I Sing the Smith and other poems of the Ridgeway and the Vale of the White Horse

7/31/2019 I Sing the Smith and other poems of the Ridgeway and the Vale of the White Horse

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I Sing the Smith

And other poems of the

Ridgeway and the Vale of

the White Horse

Written and illustrated by

Giles Watson


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I Sing the Smith

I sing the Smith in spring, when the swallow on the wing

Swoops at insects high above the stones,

And the fields of greening wheat, and the cowslips at my feetMark the ancient walks and hallowed bones.The scroll-tight beech tips burst, and Bearas done her worst,Where the megaliths stand pitted by the rain,

As the throstle winds his noteit grows rich within his throat

And all the wood is lilting to his strain.


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In the summer, Queen Annes lace makes me jubilant. The Place

Is chanting with the robin on the bough,

And the yellowhammer flips where the lapwings peeping chicks Hide among the ruts left by the plough.

The field mouse and the toad creep across the old chalk Road,And the campers pitch their tents amid the wood.The tomb is cool and dank as the willowherb grows rank,

And the megaliths are dappled, tall and good.


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By the autumn, ripened haws bring fieldfares in scores,Descending on the hedges in a rush,

And the roebuck and his doe flash their tails, and fleeting goWhere the beech invokes the Bronze Age with her blush.

The fields turn gold as sun, where the brown hares jink and run,Evading dogs and guns amongst the straw,And the megaliths are dry, aspiring for the sky

Where the red kites call to windward as they soar.


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And when the trees grow gaunt, I come to Waylands hauntAt the solstice, as the Smith climbs from the earth.He shakes away the clods, laughing scorn on newer gods,

Holly-green and hale through winters dearth.The snow-encrusted rocks hear the coarse bark of the fox,

And his spraint is pungent, feral as the storm,

But I scorn to stay at home when the Ridgeway bids me roam,For I know that Waylands hearth is red and warm.


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Poem by Giles Watson, 2011. Waylands Smithy, a Neolithicchambered tomb with four large megaliths at its entrance, is my fa-vourite place in all England, and I visit it with Jeannie and my dog

whenever I can. Itsgenius loci is Wayland the Smith, a folkloric fig-ure who recalls the Green Knight with his prodigious strength, his

affinity for metals, and his lordly presence in the dark months of the

year. It is said that a poor traveller whose horse has cast a shoe needonly tether his mount beside the Smithy overnight, and toss a silvercoin into its interior, and Wayland will have shoed the horse by

morning. The complex folklore surrounding this site is given an ad-mirably scholarly treatment by Jennifer Westwood and JacquelineSimpson, The Lore of the Land, Penguin, 2005, pp. 25-28. TheSmithy is aligned so that the rising sun of the winter solstice shinesdirectly into the burial chamber: a phenomenon I have witnessed on

several occasions. The animals and plants mentioned here have all

been observed by me at the site and in its immediate environs, andone of the pleasures of visiting it is witnessing its changing moodsthroughout the seasons.


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Ridgeway

Footfalls are thoughts; a pathA way of thinking, marked

With trails. Whole stories

Tell themselves in walking.

Chalk is a palimpsest washed

Clean every rain; our waysBecome erasures. New minds

Scribe the white with tales

Which fade as dust. TestsOf urchins tell their own

Histories, side by side

With the seasons haws.

Thorns are waymarkers;Stones, watchers. The road,Trodden by ghosts of dreams,

Touches sky at nightfall.

Poem by Giles Watson, 2012.


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Midsummer Fire

Flames and leaves all blow one wayAnd a mile-long slick of smoke

Spews funk across the downs.Hedgerow taints of fox and rot

Mingle with the tattered stenchOf smuts and ash, the bramblesScribbled against a wash of fire.

Elm leaves, barbed wire, knotsOf branches, are silhouettes

Against a shred of sun spiltAcross the field, a spreading rashOf blackness in its train. BirdsAre silent. All the butterflies flit

Upwind. Beetles scud through grass:

Some fly; some pitch toward the flames.



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Dog-Roses

The thorns of dog-roses are not spearsSo much as grappling-hooks, which pierce

A hand by accidentthey grew to gripStones or branches, their urge: to grope

Toward the sun. Each briar is crownedWith a corolla. In two days, it is blown,Its stamens naked, stripped of pollen

By little longhorned beetles, whose portionIs divided with the blundering host of bees

Who probe for nectar with ecstatic buzzAnd find noneand with leg-trailing chafersAnd tinier beetles who come to mateIn perfumed bowers. Greenbottles swivel heads,

Shuffle legs, politely wash their handsAs if with holy water. Lustful blackbirds sing;

The wise wasp settles, caresses her sting

And perfect, dark-veined wings.

A half-closed evening flower: this bee parts the portal.

Unseasonal, the wind gustssteals another petal.

Poem by Giles Watson, 2012. Inspired by observations of theinsect fauna for which these flowers provide a temporary ecosys-

tem, and by the transience of the flowers themselves, which, inmy opinion, far exceed the garden varieties with simple beauty.


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Going Back

The singing blackcap draws me backUp the path I travelled earlier

Whether in a reverie or hurryI dont remember. An uncurled fern

Chest-high beneath an oakIs near me as I listen. SoriCobble the undersides of fronds,

Stippling them like the surfaceOf a grater. A scorpion fly

Eyes me, her long proboscisProbing, fat belly segmented,Its end a fiddlehead. WhenShe flies, I turn away, ready

To retrace my steps, then pauseTo wipe the dust from my eye

And find the fairy-insects dancingIn my sight, like marionettes

On invisible strings of gossamer,Their antennae four times longerThan themselves. It is a wonderHow they wield them in the air

And never founder, a whole cloud

Of bronze wingedNemophora.One after another, they fallTo the fern and rest, their filamentFeelers flexing in the wind, then fly

Again in a blinking. A pair spiralTo the grass, and scrabble about

A fallen leaf, in a spine-legged


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Frenzy of mating. She flits off;The male staggers as though drunkOr stabbed, his abdomen pulsing,

Then pulls himself together. SomeSeem to sunbathe, gleaming

In all their burnished glory: green-

Tinged and leafed with gold, as thoughSummer painted their illuminations.The track is enchanted by them now;

Theres much to be said for going back.

Poem by Giles Watson, 2012.Nemophora de-geerella is a member of theAdelidae, colloqui-ally known as the fairy longhorn moths. These

species are characterised by the metallic sheen

on their wing-scales, and by the males anten-nae, which in degeerella are implausibly long.This poem is based on observations of thesemoths, and also of the scorpion flyPanorpa

communis, in Ashdown Woods on the Oxford-shireBerkshire border.


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Beech Pollards

Cut off crotch-high, beech boles sweat

Their reeking love-juice, rank, wet:Black runnels marking bark,

Sweating waters, gleaming dark.

Limbs spread upward, arched and greenWith algal bloom. Groins betweenThe branches, each slit a stoup

Of fecund spunk, thick as soup,

Slimed by snails, who lodge asleep

Where the fissures gouge in deep.

Here the deer laps, cloven footMarking moss about the root,

Cranes her neck to reach the brink.The trunk agape, bids her drink.

Poem by Giles Watson, Long Plantation, February 2009.


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Charmer of Larks

I could become a charmer of larks.

I send them, skyward-spiringIn dark of winter, afire

With songsters envy. One breath

At my antlerroe-shed

Summons larks to sky.

Ridgeway-walking, wizardlike,

Brandishing one over-longWhistle-wedged hazel-wand,I speed them sunward,

Ever diminishing specks,

Scaling invisible stairs,

Emulating stars.

Could I but call them back

To my cupped hand,

I could commandMy own little realm

Of infinite impossibility:

Move on to make

Crude moulds in mud,

Clap my tiny hands

And coax clay birds to flight.

Such is prides sweet danger,When a child wreaks works of wonder:

Dust made into creature,

Day-birds turned crepuscular,

Larks deprived of sleep.

Poem by Giles Watson, 2010. About two years ago, I went to a jumble sale and purchased an old shepherds thumbstick. It has become one of my favourite po ssessions, because the

fork of the stick is an antler of a roe deer, and one of the two tines has been carved into a whistle, which I use to control my dog when I am on long walks. This winter, I discoveredthat the sound of the whistle when I am walking on the downs is sufficient to set the skylarks into flight, fearful that their territory has been invaded by an interloper. The effect is al-most instantaneous, but I have now ceased using the whistle on the downs, for fear that I am causing the larks to waste valuable energy in challenging me. The reference to the making

of clay birds recalls the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, in which the infant Christ models birds out of mud on the river-bank. He claps his hands, and they turn into real birds, which

instantly fly away.


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Pasque Flower

A ruddy kite guards the gateWhere Danes, Romans stood to gloat

Before the Glead Hawks picked their brains

Above his cairn of bleached bones.

Rabbit warrens undermineForgotten graves of slain men,And Grims Ditch lies overgrown

With junipers on every groin.

Beyond the combe, torn by tilth,

A temple founders under turf

And lowly cowslips claim their geld,

Blooms the hue of soldiers gold.

There, pasque flowers knops and thrums

Raise blood and gilt to ancient drums.

Poem by Giles Watson, 2010. Pasque flow-ersnow exceedingly rare downland plants

are reputed to mark the places where Danish or

Roman blood was spilt. It is certainly true that

they have a tendency to grow on ancient earth-

works, although it is probable that this is sim-

ply because they favour ground that has long

been undisturbed. The poem describes one

such ancient landscape in the Berkshire Downswhere pasque flowers may still be seen. Glead

Hawk is the Cheshire name for the Red Kite,

which also inhabits the downland combes.

Thrums is Gerards word for the golden sta-

mens, and knops are the heads that succeed

the purple flowers. See Geoffrey Grigson, The

Englishmans Flora, pp. 42-44; Richard Ma-

bey,Flora Britannica, p. 44; Francesca

Greenoak,British Birds: Their Folklore,Names and Literature, p. 56.


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The Melt

Melt-waters make their runnelsThrough the snow on White Horse Hill,

And the oxbowed Ock is swellingWhere the washes swirl and swill

Down the combe and through the woodWhere the box and hollies bend,Bearing loads of vanished snow

And the flaws that never mend,

And I walk by Waylands SmithyDown a path of chalk and slush

As the fieldfares strip the berriesWhere the thorn and sloe grew lush,

And my back bends from her absenceLike a boxtree weighted low,And I wish my tears would thaw

Like the slick translucent snow,

But the winter has not ended,And the exile has not felt

The pangs that cure the numbnessIn the waters of the melt,But he trudges on unheeding

Where the skylarks scorn to sing,And the waters well in waiting

For the overburdened spring.

Poem by Giles Watson, January 2010.


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Thrushs Anvil

Close by the shamrock and the moschatel,She keeps her woodland slaughterhouse:

An exposed root, slung with snail fleshImpaled on sherds of its own shell.

They lie scattered, as if some unsuspectedCluster bomb had dropped amongst them:The globules quiver, dripping, gashed open,

Smithereened.

No! Do not likenHer frenzy to our own: her wastage

Is stirred by frantic mothers desperation;We only wish to thrash profits and democracy

Out of the orphans we create.



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Inscription on a Tree Beside Waylands Smithy

Working deep into the cambium,Knife blade damp with sap,

The unknown author whittles down

The poem to a single word:

NotPHAGUS, nor evenBEECH,

No word of nuptial, nor of love:TREE,

Levered in deeply

Then wends away, and turnsResponsible, lives and earns,

And goes to loam. The word

Grows wide with time,

Crazed by borers,And woodwales claws:The roots unearth;

The tree falls.

Across the glade

The stones remain,Their owners bones

Inside museums.



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Queen Annes Lace

The weft and weave of leaf and shadeis a brocade pillow, the lace spun

out of air and sunlight, with unseenbobbins. The May Queen must be

their maker, twisting each flowerinto a lopsided perfectionof five petals, with patience

infinite, repeating her makingtill the guipure of each umbel

webs the world in gossamer,

and she turns, hands dew-moist,the sex-smell upon them,

to unfurl Thorn blossominto an openwork of May.

Poem by Giles Watson, 2011.Queen Annes Lace a namewhich is probably of North American originis more prosaicallyknown in this country as cow parsley, and is the ubiquitous um-

bel flower of late spring and early summer. It often covers uncul-

tivated areas in waist-high swathes of blossom, each petal notmuch bigger than the head of a pin. Like the hawthorn, or May-flower, it contains trimethylamine, which makes the flowers

smell faintly of sex.


19/33

White Archangel and Dead Nettle

Between the white archangelAnd the dead nettle, a gulf is fixed

Too wide for keening,

Too fine for telling:

One sinless, a vision

Forged of light;One stingless, like a wasp

Disdaining spite;

Two plants inhabitingA single space.

One is negation;

One is grace.

Between the white archangelAnd the dead nettle, a gulf is fixed:One known, one seen,

And nought betwixt.

Poem by Giles Watson, 2011.White Archan-

gel and Dead Nettle are both common namesfor the same plant,Lamium album, a benign,

"common" and beautiful labiate plant whichbears no resemblance and no relation to thenettle, except in the shape of the leaves. A

poem in honour of Edward Thomas, who al-ways knew, and never merely saw.


20/33

Lichens on the Oak and Elm

Lichens on a living oakCrust every crevice

Of her hoary-torsoed trunk,Smoke thick. They increase

With glacial slowness,Knowing time is not the essence.

Lichens on a lifeless elmSeem less careless.Decay for them is like a psalmSung by the callous:

The beetle-borer and the fungus.

And time, though slow, is yet remorseless.

We choose, like lichens on an oak,Or on an elm, which forcesMake us grow or breakUs down, run our coursesFast or slow, as in the forest,

And know kind death has come before us.



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Glade

It was plashed with light when I dashed upon it -A woodsmans glade a calm arrangement

Of objects - the half-finished fence, wovenOf withies, the lathe, the rude enclosure,

And the dying light, spinning its ownCraftsmanship amongst the leaves.

The hazel coppice, a hidden dell,Was squirrel-scolded and jackdaw-chattered;Wood-pigeons uttered auguries,And the so-called world, paying its tithe

To finance and to terror, hung muted.

When all of those are gone, and men

Are thrown back on their own resource,The one who worked here will bend to makingAs everor if not him, his daughter,

Shedding her shavings to the loam.

Our inventions will be as foam

On a remorseless sea, but sheWill plant one foot on ground, the otherOn the treadle, and send

A spray of shavings to the ground,A quieter world awaking

To the rhythm of her making.



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The Devils Step-Ladder

My dog has a memory for places;

His twelve year old bones recall

The slopes of Dragon Hill. He leapsOver stiles, pees on gates, and knows

He plunged through snowdrifts

Here, when the pup was in him.

It leaps up in him now, his spine

Arched as a longbow, and the hillsideLurches with him, a gallop of curves

And stubbled undulations. I bend

Against the gradient. He saunters below,

Sniffs hare-spoor, sidles, considers,

Then bolts and jinks in a scatter

Of snow, where the glacier once

Ground in an earth-gouging flow.

Fences straddle slopes. Hillocks blotch

The ground with loping shadows,

The snow mazed with tracks of birds

And rabbits. His nose reads them.Kites wheel and screech. A lone man

Inches sideways down the horizon,

The White Horse ice-encrusted

Beside him. Barbed wire wears tufts

Of bullock-hair and wool, the sun

White, ardent, barely warm.

He shakes, breathes steam, is reborn,

The whelp within awakened.

Poem by Giles Watson, 2012.The Devils Step Lad-der is a ridged hillside, gouged out of the chalk by gla-

ciers. Together with Dragon Hill and White Horse Hill

(home to the chalk hill-figure known as the Uffington

White Horse), the Step Ladder forms a gigantic combe

which is one of the sources of the local River Ock.


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Grey Wethers

In the ice-gouged grazing placeA water trough, glazed with ice,

Stands among the sarsens thrust

From soil embalmed in frost:

Wethers of gaunt stone, their backs

Hunched against the wind. A bleakSun scours a humped horizon,

The clover stalks frozen

And brittle underfoot. CrowsRetch syllables, the stone rows

Echoing: a plainchant mass:

Altar girt by rimed grass.

Poem by Giles Watson, 2012. The picturesshow sarsen stones on Ashdown Estate,Lambourne Downs.


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Dragon Hill and the White Horse

The escarpment sleeps like a serpent,its flank ribbed, tattooed with a whiteand sinewed horse. Dragon Hill

is its headnot the place where the Wormwas slain, but the housing of the creatures

brain, in a torpid state. The white patchis its open eye. Flutes in the Mangerare its ribs. Watch, and under a half-warm

summer sun, you can see the breathing.

That human road is merely a partof its haunches. The tarmac will crackle

when it rises - and the whole of the DevilsStep-Ladder fracture into segments

of its tail. Angels will sing, or scream,and the serpent will slope off, trailing

fossils and chalk-dust, into the unknown;

leave St. George to count his shekels.

Poem by Giles Watson, 2012. Folklore insists that Dragon Hill - a natural knob of chalk in the post-glacial landscape, possi-

bly flattened at the top by human interferenceis the place where St. George slew the dragon, and the bare, white patch ofchalk at its summit is where the reptiles blood struck the soil, much to the detriment of the turf. The legend may have been suggested by the sinuous curves which are a feature of landscapes defined by their underlying chalk, which always erodes in

beautiful, undulating lines. The identity of the Uffington White Horse, incontrovertibly a Bronze Age incised figure which

appears from the perspective of Dragon Hill to be making a leap for the stars, is itself a point of contention. It looks nothinglike a horse: its tail is too long, and its face culminates in a bifurcate beak. Perhaps the Horse itself is a dragon or perhaps,

as the most delightful sceptics claim, it is just a dog, and Uffington ought to be pronounced Woofington. I have alwayspreferred to see the whole landscape as a sleeping dragon: Dragon Hill is the head, the escarpment above the horse itself is

the torso, and the waning flutes of the Manger are the tail. It matters little: the fact is that St. George would have felt dis-

tinctly out-of-place in this landscape, unless he really was more like the protagonist of Kenneth Grahames re-writing thanthe official story suggests, and the dragon really was a poet.


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Blackthorns

Blackthorns burst into blurs of bloom, darkeningUnder penumbras of early bees, each corolla

A flare of petals, promising payloads of nectarTo beetles with probing mouths, the air heady

With smells of sweetness and sex. All thisA generous ruse. Job done, the petals shed,And the lichen-scabbed twigs are serried

With spines. Bees flex stings. Birds await

The biting harvest of the sloes.



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The Hanney Brooch

The earth is a deep red womb.

They lie her back in it, arms limpAt her sides. Perhaps there is a wound,

Or a blench of disease, a bluing lip,

And beautiful eyes already sinking

In her skull, which will cave inWith the weight of loam. A spindle

Is wrapped in lifeless fingers.

There are glazed pots, jars of glass

And a useful knife. Fertile soil

Clogs her ears, enters her sagging

Mouth. Ground waters leach and spoil

Her braided hair. And when she is reborn

Into air, the brooch that held her cloakGlints with garnets. The old brown

Dust clogs the cloisons in their concentric

Rings of gold. A boss of cuttlefish bone

Gleams white amongst the mould,

The foil and filigree brokenBy the plough. All that heart and mind

Waiting among the worms and mud

To be shovelled up: she was twenty-five.Will she spin again? Will some smith mendThe gildings, some god make her alive?

Poem by Giles Watson, 2012. The Hanney brooch was found in 2009 amongst the remains ofa female aged around twenty-five years in a field near West Hanney, Oxfordshire. It is now

housed in the Vale and Downland Museum, Wantage. Its owner lived in the seventh century,

and was possibly a high-ranking member of the local Saxon Gewisse tribe. Whilst the pattern

on her brooch is cruciform, and conforms to the height of Christian Anglo-Saxon fashion, her

mourners also followed the more pagan custom of inhuming a range of other, more useful bur-

ial goods alongside her body.


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Wayland Rising

Pinks of spindle, rusts of beechMelt into the ground;

Ravens craw, barn owls screech

Their hunger to the wind.

But listen to the hammer ringUpon the anvil: stride and sing,

The sun is down, the light is gone And we await him in a throng:

Wayland. Wayland rising.

Blighted haws, frosted sloesMoulder on the earth;

The toad beneath the root preparesFor months of aching dearth,

But listen to the hammer ring

Upon the anvil: stride and sing,



Tall, gaunt umbel, withered stalk,

The foxes bark and roam;The field mouse lies beside the chalk -

Beetles bury him in loam,

But listen to the hammer ringUpon the anvil: stride and sing,

The sun is down, the light is gone

And we await him in a throng:


Wheat is threshed, apples turnTo cider in the barrels,

And we will throw the logs to burnAnd hoard like ruddy squirrels,

But listen to the hammer ring

Upon the anvil: stride and sing,





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Waylands Smithy in a Night-Mist

The fox-bark is a melding of spraint and sound

An etching on wind, echoing out of wood.

Stone is remorseless, colder

Than the surrounding air.

Shadows hide in it,

Lurking in the interstices.

Beech-boles are lit slantwise,

Lapping up slicks of moonlight.

Owls reply in echoes

Above the unfolding helleborine,

Blending black utterances

With the one, hacking fox.

The open tomb is an essay

In vacancy.



29/33

The White Horse and the Milky Way

Bored of grass, the White Horsestrays onto the Milky Way.

Trodden stars clag his shoeslike Ridgeway chalk in rain.

Across interstellar voidshe trails their detritus.

Beneath his hoovesnebulae are disturbed.Asteroids scatter.

Black holes open up.

He startles as nightfadesflashes back

to turfremembers

he is only chalk.

Poem by Giles Watson, 2012. Folk traditions insist that the Uffing-

ton White Horse leaves its hill on dark nights, flies through the sky,and - in some versions - drinks at the source of the River Ock in the

woods at the foot of the Manger.


30/33

EPILOGUE: Quan Vei Lauzeta Mover

When I see the hovering lark

Spire the sky for joy and art,

He seems compelled to so embark

On flight by his delighted heart,And envy grips me that this smudge

Of feathers, lit with solar fire,

Flies so lightly. I begrudge

His bold, precipitate desire.

I, who thought myself well-versed

In love, am but a novice still:

I cant forbear to love, though cursed

With wants that she will not fulfil

Although she owns my heart and lifeAnd at her whim she keeps the world.

Apart from her, and wrought with strife,

Wantonly my hopes are hurled

Around a firmament so wide

I lose myself. Before me passThose memoriescruel they abide

Of how I glimpsed her in the glass.

The glass entrances now as then,And its enchantments all are cruel,

So I am held, hopeless as when

Narcissus gazed into a pool.

Ive done with ladies, I like to say

More likely they have done with me

I once stood for them in the frayBut now I shrug and let them be.

Since none of them will help me scale

Her heights, I reach their depths and plumb

My foolery. In short, I fail:

Through singing high I am struck dumb.


31/33

And where has Pity flown? This bird

Flits by with greater weight uponIts wings than she; no poets word

Can move her, for she has none.

Pity save me, I stoop, I tripTo catch her footfalls, trap her breath

Yet never have it in my grip.

I long for life; she chooses death.

With her, its valueless to pray;

My supplications drip like rain.She looks displeased, and turns away,

So I shall not beseech again.

This fool desists, and longs to die,

Interred in some cold, secret place

And like the bird, takes wing to fly

From love and loss and dull disgrace.

Tristan, find a fool or king

To make your verses and adore

This lady. Or let the skylark sing:He is a better troubadour.

Paraphrase of a song by the troubadour, Bernart de Ventadorn, by Giles Watson,

2009. Bernart de Ventadorn was born c. 1130-1140 at the castle of Ventadorn in Lim-

ousin, apparently the son either of a baker or a foot-soldier. He entered the service of

Eleanor of Aquitaine, and later, of Raimon V, Count of Toulouse, before retiring to a

monastery and dying in the last decade of the twelfth century. There are 45 surviving

poems by Bernart, 18 of which have extant musical scores. A marvellous interpretation

of this song, sung in the original Occitanian languageand far more up-beat than

might be expectedcan be heard on the Naxos CD, Music of the Troubadors, Ensem-ble Unicorn, 1999. In the interests of retaining at least some of a modern audiences

sympathies for the poet, I have truncated the fifth and the sixth stanzas of the original

into one verse. The abridged section insists that in proving untrustworthy, the poets

lady does show herself true woman: a notion which was not uncommon in the

twelfth century, but which Bernart would no doubt himself have jettisoned were he

alive today.


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I Sing the Smith and other poems of the Ridgeway and the Vale of the White Horse

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