Variation on the Fourth Eclogue & Gravel
by Tony Williams
[ poetry - july 07 ]
Variation on the Fourth Eclogue
Not every song of praise begins
Skulking round dingy shrubberies
In the grounds of old hotels
Or walks of blushing statuettes
Designed to pique the ordered depths
Of municipal Edwardians;
Yet these narrownesses too,
And the wide forests, breed their loves,
The one a modesty, the other
Unbroken and exhaustive proof
That fills a horizon. Either place -
In which you find yourself alone,
Hidden by leaves from the road and the eyes
Of the house, at evening or early morning
(There comes the sound of running water) -
Either sends gifts from the earth: ivy,
Foxgloves in a clump, the white
Pates of fungal monks among
Habits of brown needles spread
On the spongy ground; or, coy with dust
And pale in the shadows cast by bored
Cherubim staring into the distance,
An ageing rhododendron flower,
Whose scent shall be yours alone. The gods
Look kindly when they do not see you:
May these be the trumpets of your reign,
Bluebells in the afternoon,
And miles of nameless conifers
Your only avenues of state.
Gravel
Measured in tons and millions of tons
and by the bit in millimetres too,
gravels of all shapes and sizes go to give
the driveways of this world the desired level of crunch.
This poem is to celebrate the large buildings
gravel makes possible: HQs military and commercial,
technical stations, aerodromes
and the palaces of deranged dictators;
also hospitals, institutions for the arts and sciences,
schools, utilities, forecourts of car lots. Beloved of janitors,
gravel touches rats' paws and the brogues of the great.
It lies against the bottoms of fences and shares their creosote,
rubs against its siblings but will never return to the
mother lode.
Joy to the hills for their Caesarean spawn!
Without it, whither helicopter landing pads,
whither boule, whither proliferation of fishing lakes?
Without gravel expensive machines would lack the proper
setting
for the murders and astonishments
and exhaustive algorithms they perform.
Nowadays most organisations prefer it.
Gravel hides the blood which the rain washes through it,
betrays trespassers,
and realises locally the emptied landscapes dreamed of by centres.
It travels secretly in the treads of tyres, arrives,
exhausted, somewhere else, and disappears at once.
Each piece is unique like a snowflake evaporated
to its hidden minerals. It surrounds you,
lies forgotten in the gutter or kicks up towards the firmament.
Stone's populace divided and set to work alone,
it drowns in fish tanks and sickens
in the ballast-holds of international freighters,
lays paths around a multitude of sins.
Gravel blots out place with geology,
covers the surface with what lies underneath,
making things possible. Never the bride:
no one seeks it, but a barrow-load or two
is often welcomed. It can belong to anyone:
keep it in a wall-safe or a wet cardboard box.
Run it through your hands like coins or sand's older brother.
A single grain is enough to stall your movement,
yet it is useless in small quantities. In any, it means nothing.
