Walking on Graves

I suppose I feel a bit queasy, using the story of a real-life tragedy to make something mythical, the way “Walking on Graves” probably does: I guess it’s a matter of how far in time you can be from an event for it not to be bad taste to use it in this way, and I’m no judge of taste. My only defence is that the story of “how the bridge fell down” was an active part of my childhood, so was already part of the world of myth for me long before I started making poetry. Anyway, there it goes, maybe Bad Taste is my middle name and besides, the picture above was more or less contemporary and the artist didn’t think twice about putting a cute little dog into the foreground….

The poem must date from 1983 or 1984, and typescript I have (me not liking to waste paper and all) is on the back of a programme for a performance of poetry at – at a guess – the Lemon Tree or possibly the Arts Centre in Aberdeen around that time. It wasn’t originally conceived as this longish poem in five parts: the second part was where it all kicked off, one of my several attempts to make a successful entry for the National Poetry Competition. I can’t really remember how the other bits coalesced round it, but obviously they did, and in a way it’s a surprise seeing such a long piece getting included in a poetry performance: I can only suppose the lunchtime audience at wherever-it-was were either very patient or were enjoying a pretty good meal which kept them quiet. The occasion might have been some kind of arts festival – it was in the days when Annie Inglis organised such things – as I see that also on the programme was Festival in the City (number 4 of this Eleventh Ten), so festivals must have been a bit on my mind.

The programme featured three poets, myself, Nigel Sellar, a local chap whose work I admired and with whom I collaborated a couple of times, and Alison Smith, a rising star in our writers group with, as I recall, a rather sly and quirky style. Alison’s work does look a little under-represented on our programme, but I can fairly say that wasn’t because we boys jostled her out of the way but rather that she was more careful than we were about exposing her work to public scrutiny. She didn’t take part herself, her poems must have been performed by Linda, my Ex (Ex, I ask you – what was Elon Musk thinking of?). Nigel I lost touch with, and when I tried some while back to identify the row of cottages somewhere between Whiterashes and Dyce where he lived I couldn’t. Alison I did run into a couple of years later – or stepped over, rather, as she was flat on her back on the pavement. In case that sounds bizarre I should mention that it was after Finals, or Graduation, and actually the only really bizarre thing was that Aberdeen was enveloped in warm sunshine rather than grey coastal haar, so you couldn’t really blame anyone for making use of the exceptional warm pavements when resting; anyway it was some time after that, I guess, that she dropped the -son suffix from her name and went on to great things.

I mentioned previously the debt my generation of poets bears to Robert Graves, particularly in the context of the love poem: I don’t know if you could call this poem exactly a tribute to the author of the White Goddess – more of a nod, maybe….

Walking on Graves (Collapse of the Tay Bridge December 1879)

i.
He caught her in the corner of his eye.
It was a wild night, the gales
Whistling down the Tay funnel rumbling the bridge,
A night of freak gusts.
It was only for an instant, and
He murmured, can a woman really
Look like this? And
Suddenly his spine was
All turning to water,
It would have been like feeling
Someone walking on his grave –
It was that sort of night
When he caught her in the corner of his eye.

As quickly as it had begun
It was all over.
There was some screaming,
Some noise of rending metal
And a lot of the roaring
Of masonry wind and water.
The lights went out, but still he held her
Endlessly, in his eye.

For a while the carriage
Remained a place to breathe in
But those two were watching transfixed
From their several windows,
Though all that was to be seen
Was water and thick darkness,
And both held their breath.

The main moments
From childhood on swirled past.
It seemed as though
They would never come together,
But on the third roll of the carriage
Before it reached the bottom,
Stirring silt into the black water,
He toppled across the gap
Between them, to lie twined round her.

So, on that freakish night,
One bridge was built,
One buried.


ii.
Everyone rushed for the Newport bus, but it ambled
Riving in its own pall up the hill
;And behind the grey village lay closed, like a foetus,
Tight around the open green graveyard,

My grandmother’s home. On the shaking shiny seats,
On their twice-yearly trip to Dundee, women with smooth
Wool coats the colour of earth overhung
On either side. And in the middle was me

Recollecting events from years before
Though only six, and though newly dead
Still hearing her comfortable voice at the bedside
Chiming through the thick air with reality of its own.

The day the Tay Bridge collapsed
That dry thump shifted the sunny air
A full twenty miles away. I asked if she heard
The people wailing as the train slipped off and went down

But she said there was only the echoed thump
Then the sound of the lambs and larksong resuming
While she went on walking on the grass, never knowing
It had orphaned her, father and mother at a stroke.

The worn steel gangplank clanking back
Your footfalls gave onto that thrumming other ground
That tingled through your feet and up your spine
And everyone called the ferry deck.

A pale green wall bounded it, topped with wet wood,
And over the top the low Newport shore looked high,
Shouldered with trees fallow and grey
And retiring grey houses picked out with white paint

While the brown fields closed in over the river
Dwindling away upstream;
Beneath our feet, fat people were huddled in smoke
In the brown lounge, but we stayed in the air.

I could still hear her dry voice, dry
As a stubblefield, counting
The old black piers still thrust
Up in pairs through the blind water

Like a shepherd counting sheep, a sinner telling beads;
And though a strong-willed woman who’d broken the link
With both religion and her youth, I’d swear
There was a thrill of awe in it.


Iii.

Lady Silver Water
Lady oh Lady how you swallow me up
And all along your belly
Are pearls which the divers missed
And the dredgers are only after
Silt and lost bodies and sand

But out over your smiling face
Upstream in the silver sun
There swings a broad white bird

Lady Silver Water
I was walking with my grandmother
Walking hand-in-hand
As lovers will
And she was telling me
How up till yesterday
She was queen of a country
Whose name I’d never heard

Grandmother grandmother
What big eyes you have!
But when they tell you stories
You never know what to believe

Lady Silver Water, but
Granny, I said, when the bridge fell down
It was night and it was winter –
I know, she said, I know
And I was asleep
And I never lost my parents
Grandmothers never have parents
And besides, I came from the moon

Grandmother grandmother,
I said, take me on your knee, let me
Take you on my knee
Silver Grandmother, let me take you
With my eyes closed
Your belly’s as supple and your lips
As soft as a sixteen-year-old

Does it mean I’m growing up?


iv.
Robert Graves the hangman
Crossed his legs to keep
Himself in order, while his lady
Snored in her sleep.

Robert Graves the hangman
Drew the noose so tight
His eyes popped out, and his potency
Burst into light.

His lady stirred and grunted, You’re mad;
I know, he said, but it’s not too bad:
I’ve skewed my neck at the branch of a tree
And the name of the thing is Poetry.

Robert Graves the hangman
Give me a song;
I’m blind and I’m syphilitic
And I’ve lived too long;

Robert Graves you grey old wreck
Stretch out from ridge to ridge
Put your brow in the bank and your bum in the air:
You’ll do as a bridge

v.
Will you walk out with me? I’ll take you round the hill;
I’m just wanting to show you where I once had my home.
I’ve this strange restless feeling
My time’s nearly up, I’ve a train to catch.

Look how the woods and fields roll away round through Fife;
There’s Dundee, tall upended blocks piled around the Law.
Strange, the wind gets your eyes, it
Suddenly all seems far away.

Seasons change in the farmlands spread around us here;
Sleet comes to wash the city slates there; but in between
There’s the dead people’s county
Where there’s nothing but summertime –

Lovely fat women sprawl, straining their printed frocks;
Children in leather sandals, fishing or throwing stones;
While we lie by the window
Thinking we’ve played a trick on time.

More than four thousand times I’ve woken up with you,
Watched the night roll thickly against the window-panes;
Now we’re calling our flocks home,
Disentangling our trawler-nets.

That’s just how it goes. You know I’ve nothing to do
With a life where scraping living’s held as the trump,
Where the banks are the temples
And the flick of a hand buys longing off –

I’m fluid, you’ve always known, re-form whatever I touch;
I can’t grow up, I’m water (under the bridge), I’m blood
(But a haemophiliac’s),
I’m milk, I’m pouring out of the moon.

Surely, I’ve roots – we all have them – but I’ve brought you
Here under false pretences, talking about my tree:
The trunk’s broken the surface
But I’ve played the axeman and blown it off.

Lomond, Largo, Drumcarrow, Lucklaw, Clatto, The Mount,
Ceres, Kemback, Balmullo, Logie, Pitscottie, The Bow –
Never trust a Fife farmer
Or look to his grandson for support!

Things have changed: nowadays, you can fly to Dundee.
Look now, below, two bridges span the estuary;
Eighty piers alongside them
Stand in water and hold up air.