|
The Argotist Online |
|
RAY TEMPLETON
Ray Templeton is a Scottish writer and musician who lives in St.Albans, Hertfordshire. IN
THE CITY All
this had been salvaged from
ages, worn-out inscription
faded brick
reduced to palimpsest. Only
vigilance discerns
the signs though
generations breathed
the dust, fading beaten
by weather blasted
by sand. Semi-legible
record:
flaked, erased there
– in numbers, letters curlicue
and scroll. This
is a cipher for
us – remote dying
in light, in daylight,
streetlight. Once,
hand torch, candle a
wick in oil, set in
a shell, the pearl lining’s
glimmer a fathomless
handful
of colour. THE
SHIP Sea
wind gentled by distance over
level ground and hedges. The
endless belonging in
the long note a
rattle, a scrape and
the feet clatter. (expect
no right of kindness to strangers) A
heavy door pushed into hard
surfaces like wood,
slate, coal pewter,
baked clay. Light
of a flame softens. Skin
scrubbed, but ingrained eyes
like polished beads teeth
brown, broken flints shouting
– a call for order then
the hunted bird, the token of honour. A
tough, tenacious root memory
is its own mass media inspired
by wild ales and
wisdom shaped by whispering to
beasts. Smoke,
night scents cropped
pasture still
under stars. THE
RIVER LAMP On
the bank, a lamp, almost lost against
the perfect, blackened space,
where water is invisible swings
and its glow is a rumour of
fire – not hard to envision the
streaming street, the flow of faces all
stopped, locked in dream now swirled
in a crystal storm lost
to each other, to us crushed
in history’s faultlines. Yet
still here: still casting the
curfew’s shadow. On one night of
this plague a mother missing searches,
for any small reflection any
echo. Dreads the pale sleep the
spoiled bed, the first waking all
those to come. This pain repeats like
winters, clamours across centuries. But
fallen walls make a fire-break a
quarantine – where monuments move
is a point to cross.
At
the gate, a call to play, and even among all
this refuse, even this close to the edge she’s
ready to catch. Blink and you
might miss it – but grasp that
flitting chance and see the
shining pearl in the river lamp. A
LEAVING TURN A
quiet echo disturbs; footfall
in the passage answers. A
door opened the world finger
clinging in the sun. But
time strays, follows to
day’s end, possessing a
mind’s dust garden with
silent purpose. In
the light, a black rose. A
toll will gather and
clouds close down to
clutch with chill wings. A
leaving turn, one taken from
a burial bowl to
coil the absent memory: the end risen to the road.
copyright © Ray Templeton |