Taro Fair

     (Flora Twort: 1893-1985)
 
During that time, she woke to the horses
Passing under her window and followed
Later, their straw plaited manes. Like faces
In the sky's crumbling landscape, she noticed
Other things as she put up her easel
At the Taro Fair. But the words which led
Her had been that way before and were first
To leave, though they ran along her fingers,
Quietly counting the syllables. All
She saw was enough; all they gave, disguise.
 
That was when the conversations ended,
On a hot day in the stares of gypsy
Children, when the lake water responded
As if moved by her brush, when life became
The true miracle and she saw the grey
In the white, the white in the grey. And so
Easy, the horses, moving in a time
Almost forgotten, across her canvas
To another place that retained its eye
And watched the marvel growing in her face.
 

Ian Caws

in collection Taro Fair, 2003, Shoestring Press,
ISBN 1 899549 80 3

 
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Mr Spickernell's Guitar Lessons

or how Django Reinhardt, his left hand mutilated, brought the music to an end.
 
Returning late from the Dockyard,
Mr Spickernell left his bike
Bumping and barking down the side
  wall. Steam from his tea cup
Harmonised, a kind of music,
And the snug fire clicked its needles
  softly as we tuned up.
Notes hung on their stems in huddles –
 
“Pick them in bunches,” he whispered
As I peeled them with my plectrum
One by one and, past the score, peered
  at the smoky knitting
Collapsing up the chimney. Warm
Enough in the music, later
  he’d roll up his sleeves, swing
Improvised runs through a twelve bar
 
Riff. Or he’d play a prized record,
Ignoring how it hissed at him,
And follow on where it faded,
  his mad fingers running
After the vanished tune. Then came
The evening he played Django’s
  Parfum. The needle’s long
Complaint grew soft and all was gauze
 
Through which the music spread, leaving
No residue. Silent, Mr
Spickernell touched every string
  on his guitar, gave them
Tactile instructions not to stir.
The record stopped. “My God!” he said,
  “two fingers and a thumb!” –
Stared into the fire and shivered.
 

Ian Caws

in collection The Feast of Fools, 1994, University of Salzburg Press,
ISBN 3 7052 0810 1

 
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Two Lights

  At that time of evening,
  light hung between the seven trees,
conveying stillness and a softening
and something by which to measure the days.
 
  Occasionally, cats and birds
  were transfigured in its spreading
but I stayed with my bookshelves and cupboards
and turned on my angled lamp for reading.
 
  And different altogether,
  it lifted words from the pages,
leaving the other light shapes to gather
that weren’t words or defined by their edges.
 
  Yet what they were was too far off
  and not open to eye or touch
so I turned from them as from things unsafe
or a beauty too dangerous to watch.
 
  Now I’m older and take the air
  at dusk, find a sense that quickens
with the insects and, mislaying my fear,
it’s the light among the trees that beckons.
 

Ian Caws

in collection The Blind Fiddler, 2004, Pikestaff Press,
ISBN 1 900974 26 6

 
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Saltmarsh

  Everything disintegrates
  In the heat except these shore crabs,
Tossed like children’s badges on the swept mud,
  And where there is shadow, it floats,
  A ragged shirt over the ribs
Of silt. I stood on this path once, near mad
 
  With cold, and wind would not let me
  Pass, flexing like a metal sheet
And pushing me back to the road. Today
  It’s dead crabs keep me company
  And there’s no breeze at all to set
The liquid horizon. And if I die
 
  Today, where there is space round me
  And I don’t fit, and in this place
Which has no end, I would prefer my death
  To be with the crabs, carelessly
  Scattered, random as sea asters
Or the flight of the redshank, maybe worth
 
  Exactly what makes them or me
  Part of this. I’m too close to cool
Water even to notice the heat sting
  Me and too far away to see
  The sails of old Halnaker Mill
Still multiplying nothing with nothing.
 

Ian Caws

in collection Chamomile, 1994, Headland Publications,
ISBN 0 903074 59 1

 
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