THE TRAGEDY OF LOST SOUNDS
a
collection of poems
by Lea Knowles
Preface
How fortunate we are to have
the technology to be able to record and preserve sound, that most ephemeral of
senses. Present and future generations may have the voices of loved ones now
departed to share with their children; we will all hear the actual voices and
words spoken by our leaders – political, military, literary, artistic,
scientific etc; we will be able to hear sounds made by animals endangered and
which may or have become extinct – to our greater loss and shame.
‘The Tragedy of Lost Sounds’ in part reflects on what has been lost to
us and is irrecoverable. We can attempt to recreate the voices, speeches and
sounds made by famous people from the past but wouldn’t it be great if we could
hear the vocal tones of William Shakespeare, Henry V, Samuel Johnson, Lord
Nelson, the prophet Mohammed, Jesus, the actual sound of a dinosaur, mammoth or
dodo or key events in human history; I
suspect Roman generals didn’t really sound like Russell Crowe or Jesus sound
like Robert Powell!
The following poems are partly inspired by this nostalgic idea of
‘things lost and gone’ and longings for that which is regretted, treasured but
eternally over.
Contents
Page
Martha 3
A Lost Poem 3
Fingerprints 3
A Dawn Walk 4
Stepping Through 4
The Tragedy of Lost Sounds 5
Issues of Equality 5
Let me lie in Sunshine 6
This Moment 6
The World of Birds 7
An Island Race 7
A Sense of Place 7
Migrants 8
Zoo 8
Long Ago People 9
Bombsite 9
Archaeology 10
Snowscape 10
Breakfast 10
Ice-cracking 10
Wild 10
Waves 11
The Axe 11
The Ash Tree 11
Living by Numbers 12
And so the Song Dies 12
THE TRAGEDY OF LOST SOUNDS
MARTHA
Questions were never asked nor invited
About a life ended well within the scope of memory
Begun when the 1880s were proceeding erect and dour
Self believing their days would never end.
She made her communion with the times –
Hard to change the flavours of the fruits on a tree –
Storing away harvests of shadows
And presumably sunbeams too
That hid her stories,
Stories she would never tell to me,
Because questions were never invited
and never asked.
A LOST POEM
It sparks and flickers briefly in the mind
Then catches with a blaze of tinder
Words and rhymes and rhythms
That may blast from a crater
Or seep from a spring
To fall or to flow
Into the niche
Or gully of a phrase.
But for want of a pencil I trust unwisely
To my inflated powers of recall for
The heat and the light soon die
And the juices of the vine evaporate
With the night.
FINGERPRINTS
Beneath Otters Bridge
From a child of the brickworks
Fingerprints in the clay
A DAWN WALK
The hour before sunrise I go out
Into the misty morning taking in
A lungful of chilled air as
I quickly climb the ridge to watch
The sky and listen to the world awaken
While the coming tumult of day is
Just a low discordant grumble
That would rather sleep.
The woodland path sought out by
Lovers of silence and solitude and
Their sniffling snuffling dogs
Shelters something that passes like
Camaraderie between us, early risers
Of the golden dawn, conspirators
In a select wisdom that tingles with
Dew and frosty air and woodland ways
That rarely fails to grant an inner peace.
STEPPING THROUGH
Thrown with the garbage
Confined in airless squalor
Beaten and submerged
Ripped naked from the sun
I give thanks to none.
I have been pierced, misused
Infected, molested
Spat upon, shat upon,
Starved
While I felt the jaws of the trap
Snap on my ankles,
Grip my heart and tongue.
As I tasted the knife
I drank my own blood
And in fading wish nothing
But contempt for the
Farmers of evil harvest
Whose shadow haunts the land
And poisons the soil.
And now, at the end,
An end I deserve,
A new life I am due, another world
Now I’m just stepping through. 2015
THE TRAGEDY OF
LOST SOUNDS
All played out
The lost soundtrack of our heritage
Whose longing lingers
Like the vibrations of a heartstring plucked
The sighing of a dying wind
Drifting through the strings of a harp
Sounds of a language lost
A legacy of remote words
with no voice beyond the memory
The song of a father
A mother’s laughter
The child lost in infancy
And me as a young boy –
What was my sound
Today.
ISSUES OF EQUALITY
Equality of the sexes –
Whatever happened to that!
I suppose I am sort of equal –
Equal to the cat.
Yet its you who lounge around all day
Slumped before the telly,
Admiring Carol Vorderman
And the flatness of her belly.
I wash and cook and iron for you –
What do you do in return?
Head off down to the bookies
Like we’ve got money to burn.
You never say how nice I look
Or notice how I’ve done my hair ;
I could say yours looks fine
Even though there’s not much there.
I ask if my bum looks big in this
But you just answer no –
Never even glance at me
Before off to the match you go.
Never think it’s Saturday,
Never mind the weather,
Lets take a trip to Primark –
Just to do something together.
Years ago you bought me chocolate,
Even once a bunch of flowers;
Now all I get is an alarm clock –
For counting down the hours
Till this relationship is over –
Greatest ordeal of my life.
How have I stuck it all these years
With you for a wife!
LET ME LIE IN
SUNSHINE
But let me lie in sunshine
Gentle fingers on my face
And though my eyes like curtains close,
Come to guide, to lead me through
To that other wondrous place.
Do not in darkness let me lie
Shrouded in time and cold of stone
Concealing tender memories
In shivers of cloying air,
A solemnity that petrifies
The love of heart and home.
Surround me with the music
That fed my heart and soul
That lifted me from out of dark
That lit a flame from just a spark –
Let not that lone bell toll.
THIS MOMENT
The shapes of history lie beneath his feet
at his back, impelling him helpless
to the achievement of this moment,
pushing inexorably towards an irresistible future,
unknown forces steering blind yet
suggesting nothing really matters
but the now.
THE WORLD OF BIRDS
Perfection of form and plumage
range and haunt that sang
and called and hooted and whistled
that flirted and pecked among the leaves and stones
since an age before man was even the faintest glint
in the mind of his creator.
Now they dwindle by the hour and must
fit themselves into the chinks and hollows
that men have allowed.
And yet they still preserve for us
the wondrous clarity of their being.
A SENSE OF PLACE
The names of places last
as evidence of
the former presence of
submerged peoples,
recall the talk of forgotten firesides,
forgotten tribes
about the integrity of the world.
Like a stream babbling
among the northern mountains,
they spoke a strange tongue
that would rise with the sun
and fade to sleep beside their dying fires.
They spoke of food and shelter and livestock,
of places to defend and worship
and all around them through forest
and plain having come to rest and tamed
the shores of this unknown land
the names of their places flamed.
AN ISLAND RACE
Enclosed within a shape
familiar as my hand and
as comfortingly felt as the
enclosing arms of my garden
this island from her diamond shores
glitters pride in her stern defence
of this realm
from stormy seas and nations adrift
yet powerless like them
to prevent the erosion and depositions of time.
MIGRANTS
No longer the chasers of game
leading flocks and herds,
seeking some small economic gain
or purchase
escaping the home
if just for a week
from the imperative drive of
targets and aspirations
from a madman’s world
made too hard, too tense,
too ugly to allow body and mind
a peaceful rest
or to dance,
too much to call on their own land
for repose, for refreshment of the spirit,
nourishment for the soul.
ZOO
Staring into this ancient perfection of wild creatures
Red in tooth and claw
brought to the brink
fading glimpse of the age of reptiles
in the gallery of the dead and almost gone.
LONG AGO PEOPLE
Long time ago
persons unknown walked the land we walk
people like us - worriers,
jokers, lovers who
saw the world in different shades,
gave labour and sword,
fashioned objects such as these
according to needs,
held by long ago hands, long ago hearts,
long ago minds that somehow we become
as we place our hand in theirs,
as our heart beats with theirs,
our footprints alongside theirs
as the years between us dissolve.
Perhaps we try too hard
to imagine each other different
though we wake to the same rising sun
and sleep beneath the same stars
when our day is done.
BOMBSITE
The fabric of the world has torn –
cannot be stitched back together;
a tattered shroud on the beach,
the beach where the four scurried from the hawk –
the beach where the boys will no longer go.
Instead the two go collecting,
rescuing familiarity from the rubble
each trying to rebuild a childhood
out of terror.
In 2014 four boys
were targeted by Israeli jets while playing on a beach in Gaza.
Two of them were
killed. Israeli authorities said they had been mistaken for Islamist
terrorists.
ARCHAEOLOGY
Layered deep and disordered
the archaeology of grief
like a spade unearthing
forgotten things
that made you laugh, that made you cry
that make you wonder.
SNOWSCAPE
The air that swallows sound
muffles words and wheels, numb
beneath a smother of snow.
BREAKFAST
Morning sun
pouring soft golden light
into my garden
enhancing my breakfast
with sweetness.
ICE-CRACKING
Lying in the mud
saucers of ice crazed and groaning
feet cracking
WILD
To reconcile the wild
to bring it home
wherever home may be.
WAVES
Rebellious waves
charging ashore
stumbling over breakwaters
surging round piers and stantions
smashing their heads on the rocks
but nothing more.
THE AXE
From out a confetti of autumn leaves
a primeval urge
feeling the heft and swing of it
the measured grip slips
from shoulder to the bit
that sends the air ringing
as the whoosh and whomp bite
deep as human time
releasing the sap and strength of it,
the root, the limb, the life of it,
the elemental spark of it
through endeavour and tragedy
to the creation of time.
THE ASH TREE
The teeth of the saw
bit through the years.
I cradled it with tears
while living centuries turned to dust.
A hundred ways they fashioned
from her suppleness and strength,
her consistent heart, that straight length
that would not shrink nor splinter.
I cradled the axe she bore
along the shaft ran my hand –
those perfect curves, that grand
sweep of waxed grain.
And so through it all
to such a distant end
longer than the life we pretend –
was it just the woodland’s call or
a whisper of forgiveness on the wind?
LIVING BY NUMBERS
Neatly parked
on the even side of the street
no wind, no rippled surface
no cascading leaves
no chariot of fire;
washing almost dry –
though a weak and thoughtless sun.
the square box of each day is
scrawled with the passage of time,
colour-coded, designated
so to ease this old tyre
over its evening rim
collapsing on sofas
living by numbers.
AND SO THE SONG
DIES
Voices that once chimed together
now brittle, out of tune
clang like cracked bells
all pace, rhytnm, jubilation
lost on the wind
out of rhyme, out of reason
pitched too high or low
for chords to grasp
while words half-remembered
fumble and mumble,
stumble, grumble
lose their meaning
lose recognition, sincerity
so soon to evaporate in
the darkening sky
till all that is left is the memory
of an existence marked with a date,
and so the song dies.
AND IN THE END
And in the end
it’s the words in my head
at play with emotion and reason
that drip
random as raindrops
growing together in private truth
fondly felt on the inside
displaying my favourite scent
and scent blossoms its eternal season.
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