For the Silent
11, 2 Poems, Voice for Nature
If you have read a few of my poems here you will realise that I have a deep love of nature. I abhor hunting for sport/entertainment and a while ago I was lucky enough to have a poem chosen to be in an anthology where the proceeds go to supporting folks trying to stop this pretty gross practice, The League Against Cruel Sports. I loved the title, For the Silent, as even though animals are very definitely not silent (anyone who has heard the screeching call of the fox or the barking of a deer can attest to that!) they have no voice within a human world. Is this due to our lack of connection to nature now? perhaps as their voices are there if we listen.
It is a spectacular collection and I am honoured to be alongside some extremely fabulous poets such as Ted Hughs, Pascal Petite, and Mary Oliver to name but a few! (Edited by Ronnie Goodyer.) You can buy it here
The book begins with a wonderful quote from Pascal Petite;
“of course writing a good poem is impossible, if what you want is one which holds infinite raw readings. I made do with echoes, live for an echo whatever poetry is. It’s my religion, that, and animals. Animals are of course pure poems, but we only perceive their echoes.”
They chose a poem of mine that I wrote over twenty years ago now, when I lived in Brighton UK. At the time I was practicing nature awareness and meditation walking daily up by the golf course. There is an old Roman road there that leads to an ancient hill fort. I had some incredible close encounters with weasels, mice, and of course foxes! Some were sad ones like the one in the poem below.
Marriage
the fort gives us its rings
the oak too
I will marry you here
beneath this tilled sky
seeded with leaves
your fur is the autumn
arriving through falling
the wheel turns
your teats give up nitrates
their death-milk miasma
a confetti of flies make this a wedding
you dear dead fox,smile
for the wetness of the rain
your corpse, so full of having lived
the rose-hip of your still heart
itches at its browning centre
beloved, I will marry you
here in the dead grasses
beside this Roman road
I wrote this next poem when I was staying over at a friends in Hamburg. He is a crazy guy and lives in the heart of the Reeperbahn, a pretty hideous place not dissimilar to the red light district in Amsterdam where men go to buy women. I don’t know the area well and became lost, I was with my then 8 year old daughter and pregnant with my second daughter in the neon lit drunken male infested streets. It was terrifying, I was so scared and uncertain I could protect my children if anything were to happen. Luckily I grew up in a dangerous city and fell back on my knowing how to walk and how to give off the don’t fuck with me vibes - even with my big belly. This might seem like a departure from the previous poem, but it isn’t, its a reminder that we share our world with nature - our world is part of nature and we part of it, inseparable.
I wish we heard natures voices more clearly and took more care to include nature in our worst places.
In the heart of the Reeperbahn, the sprawling city, was a fox.
This poem was first published in Black Light Engine Room
City Fox
This house shares its foreign heartbeat,
DJ´s an industrial dubstep through
its concrete body.
At the window I am foetal.
I see stars become
raw light bulbs,
wish away the flats opposite.
Here women use their bodies
as If they were trains;
eyes of reinforced glass,
passengers, speed,
underground.
Stilettos clatter, sidle, flirt
with the lacy edge of vomit,
their owners compete
with the luscious curves of beer bottles.
Here you can get tits and ass
and live sex shows, but
between the semen stains
and the filth of human shame
coming on like a fly-tip,
a scrap of neon blue,
herself a remnant of wildness,
fox,
burrows in dustbins
as if they held rabbits.
I know life is tough for many but even the smallest contribution means the world! if you wish to make an offering by crossing my palm with silver I would greatly appreciate it!
Tremendous!