James Harpur

As thoughts arrive
From god knows where,
Or sun breaks through
A fraying cloud
Emboldening a patch
Of trees, or grass,
They just appeared
From nowhere
Among the harvesters
The field a world
Of cutting, gathering,
Cutting, gathering.
Their outlines sometimes
Flickering brighter,
They walked between
The bending figures
Curious
Pausing to watch,
Like ancestors
Almost remembering
The world they'd left,
Or foreigners
Amused to see
The same things done.
They moved around
Unseen by all -
Unless one glimpsed,
Perhaps, light thicken,
A glassy movement,
As air can wobble
On summer days.
And then they went
Walked into nothing
Just left the world
Without ceremony
Unless it was
The swish of scythes
The swish of scythes
...

from The Dark Age


I never looked, but felt the spiky feet

Prickling my outstretched hand. I braced my bones,

My heart glowed from the settling feathered heat


And later from the laying of the eggs

Heavy, as smooth and round as river-rolled stones,

Warm as the sun that eased my back and legs.


When I heard the cheepings, felt the rising nest

Of wings, the sudden space, the cool air flow

Across my fingers, I did not know the test


Had just begun - I could not bend my arms

But stood there stiff, as helpless as a scarecrow,

Another prayer hatching in my palms -


Love pinned me fast, and I could not resist:

Her ghostly nails were driven through each wrist.
...

from Oracle Bones


Let us live dear wife as we have lived,

And call each other by those names

That lingered on our lips the first night of our love.

As years add wrinkles to our ageing skin,

I hope to God the day does not arrive

When I forget that you're my sweet young thing

Or you no longer see me as your suitor.

Though you outlive the prophetess of Cumae

And I surpass the age of old King Nestor,

This ripe longevity we shall deny:

Instead of ticking off the days of life,

We'll count the joys they bring, my dearest wife.
...

from The Monk's Dream


Tugging apart the curtains every day

He always saw, three stories up, a grand

Sweep of the Thames, the trees of Battersea



And, squatting there, the Japanese pagoda -

Inflaming, a parody of a bandstand,

Its four sides flaunting a golden Buddha.



It glowed like a lantern near the glitzy braid

Of Albert Bridge at night.

If he had crossed

The river he might have heard Renounce the world



Escape the gilded lips or seen Gautama lying

In mortal sleep, his face relaxed, his flesh released;

Even in death, teaching the art of dying.



At night, across the river two golden eyes burn

Into the heavy velvet of the curtain.
...

From A Vision of Comets


Too high for any flood

In a tree both bare and black

A nest is lodged in a fork,

Growing daily though squalls shake

Each branch and batter the rook

Who flaps with tardy strokes

Back to his hide-out

Bristling like a stook.

He topples down groundwards

Till all his feathers flock

Upstream then slot in like slates.

The pumice-pale beak starts to poke

Away leaves, stilettoes the turf

Then swaggering, braggadocio, he croaks

Out gall from the pit of his craw

And listening keenly as a crook

Gathers his Sicilian shawl

Plucks a twig, mounts and rocks

The breeze until he drops

Down into his secret nook,

Ready at once to carry on the work,

Incessant work, kept in the dark,

As when Noah, scenting the future,

Built his ark.
...

Tugging apart the curtains every day
He always saw, three stories up, a grand
Sweep of the Thames, the trees of Battersea

And, squatting there, the Japanese pagoda -
Inflaming, a parody of a bandstand,
Its four sides flaunting a golden Buddha.

It glowed like a lantern near the glitzy braid
Of Albert Bridge at night.
If he had crossed
The river he might have heard Renounce the world
Escape the gilded lips or seen Gautama lying
In mortal sleep, his face relaxed, his flesh released;
Even in death, teaching the art of dying.

At night, across the river two golden eyes burn
Into the heavy velvet of the curtain.
...

I never looked, but felt the spiky feet
Prickling my outstretched hand. I braced my bones,
My heart glowed from the settling feathered heat

And later from the laying of the eggs
Heavy, as smooth and round as river-rolled stones,
Warm as the sun that eased my back and legs.

When I heard the cheepings, felt the rising nest
Of wings, the sudden space, the cool air flow
Across my fingers, I did not know the test

Had just begun - I could not bend my arms
But stood there stiff, as helpless as a scarecrow,
Another prayer hatching in my palms -

Love pinned me fast, and I could not resist:
Her ghostly nails were driven through each wrist.
...

for Grace

‘My soul, there is a country
Far beyond the stars . . .'
Henry Vaughan
There: a planet full of seas and craters
Its mists of light and shadows detailed by
This photo printed on a scrap of paper.

A more than middle-aged astronomer
I scan this map for signs of life . . . and look!
Emerging from the grey - an alien creature

A small unearthly being, here, arrived,
The thing I feared would end my life, the thing
My mother would have died for, had she lived.

Dear soul, did you pick up the fuzzy thoughts
We sent as hopeful signals into space
In search of life and track them to their source?

Now you've landed, I feel the pang of age -
The undimmed glow of drawn-out childhood days
When growing older seemed like a mirage.

Now time is just an issue of dismay:
I pretend I'm one year older than I am
To quarantine each eager fresh-faced birthday.

I'm sad as well because I'll never know,
Probably not, the ending of your story.
What happened when I left? What did you do?

Have children in the sweet release of pressure?
And show them photos of your not-yet parents
Evolving in school line-ups to the future?

Did you shake off my shyness, hermit ways,
And curse an absent God and pointless life
And wonder why we brought you to this place?

Dear little traveller, may you forgive
Ancestral faults and ones we made our own:
Remember that we sent for you in love.

May you adapt and breathe the oxygen
Of this new world, pick up the signs and codes,
Human disguises, masks I tried to learn.

Be blessed to find a kindred alien -
Watch out for eyes, and smiles, and chance remarks
In crowds or somewhere lonely like a mountain

And maybe in the future, the stars uncurtained
On a summer's night you'll show the one you love
The shining home you lost, where I've returned.
...

(from ‘Voices of the Book of Kells')
"Remember this: I do not have
A name or face, or form,
And words and paint prolong the lie
That I can be depicted: I am beyond
All sense of what ‘beyond' can mean.
To know me you must close your eyes
And leave the road of affirmation,
The road of thinking and imagining:
Just be a pilgrim to yourself,
Alert, not knowing where to go,
But trusting in your ignorance
And travelling inward all the time.
Watch out for clues and signs - observe
The spirals of your thoughts,
The interlace of hopes and fears,
The circles of your good intentions
Revolving ineffectually,
The nibbling mice of jealousy
And hissing serpent of resentment -
Just watch your convoluting self
Proliferate without your intervening
Until it dies away to nothing
But silence and a glowing stillness,
As a stone exudes warm summer light;
And in that pregnant emptiness
You may just glimpse me
But only unexpectedly
Like a half glance at a sunshaft
Erupting in a neighbouring field;
And if you see me you've become
The unstained love you sought in me -
Then who is who?
The eyes through which you see are mine."
...

(Translated from Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy)

'The function of the wing is to take what is heavy
and raise it to the region above, where the gods dwell.' - Plato

'There is another life, emancipated, whose quality is
progression towards the higher realm . . .' - Plotinus
I have quick wings to fly you to the heavens
And when your nimble mind has put them on
It will despise the earth as something grim
And soar beyond the stretching realm of air
To see the clouds as tiny specks below.
Ascending through the upper realm of fire
That's heated by the ether's rapid movements
It rises to the starry Zodiac
To join the sun god's path or journey with
Cold Saturn or with coruscating Mars;
And where night glitters like a silver painting
It follows round the orbits of the stars.
Contented with its efforts up till now
It leaves the farthest limits of the sky
And stands upon the ether's outer boundary
Revelling in the awe-inspiring light.
For this is where the king of kings holds sway
Who holds the universe's reins and drives
Its speeding chariot - though he remains
Unmoved, the radiant lord of everything.

And if the path returns you to this place
Which you forgot but now attempt to find,
You'll say, "This is my country, I remember!
From here I came - now here I've come to stay."
And should you want to gaze down on the world
Of darkness that you left, you'll see as exiles
Those callous tyrants who inspired such fear.
...

I stretch my arms like a swan flying
And watch, weightless, the world turning
So high up I can see - endlessly it seems
Rome and white mountains rising beyond,
Triremes at anchor in still Alexandria
Pearl-divers practising from rocks
The wind wandering through the wilderness.
The sun casts no shadow of the compass.
I am rooted to the spot, rotting inside
I had no choice but to choose this perch
And now I cannot choose any more
Each choice I made was like a nail
Fixing my arms to embrace the world.
...

"I leave parchment to continue this work, if perchance any man survive and any of the race of Adam escape this pestilence and carry on the work which I have begun."
Friar John Clyn, Kilkenny, 1349
Lord, your work is now reversed.
No cockcrows spit the bloody dawn
Wheat whispers like fields of glittering wasps
The fruits of orchards hang down
Fat and untested . . . we crumble to the dust
From which we were once born.

How can all this dying bring redemption?
How will you burn us into angels
With skin of gold of the light of sun
From blackened bodies dumped in wells?
Forgive my doubts of heaven
Amid the sweet miasma of this hell.

Who will survive to shoot memories
From age to age like swallows
Joining distant countries?
Who will preserve fire, earth, snow
The first green shivering of trees
The flow of pilgrims to the Barrow?

The reason that you made us -
Surely - was to witness your creation?
Without us what will be your purpose
As you walk around your garden
In eardrum-silence, echoes
Of the hooves of Death spreading on

And on - each night my sleep is beating
Over what my being has amounted to
Beyond cold vigils, chanting
The isolation of beatitude
Always giving thanks and never doubting
Why so much of it was due.

I gave my youth to find your paradise
Within this cell and cloister
Now every little sacrifice
Flares and rages - has stripped me to a pair
Of jittery fiery eyes
Skidding off corpses everywhere.

Lord, for years I have been dying
Leeched white by sterile days,
Lacklustre nights; instead of trying
To exorcise the haze
Of tepid piety - instead of crying
Out for grace, I mouthed your praise

While desperate to feel your fire in me,
Yet dreaded it, resisted till the kiss
Of apathy
Or warm embrace of fickleness
Would welcome my return to the
Familiar chapel of my emptiness.

You could have driven me pure
Transfigured me with light - one vision
Just one! would have made me sure
This life of yours was really mine.
Each day, like a dog, I waited for
Your unmistakeable sign

And now it comes - as flaming blood
Distilling fear to keener fear
And no escape; no ark bobs on the flood
Of this fetid waveless atmosphere -
The dark age has come - God
Deliver me, prepare

My soul . . . the world's light darkens,
The future tunnels to the past.
This blank paper is my afterlife, a token
Of the hope I've lost.
Lord start again. Make the earth
Afresh from this
Great Dearth.
...