IN THE GLASS OF WINTER
IN THE GLASS OF WINTER
DAVID JAFFIN
With an Introduction by Edward Lucie-Smith
Abelard-Schuman • London
For my parents
(C) 1975 David Jaffin First published 1975 ISBN 0 200 72280 8 All rights reserved
Abelard-Schuman Limited 450 Edgware Road, London W2 and Kingswood House, Heath and Reach, Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire
Printed in Great Britain by Billing & Sons Limited, Guildford and London
Contents
Introduction 7
[I]
Preface 9 Green scarf 9 When winter comes 10 Getting old 11 Upon a still glass 11 At ease 12
That afternoon in Salzburg 13 With a change in the winds 14 At night by the fire 15 That room 16 I 17
Dying 18 Closed behind 19 In light 20 Late harvest 21 [II]
At the gate 22 Encountered 23 19 days 24 Ladder 25 Cities 26
Nearing spring 27 On his illness 28 Aquarium 28 Steps in Snow 29 In the glass of winter 30 Aging 52 Misconceived 33 Established 34 All before 35 Ballroom scene (after Francesco de Guardi) 36 Bridge 37
On a Wednesday afternoon 38 Vacancies of sound 39
These poems have appeared in the following periodicals:
The Contemporary Review; English (Oxford University Press); Tribune; The Dublin Magazine (Ireland); The Chelsea Review (USA); Ariel (University of Calgary, Canada); The Christian Century (USA); Meridian Poetry Magazine; The Decal Review; Workshop New Poetry; The Anglo Welsh Review; The Antigonish Review (St. Francis Xavier University, Canada); Tagus; Samphire; In Dark Mill Shadows (Anthology of Bailrigg Poems, University of Lancaster); Poet (London); The Dalhousie Review (Dalhousie University, Canada); The Little Word Machine; The Literary Half Yearly (University of Mysore, India); Littack; Capella (Ireland); The Chapman; The Clare Market Review (London School of Economics); The Wisconsin Review (USA); Poem (USA); The Galley Sail Review (USA); The Wascana Review (University of Saskatchewan, Canada); The Roanoke Review (Roanoke College, USA); The University of Portland Review (USA); Gallery Series Poets (USA); The Florida Quarterly (University of Florida, USA); Waves (University of York, Canada); The Washington and Jefferson Literary Journal (Washington and Jefferson College, USA); Orbis; The Free Lance (USA); Here Now; Gong (University of Nottingham); The Whetstone (USA); Platform (Yorkshire); Muse (Birmingham Poetry Centre).
Introduction
It is a matter for concern, as well as for curiosity, that the struggle to be modern has had, in the English language at least, such an intermittent success. Much consciously ‘modernist’ poetry written in English is forced and pretentious; but work which shuns experiment is often pretentious and boring. Things are different abroad. In France, the ethos of the Modern Movement permeates contemporary poetry as much as it does painting and sculpture, and developments in poetry have been inseparably linked with those which have taken place in the visual arts. Expressionist painting in Germany ran parallel with the development of Expressionism in literature, and especially in poetry; and the modernist development which Hitler checked has been taken up again with renewed vigour in the years since 1945, as we can see in the works of poets otherwise as different from one another as Enzensberger and Celan. In the literature of Spain and of the Spanish-speaking Americas the vitality of the poets—they range from the vigour of Neruda to the severity of Nicanor Parra—has perhaps surpassed that of the visual artists produced by the same group of cultures.
It will take many writers, not just one writer, to remedy this situation where English is concerned, but David Jaffin is certainly one of the few who seem to be aware of the problem. His poems are brief, and at a first reading look very simple. It is only as we re-read them that we realize how subtly he handles his linguistic material. Many of his most characteristic effects come from small but nevertheless vitally important displacements of words—from their usual function or their usual context. Here are some examples, chosen almost at random: ‘Memory lights the scent /of lilac’—‘When winter comes/ We take a book to ourselves/From those long covered shelves/of silence’—‘You touched/Your fingers placed silence fin place'.
This sensitivity to the weight and meanings of words, and the way in which the meaning can be altered by a number of different factors: context, grammatical function, position in the line, the overall rhythm of the poem—here is something which makes it clear that David Jaffin has nothing to do with ‘academic poetry’ of a conventionally skilful kind.
One reason why we read poems is because they refresh the language, because they bring words alive, and rub off the tarnish which accumulates in daily usage. This cleansing function is one of the most important the poet can exercise, though it is not necessarily the one which will make his work immediately popular. David Jaffin’s characteristic spareness and economy make the reader particularly keenly aware of his concern for good language, which means fresh and immediate language. He deserves to be read because he improves and extends the instrument he uses.
Edward Lucie-Smith
[I] PREFACE
The tentative light of the winter dawn,
Its cold truth I break with this song;
Incomplete I left the flower
Before my lips could form its presence.
GREEN SCARF
I am of the winter of your eyes:
The mist
(the flower cold)
You circling on that field,
Your green scarf (this circled sun),
The sorrow of our love;
Why among the clouds so shaped and solemn,
Memory lights the scent of lilac?
WHEN WINTER COMES
When winter comes We close the windows behind us, Seal off that last bit of cold from within us
And consider the warmth inside.
We are rooms then,
With emptied spaces and shutters without,
Perfectly planned we stand to Within the centre of ourselves And turn that switch between light and darkness.
When winter comes We take a book to ourselves From those long covered shelves of silence
And feel out the pages of sound
To our stretched out thoughts recede,
Touch to each a quickened vein At a fire of our own asking:
Wine, and the wintered winds -without.
GETTING OLD
You were getting old they told me,
The fires gone from your face, Burned to the coolness of diminished flame,
The heat in being constant,
Coals that kept their purpose still;
You were getting old they told me,
Hands less quick to grasp But slow to yield As if touch could replace that Active thought of yours—
And yes,
They told me you sat by the fire now,
Days on end, not thinking At all but watching those flames Diminish to their final glow.
UPON A STILL GLASS
Ask in silence me,
The words have whispered found
as breath upon a still glass
then cease to be.
And that afternoon
We sat at ease, I had waited
Long for your coming,
With hat in hand And the winds had blown Whatever thoughts I had, away,
Before you came and we took A loaf of bread between us,
Sliced it to the last fragments of sun
And it was like looking
in,
You talked and it was Like looking in a door we’d Already closed behind And all those seats were filled before,
The faces wanted to be away
But you brought them nearer, Constantly nearer—
Was it your hands,
The quiet intonation of your voice?
And they sat And we sat looking at the same thing,
At a word we’d focused on, And the candle on the table Standing at the middle Blew repeatedly upon its own flame.
THAT AFTERNOON IN SALZBURG
I sit in the afternoon.
It could be a garden here
And the fountains would be on Turning their clear light As people pass
Between rows of gardened grass
I sit where I am,
Time and place are all the Same in this ordered scene
I sit and think Or I come and go between These rows of conscious sounds
Nothing takes place.
People pass, the fountains are Lit, on, flowers open out Their face to that all consuming sun
But the shadows are gathering sounds
The still’s become cold And I’ve grown conscious of These stones I’m looking at And sitting on The sun sinks, its tendered Light, a wind without a mark Quicker now, each time the Shadows break, people pass as Birds take flight
fainter still
from here.
WITH A CHANGE IN THE WINDS
Sadness came in the night With a change in the winds It left snow,
It left a face of clearness,
It deceived for its own sake.
And in the morning
When we heard the men working
Between the hills,
Sounds that echoed out And birds that circled there Self enclosed in shadow
Where the winds crossed as waves of sound
Sadness came that night And we felt it between ourselves, Distances there that were Covered over too and deceptively clear.
AT NIGHT BY THE FIRE
It is better not to say. Quietness at least conceals.
It can be touched to The cloth work turn of your hands At night by the fire When your face was a pause in the shadows And flames sparkled their thirs t
We remained to the corners of That room we called familiar once
Concealing ourselves there From the winds that told without
And the flames that burned their cause away.
There must be quiet And there must be beauty, Whichever way the world
goes
Here it stays still,
Here it is brought to and Here it shall find
As a chair in an empty room,
Hardly noticed at first Concealing space where You sat, you as you And drawn to within the Qualities of yourself.
Let us close that door now To silence and to beauty And to rest, and let us Listen in that calmed stillness
To the voice of our own concealed voice.
The sun is broken,
Its face of glass reflected the image I—
Not the I of myself,
But the glass, the image reflected.
Fear is of two wings (flight but shadow)
That distils this silence, the
awkward pain—
Fear that these eyes would meet themselves
that dream was but fancy, of cloth woven
that when I touched your hand
It was only the wind, and i.
DYING
It was that room again,
The same and ever present and walked into
As the sea with its life like Sounds that could have been drawn even closer once
He stirred, the light Changed and his eyes were half expectant
As she came in his mind Down those corridors of sound
And he thought of summer then,
The stillness of being loved,
The counting out of things together, and after
(that light changed)
Not at a moment to be taken in hand
Or with a switch
He lay in shadow Conscious of those sheets that couldn’t cool
About him night closed it self round,
The ringing out of stars And that bright, apparent moon
It was that room again,
The same and ever present and walked into
He prepared, he neared his own parting.
CLOSED BEHIND
And when we went a bit further The fence closed behind.
It swang, the way Robert Frost Wrote of birch swingers,
But it closed. It wasn’t our choice.
We didn’t even think of it then,
Not till later, the sun had Climbed over the hill before us And winter was at its brightest Despite those shifting shades and The pastel sky that added a Tone of lightness to our step As we passed through the powdered Snow and noticed row upon row How that fence had widened itself out Until we were closed within
And when we went a bit further We came to a wood.
It was light at first,
Combs of birch stood at the sides But before we realized where we Were it had darkened,
The trees became higher, the Snow deeper, the world Darker, and we couldn’t think, not Even then, of turning back,
We kept going on and on
Deeper and deeper into that closing
Darkness until at once
I lit a flame to my fingers to
Take that cold away
And when I looked you weren’t
There and I turned round to where
We’d been before, but
Our steps had blown away.
IN LIGHT
You were alone in a room. The light lit you It fell where you were And folded your hands together
Creating a moment You touched
Your fingers placed silence in place
Rethinking sounds Recollecting thoughts
You closed that door quietly, behind Went out, into the sun
Your dress creased Your mind absorbed light Your fingers ceased to think
For themselves
As you stepped quickly instead
Aside from what you thought
And were gone in a Moment of shadow and shade.
LATE HARVEST
The last fruit is almost in,
The fields will be stubble and stone
And what we’ve forgotten to take, dried,
The trees will loose their leaves
As you did for me once, your hair,
And that sun will turn cold, to touch.
Let us walk now,
Let us take hands, for we are less than this.
Here, waiting at the gate The sun slipped quickly through my hands
As the scales of a fish Left shining in light
Steel touched I stood Where the sky had ceased to move in me Its clustered sounds of snow
The stroking of the winds
Trees stepped, footwise higher
For the leaves to turn Their stillness
out
And the gate,
Prefigured, cold watching night.
ENCOUNTERED
That day
Cold and clear as a conscious flame
I feared as I fear myself now, Not knowing how it came to this,
Cold and clear As light that wants itself, a Brightness without cause you came,
Eyes wanton flame,
Nearer to my own than this That flesh I called myself,
Marbled/spoken stone seeing presence there.
19 DAYS
For 19 days We didn’t see the sun
It disappeared over night we grew closer
to ourselves in the cold mist
followed our steps from behind
listening to sound the touched-presence of
stone
What we couldn’t see we felt, even
if the cold numbed our hands we went
without hats
that space could be heard
We kept close together breathing the warmed air
We wanted rooms to be lit when we came,
identified their space
We stood before mirrors hours at
a time looking at our eyes those 19 days
without sun.
LADDER
That ladder led its way from place to place
of former chance, traced the cause (barely construed) deciphered then,
hands held fast feet secure
One wanted more scope toward
the top it came, that ladder led the same way down.
CITIES
This time we had to pass walls we couldn’t climb
They were preconceived as an eye that closes with a switch
They stared through fountains, hollowed stillness as a woman
petitions coldness with the touch of a naked hand
Night descended still without stars
the moon a foil to itself.
NEARING SPRING
A man’s picture Taken in the papers, worn with the print,
A pipe leaning beside on a tray
Pursuing its own aimless way in that emptied room
No one sits there,
A radio could be on The curtains could be hung to appear bright
Perhaps a cat’s Creeping along the roof, Keeping its paws close to its own sounds
And perhaps the rain’s been turned on
And there’s a vacancy of light,
A dullness of grass
Nearing spring I could read it from your face,
What’s been worn and Where the print’s coming loose.
ON HIS ILLNESS
He felt the leaves run dry,
In the blue sunlight
He was cold to thought,
The abstractions of time
He asked if the flower could bleed its
scent away.
AQUARIUM
They’ve never thought that way, Light means nothing to them only the borders of sound,
The cold rimmed glass
As they run That flash of steel their prismic thoughts Closed in to the sun of their own unconscious selves
Those scales, that
Light means nothing to them
only the borders of sound,
The cold rimmed glass.
STEPS IN SNOW
There were steps there
That led across the snow, clearly,
From this house to the road.
I remember how they looked at first, The impression that they made of Distinctness, freshness
That I could almost feel the Boots meet that crush of snow and The clear impressions they
Left, after. And
Then it froze, winter sank to
Its deepest point and
Those steps hardened then,
Without person, intomhed in a Certain stillness as the
Mark of a previous age.
And now it’s melting, that path Itself is thawing and it
No longer meets the road,
And it doesn’t quite start from The house, and at times Between it can’t really find Its own way out.
IN THE GLASS OF WINTER
He had never heard himself.
Everything has sound he thought, the trees
need wind the clouds snow but they can be
heard.
When he was 8 he saw himself once
in a mirror imagined his death
Eyes can’t see themselves without glass
He knew he’d put this edge to himself
It took 4 years before he began to listen
usually in the rain
if he heard hard enough and saw shadows
He thought he’d felt himself
but once a bird passed and he knew he was
gone
Or if he listened long enough
there was only rain But now
at 36 he’s stopped listening
he’s put the shades where he wants
but at night every once in a while
He looks at the moon touches the dark
and’s afraid.
AGING
The day closed as a curtain
folded at either end
certain to meet at the middle—
Winds waste away out there
You found the light and
combed your hair,
pursued thoughts that weren’t there;
Time recedes, as touch
You felt very much that way
(without feeling at all)
Except the bright of day
closed as a curtain
folded at either
end.
MISCONCEIVED
As we sat by the fire, Preserved the winter’s flame
I touched your hand observed the same
Forgot precisely the adequate name for such
feelings;
Presumed the presence of flowers
assumed it was May,
But you, my dear
exclaimed That’s a long time
away.
Can you imagine her now With children steeped from head to toe
In a flowing gown and All that regalia of justice,
She who spat upon her mother’s knee, Who taught her masters oft A lesson or two,
Extended her tongue (when she was still quite young) between The upper teeth and the garlicked Dungeons of her lower mouth?
Can you imagine her now Treading the church with a drawn down brow
And all the appearance of a somewhat contemplation
When she used to kick between the chairs And mimic the worthy airs of an elder generation?
Can you think of her as stately And fine, jewelled and gowned In the prismic order of the present?
ALL BEFORE
She had danced it all before. Swung softly to the right
Hips swayed, asked casually If you liked the featured parts,
The prettied portions of her Face appearing on the family page
At length she crossed her legs,
Adjusted the smile Paused awhile raising that glass
To those turned up lips flittered away among the guests.
BALLROOM SCENE (AFTER FRANCESCO DE GUARDI)
The world’s turned cold, Naked for the mind And the eye to behold its solitary light
As truth once told, disenchanted;
Touch defined, Crystalled light the Mind as glass
To its cause, insufficiently.
BRIDGE
The winds are sharp,
The waters cut with a blade
The sky should be steel blue
Whatever I touch shines cold in my hands
Thoughts edged in glass
The mirrored frame of fear
This cold glistens its
Sound and the waves are moved by swans
Tucked in their wings
As persons closed in the folds of their coats
A bridge crosses the water from either side
Steps that can’t be heard
We’ve told to ourselves
And don’t lead as sounds, to.
ON A WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON
Somewhere he’s sitting and thinking himself out
on a park bench
beneath barren trees
and self accustomed stones
on a Wednesday afternoon.
He hears the sounds of his own thoughts
He’s listening closely.
Shadows blow in the wind quickly
His hand touches wood.
He’s trying to stand now
Children jump squares beside him
A fountain should be on but isn’t
He turns now and’s going home.
VACANCIES OF SOUND
This room is dying in my heat
The sun draws its flames from me
Flowers stain that I cut with my bare hands
in the window’s light
As a fire rubbed to the quick of its own
thirst
The colours run Into pools of stagnant streams
I close the windows for my eyes to look out of
nothing within except the vacancies of sound
The city held from its breath as a wind with out touch
I sleep the final sleep of death.