I despair of ever getting this poem published. Not only is it over 200 lines long, it is also splendidly old fashioned. I started it twenty-five years ago when I was going through a rough patch and it took several years, on and off, to complete it. It seems a shame for it to lie unread. Then again, maybe it sucks. Judge for yourself.
For those who don't know Barming Bridge, it is a little wooden bridge which crosses the River Medway between the stone bridges at Teston and East Farleigh, a few miles outside Maidstone. It is one of the most beautiful spots on earth, when it is not being blighted by the passage of chugging pleasure cruisers...
Upstream from Barming Bridge
Should starlight fail to light the darkened skies
Yet summer mornings be as midnight to my eyes,
The whitest wisps their darkest shadows shed
And see my whiles from ecstasy to melancholy led,
Or reason, breaching Eden’s perfect lair,
Give rise the myth that Eden lies no longer there,
Should lies be proved, love overcome by need,
Necessity by ease, or freedom by the freed,
Then vain regrets I’d not protest nor scorns,
But trust unto the quiet justice of new morns.
Might Nature’s very blood whose banks I trail
conceal from me myself within her Kentish vale?
I’d cry in chorus with the silent birds
Should day come darkened, then my crafted words
That darkness will reflect in sombre verse
To curse this day we live, yet Life I’ll never curse.
Would that this world of my own making be,
Of my creation all I touch and all I see.
So yearns my will what will can not see proved
And proofs confront my will, all stubborn doubts removed.
For sense I have my senses to believe
When for my senses have I sung and later grieved.
Cast out those empty ideals that I sought.
From harsh reality all human life is wrought.
And all around with walls of righteous stone
‘Gainst cruel seas a haven safe for me alone
I have long sought.
And Nature should provide,
In equity, where outside is there too inside.
Yet where within ‘gainst stark without collides
No wall I’ve found inside from outside to divide.
Each pylon falls ‘gainst so relentless foe.
No haven safe I now seek, nor e’er shall I know.
With anguish have I sanctuary claimed
To sanctuary see defiled yet once again
Each violation driving deeper in
The bitter truth:
Real is the world we strive within.
No sanctuary safe from desecration.
No fortress shielded bay.
No world of my creation.
And is it you,
Whilst I survey with Joy
My dream made real,
With peels of empty mirth destroy?
Your engine too from which all Nature ran
shrills piercingly where once the softest streamlet sang.
Come hither so that you’ll be sooner left,
That gone, no more will Nature deem to hold her breath
And this I vow:
To dry each tear she weeps
Till time allows together from you us to keep.
Joys approach no introduction pays.
Bringers though of rot by wails and wolverine bays
Foretell the breach of Nature’s very law.
The statutes fall.
The virgin state is made a whore.
Pretentious fools, I would your throats impress.
You sheer the water clear, dividing one-ness-ness.
That harmony which each to all adheres
Amid the now pervading discord …
disappears.
“Ahoy, be doleful not”, the pilot chants,
“For we alike applaud the procreators dance
Though, critics being, our assessment tend
That Eden’s fruit whose arts her symmetries amend
In form and deed His maker has surpassed.
Such curvature as Him offends by reason’s grasp
To perpendicularity He bears.
From wilderness, Man’s providence Man’s labour fares.
Then grant us justly that but incomplete
Be nature rent, so that by Man’s creative feat
Is she fulfilled with fair embellishment.
For her adornment, through Man’s grace, is beauty lent.
“Like deficit, so too obtains excess,
And once more praised be Man of whom issues redress,
Who through creation orderly extends
The essences which He uniquely comprehends,
And whom without be providence uncaused
In blatant breach of science’s enlightened laws.
Before Man, nature lays herself prostrate
His pleasures to attend and hungers to abate,
And should Man stake but everywhere His claim
No portion disavowing, still no greater His domain
Than would true reason readily concur
Unto the Son of Adam justly be conferred.
“How come this twining of our common way
Within your soul inspires no joy, mine no dismay
(For I but joy embrace, you but despair)?
Be blessed! Receive this faith that blindness wills repaired
And raise aloft your sight that downward dwells.
Look up! See what by nature being Man entails,
That we, on high, distinct are from all beasts
At God’s right hand, alone attendant at the feast.
See to the flame your dark forbodings cast
And nature see salute our craft in triumph past.”
What heinous mocking!
Such must I endure
With no sweet retribution?
Railed by souls abhorred
As vacuous by nature thus, yet I
Shall find her not avenged!
No more can I defy
Her love then e’er deny Her this disease,
Can no more name my enemy that make him cease
His unprovoked and unproclaimed offense.
With wave and cheer derides society’s pretence,
Yet bent I rise in Nature’s breast with scorn to draw Her recompense!
“What son would be lest from his mother’s womb?”,
My wrath retorts.
“Might barren rock issue in bloom
Yet still maintain humility it’s seed?
Is now heredity denied if so decreed
By oath of one an heir?
Is such contest
Derided by a judge unfit so to attest?
Or is the judgement sound, the fallacy
So thinly veiled?
And does man mock himself with me?
For that toward which harbours man intent
By industry to bring about it’s betterment
No fragrant fruit to him will bear, and such
As man presumes to cultivate will, by his touch,
Be wrested from his heir.
When realised,
Man’s scheme of artifice to innocence denies
What Nature had invested in the seed.
His artful gift conceals contracted in the deed
A taxing debt, more onerous than love.
Deceitful like a claw within a glove,
It’s velvet handshake once freely impressed
Bequeaths a legacy of compound interest.
Intrinsic value, priceless and so rare,
No conservation plea does his ambition spare.
Nature’s outline man conspires to trace
Till artifice is all and everything is base.
Blind is he to that which lies beneath
The shallowest veneer, unquestioning belief
As understanding masqueraded, so
That deeper knowledge does he neither seek nor know.
“Yet was Man free before he sought to rule?
Must now he serve the God he made himself so cruel?
Is Son of Man fictitious God’s invention,
And thus is Man the product of his own pretension?
For he bestows in credence and despair
Unto his lord his thanks, his praise, his woeful prayer,
His origin, his life, his destiny,
His liberty, his purpose and his dignity.
Man is the author of his history,
Unwittingly a posthumous biography.”
“By Progress and by Heir shall I be called”,
The foaming, rising wake informs,
“Yet you whose shored
Confines the tides describe, by what would be
You hailed?
By Envy, or perchance by Jealousy?”
“Such vanity!
Such arrogance!
Tell me,
What premise misinforms you of my jealousy
When I should yearn to spend my only days
Amidst this travesty of joy before I’d gaze
Upon the dread of my stout heart beguiled,
And in my eyes, as yours, see innocence defiled?
Those hollow globes, dull depths beneath your brow,
Betray no bygone days nor hours nor years b’yond now.
Unto your pleasure serve but Now and Here.
Witnesses of empty pleasure to your face adhere.
“Yet will it be, while time dispels the boast,
That pride, a charming festive guest, consumes his host,
And with such pride as vanity endows,
Afforded by our gift of name, assumes the Now
Itself to differentiate from each
And from behind some thin façade the fool beseech.
Now is that tide which blindly us conveys.
Now is your tireless night.
Now is my lightless day.
“Yet how, were not your shade upon me lain,
Might I anew what darkness now denies attain
Can your eyes neither bode nor witness bear.
But ignorance inspires ill-nurtured wit to wear
As Wisdom’s cloak of honour naked Shame.
Still all along these waters is Creation’s gain
Proclaimed by those who hear but their own lies,
Who neither seek nor find between the blooded skies
Of Day’s confines perplexity nor doubt.
Solicitant of vulgar caprice!
Turn about
And deem not my conversion to your creed
A clement course.
Upon this silted strand your seed
Lay victim of your unsought amity,
Lay mocked amidst abundance and fertility.
“At last, be gone.
Hail not this ailing shore.
Your cheer us spare.
Ail not this shore by hailing more,
But pass as must you surely come to fare
And let not my distress your passage by impair.”
And so came Nature’s peace intent upon her ultimate repair.
(c) 2012 Poetrivia
