THE POETRY COLLECTIONS: UNDER WIND AND OVER SUN

UNDER WIND AND OVER SUN

BY BARRY VAN-ASTEN

2011 

This collection of poems, and the sentiments behind them are a mixture of both old and new verse that lie in the same enchanted pasture. Also included here is my first published poem ‘Is she dying?’ which was printed in the anthology ‘Poetic Enlightenment from Southern England’ by Poetry Now (1997). Poems, birthed and nurtured that echo with personal memories and meaning such as the little bridge where some day I hope to return, perhaps; feelings which by there transitory nature can never be recaptured the second time around! There is love and there is death and there is the dalliance with the devil in between, but it is strange how often I dream, a recurring dream in which I am deep in a dark woodland, some childhood haunt where I and my accomplice, my brother in fact, have disposed of a man’s body, somewhere in the undergrowth. We go there to check that he has not been disturbed and detected! I usually awake from these dreams with colossal fear, not at what I think I have done but at the terror and fear of exposure – imagine my surprise to find out that my brother dreams the same dreams and has that same fear of being ‘found out’! These poems, like exposed corpses, have been ‘found out’!

Poems that exist like death flowers, dead as soon as they are born like floundering fish suddenly taken from their comfortable watery world, prized from the cerebral regions to exist in a sort of limbo; poems that bloom like the crinkled rubber flowers of my childhood – those mysterious pink, discarded and shrivelled milky condoms that magically grew about the car park on the common near to where I lived, that sacred theatre of the un-born where liquid life is quickly baked in the summer sun, encountered by young and naive eyes who thought that they were something that old men ‘coughed up’ and only later learning that they had some rude attachment to them! Thoughts that effervesce into poetic structure, they come and are gone… I have not been to the common in several decades but I am sure those unpicked pink sprouting mushrooms, fed by desire, ‘from the dull enuii of a woman’s kiss’ still flourish there and will do for ever more!

No doubt they shall come back to haunt me, much as the body in the woods disturbs my tranquil sleep – under wind and over sun!

 

Barry Van-Asten 2011

MARCH MORN

Sun upon my window –
I worship you;
When you are far away from here –
I worship you.

Gone, all gone,
Went in the moon-glow blue;
Questions, yet I know not why
I worship you?

I watch the seasons come and go
And my mood with its many shades;
Leaves me weary for your touch
And a love that never fades.

And now I think I know why my
Nights are never still –
You are a flame within my heart:
Sun be my love; wind be my will!


APOLLO IN LOVE

To his Caesar smile – sinks;
Surrendered to his soul and skill.
Beauty forced the wayward heart
To love as lesser mortals do.
Skin that ached for tender touch
As midnight, slow, swept in;
Had found the love of gods, too much
And mankind sweet with sin,
To unnatural brains that worship still
The mystery of his oracle!


MY LOVE AND I

My love and I, in soft embrace,
Can tear down the world and escape from this place.
My love and I, lie hand in hand,
So in love that they cannot understand.

My love and I, can shatter and destroy,
As we go racing through the morning sky.
My love and I, gaze and ache
And make the Hells and Heavens shake.

My love and I, in the rolling clover,
Make darkness fade and light take over.
My love and I, with fearful eye,
Can bring down the moon, if we try, if we try...

My love and I, as we kiss in the night,
Chase away sorrows and chase away fright.
My love and I, make mountains move
By the beautiful symmetry of our love!


THE BRANDIED BORE

Safe inside its naked arch;
Loose upon its native shore,
Rolls its eyes that’s stiff with starch:
The brandied bore!

Talks too long on subjects wide –
Politics, art and law.
He quotes his tailor’s bill, with pride:
The brandied bore!

He swirls his drink and dulls his pain;
He dribbles and spills it on the floor;
He guzzles it down in his pickled brain:
The brandied bore!

He takes his mistress to his lair –
He always pays a whore!
He’s lost his looks and he’s lost his hair:
The brandied bore!

Lifts his glass to his Almighty God,
And praises Queen and poor –
‘One more for England!’ shouts
The pot-bellied sod:
The brandied bore!



HIS PRESENCE

What love was this that tore my soul?
‘Twas bitter love, they say;
I said I loved a young man’s heart,
But youth soon fades away.
Within him lonely anger slept
Where sacred love had dwelt;
He took his feelings strangely:
There was no shame, he felt.
I shared his tears and joined him
And gave him half my pain.
The wind was blowing, tiresome,
But in his arms again,
Two hearts as one were torn in two
And in our tender way –
We shook the night upon us,
And almost shook the day!


THE GHOST TRAIN

As I climbed the station’s railings
To fall firmly on the snow,
On this night of idle fancy
And thoughts that turn to woe;

The cold night, dark and loathsome,
Went winding up the track,
And smoke like icy fingers
Curled around the station’s stack.

A lamp swung to and fro;
Shadows stalked the platform;
The wind danced all around
To the thunderous beat of the storm.

Windows, snow-framed, sparkled
In the showering light:
Darkness hung heavy like a ghost
Around the station that night.

A red light on the embankment,
Pierced the cold, grey mist,
Like distant red lips that hunger,
Though never to be kissed.

Then a hushed sound as of crying
Or a warning to turn back,
And not go alone, one step further
Down that damned infernal track.

Far off, I heard a whistle blow
Death’s own fury, shrill;
Closer came its strangled tone
Wailing up the hill.

A small light in the darkness
Of the tunnel, growing bright –
It was the ever-nearing ghost train,
Thundering through the night.

And running, I tripped and fell
Upon the drifted snow,
As I turned my head to see
The tunnel, all aglow.

Smoke burst from the entrance
As it roared upon the track,
And then I glimpsed the engine
With some monster on its back.

Its clanking wheels rushed past me
In its menacing dread
And all the passengers stared out from
The windows – they were dead!

Its big old puffin’ belly,
Blew its Hell-broth fire
As the spectral engine sang
Its way through dell and shire.

The train ripped down the hillside
All ablaze with light,
As it hauled its dark mass Hell-bound
And disappeared from sight!



NOCTURNE - IN OUR HEARTS

In her eyes the stars would shine,
Yet there was no lonelier soul than mine,
That sat next to her on that midnight
By the bright of the stairways drifting light
That threw its chill within the halls,
Where phantoms danced their haunted balls;
Deep-shifting shapes from room to room
As the moon shone on that lifeless tomb;
I turned to her, and in my heart, I died.

O thin-lipped beauty, my love was she,
Still I knew it could never be.
I saw the haunt of a tear in her eye:
‘Oh my love, you need not cry;
Though these grey-ghosted rooms are dead,
My love can live for you’, I said.
And by a candle’s flickering glow,
As the moon paled its flame from a near window,
She turned away, and in her heart, she sighed.

Pictures, framed, hung from the walls,
Of landscapes changing within the halls.
From the window’s moonlit glow,
I saw our footprints in the snow;
Turning to her, I held her hand,
Yet I could not understand
Why kissing her was like kissing, the ghost of time:
The moon struck the clock and the clock struck its chime.
I turned to her, and in my heart, I died.

What things does she see, my angel there;
Does she think of me as she sits on the stair?
We looked at each other in the halls decay,
Yet, we could not feel more far away;
So in my arms, I held her near,
And tried to comfort her strange fear;
I took her lips to my soft kiss,
But as that spying moon saw this,
She turned away, and in her heart, she sighed.


TO MY WIFE ON HER THIRTY-SIXTH BIRTHDAY

If I could give you the soil and all that grows;
If I could give you the birds with their songs so sweet;
If I could give you the wind and wherever she blows –
These with my love make my gifts complete!

And if I could give you fruits in abundance;
Perfumes and precious stones, fine cloth and gold;
The woods, the fields, the stars that entrance –
These with my love are yours to behold!

And the mountains and the valleys, and rivers that flow;
The evenings of summer and the night and the sea;
The blossom and the rain and the moon’s soft glow –
All these with my love, to thee, to thee!


SAT WE THREE

I sat in the hall, on the old wooden stair,
Reading a book, and as I looked down to see
A fly, with me, beat its wings on the stair;
And there was a spider on its web, on the stair
Contemplating the fly in its devilry.
The fly, and the spider and me on the stair,
Sat we three – yet which of us there sitting there
Knew more about life on the old wooden stair?


THE OLD LOVE LETTER

By the bright of a full-mooned December;
By a December’s full-mooned night;
Love filled the starry-eyed night
With dreams she cared to remember,
Brought ghosts from her past, into sight.
In her hands: an old love letter,
That she reads and starts to weep;
He swore that he’d never forget her,
And she in his heart, would keep.

Now the years, so many have gone;
Now long gone, she counted each year;
The pain made her sadder each year.
By the fireside light she read on:
I’ll love you forever, my dear!
The loneliness fell from her heart
And the letter it fell from her hand
As life’s light began to depart –
It is love that we don’t understand!


THE GHOUL'S RECEPTION

‘Twas late in the churchyard,
Not a soul did stir,
Till figures in the light did dance:
Creatures of darkness and things that once were –
When I shouted they all turned to glance.

I turned and I ran,
As hard as I could,
To the church where I’d first seen a light;
Over tombstones I leapt, till the entrance I found,
In the doorway stood an airy young sprite!

Let me pass, said I,
Let me pass and be gone!
As it rose and its eyes met my gaze,
And held bony fingers, stretched pale and wan –
So departed the doorway ablaze!

From inside the church,
Strange chanting was heard
And musical tones filled the air;
Figures in white, did shift through the night,
Transfixed by deep chant and prayer!

Around the proceeding
A young sylph was leading
A dance with such force, such furore;
Till still went the night, and a furious flight
As the master blasphemer came forth!

Out went the lights
On this night of dark rites,
And the wind swept the door wide aside,
As in drifts a gas of a conjuring mass –
The flowing, spectral bride!

In the luminous green glow
Trailed that pale lady, slow,
With eyes dark as a raven’s stare;
She floats to the nave, like a murmuring grave
In deathly, ancient air!

That winged, horned devil,
At the end of the revel,
Took his virginal, un-dead bride;
Drank blood from her skull, in the lingering dull
And rode off with his wife at his side!



THE SCARECROW

My back is an old wooden pole;
My chest is a bundle of straw –
No heart in my breast, nor no soul:
A scarer of birds – nothing more!

I want to see children play –
My eyes: two coins, black and worn.
Oh to hide in the forest and the hay:
How I fight with my days in the corn!

To climb high in the oldest oak;
To jump through the foaming stream;
To run through the midnight smoke...
All these and more, I dream!

I want to see rivers that flow;
To journey over hill and moor.
I want to be free and to know
Why crows don’t scare no more!

I want to see flowers that bloom
And smell more than harvested hay;
To see buildings that tower and loom
A thousand miles away!

How I yearn to see more than I do –
Hillocks, grassy and swept;
To trample my limbs in the dew:
Oh the nights in the field I have wept!

My back is an old wooden pole;
My chest is a bundle of straw –
In my dreams I see pastures that roll,
And more, and more, and more!



I AND MY LADY

I shook her from the empty mound
And by fair hand I led her round;
Through the darkness, to a hush,
With her cheeks a crimson blush.
I wept to see such witchery
That night when beauty walked with me.

By a crooked chestnut tree we stood,
On the edge of a haunted wood;
Deep in the dark a scream rang out:
Something ghastly moved about.
I and my lady, by cherished bones
Was chilled to hear those haunting tones.

She sat by a brook with the moon on her face;
Angelic she sat near that monstrous place,
Where the churchyard cavern gathered and grew
Around a lantern... Softly blew
Autumnal fear into her eyes
Under black loathsome, meaningless skies.

I waited, I watched, yet still couldn’t see
Why this sadness in her made me
See evening’s face in the midnight blooms
On the edge of the burial tombs?
In her eyes the moon now lay
And I could think no words to say.

This night of nights had let us in
To see how madness and nature sin.
The ghosted brook, was still with fear
And we could still in the dark woods hear
Creaking boughs break in the breeze,
Where an ancient anger struck the trees.

Quiet now, and all was still,
Waiting to see those pathways fill
With ancestral fear and mock:
Surely ‘tis now past twelve o’ clock?
And nothing more that night was seen
By I and my lady of Halloween.


IS SHE DYING? *

Life everlasting: what a terrible dream
Under the invading birch;
The shade was sombre, though a sunlit beam
Showed bicycle tracks to the church.

We sat where the sycamore stumps
In this iron age of doom,
Listened to the cushioned thumps
From the hospital room.

Beyond the yew – a sick-bed window,
In the noon-day: will she die?
Hospital ward in emerald glow
With the rush of footsteps passing by.

From the bed, Victorian towers
Rise from a half-shaded rectory,
Where young mums, smoking, wait for hours
Outside the gates of the factory.

Roses all adrift with pink;
Buttercups scattered on the grass –
Schoolboys stop to stare and think
About the girls that pass.

Athletes in gymnastic dress
Among the jasmine and poplars –
Behind the fence, a fond caress
Is sandwiched over handlebars.

In the ward are coughing fits –
The little chapel conjures doom!
Is she dying where she sits
Alone, in her hospital room?

*my first published poem


SIX DREAMS OF HER

She who kissed my silent frame,
Kissed but the ghost of me;
And as our hearts rang out the same,
I dreamt she dreamt of me:
Had she dreamt that my soul came
To her, as I did she?

In her room, so beautiful,
She waits, O waits for me;
Alone again, with eyes so full
Of sadness – sad as me.
Something strange, yet wonderful,
Has left her, heavenly.

Her kisses soft upon my cheeks
Found me fair – was this me?
She is the love that my soul seeks:
Her tears were cold to me.
My lips, my heart, so mortal breaks
Where the ghost of her should be.

She held me close – I did not know
If ‘twas my shade or if ‘twas me?
This love that hurts my frail heart so,
She could not give to me.
The light of life in her dark eyes show
More than my dreams could be.

O what things lie in her sweet head
That dream themselves to me?
Was I ever there to hear them said?
Perhaps not, but they found me.
She whispered sad words in her dread
Wrap of mortality.

My life is over now she’s gone,
And certain now for me;
Did she kiss these lips alone
Or kiss the ghost of me?
Whatever gentle sleep had done,
It found me fair as she.


O LITTLE BRIDGE

O little bridge that crossed the stream –
Dark water, dwarfed by trees...
Often I’d sit where the leaves were swept
By the autumn’s sombre breeze.

O little bridge where sorrows drift
And lovers kiss at dawn;
To trample dew so soft and wet
Like tears upon the lawn.

O little bridge where scholars walk
Their way to the lecture hall;
At midday, pale and full of talk:
Byron, Plato and football.

O little bridge where the sun shone upon
My soul, in never-ending chain –
I looked in the stream and saw no-one
Looking back at me again.

O little bridge in your russet grave
Of brooding pine and willow –
I watch the morn mist weave and wave
Through thicket, ditch and hollow.

O little bridge, how sad you are
Where oft’ you mirrored my heart;
Resting in your shade like some fallen star
That strolls about the park.

O little bridge, I’ll return maybe,
To where I used to sit and dream;
To where great sadness fell on me
On the bridge where no-one came!


THIS AUGUST NIGHT

How love has bloomed and swept aside
The heavy mantle that closed it in,
To reveal the waltzing mannequins
Of gleaming knights and twirling brides,
That spill onto the balcony
By the moon this August night.

O what music’s struck within?
What symphonic imp this eternal night
Has set some devilish harmony abroad?
Chords so crashing should never begin
When hearts are singing in deep embrace,
On this last night of tears.

That piano with its dreams shall sing
On this romantic August night;
Cadences lift the soul to flight:
Rhythms to those sleepless strings.
Ball gowns whisper through the air
Where a mad moonlight has been invoked.

Blows the curtains wild aside,
Black upon black, to and fro,
To show my starlit angel afraid
This August night, where love is rare.
My beauty stolen to the shade
Over the moon-green conquered lawn.

I left the waltzing knights and maids;
Slipped out by the crazed three-four;
Gliding over the gold-spun floor
As I crept over the lawns half shade
To find where my love had hid away;
By the blossom-blown lake, was she and I.

I held her close by the water’s edge,
And as she could feel my beating breast,
Those stars in her eyes met my medalled chest
And I swore to her of my undying pledge,
That I will forever in my heart
Love only her for evermore!

‘My dear’ she said, ‘it can never be,
For I love another man, you see;
A handsome man that’s nobly bred:
The pride of the King’s own cavalry!
You see, by morrow we shall be wed –
Don’t waste your heart on me, I pray’.

‘No other can I love’ said I,
‘This August night, how I love you;
Now what is my sore heart to do
Now it’s broken, incomplete?
For soon, you shall be far away
And what have I to live for then?’

By the water, we kissed, there was no time
As my tears flowed this August night.
Never to hold her again this tight –
Two lovers parted in their prime:
One to a handsome cavalry man,
The other to an early grave!


DEATH IN CRICKLEWOOD*

Ah, the leaves are returning
And the blooms are Nile-boat red.
Last night I lay with my lover
And by morning he was dead.

His scissor thighs were crushing;
His gallant eyes are black,
And the window reaches nothing
But the sunlight on his back.

Sleep, sleep, my William
Till the last gasp fades away.
Last night those awful secrets
Made you turn to me and stay.

But O what wonder can foretell:
This love we have is real;
No bones unlock a greater bond
Or greater mortal seal.

Sleep, sleep, my William,
The night has fled away
Into the town of secrets
Where it will always stay.

Sigh and whisper to the shade
That gallops across the lawn;
To shoulder madness, hand in hand
From midnight gone till dawn.

The crows in the fields shall furrow
The farmer’s brow again –
Dark their havens, dark their shame,
And dark this love of men.

For I love a dead man’s eyes, I said,
And his lips so run with blue
Now have the morn light on them
And an inner beauty too.

Come crescent moon, come sooner,
For I am masked inside
With false beauty, awkward, turned
To dead man’s eyes that hide

The lonely, golden moon from me
That waits in wasted wealth;
My William shall sleep beside me,
Though none shall drink his health.

Sleep, sleep, my William
For I won’t turn away
The love that looked on secrets
And made my William stay.

For I share a dead man’s bed, I said,
And William was his name;
And we’ll both be together
Until the end of time!

*195 Melrose Avenue, Cricklewood, N.W. London.


ODE TO SATAN

His bones are black like dragons’ teeth
And he’ll make merry with your soul.
Beyond concept, form and time, to dwell
In the regions of your own imagined Hell.
Like mind-fire, he rises,
Silk instigator, his bulk shall sway,
Song-like, in timeless rhythms, to emerge
Urgent at his supper of souls, again.
No purity too high; no weakness too low;
He is mistrust in the heart of every lover
And anger wrestling in the down-trodden.

A name swift to lips – he’ll come
In sleep or silence, seducing:
‘S’ words – serpent, scratch, sugar, sun;
Slumber, sweet, shout, sex, sing,
Smoke, scream, sinister, snake, sin...
Of them all, Satan, upon the tongue,
Licked with a rush of air...
Shushed and shaped into Sss-a-tan:
Satan, I call thee to me, Satan,
Sensual flame and saviour, strong:
Satan, Satan, Satan, come!