Which snatched trees
Breaking the colours down
Because rain has long rejoiced to seed
This Earth.
I, on a bench

Until the traffic came:
Hard noise that crushed my spell -
Clouds, that promised tomorrow

No suffering, as Christians suffer -
Only the stream, there
By my tent.
It is home, now,
Green like its field, and at night
With a shrunken stomach
I sit by its flap and dream.

I cannot play the flute
I have made from maple;
But there is time
There is always time
For a madman like me to scheme.

It is not romantic, this life,
Like others think.
It is boring and hard yet I endure
With endurance to bring more
Than deep lines to my face.
My tent is a message
As I myself am not me.

No falseness, as burning religion
Makes false. Only a stream
Of impressions that makes me
Nothing unique.
Each changing cloud reminds
Just as I am a reminder
Of what I and all others
Might be

There is a reality about Spring
When grass grows green with the sun:
Days lengthen bringing the warmth
That reassures and one is pleased
To run a hand where wind moves
And blossoms have been blown:

Every hour is unique
When rain stops.

There is a pleasure about Spring
When free grass grows in the sun,
A slowness when wind rushes tree:
Nearby
The curlew and lark
Where sun glints
Upon rain sodden earth:

How are you today, Mr Hughes?
Oh not so bad, you know -
Better for the sun.
Aye, will dry the ground
So we can seed.

Over the fields -
White clouds making faces
In the sun