S. D. Heath | Poems & Poetics

I was reflected for a second
in an avian eye – clear
of any apprehension. The drake,
without the ballast of a soul
blindsighted me – unaware
of its blissful fucking ignorance.
Leaving him to his duck…
I am then compelled to step
gingerly, over the two young swans
slumped like grumpy ballerinas
on the towpath.
I want to pick up one dirty
white bundle of swan and take it home
with me. Make it sit and watch TV with me;
Dexter, or maybe Jeremy Kyle.
I want to feed to it our self-made world
and watch its eyes cloud slowly
with misery – seeing its’ swanniness
for the very first time. Swan beautiful,
of this universe, set for nothing
grander than a canal life.
But what I want is lost…
Cygnets make it into swans
Most of the time
and frankly they don’t want to watch
TV with me.

The last drops of sun catch fire. 
A bloody orange flare explodes between the sea 
and a fat roll of storm clouds, incoming 
and loaded with hail hiss-patterning the sea 
in preparation for the expedition of the rain. 

As the tide turns, all the sea’s weeds are laid bare; 
a cold black, popping with sea-weakened capsules. 
In the slack water, mermaids leave their purses 
on the strand line for the final squirms of embryos, 
tightening in the constant breeze. 
Give the wind time and it will scour the world clean. 

Farne and Longstone islands are silhouettes of submarines 
forever surfacing in the North Sea spray. Their lights regard 
the rock-boiled water and scan the shallow and profound 
the drying rocks and reefs; Knivestone, Whirl and Glororum Shad, 
beaming their regret to the bones of ship after ship 
lost inside the kelp.

What the lights have stood in silence, 
the gulls rail against: the stabbing wind, the fretful air and nostrils 
caked with salt. They have become white noise, mere edges, 
arcing through the green sea air – the smell of fresh white sheets; 
and they repeat a sorrow buried so deep 
not even steel from Damascus could cut it out.

And that midsummer night remains cool
in my head – the house floored
in red glazed ceramic tiles
the heat was minded to keep off
The screams that came were not human
only later did we discover that
the stoats had crashed the rabbit holes
and beneath us, under our feet,
the massacre took its course
You were high on weed
and I was low on serotonin
I don’t know who they scared the most. 

She turns to face the unkind wind – to see the day’s moon,
chalked on a frosty dawn, above the black and dripping railway yards;
her first reminder of how things have, and how things will, go on without her. 

Butterfly bush after butterfly bush, bowed heavy with seed, 
lets the bitter wind and the soft new snow do their worst – their best. 
Other lives? – she wonders – looking down the platform when –
like a freight train – a freight train ploughs through snow-flurried air.
It gets colder, colder by far. 

Clutching coffee, she sees summer grip the lifeless bracts
and mangy leaves transforming them into riots of orange-eyed flowers –
lilac and sometimes white – giving up nectar from a million tiny cups. 
What she is afraid of is what is lost, right here; when winter
turns the seed heads black and there’s nothing left to be reminded of, 
nothing left to be remembered.

The rain aspires to be the element
of surprise but it’s already gone beyond
the morning’s dewpoint; and the kites
(not often unawares) carve neat circles
with their tails - their wings - and scatter ground
dwellers, of a certain size, beneath the orbits
of their shadows.

Their hunger cuts like glass in their bellies;
making their lives one long dreamless hunt
until they stop their wings and close their eyes
and never move again.

I was at –
at sea – could hardly feel
the slightest reel – the softest rocking
that bent my knees and made me wonder where
I was –

I was inside the sea – fathoms down and
looking quite self-consciously
at a bioluminescent squid – white silken skin and puzzled eyes
in his domain – his navy night
the faintest stars – a puddle moon
and me

The rain fell to sleet
and the sleet fell to snow
and the road fought it off
to a crushed black slush

a clear sign of dying Winter’s
small attempts at roaring back at us
at you and me driving
at kids and cars and human stuff

6:30am: the heating clicks on

You are still now – white as a china cup’s
inside – face numb on the wet warm tiles
absorbing the pulses of pigeons on the ledge.

Do you see the slow music of planes;
Read their minims and scales upon
the staves of the rain-streaked sky?

Can you hear the queries of crows?
Spelling out for you the sleepless cold
of your unslept-on pillows?

8:30am: the heating clicks off

The blue songs of sirens will not rattle you;
Odysseus you weren’t. No matter.
You have always been bound to the falling mast.

You should be dipped in hell by now;
a work-bound Orpheus in the underground,
eyes clutching at eyes, thighs straining on thighs.

But you will never save Eurydice now,
with, or without, a backward glance;
Your world is preparing you for a journey.

Life falls into your ears

Now you will zoom out from this fat blue ball,
floating up through the burning skin
through the dome of the crackling thermosphere.

Then, rest in orbit, looking down for home – so sweet
you will want to weep, but won’t; at last, a treasured verse
will soothe your fading thoughts…

“Great streets of silence led away
To neighborhoods of pause —
Here was no notice — no dissent —
No universe — no laws.”      

is acher in gáith in-nocht,
fu-fuasna fairggae findfolt:
ni ágor réimm mora minn
dond láechraid lainn ua Lothlind*

in these storms our manners cannot hold
the civil lighthouse sweep will stall,
all ventures end – deep time unfold;
savaged by tooth and claw

sand is stripped by sunset’s tide;
slack water shows the sandworms’ holes.
swallowing sand, each head creates
a crater; each tail a sterile dune

they felt the weight of Viking boots,
the heat of seaside funeral fires
as dark age kings passed through
ashes to sand to sea to sky

they built themselves from themselves
expressed from borrowed code;
fossil proof immortalised
in every layer of rock

hail to you, the beach-keepers,
the unstoppable sandworms,
you’ll keep your form when
we’ve evolved to God knows what

*“Bitter is the wind tonight
Ripping the sea to a foam-filled white
On nights like this I write at ease
The Northmen prefer quiet seas.”


Old Irish lyric, It was written in the margin of an illuminated manuscript (“The St Gall Priscian”) by an Irish scribe in the ninth century- a time when Irish monasteries were under constant threat of attack by Vikings, (Northmen). It alludes to a scribe working during a storm – and how he is relaxed because he knows the Vikings will not attack when the sea is rough.

On moonless nights I used to ask,
“Mum, where is the moon?”
She always told me, softly, that, just for now
there was no moon.
 
Even today I am troubled by the darkness of these nights;
by how the sunshine slips behind the far side of the moon.
0% radiant - my desktop gadget tells me so
and though I understand the solar mechanics better now
it’s no less dark, and I can’t stop myself
from looking for just a little curve of moon

My name is Simon – an anagram of ‘less’ in French
But I have always wanted more, not less, of the moon.

S. D. Heath, January 19th 2012

Now the high above
tightens its hold.
The temperature
falls with typical
English restraint.

-4°C and
the overhead wires crackle
and pop as the trains
pass like giant dodgems;
flurrying up discarded tickets
snowfurred

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I didn’t ask for this
as always
I pace the room and
say those things I know
will only bring me more
despair

you are sad, like naked trees
in winter
exposed and cold
haughty
until left alone

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Under red rooves we can feel
the velvet deep inside of us;
all the day’s butterflies
tucked in tightly for the night.

Under green leaves, where tiny
hearts flutter, predatory eyes
track the careless moon across the sky;
unafraid of another sleepless night.