PIHW 1 Palm Sunday - Process

Of course there is nothing to stop my writing a poem about anything I fancy.  I could completely ignore what is going on in the wider world and in my own little world of Castelldefels and write about something a million miles away from the threat of Covid-19.  But, even if I did choose subject matter ostensibly unrelated to the virus, it would still be understood as poetry being produced at the time of Covid-19 and be seen as a reaction to it – if only as rejection of it!

     In previous Poems in Holy Week (PIHW) I have said that the poems could be seen as a sort of poetic diary, and I think that this year is going to be no different, with Covid-19 forcing itself into all areas of life!

     In previous years I have at least been able to, in Tony Hancock’s words to describe his mother’s gravy, ‘move about a bit’, but this year is different.  For three weeks I have not been outside except to take the rubbish to the communal bins.  Once.  Tomorrow I might have to get money and go to the shops.  We’ll see.  This year is anything but normal and the normal narrative of a week has been put on hold.  But the poems will be written!

The first poem, whose draft follows, takes as a starting point the exercise that I do each day.  We are fortunate that we live in a three storey house; we have gardens back and front; a good sized terrace, and a communal pool.  As I cannot go to the local indoor pool for my customary early morning swim, I have had to make do with circling the pool each morning on foot.  It is far too cold to venture in and does the virus thrive in outdoor pools?  Our pool is next to a tennis court and two other communal pools set in gardens.  We are separated from the other dwellings by high fences and walls.

     Considering how many people live around us, I see very few of them on my circular walks and, as we all seem to have earphones firmly plugged in when I do se them, there is very little interaction in terms of conversation.

     When you are confined, it is almost impossible not to let the mind drift, no, not drift, more like forge outwards from confinement into the wider world.  My mind did that while playing a sort of game by trying to think of all the places that I had been to in different countries beginning with the sound of the first letter of my home city of Cardiff and my adopted city of Castelldefels.   I was lulled into thinking this easy because of the linking of the first two cities; the rest took some thought and, obviously, thinking and walking was not my strong suit as I managed to catch the edge of a sandal on a slightly prominent tile edge and I came to the abrupt stop that happens when you try to go down a step that isn’t there!

     Apart from the people working in the house next door, doing construction work that they shouldn’t, this area is unnaturally quiet.  For Catalonia.  A barking dog or children playing now stand out!

     The poem ends with a ‘gesture’ that, unlike the UK where I think it is only on a Thursday evening, people come out every night and applaud the health workers and the front line essential workers who keep us going during the crisis.

The title of the poem should be taken as a verb and as a noun, and as a nod to the day and also to the position that we are all in.

     I suppose that the poem is about confinement and freedom and about what it means during this time where norms do not seem to exist.

It is difficult to imagine that the final sequence of poems will be anything other than a comment on the crisis, but I am interested to see the direction that it takes!

If you have any comments to make after reading the poem please feel free to leave them and I will respond to any and all!

Please also bear in mind that this is very much a draft of what I will finally be satisfied with.  It is work in progress!

Daily Poem 1 – Palm Sunday

Process

Around the pool,

my daily walk,

square, pebbled tiles are

different, and yet the same,

are set in nearly perfect lines

where, as I walk

around, around, around,

excitement’s found in an

occasional slight tilt,

an inclined plane

along my regimented route,

where sandal’s catch on thin-lipped traps

bring footstep juddering to halt

a line of playful cartographic thought,

free drawn on coasts of memory:

Cardiff, Cannes, Castelldefels,

Cancun, Kiev and Kettering,

Çınarcık, Corfu, Kos, Cape Cod,

Carlisle and Copenhagen

        

but by that step

I’m back.  Contained within the

exercise of freedom caged by

insubstantial bars and flimsy fences,

open gates and keys to hand.

I’m solitary, but not alone.

I see and hear adjacent lives:

the gardened rat-dog’s goaded yips

at preening cat, fence-safe-secure;

bound siblings play around parked cars,

and joggers, tennis court confined

run widdershins to my progress

together, separate, safe distances apart

until, at eight pm, and on the dot,

the first staccato crack of palm on palm

brings us all out alone, a part of something

blended in applause!

Although I eventually bought a new one (or it might have been I picked one up second hand in better condition) my copy of The Little Oxford Dictionary has been in my possession for over fifty years!  It was bought for me to start Secondary School and it stayed with me through the years: at the bottom of my satchel, brief case, attache case and all the other cases and containers that I have used through the years.  In university it was 'on the desk' and that is where it is now.
     The original is very much the worse for wear: stained, pages folded, front cover hanging on with a strip of agèd brown Sellotape, but the text is still useable and readable.  It has been a very, very good buy.
     I am fascinated by works of reference and I have bought many since the early sixties of the last century, including a variety of English dictionaries of various sizes and complexity.  I also have (though I have to be honest, rarely consult) the photographically reduced full Oxford English Dictionary - which has to be read with a magnifying glass.  Whenever I do actually consult it (usually for the historical use section of the words' definitions) I feel like a scholar of old, pouring over some massive tome in a library given over to academe!
     So, my first choice of reference for spelling and definition was from the Third Edition of a little book published a decade before I was born, and I continue to use to this day.  It was only when I looked up the definitions of the verb 'to cut' that I began to think about how society has changed and about how my work of reference was so out of date.
     The definition that informs the central section of this poem was not available on the first couple of internet dictionaries that I consulted - obviously the meaning that I was using was considered so esoteric that it didn't need to be included!  Times change and we with them.
     The poem starts with observation, the little dramas that play out in front of me when, with notebook on the table and pen poised, I wait for my tea to infuse.  The girl's whining first attracted my attention and then the action and reaction of her brother.  It was his ability to 'cut' his sister that I admired and gave this poem its impetus.
     I am sure that some sort of scholarly study could be done checking where the definition of 'cut' (in the sense that I use it) comes in various dictionaries of English; how it changes in other countries that use English, and how popular it is.  I fear that 'cutting' is a declining art and that it has been replaced by sheer rudeness instead!
     The end of the poem uses social media as its conclusion.  I am not sure that this is the modern version of the older 'art' of cutting, but I am sure that it is used in something like the same way - though refusing to answer the phone is not, in my book, the same thing at all!

To cut

. . . decline to recognize person; . . .

The Little Oxford Dictionary, Third Edition 1941, reprinted 1957.

[Definition 7 of 8]

Child grizzle-crying,

ugly glasses,

mother-clingy,

grasping flesh

and all attention.

Mock-derided

by her brother,

who, ignored,

slumped thinker-like,

within his coat,

unhappily.

The stand-off didn’t last,

of course, and soon

the two of them

made equal plays

for parents’ eyes

they both knew

were their right.

The girl’s attention

switched to dad.

The son felt

pushed away;

walked by.

Only kids can ‘cut’

as if it were instinct

and not technique.

That walking past

as if a person

was not there;

was never there,

yet making it

so clear that

they’d

been seen.

My dictionary was always there,

through school and university and job.

‘Authority’ from nineteen forty-one,

‘revisions’, nineteen fifty-seven,

and published the same year

            where words like: nudist,

Pluto, calypso, jive,

yoghurt, lobotomy, rumpus, svelte,

perspex, parsec, hamburger –

had, “recently made good their claim”

and made Addenda not The Book

            description of a cricket shot

was higher up the list of use

than distain by averted gaze

As it must be.

Proximity is relative;

one can unfriend, unfollow,

with a gentle tap
on distant, solitary keys.

I do like the word svelte though, alas, I am a long way from claiming the adjective in relation to myself!  

     I know that some publishing houses produce yearly books of neologisms as a sort of half-way house towards inclusion in the full dictionary, I have a few of them myself and it is interesting to see that some of the words did not make it any further!  

     I am not sure that svelte is instantly recognisable for most people, but that is no reason not to go on using it, in the same way that the definition of 'cut' used in the poem should be preserved, and perhaps practised!