BRIMSTONE COTTAGE

I

As I remember, my tender age began
Much less in sorrow than in sadness,
A sensation I had no name for then
Quite different from misery of any kind,
For I was, I have been told, a happy child.
But hurtling one morning carefree down
A steep and cindered track, headlong
I fell, and injured was put to bed confused
In the middle of the day. There I lay,
Dozing on and off, boyhood’s round
Of restless doing stilled in me, waking,
Hours later, to a winter afternoon, rain
Spattering the window above my head,
Darkness falling.

Suddenly I was filled with the knowledge
That I belonged elsewhere, with a sadness
So complete, a longing so full, so perfect,
(‘A deep and genuine sadness then I felt’)
That all other life in me was quite subdued,
No thought of the world I’d tumbled out of,
No wish to be up and venturing out again
Into the woods and fields around our house,
Cast aside all the life I’d ever known,
Abandoned briefly to that happy longing
For somewhere I had never heard of.

And I remember too a regular dream
In which the world, rolling into a ball,
Receded from me, smaller and smaller;
And I saw the distant earth from space
As we do now, but brown and lifefless.
And though disturbing, this dream came also
With a kind of comfort I cannot explain
And when it came no more, I felt a sense of loss.


                                       II

Does such nostalgia in a child of five
Speak of the sorrow of sin, talk of a choice
Made in our ancient original heart, a choice
That day by day we make and make again
The life and loss of each of us? Does it
Tell us of a country we came from, far
Beyond the stars, beyond all time and place,
That heaven we once believed our home
Which we walk away from now, further
And further every day?
                                          I can hardly say.
But I do know that when I would discover
An experience to match the truths declared
By writers whose words to me are wonderful
I have gone back to that strange moment
And felt a glory shared. So these few words,
Found after fifty years, old singing robes
I would make my own, are either faithful
To what happened then, should precipitate
A way of life in me I’ve learnt to think of
As life itself; or they are the rags of reality,
The worn-out hope of clothing a body
Naked of meaning.


                                     III

                                 And if you wonder why
I’ve dallied so very long with that decision
Not doubting much that in those moments
Repeated once or twice as I grew up
Some meaning was ready to be disclosed,
Remember I was a boy, my days were spent
Roaming the only world I knew, searching
With my sister the woods near-by, stealing
Sugar-beat from fields―something sweet
Though raw and muddy―digging doggedly
In the garden, sinking toys in the water-butt,
And one or two of my father’s tools, a loss
We understood one day when he emptied it
And from its dark mysterious depths emerged
My clockwork boat and a long-lost spanner
Rusted and useless both.
                                          Some years later,
Sent away to school, out of the class-room
We lived in tribes, defending territory claimed
In the lightly wooded grounds beyond
The iron gates of a battered country-house,
Our home eight months a year, building huts
And flimsy palisades, sometimes inviting rivals
To inspect our work, all pride or admiration,
At others finding allies to attack the Alamo,
The best fort and the biggest, victory ceded
If we gained the doorway, our respect too great
To pull it down. That we played the enemies
Of freedom, fighting against our hero then
Davy Crockett (what few had, all wanted
His racoon hat―wearing it you were the man)
Didn’t bother us at all, so slight our knowledge
Of the events we acted. And among our own
We had heroes too, one of whom I remember
Not as he was christened―Richard Macleod
He might have been―but as a living presence,
Coeur de Lion, his nom de guerre, our tribute
To someone in whose name and spirit we felt
A fabled soul re-born: fearless he was,
Climbing out so far along the limbs of trees
That bending down at last they brought him
To within jumping distance of the ground,
A feat few others dared. And he was just,
His judgements we accepted. But most of all
I know that he was kind: often in tears
My first few days at school, a shame
I did my best to hide, he once came up to me
And said, quietly, no-one else about,
‘That’s how we all feel to start with’, words
Which simple in themselves, said in sympathy
Were what I needed to cope with a misery
I couldn’t understand.


                                        IV

                                          And so a kind of story
Might begin, the telling of a life, a setting down
Of almost all our being―except that rare, ruinous
Irruption of another world into this, contemptuous
Of the careful order we build about our lives,
Destroying, with a shot of light, the castles
And chronicles of time, demanding a life
Not this, taking no part in the knowledge
We gain from living day by day, razing
The world we made our own, rendering
Inexplicable whatever it is these moments
Ask of us, enigmatic insistent prophecies
Leaving us stunned, silent, feeling we must
Do something; but what, other than saying
It is so, I don’t know, and have no words to offer.