I started to write the Apple Orchard poem sequence in 2007 after re-reading The Waste Land by TS Eliot (about whom I have ambivalent feelings). Over the course of 2007-2008 the original poem, 'The Garden City', expanded into a longer, basically autobiographical but wide-ranging sequence. I would say the general theme is the doubtfulness of hope.

The Apple Orchard

Prologue

Piece of a dark rock
where the elves dwelled
the old elves.
When they broke the rock,
did the elves die,
did the elves flee?
When will the elves return?

I – The Garden City

They planted a school in an apple orchard
in Ebenezer’s first city,
and there we played ‘it’ among the trees,
and there I walked by the muddy car park,
and there I came across
a clear puddle:
put your foot in,
stir it up
and drink the coffee.

But at home they had told me in their wisdom,
‘Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!’

Here is a broken wall, a Roman wall
where nettles grow. What tales can nettles tell?

Dennis, you do not know, you cannot know:
though you gazed on overgrown
and blackened stones
in Florence on the Elbe
and talked to one who did survive,
you were born twenty years after
in Ebenezer’s second city.

One day
in the old black ruins
I might see goose-grass growing like a tree
and onion flowers like red flames above me,
a jungle fit for the Jubjub bird
and the frumious Bandersnatch.

But I met another, like a man of business,
who showed me a different prospect:
the grey lunar landscape east of Cottbus -
where once his pretty villages had lain -
dug out for the sake of brown
s*** as far as the horizon.
Da sah ich sie liegen: schön unsere Dörfer.

Today
in the provisional present
I live in my great-grandfather’s house
and still walk in the mud.

One day
after the apple orchard is gone,
after the borogoves are gone,
after the garden city is gone,
we can hope for no more than
reconstruction,
recultivation,
a new earth.

II - Nana is Buried

Come into my pupils and you will see
a funeral party on a hillside,
clouds racing in Odin’s wind.
Though the god rides on the swiftest of steeds,
a still greater power impels him,
the gale roaring from riffling pages
of a red book behind the hill,
world-embracing work of the learned
who lectured once by London Wall.
Now, as we fly to friends abroad
you see the city lighting up,
cut by the plane’s dark wing.

III - Bergkamen Power Station

A band of ten in white hard hats
are walking over metal grids,
are marvelling at great steel pipes,
are gazing into hellish depths
beneath their feet. Resounding noise
drowns out all talk. The warmth is strong
and close.

Our friendly, bearded guide
has shown us on his diagrams
the furnace and the turbine room,
explained how crates and furniture
get cleaned and shredded for the plant.

Through a round glass I peer and see
an orange whirl of flames and sparks:
beneath the skin of the machine
the fiery present builds itself
and through the steel I feel it come,
destructive and creative power.

IV – Carthago

The date-palms spread their generous leaves;
the pomegranates glow against
dark foliage; and in their shade
a gathering of battered stones
like broken teeth. Each stele marks,
maybe, the ashes of a child,
a sacrifice to Punic gods
in pagan times.

We lounge in sensuality
in Moorish style in our hotel.
But while we taste the sultan’s life,
the ever-rolling stream of Time
eddies around our bed.

Strings of tourists saunter
through the lazy park but behind the Baths of Antoninus,
broken carcasses of stone,
a turquoise sea is waiting.



Stevenage-Edinburgh

City of brick and glass -
my concrete Silkingrad has changed.
Goodbye to my parents,
and the Borough of Stevenage carries me
left into the long flat lands.
The Scots are here already.

Smoke and steam rise
behind heaps of trees.
Between the famous cities
the power station towers
stand on the flat green country.
Buzzing ticket inspectors
land on my skin.

Gentle mountains and ragged clouds
mark the beginning of wildness.
The trees are rougher too,
and the earth is still on fire.
'Have faith in God' says busy Newcastle -
but what's that cloudy brain above us
thinking?

Red fire over Morpeth
where smoke stains the pale clouds;
they die out where the sea begins.
Over sunny fields of sheep and straw-rolls
you can make out Norway's grey mountains -
a picturesque scene.

The Scottish sea is deep blue,
held between dusty land and sky.
They bring forgetfulness
until the sharp-edged town
presses into my consciousness.

Into the chaos, march across the sand,
bodies of bone and metal.
The city repeats itself
for the thousandth time.

What is my goal?
A room of people, some known, some unknown,
literary vampires, cultural ghouls,
forming and re-forming like clouds.
Flee and prepare yourself
for the great jaw.

1989

Beacon Hill

One evening, as the sun was declining,
I set up my chair on Beacon Hill
And let go.
A man in a broad-brimmed hat
Was flying his kite, bucking and turning
And I flew with it.
A lark came up, warbling beyond reason,
Then another,
And I soared between them.
Waves of cloud were washing above me,
The current taking my craft aloft
And out of the hazy world.

first pub. in poetrymonthly.com 128, Nov. 2006

Knebworth-Wimbledon

'I am a barrister
and I sit half the time as a judge,'
says the square-shouldered lady,
whereas I sit on the train,
stealing away from the workplace
and back to my woman in London.

Violet sleep pales into azure sky
over Portakabin city
and then the magnificent arches
of King's Cross.

Returned to the light at Vauxhall,
I gaze at the glass palace,
the emerald palace
of a mysterious prince.
We do not have such sights at home!

Even Stevenage lacks
so many sunlit blocks of flats,
such golden arches,
so much art upon the walls.

The Knebworth ladies might be cold,
but the love bus welcomes everybody,
Chinese and curly Africans,
pale schoolboys with protruding ears
and those from out of town.

In a funny corner of Wimbledon
Maria opens her door to me,
waving and smiling like a Chinese.