Nicholas Coleman

Mediaeval Requiem Audio

Electric wall lamps, novena burning.
Log fire wafting elm wood incense
over a decade's failed dreams
turned to stone.

This Crusader rests, sunken eyed,
a warrior laid out on the hearth rug,
reading the fading stars in
ceiling cracks.

Stars that marked a route that once,
before diverted by too many tomorrows,
he would have fought his own death
to follow.

double atmospheres weigh down,
lungs cramp, choking for air,
closing walls become soft
coffin silk.

nic 6 Dec.96

Two poems on the Yew Tree Inn, a country pub.

Gorn down pub tonight, pissed orf with watching TV.
Shoulder open low door, back bending beams,
faded photos pinned to the rafters,
dirt brick floor oozes smell of damp stone,
Landlord squints against cool sunset curtains.
Under the lamp a spider swings boldly
as if the pendulum of the old wooden clock
ticking as loud as the death watch beetle.
A dart droops from board asleep in yellowpocked wall
Coffin stools, corpse ready, rock in the inglenook
Last winters ash crisp-packet covered
Forgotten dried bacon side smokes up above
drawing flies and fag air out of the pub.
With photos of cricket club tour of Jersey
fresh clean faces, arse-mooning out window.

The back bar locals shoulder a glance
wary of sensitive strangers in suits.
Hi..have a drink, pint bitter please,
thanks chalk it up on the wall.

Clarissa, banished barrister, belches
politely into silver tankard of gin, as
Jake-the-Pig, soggy neck towel curtains
drooping belly, assailing the nostrils
with the scent of boar semen and slurry,
pontificates to the assembly, and
in corner Black Ron, never washed in his life,
oilrag overalls pole hanging on half starved frame,
tells for half-a-stout stories of steam-engined tractors,
young boiler flame eyes burning in a thin old face,
rolling an empty fag**, with delicate hands. **cigarette,Brit.
Two strapping straw carters in hay flecked vests
braceing up the wall with tanned biceps,
bale-pitch pints down dusty throats,
musky odour wafting from hairy armpits
mingles with fragrant female perspiration
of The-Three-Blondies just come panting
hot-knickered flushed from aerobics.
Little-Lizzie rests heavy boobs on the bar
soaking up slops, rough hands round pint pot,
smooth ochre legs in torn shorts, as
Old farmer Tell-Ye-Whaat leers at her.
Told his wife he was off, to see a cow.
His terrier cocks its leg on a string hitched trouser
unfelt by Sir Humphrey as he looks at Lady Jane,
her hand in ceiling-strap, hopes for
bondage in tackroom tonight.

Whoah there ---Hold your horses!
Strangers at the door!!!

nic.2 Aug 96

More photos here

Blasted Rat.  
It was a sultry evening,
the dying end of a dog -day.
In the back room of the Yew Tree Inn
a few regulars perspire at the bar.
Jim "Coleridge" Coomber, mine host,
huge frame bent under the low beams,
scratches his back against the pillar,
hoping no damn stranger comes in to ask
for complicated drinks in clean glasses.
A city man buys the characters
a round of drinks, to see the colour.
(like putting sixpence in the slot
to watch the puppets play.)
They oblige, talking of ewes and tups,
and market day and hay.
Through the open door comes
the crack of bat and ball,
(the cricketers will soon be in )
and summer evening smells
that remind you of your youth.
On the bench next to the door
a young couple whisper
thoughts for their ears only.

Peaceful enough for the foraging rat
that sits on the threshold with
whiskers and pink nose atremble.
A second time, it wanders in
and Coleridge looks put out,
and when the rat reappeared
he quietly went out the back
returning with a shotgun,
a double-barrelled Purdy.
Elbows steadied on the bar
he blew that rat right out the door.
When the smoke had cleared,
the young couple had left.
(they had not seen the rat)
We never saw them again.

nic 18 March 97

The Weathercock's Dominion.

Selmeston sits astride a crossing of forgotten ways.
At its heart a rough flint church broods on a pagan mound,
My fathers coffin is carried in procession from the big house
through the lych-gate, to the song of Road to the Isles.
A braver era is etched in the veins of his gravestone,
and his bones now feed an alien soil
that he came to call his home.

And the Cock cries tears
over graves of prodigal sons who heard him crowing
across an ocean. A holly bush drops red on the fallen faded
marker "In memory of two Canadian airmen", names unknown,
who returned in death to their blood's ancestral home,
and lie now in a forgotten, unrecorded, War Grave.
Great English elms hold their spirits in,
with silent crows on guard.

And the Cock flies round
to the West. Slubby Lane passes the priest's safe-house
where he sweats in the dark until dragged out to the sword.
The Roman pavement, that they imagined would stretch on
to the crack of doom, now buried under cow-poached mud,
crosses the sandpit to the hearth fires of pre-history,
where fine arrowheads and delicate pottery
whisper of home in the dry grasses.

And the Cock looks out
to where runs a winding track across the wetlands.
Mist stains the air with an odour of peat bog and rushes,
hiding a moated timber farmstead from Viking raiders.
North, the road passes the burial ground of Angles where
gold hides inside the white shadow of bones in the sand,
on its rulered way to the farm settlements
of pensioned-off Centurions.

And the Cock glints gold
in a hogday sun that brightles the brain of Lewis Carrol
telling Alice stories as she sits at his feet in the garden
of the Tudor vicarage, its ghosts scribing ever wilder words.
To the South, a boy carries flagons of cider from the pub,
while in the garage the Village Idiot tinkers with a truck
with which to take the lane that leads the way out
to the nearby highway and the hills,

But the Cock laughs loud,
as he spins madly round,
crowing come on in - there is no way out.
Unheard by dead commuters on the teeming bypass.

nic.12 Dec 96

The Newcomers

From the road, a wisp of wood smoke betrayed the house, rough granite face,
sagging slate roof, set into the head of the Cornish valley.

The old farmhouse had waited for them.
Through granite posts guarding the gateway,
walking wide-eyed down the entrance drive,
and around the corner, they saw it:

The crouching house, climbing out of the hillside,
stared at them warily, stretched, door yawning.
A sad grey roof and weatherbeaten face,
ready to retire down into the rock.

Hopeful peasants hut, grown up and out
as children had grown up and died;
solid walls soaking up their lives,
and returning their care with comfort.

Breathing them in through the open door,
House closed in round the Newcomers.
"These will do, yes,this couple will do"
the chatter hummed through its fabric.

The creaking door closed silently,
the cold stone chimney drew strongly,
grate glowed and the rough walls warmed,
as old House prepared for a new life.

NiC.Jan.96

A Letter From Penrest, Cornwall.
From my diary. 16th September 1996

Down the track and past the spring that bubbles out the bank
into a trough of mossy stone, and splashing 'cross the ford.
Past a patch of king thistles and rushes, through oak trees
standing broad bold upright 'gainst the angle of the land.
Climbing higher to the corner of the topmost pasture,
underneath the shelter of the stone walled hedgerow.
There stripping clothes to lie upon, in the grassy meadow;
wild flowers are growing at my head, and dandelions below

The soft'ning heat of September sun soaks down into me.
A warm breeze rushles through the pasture, fingering
limbs and hair, and my taut body relaxes at its caress.
Out of my fingertips seeps the unwritten, the undone,
the unfelt kisses, unsaid words that made an iron band.
A spider scurries down my thigh, a dragonfly darts past.
A green grasshopper sounds crizc-crizc, in hiding near my head
And my mind floats far away with, the thistledown on the air.

Shading my tired eyes from the hot bright burning light,
I look through the foxtailed grass that brushes a too blue sky
with soft breeze blowen strokes. Overhead a buzzard falls
tumbling out the sun with finger-feathered wings aglow.
It wonders what dead meat might this naked body be,
sees movement, wheels up away. I soar aloft with it;
see my own supine self lying, white golden in the green;
soar higher yet and higher, on outstretch'ed wing of dream;

I see a past love playing, chain of daisies round her neck;
see long dead children dancing, in white smocks berry stained;
hear their laughter ringing loud, and the sounds of harvests gone:
click-clatter of the cutterbar, the rustle of the rake.
What soaring soul in time to come will look down on me in envy;
this moment's mine, the pasts sights and sounds, and as
the sweet warm nose of well made hay comes wafting up to me,
gliding on the wings of peace, Penrest sets my spirit free.

Way to the East is wild Dartmoor, its heights lost in the haze.
To the West rises the black plateau of cruel Bodmin Moor,
the moor of yore, King Arthur's knights and of Jamaica Inn,
edged by the crags of Twelve Men's Tor, Hawks Tor and Trewortha.
To the South the softly rounded hills of Kit and Caradon
rise beyond the belly of the green hedge-netted land,
up into which cuts the darker gash of the Trekenner gorge
that runs into the wooded vale of the River Inny by the ford.

The sun is lower now. The trees a fray`ed pattern make
of many shaded green. And on the far horizon rays
light red the old stone tower of the worked-out copper mine
that points in accusation at the sky; a reminder of
the hand-hewn shafts below. While tiny grazing cattle,
like lost toys, lay still shadows 'gainst the far off fields.
Pigeons race low home to roost, the peregrine looks for prey,
and a flight of crows flies black, across the cloudless sky.

NiC.28 Sept 96

One summer a couple of years after leaving colIege, when walking past a Gothic tower on the hills, I came across a school friend of mine who had gone on to Oxford University. The next day I returned on my motorbike which he admired. He bought a 750cc machine the next week, and killed himself the same day.

My boarding school
Divine Justice? The chapel is now a computer classroom!

John Flagg.

Was it my fault that John Flagg died,
that Oxford's spires lost an eager neophyte
-a future son,
that a chance encounter one summer day
sent young Flagg too soon to the other side?

Always impatient to haul the future in,
to learn the whys and wherefores of it all
-to lead the way,
from nine to nineteen we led each other on
fighting authority, knowing we would win.

I was the first to buy a bike, a Silver Star.
Remember how we talked of Paine* that day?
-the sun shone.
You had to, damn you, taste the thrill
as seven hundred c's launched Your star.

For you as well I kissed the girls, and wined,
I read the books and wrote the words for two
-you held my pen,
I tried to be your senses, fight for your ideals,
to give you back the life you were to never find.

And now a half my life has leached away,
yet sometimes still, in silent places
-where no light shines,
the shadow of your shade passes over me,
and I hear you laughing at mine own decay.

nic 22 Nov. 96
(*Tom Paine, the revolutionary, lived near here)

In Extremis.  

In dungeons of the mind the maggots heave
in rotting thoughts drawn long upon the rack,
and blowflies lay their eggs in shackle sores,
as entombed Hope claws bleeding at the door.

In dungeons of the mind I wander now
to cut the bonds and tear the chains apart,
but flesh cleaves to the bone, a darkness falls.
Too late, too late to rescind the pulse that's gone.

In the dungeons of my mind I'm searching still
for sparks of life amongst the tortured bones.
Even as the blood cools, closing fast the gates,
I burn, I burn to drag a flame from out the lime.

In the dungeons of my mind cold hell takes hold.
Close tight the doors, quick roll the stone across.
Climb, climb towards the fading of the light;
and from the battlements of Despair cry out,
cry wild across the honey waters of Lethe:
       eli...
              eli...
  nic.18 Nov.96

Ice Silent  
Bars of ice guard the pig house wall
Steam heat shivering out the ridge
Of a roof half hidden by snow
Fans are silent, the only sound
Is from my boots on the frozen ground

The fox has made its nightly round
Leaving its trail from shed to shed
Cross the muckheap and past the barn
Searching out dead meat to steal in
A hungry quest for a decent meal

Cold bites my chest as I take breath
It sears my cheeks and stings my ears
No birds sing in the icy quiet
But then cracking open the pigshed door
Piglet warmth rises from a sawdust floor

NiC.

Harvest.

A helmeted hawk-like figure is leaning over the wheel
As the combine sidles its way across the slope,
The steadily turning reel swallowing the summers gold
In the centre of a haze of harvest's dust.

Gorging itself on yet another years fruit,
Spewing out at the rear empty ears and broken straw,
Like a giant red spider spinning a web from hedge to hedge,
It claws its hungry way towards the sun.

Another years dreams are being threshed in its drums
Some grain's in the tank, some just waste on the ground,
To rot in the soil or fill up our barns.
Either way it will just continue the round.

NiC

The Cultivator  

Glimpses through the gateway
Blast of black exhaust,
Tyre-treads turning
Grey dust spraying
From chisel tearing
Yellow stubble, sun-cracked soil.

Her tanned legs brace
'Gainst the furrow shocks
White hands clench
Wheel as it kicks
Brown eyes turn
From the red of the evening sun.

Night was I stroked
Those gypsy thighs
gentle white hands
clenched mine to hers
brown eyes turned oval
as the furrow turned.

Hasten past the field gate
frightened to confront.
Hidden behind hedgerow
Apparition gone.....
left a plume of black smoke
And a pounding heart.
NiC

Thirst  

I'm sitting on a tractor seat
loading bales of straw,
with spool-valves at my fingertips,
dusty eyes rubbed raw.

There's seven hundred more to cart
but thunder's in the air;
and many hours work ahead
before the field is bare.

Broken blisters on both hands
from stacking up the straw
and before this day is over
I'll have plenty more.

Trailers loaded eight layings high
lined along the field.
A harvest moon is shining
coldly 'cross the Weald.

I'm passing by the village pub;
engine stop's pulled out.
The creamy froth has touched my lips:
another day is nowt.

NiC

Factory Farmer

A cattle truck of broken dreams
Just a cattle truck of broken dreams.
Twenty years of his life has been loaded that morning
Twenty years of his life, his labour, his love.

Watching the wagon lurch down the drive and out of sight
He walks slowly across the silent farmyard
Crouches in the corner of a deserted pen
And as the sun rises on an empty day
He quietly sobs his heart away.

He was only a factory farmer, he did not care for his stock they say,
As they sip their cocktails in the converted cowshed
And waltz across the floor of his barn
Showing off to their friends its rural charm.
NiC


The herd comes in for the very last milking.