Who Turned Off the Lights?

I dabbled in environmentalism with this one. It was specifically inspired by seeing the campus sports field floodlights illuminating the sky all night, every night in a weird greenish hue reminiscent of Minas Morgul from 'The Return of the King'. It's visible from Bath to this day if you know where to look.

My general frustration at first year not going quite the way I'd hoped got channelled into a piece of righteous indignation at mankind's disregard for nature. And it's a message I still stand by, unlike a few other things I wrote in first year.

WHO TURNED OFF THE LIGHTS?

Bright lights

White nights

For the birds in the hedgerows and trees.

To sing their songs they strive

But they cannot survive

With no sleep.

Blackbirds have spoken

But now they are broken

By cruel, piercing beams.

Turn off the floodlights and then

They can rest in their nests once again

And have peace.

Turn off the city and wait

For the chorus – not early, not late

But beautifully free.

Nature kills all

And mankind will fall

So don’t get too used to this power.

Short-out, blackout, where are you now?

Couldn’t be bothered with Mars or the Plough

The night sky is new and deadly to you.

Lost through exhaustion

And crushed by ignition

Of too many streetlamps.

Dark days

Music plays

To replace all the birdsong

Killed off by laughing

In the face of the night…

Humanity’s arrogance

Turned off the lights.

Thanks to: Frankie Goes To Hollywood for Black Night White Light, Cat Stevens for Morning Has Broken, and Kate & Anna McGarrigle for Mother Mother.

Too Much Information

I've always been an avid collector of trivia of all shapes and sizes. Over the past few years it's all been put towards some constructive end via regular pub quizzes – but back in the first year of uni those days were just beginning, and I still wasn't convinced there was any real value in my own fascination with 'useless information'. I couldn't say for definite whether it was actually standing in the way of my social life (and if so, how)...but I had my doubts.

Of course, come second year, the doubts were largely dispelled by my stint on the 'University Challenge' team...but that's another story. ;)

I think this marks my (admittedly slightly clunky) first attempt at working in some French too, in the form of a couple of lines from Francis Cabrel's excellent Qu'Est-Ce Que Je Viens De Dire?, which also seems to deal with a young man struggling to concentrate on what he finds important in life.

TOO MUCH INFORMATION

For once let’s forget the hurt in the heart

And talk about the pain

In the busy scrambling brain

Where to start?

Too much information

Flooding through the corridors of thought

That’s why this guy’s so often overwrought

That and the lack of conversation.

Heading for a mental catastrophe

Et la voix dedans me dit

“Tout va bien, t’as la tête ailleurs”

Head elsewhere, head in the clouds.

Longing to share the top facts and info

With somebody, anybody

If they’ll listen and at least pretend

To be interested they can be his friend.

Friendship’s hard to come by in this way

And as for anything more, well

The ones he likes are all party animals

Like the millions of others all over the world.

Not that much interest

In the day it snowed in the Sahara

Or the Battle of the Atlantic

Or a little-known Queen song.

And as it turns out

The heart can’t be forgotten

More and more these days

It rules the head.

That’s when his whole world starts sinking

A ship in a brainstorm

Capsized by far too much thinking

He does it to keep his heart warm.

Thanks to: Francis Cabrel for Qu’Est-Ce Que Je Viens De Dire?, Elvis Costello & The Attractions for Party Girl, and Brian May for Let Your Heart Rule Your Head.

In My Nature

A typical early poem, this. In the same 'lonely' vein as 'Sweet Dreams', really: the difficulties associated with living away from home for the first time, and more specifically trying to make friends while simultaneously enjoying solitude and the nature I'd grown up with. I was puzzled and frustrated by the contradictions of the two states of affairs, and couldn't work out how to make the most of them...things never seemed to happen at the right moment for me. I was pretty miserable about it!

IN MY NATURE

Welcome to my social life

It’s quiet here

Step out of the door

The silence is deafening.

And there’s no-one around

But from the corner

Of your eye

You see a flash of colour

That’s me I think.

I sit here for hours

Thinking my thoughts

And they aren’t all bad

As long as you shut up

Leave me alone.

Quiet – I like it, it likes me

I think.

No I don’t need you

Your help

Your sympathy

This is my lonely symphony

Conductor and chorus is me.

The sun shines, the animals play

I could spend all day

And frequently do

So I don’t need you.

Stop talking, let me think

And you do stop.

And I’m shocked

By the sudden silence

Now there’s no-one around.

Wait

Don’t go

I didn’t mean it

Talk, you can talk

Oh God talk to me

I’m the only one talking

The only one here.

Talking to thin air

Not just nobody, nothing

There’s nothing here

The sun, the animals

Gone from this nightmare.

There was a dream stream

But that’s gone too

How I’d have longed to

Dip my head under the cool water

For a few minutes too long.

But it’s gone and you’re gone

Where are you?

So back to the real world I crawl

To try and find them all.

Thanks to: Frances Ruffelle for Lonely Symphony (We Will Be Free), Queen for It’s A Beautiful Day, and Kate & Anna McGarrigle for Cool River.

Soul Stone

In a tranquil Mediterranean pine forest above the village of Crestet in Vaucluse, Provence stands a modern arts centre, now abandoned with the sculptures placed in the surrounding woods slowly returning to nature. But when I was little, my parents and I would visit it every year.

One year, aged about 7 or 8, I scratched my initial on the stone part of one of the sculptures. Fast forward to 2007, and we were in the woods again, with me recast as a troubled teenager. And there on the stone was a faint trace of my bit of wanton vandalism, which I'd forgotten in all the intervening years. Sometimes time freezes.

The Crestet Centre d'Art makes another appearance in one of my most recent (as of 2015) poems, which I'll get round to posting soon. It's a captivating place indeed.

SOUL STONE

A sculpture in a forest

The south of France

A dry, dusty hillside

The edge of Provence.

Coming down the track

Through the thirsty trees

Little boy

Finger still sore from the thorn

That hurt him earlier

Sees the sculpture

The stone and the carvings of wood.

Smiles that smile

That twinkly smile of his boyhood

Picks up a pebble
And scratches an A

Between two stars on the stone

Turns to go

He comes back next year

But the memory’s rotten

And so in the wood

The sculpture’s forgotten

And a few more times

But still

He doesn’t remember

And then he returns no more.

Except, for old times' sake…

Coming down the track

Through the thirsty trees

Older boy

Heart still sore from the girl

Who hurt him earlier

Sees the sculpture

The stone and the carvings of wood.

(He’s almost a man now

But not quite

Kept awake at night

By the almost which he wants to fight.)

Peers at the stone

Draws a breath

And is engulfed

By the sudden tide of memory.

Head shakes

No, can’t be –

Is.

He scratches his name for the second time

For the next time

Which hasn’t yet come.

He often reflects on the space

The hundreds of miles

Between him and his soul stone

When he’s alone.

And maybe

Just maybe

The A between two stars

On the stone will remain

In the forest long after

This boy has given up hope

And done something stupid.

Grinning like Cupid

That little boy’s face

Has gone for good

Lost in space

And time.

(Inspired by an experience at Crestet, Vaucluse.)

Remembrance

A historical poem. These were definitely the exception to the rule back in my early writing days. They'd become a lot more common later on, I'm pleased to say!

This one is an imagining of the hidden links between generations, and how history can 'repeat itself'. Once again, a theme that I'd explore again more than once.

Thierville is a village in Eure, Normandy, well known as the only commune in France that lost no-one in either of the World Wars (or the Franco-Prussian War). This is in stark contrast to the many English and Welsh 'Thankful Villages', all of whose servicemen returned. 

REMEMBRANCE

Bourges.

The old farmer sits and watches

As the young men go by

To their deaths he knows

A tear in his eye.

He sits and remembers

Forty years before

In the far-off Ardennes

One of those young men

Was him.

Nineteen there were

One for each of their years

But he was the one

The only one

That got out alive.

A Prussian ambush killed his friends

Now he watches the young men

And desperately hopes

That when this is all over

He will see them return

To farm with him

The good earth of the Berrichonne fields.

But no

Four years later

Twenty-two return

Out of forty.

A sickness follows them

Not from Prussia the old man’s death came

But from Spain.

Twenty-two years on

He doesn’t live to see

The twenty-two who survived

Fall to their knees

Gasping their last

Amid the Panzer shells raining down

On the Ardennes

Perpetual grave of the young men.

On the marble

Their names in two separate groups

Friends separated by stone

For evermore

Above them their fathers

Names from the three wars.

Thierville

Normandy.

No memorial here

Alone in France

No men are lost

In the three wars.

The young men did grow old

And weary

The sun sets

And thankfully

The village forgets.

Thanks to Sting for Children’s Crusade.

Solsbury

It was quite a revelation when I realised that Solsbury Hill, immortalised in 1977 by Peter Gabriel's song, was actually only a couple of miles away from my uni halls. One night, fed up with the racket my housemates were making, I went for a walk down into Bath...and ended up out the other side and up on the hill with its traces of ancient earthworks. I dozed off and woke up in time for the sunrise. Magical.

So not all of my poems from this year were gloomy. There's some sense of optimistic wonder, and hints of my later attempts to tie in historical and geographical curiosities with my own personal experiences. That was nice to discover as I revisited this early stuff for publication here!

SOLSBURY

Followed in Gabriel’s footsteps today

Climbed that hill

Where time stands still.

And from miles around

The sound

Of rooks and traffic came to my ears

And washed away the years.

In the grass

Traces of fortifications

From centuries past.

Defending long-gone halls

The castle walls

Under a leaden sky

Like the weight of history slipping by.

Close your eyes

Picture that landscape.

So many trees

So few houses

So much time gone by

Feel small?

Well you’re part of it all.

If it had been a sunny day

I’d have marvelled

How the sun

Was the same one

Worshipped thousands of years ago.

The solstice, the standing stones

Those that built them, their souls have been taken home.

But it was cloudy

So instead I stood awhile

And listened

At peace.

The rook-song called to me

An atom of human history

The years went by rapidly.

Thirty-five or so

Of those years ago

Another young man

Climbed that hill.

Saw for miles around

Listened and was inspired

Magic, perhaps.

A lingering relic

Of ancient memory

The compelling music

Of Solsbury.

Thanks to Peter Gabriel for Solsbury Hill.