PROOF 6 (South West Arts 1998)
rosebud on the beach (lelant)
No one came back for Rosebud.
Years passed.
Tired, she leaned over, let go.
A dead-boat-yard,
beneath minor suburbia
of golf links and bungalows.
There are thousands of al fresco tombs.
All boats die, as people die,
not often by the rock,
not in the drama of the storm at sea.
Most boats die of neglect and weather.
Children play near her,
bearing buckets of water from the safe pools.
Only hairstyles change.
Across the harbour, Hayle flattens and bleaches
as the boats twist and flow and split and spread,
engine and donkey exposed to the sky.
The end of a history:
people's hopes for their homes;
working the living wood
of who they were,
and strong belief in what it might be for.
Bleached by the rain and the wind, they lay down
and surrendered themselves to the sky.
Years passed.
Tired, she leaned over, let go.
A dead-boat-yard,
beneath minor suburbia
of golf links and bungalows.
There are thousands of al fresco tombs.
All boats die, as people die,
not often by the rock,
not in the drama of the storm at sea.
Most boats die of neglect and weather.
Children play near her,
bearing buckets of water from the safe pools.
Only hairstyles change.
Across the harbour, Hayle flattens and bleaches
as the boats twist and flow and split and spread,
engine and donkey exposed to the sky.
The end of a history:
people's hopes for their homes;
working the living wood
of who they were,
and strong belief in what it might be for.
Bleached by the rain and the wind, they lay down
and surrendered themselves to the sky.
the angry emigrant
He takes his stand on the hill
And sets himself against oncoming winter.
Sick of the quarter-year sadness
This time he will not take it into himself.
He damns the mists against the sun
Of the late autumn afternoon,
The layers of Cornwall silhouetted in distance,
The red and blue horizon,
The black trees in the blue desert.
But the quietness answers, harsh in his ears,
"I bequeath the land to crows".
Things shriek as though it were night
And he grinds his teeth at all subtle surrender
To the coming winter,
Knows he is alive.
It is now he can take the 88A
To town for the passage to exile.
The emigrant ends of his forebears closed,
He books passage nightly on the SS Bitter;
Leaves Cornwall, running at the eyes,
Surveys the world through the flat of his palms.
He receives messages of home -
The clarity of indignity,
Contempt conveyed through casual pain.
"One day...! One day I will return,
You bastards!" he shouts to the homeward-bound bus.
"You bastard!" - he thanks the driver.
"You bastards!" he calls to the sleeping estate.
The late night children hide as he passes
And wish, and wish the Cornishman home.
And sets himself against oncoming winter.
Sick of the quarter-year sadness
This time he will not take it into himself.
He damns the mists against the sun
Of the late autumn afternoon,
The layers of Cornwall silhouetted in distance,
The red and blue horizon,
The black trees in the blue desert.
But the quietness answers, harsh in his ears,
"I bequeath the land to crows".
Things shriek as though it were night
And he grinds his teeth at all subtle surrender
To the coming winter,
Knows he is alive.
It is now he can take the 88A
To town for the passage to exile.
The emigrant ends of his forebears closed,
He books passage nightly on the SS Bitter;
Leaves Cornwall, running at the eyes,
Surveys the world through the flat of his palms.
He receives messages of home -
The clarity of indignity,
Contempt conveyed through casual pain.
"One day...! One day I will return,
You bastards!" he shouts to the homeward-bound bus.
"You bastard!" - he thanks the driver.
"You bastards!" he calls to the sleeping estate.
The late night children hide as he passes
And wish, and wish the Cornishman home.