MYTH & LEGEND

Reflecting
On Camelot and Coleridge,
Kierkegaard and the Bible,
Abstraction coalesces
Into images of water,
As I stare into the sea
From a cliff-top in Anglesey.

I’m reminded of the story
Of a ghostly young man
Walking on the rheumy water
In an old sailor’s eyes.
Then, from a misty lake,
Another man in another story
Sees a silver sword rise;
But, sidewinding
Through rotting water,
A scaled and sinuous snake
Is all this mariner can see.

And this hand
Will not wither, Moses;
It only remains firm,
Gripping a rod
That refuses to squirm.
Your stick will not strike
Water from this rock,
Let alone cleave a path
Through any sea
For me.

Time
Rolls out on the tide
And the wind turns
Leaf after leaf.
I gazed out
To horizon’s sunset
And tried to believe
What I had read.

But why look for the dead
Among the living?
I see no young men
In dazzling robes.
I’m frozen
Out here on this ledge,
Clutching maybe faith
Or merely
Some kind of question;
Fearfully trembling now
Over grey waters
Seventy thousand fathoms deep
And not knowing
How I could ever leap.


(1979)

Studying literature and religion for a degree in my mid and late twenties meant my head was often up in the sky whilst my feet were adjusting to marriage and fatherhood down on the ground. I’m not sure that I ever experienced a crisis of faith as such - because there always were more questions than answers for me. I have, however, had several epiphanies – usually when gazing out to sea – and this kaleidoscopic poem began its gestation during a solitary couple of hours during a 1974 holiday in Wales. It was a hot day and I was lying on a grassy cliff-top looking down at the bay where, I remember, these brown and white cows kept venturing into the shallows to cool down.

I have another recollection of Anglesey cows: each morning I would walk about a mile from where we were staying to the village shop for bread, milk and a paper. Mike Oldfield’s famous album Tubular Bells hadn’t been out long at that time and I had a recording which I used to listen to on a portable cassette-player. There and back from the shop, the cows in the fields would follow me as I tinkled along on my way in the early morning sunshine. It’s a very vivid memory.

There’s a lovely, light, little Betjeman poem called ‘A Bay In Anglesey’, too.

I took the picture a few weeks ago on holiday in Portugal. It's the fabulous coastline of the southernmost tip of Europe, Cape St. Vincent - what the Portuguese call 'the end of the world' from where explorers like Columbus would set sail.