1979 - 1982
Roman remains
The Appian Way: Domine, quo vadis?
The siesta sun baked the via
where tombs and faith’s wombs moved us.
The distant towered walls recalling
death sped his steps in the dust.
The Face at the timeless bend
prevented his typical flight.
A memory of love beside lakes
returned his tread towards death.
The Vatican Museums: for John Paul II
In the long, thronged chamber,
from the window of a thousand stares,
the sunned and fountained garden
of his casa can be seen.
From his white and eastern heights
to this glorious walled-in heat,
assuming the mantle of one
whose martyrdom was less lingering.
© Martin Robb 1979, 2012
Goodnight
Flushed, rushed by the bus station’s
downright night-light glare,
our intimacy become proximity,
emotions mere motions,
in a comfortless concrete
yellowy late-night Elysium.
Publicised by pallor,
by blandness laid bare,
this kiss dismisses privacy.
The warmth of a moment ago
and the café’s closeness seem
a wondering world away.
© Martin Robb 1980, 2012
Bonnie Prince Charlie in Manchester
A swirl of kilt and skirl of fife and drum:
the noise of an alien band on the marches of the town.
Georgian Manchester welcomes you:
your advent assumes us, the lost north-west,
back to our Celtic womb.
In your bare knees and powder you stand in our squares.
You appear like a ghost of what we once were
and know (in spite of the blood of our sons
on your swords and your Gaelic rabble
ravishing our daughters) we never shall be again:
the roundhead factories are ready to rise,
the smog of a work ethic darkens our skies.
We knew it was useless, but we enjoyed like, like a carnival,
so that when you marched off for the panic-stricken south,
towards a London surfeited with Whigs and water music,
there was no need to doubt us. You’re all the rage:
the Halle are having bagpipe lessons,
there’s a run on kilts in Kendals.
For Charlie he’s our darling,
the young cavalier.
But how will it seem a few decades from now,
when the party’s over and new ideas
come o’er frae France? Not harking back
to a golden age of gods and crowns,
but leaping forward to the free city of silver?
And we’ll be in the forefront, you mark my words,
with reformers’ statues and plaques marking massacres
in these very squares.
In a way it’ll be the same thing all over again:
Celts and Norsemen rising to throw off a southern yoke,
but in the name of the rational brotherhood of man,
not some mystifying opiate from a vanished past.
Mind you, I’ll warrant that history has owt worse
than these here rumoured reprisals in store:
there’s some things to deep for a prince to restore.
© Martin Robb 1980, 2012
GMH
Decades passed,
the casements gathered moss.
A new age threw up
new manufactories of meaning.
Nature wasn’t enough:
your neurosis sought form
in gorgeous gold,
these grey vaults framed your lust.
The last of your kind:
your grand gothic metamorphosis
is not for us.
© Martin Robb 1981, 2012
Holy week: for Helen
What is this time, this no-time,
this nothing without your touch?
How can I live? I un-live,
unnourished by your love.
As it waits for resurrection,
the world sings songs to the dark
and flirts with deprivation
to hasten the rising spark.
Around me the bright sap springs
forth fresh, and in its flow
the bud, the blossom begin
in the warm, soft April glow.
While within, my wintered soul
is patient in its gloom.
Your touch will make me whole
And lead me from the tomb.
© Martin Robb 1981, 2012
Wet Sunday
Amid the gas-fire’s hiss
and the record’s quiet hum,
we shut the doors against the world
and were a new world of our own.
I sheltered in your smile
and in your dark eyes’ silent shine.
My life was in your arms,
your warmth, your life in mine.
© Martin Robb 1981, 2012
Annunciations
After the ballet you feel ‘inspired’,
but you never write anything down.
‘The moment’, you say, ‘is too precious,
my words would profane the moment’.
Your artlessness conceals your art,
the secret female skill that can hold,
luminous and unassailable,
the untainted moment,
in the tidal maze of mind.
While the masculine poet, restless to write,
would carve statues in sea-water
to persuade himself of his inspiration.
.
Mother of God, mistress of epiphany,
you kept your cool, never kept a diary,
for the most part kept silent,
storing up all these things in your heart.
You left all your talking to your Son,
the Word, and his four hack followers.
How much did you hold back
when you sold your story
to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?
Did you leave out the best bits?
What else did the angel say?
In you the Word became flesh,
the original Author incarnate.
The masculine gospel marched on,
talking its way into temples and offices,
bars and brothels, wording its way to success
via the old-boy network of language.
.
In draughty chapels of the Word discarnate,
the black book reigns, erect and supreme.
On Sunday the men talk loudly.
All week the women are busy.
In cold rooms the children move quickly
to keep themselves warm, to fill up the space
left when the silent Mother
departed and left only words.
Mother of God, guardian of silence,
be thou my muse when speech is ended:
receive me back to your wordless womb.
© Martin Robb 1981, 2012
Dawn
Light falls
a canopy of despair
a distant murmur of waking hearts
tumbling down from the mountain of love
© Martin Robb 1982, 2012
Passion
Jesus became a Christ who died
in spasm on the tree,
for men, unhappy with themselves,
could not let such love be.
© Martin Robb 1982, 2012
Discovering Shelley
Clear astonishment
Alastor azure evening
a flight of mind I follow
movement music
like a string of stars
(C) Martin Robb 1982, 2012