THE ANGEL TOUCHED MY THIGH

Looking towards the Pentland Hills

(Genesis 32:31, Hosea 12:4)

I had the vigour of my prime
   On which I could rely
In all my ventures till the time
   The angel touched my thigh.

All things I gathered to my will
   Whether by truth or lie –
I cheated shamelessly until
   The angel touched my thigh.

I hobble forward like a tramp
   Despite the dawning sky
Since, as I felt his bitter cramp,
   The angel touched my thigh.

But I can garner richly now
   A bountiful supply
And gladly testify of how
   The angel touched my thigh.

I hold the dignity of prince
   For that is God's reply
To all this world's discomforts since
   The angel touched my thigh.

My composition which God taught
   Could in no part apply
Nor could I freely bless had not
   The angel touched my thigh.

Though once this lameness made me sad
   God helps me so that I
Worship before Him and am glad
   The angel touched my thigh.   

    

PORTRAITS OF THE ARTIST (G)

                           I

        Holinesse on the head,
  Light and perfections on the breast
Harmonious bells below, raising the dead
  To lead them into life and rest:
        Thus are true Aarons drest.

        Profanenesse in my head,
  Defects and darkness in my breast,
A noise of passions ringing me for dead
  Unto a place where is no rest:
        Poore priest thus am I drest.

        Onely another head
  I have, another heart and breast
Another musick, making live not dead
  Without whom I could have no rest:
        In Him I am well drest.

        Christ is my onely head,
  My alone onely heart and breast
My only musick, striking me ev'n dead;
  That to the old man I may rest
        And be in Him new drest.

        So holy in the head,
  Perfect and light in my deare breast
My doctrine tun'd by Christ (who is not dead,
  But lives in me while I do rest)
         Come people; Aaron's drest.

              II

Not my words, for words merely mine
Could attain no value in God's
Environment; only the Word
Could institute right words; the Son
Be language that is right; the Christ
Give anointed praise. Yet I must
Give voice - and others' cadences
Meld with my own. And if your heart
Is right with mine you can sing words
Not mine, but more than mine - and ours:


               III

Praise the One who is Creator,
Heaven's and earth's Originator
Yet come near as Mediator
    Between God and man.

Praise the Christ who as a stranger
Once was cradled in a manger,
Come in flesh to be the changer
    Of the course of time.

Praise the Man who here was sowing
Seed from which good seed is growing
In abundance overflowing
    To the Father's joy

Praise the Shepherd who has sought us:
With His precious blood He bought us,
With His tender arms he brought us
    Back into His fold.

Praise the Victor who invaded
Realms where Satan's might pervaded;
Now no power we are persuaded
    Separates from Him.

Praise the Man who God perfected
For the work which He effected
Now He leads the Sons selected
    To a glorious sphere.

Praise the Firstborn of creation
End of all man's perturbation
Bringing reconciliation
    As the Prince of Peace.

                                    22/4/94

(This attempt towards autobiography contains poems from earlier periods, this being appropriate to my objective. AI, DI, DIII, EI & FI were previously poems in their own right; DII was a fragment which needed a setting; GI is, of course, by George Herbert. The poet of AIII is GMB.)

And further: I had the concept of a archetypical village with the seven characters the chief, the shepherd, the peasant, the soldier, the tramp, the poet and the priest in it.  I have used this - varied, so that the chief could be a king, for example, as a basis for poems around the time this was written.  I think I'll follow up with other examples of this.

PORTRAITS OF THE ARTIST (F)

 On the Pentland Hills

                        I

Around us are our tender flock
Within this howling wilderness;
Under the shadow of the Rock
Care for them with me, Shepherdess.

As shepherds must we'll guide their feet
Amid the desert's brokenness
To where the gentle grass is sweet:
Care for them with me, Shepherdess.

We'll keep them near the water's flow
Whilst all around is barrenness;
While by is glassy streams they grow
Care for them with me, Shepherdess.

Teach me, as Rachel must have taught
Jacob, to heed their tenderness
In case the lambs are overwrought:
Care for them with me, Shepherdess.

A greater Shepherd guides above
Our ignorance and bruckleness;
Under the shelter of His love
Care for them with me, Shepherdess.

              II

The shepherd's skill
  Moving from man to dog
    From dog to sheep
    Moves at a level subtler and more deep
  Than that of one who carves a log,
Or sews a frill:
Instincts are thirled to will.

The fisherman
  Must read both sea and sky
    To sense his way
    Between where currents sport and fishes play.
  Wave-borne lest he wave-swamped should die
Instinct he can
Enfold a vivid cran.               (A cran is a measure of fresh herring)

The poet folds
  Images to his mind
    Herded by tropes
    Into the verse that fabricates his hopes:
  Or trawls in deeps to find
Silvers and golds
Live in swamped vessel holds.

             III

No, I am not ashamed
Of not being sailor or soldier:
These have no claim on
My genes. But can salt wind
And water, silver of fish
And their gut stench, screech
Of gulls, and wave voices
Inveigle themselves within
Chromosomes? Their homes abutted
On the North Sea, my forebears
Enfolded a living from it by
Dull courage of necessity,
Harsh days and long nights,
Sea burials. Widows', wives'
And mothers' untold fears
Rubbed into the family psyche.
His mother dreading the loss
Of all her men, my grandfather
Abandoned the sea (and the boat
He had named the "Glad Tidings")
Yet spent his days with fish.
My father learned to handle them
Deftly. But to me sea
Or fish are alien. Of that
Unravelling, I am ashamed.

(But don't lay any blame to the shepherdess.)

PORTRAITS OF THE ARTIST (E)

               I

When first I found Africa
Missionaries dared The Dark Continent:
Livingstone, Moffat, Mackay.

Hence I saw slavery;
Africa, a vast stank
The Americas drained.

Powerless I discovered
Cultured tribes
Thirled to the Boer's want.

Here be great beasts
Lazing lions, gangling giraffes
Locust hordes of gnus.

In jungled hills, next
In gentle grandeur
Mountain gorillas stravaiged.

Recently I came on
Brasses from Benin
Bold in their figuration.

"There is all Africa,"
Sir Thomas Browne affirms
“And her prodigies in us”.

              II

Perhaps no great adventures, but we went
Upon the "Claymore" to the Western Isles;
In the old escort timidly we bent
To Applecross for clouded haunting miles.
We stumbled the Five Sisters of Kintail
And saw Skye mountains crag the sunset's glow;
And through your leadership I did not fail
The sgurrs and stucs that loom above Glencoe.

Exploring ethics and philosophy,
Discussing truths of Christianity
And girls we rambled on without an end
Finding that it was good to have a friend.

Till as my Best Man finally you sent your
Old friend upon a more exciting venture.


             III

The Laird's face
Is altogether too big for me;
The mask wobbles on my brow.

The peasant mask
Is broad on my cheeks
Tight on my cranium.

The shepherd's tender smile
Fits my lips
Seldom.

My lines do not yet
Fit the gnarled visage
Of the tramp.

But the poet's mask
Most comfortably
Conforms to me.

Preposterous
For a priest
To hide within a mask.

Thus I attempt to explore
The space
Between the mask and face.

PORTRAITS OF THE ARTIST (D)

 

Lindisfarne

                          
                          I

If I have looked at your stooped back
And your tense muscles (naming them thews)
The sunlight blond on your hair
And the green sprouting of your virile crops
Praising them, forgetting the runnels of sweat
Stinking in your armpits, the honed wind
Nailing your skin, the worms of decay
Coursing up through your limbs, loneliness
The hawk hovering over your shoulder
Preparing to stoop, prying, forgive me
I am a man; and remember yourself
That crabbed fingers and rounded shoulders,
Fumes in the lungs, halter on the heart,
Attend your dream. At least my
Dream is noble. Your life is harshness
And your dream luxuriant decay.


                          II

When I consider the poets I have loved
This I discover is their common element:
Soil.  Whether Mackay Brown's patchwork,
Drudgings among stones, furrows pages
To be tuned through station of the year to harvest;
Thomas, amid his peasant parishioners battling
Doggedly against the tilth that bore them,
Longs to absorb them; Heaney's diggings,
Peat embruing to constitute bog people;
Rowe's more exotic peasants stolid
As the tractor mangles their world; or the one
Poem I know of Ogston's celebrating
The crofter's sordid defeat, soil
Is their material. I have enjoyed reading also
Part understood volumes on geomorphology:
Glacier or flood sculpting clay or rock.
Yet there are romantic touches to my
Love of their works for the soil itself
I handle only in a little loved garden:
Not that the peasant loved his land,
A harsh mistress rooting age into his limbs.
Soil, tilth, peat or clay:
This is the word I have shunned: Earth.

             III

The vital water, silting and moistening,
Compounds the good ground.

The fecund seed, broadcast on the earth
Clung in the good ground.

The thievish birds jibbed at the nets
Shielding the good ground.

Roots writhed down, toward the procreant water
Imbuing the good ground.

Toward the sun sprouts pullulate
Out from the good ground.

Master, garner the mellow fruit
From your good ground.