Extract from "Epping"
Polyglot Tottenham’s a babble. Ruled lines at the set angle,
Parallel ridges, brickwork. The high street calls for its Lointain:
Last summer it was southern Spain: lichen and the dried
Flambeaux of grasses seen on a wander. Spanish lavender,
Eagle owls and a stupa among the pines. This breezy day,
Luke Howard prompts us: “Cumulus. Cumulo-nimbus.”
Ah, but there was smog back then. ‘Tottenham International’
Cross-fades to a romantic vista on the edge of Woodford:
Not far away, yet remote as a Claude Lorrain.
...............................................................
Further north, the trees develop goitres.
Yes, and threads that are there or not, as a breeze lifts a branch
At a sunbeam’s touch. Forests are alive and dead.
Dying, they become their food. Petals like flattened pebbles,
Roots making veins in the path, and tracts of mire
You edge around, brushing things aside. For earth-encrusted
Uprootings visit High Beech: the elephants’ grave-yard.
These once–airborne pachyderms have been laid low
By the hurricane. Here was a galleon. Now it’s a hulk,
Its carcass prone against the slope. And no escape
From a pang of guilt. It’s where I might have scattered mother;
Not where I did, within earshot of the motorway.
Mock the superstition of us atheists. Andrew, alert
For the third bloody magpie, veering off the central lane.
* * *
Here the hunt rides also, here things are killed and eaten,
All their remains gone over again, by ants, and again
By the mites that feed on their leavings. The forest
Laps at the fringes of our constructions, its birdsong
Drowned by the traffic, its thresholds clogged by garbage.
Choppers flutter overhead. The M25 now separates
Upshire and Boadicea’s monument from reinforcing
Greenery. Planes drone like insects as they cross
Clearings of sky glimpsed through a spray of leaves.
Let’s move away from the parking spot, getting into stride,
Overtaking other walkers waiting on their dogs.
Our destinations are circles: hikes that incorporate landmarks –
The Buddha tree, the inkpond, the camp.
In this built-up county now, the forest is a patch;
Though once the perilous everywhere else, reaching from
The dunes to the mountains: a vegetable Tsunami
Effortlessly smothering the isles of our urbanity.
Land’s prevailing sea – of illusions formed from reality:
Death, disease, dissolution – fostering shoots and larvae,
Husks of things becoming loam like night.
Elsewhere there are werewolves and the misted retreats
Of the sages. Elsewhere there are chasms, table-fastnesses…
Unkempt hinterland hangs from unreachable heights
And chokes impenetrable depths. Elsewhere the bush is agog,
Its temples drowned in lianas, orchids and
Be-fronded cobras. Water-holes quench the jungle’s thirst.
Steaming swamps fill a holy river’s reaches.
What we’ve got, beyond the 406, are hillocks wrapped in copses,
Low-lying mire obstructing holly bottle-necks,
And tracts of heath, where, among clumps of furze,
Token cattle shake long horns at flies. A hidden golf-course
Backs away from birch, then oak, and then prodigious beech
- Seal-grey, lopped at antler-height, and squat,
Or left to soar above the make-shift graves
Hurriedly dug by near-by London’s murderers
Behind those nettles ranked beside poached rides.
Deeper, an earthwork circles above its fosse
- Prohibited to boys on mountain bikes.
Here may be stumbled across the ingle of the gipsy witch,
And the lair of Turpin, rather than the glade of some Apsaras.
Here we have our wood-nymphs and the goblins
Who leer from our pollarded hornbeams. Are these
The cousins of those blue devils who prompted Clare
To commit himself to Epping’s lunatic cell?
Remember, Wordsworth lived here as well
At High Beech. Did Clare know his hero
Was just within reach? The “brook without a bridge
And nearly dry” is Epping, where the brooks begin as
Runnels clogged with leaves. And Clare observed
The dogs that still get exercised “where weeds
Are gifts too choice to throw away.”
But honestly, a forest’s hornbeamed bogies
Can’t be brought to book for a poet’s instability.
Hard to discover a rickety bridge here
Or dine on a tile from a ginger-bread house.
Herne, you’ll find, and a ragged staff brandishing bear.
It could be worse, be leshie, raksha, drude.
Or are these just inventions of the town
Whose Gherkin hives a forest-phobic populace:
Canary Wharfers, toasting to the Shard…
No need to invent those fish-net spangled birches
Flirting so seductively above their rooted boots.
Things are decidedly spooky. For instance, on magnetic
Hunter’s Hill, you cannot tell if you’re going up
Or if you’re going down the slope, just as Turpin
Had no clue, as he rode for York, he rode towards the rope.
Farms well-placed for poaching fetched the highest rents back then,
When pock-marked highwaymen handed ladies down
On the Cambridge Road. They’d split the loot
At Loughton Camp. A white hart was a sign to them.
@ Anthony Howell
Read by Anthony at the Tottenham Trees Poetry evening, March 2017
Epping is the first part of the "Songs of Realisation"
Polyglot Tottenham’s a babble. Ruled lines at the set angle,
Parallel ridges, brickwork. The high street calls for its Lointain:
Last summer it was southern Spain: lichen and the dried
Flambeaux of grasses seen on a wander. Spanish lavender,
Eagle owls and a stupa among the pines. This breezy day,
Luke Howard prompts us: “Cumulus. Cumulo-nimbus.”
Ah, but there was smog back then. ‘Tottenham International’
Cross-fades to a romantic vista on the edge of Woodford:
Not far away, yet remote as a Claude Lorrain.
...............................................................
Further north, the trees develop goitres.
Yes, and threads that are there or not, as a breeze lifts a branch
At a sunbeam’s touch. Forests are alive and dead.
Dying, they become their food. Petals like flattened pebbles,
Roots making veins in the path, and tracts of mire
You edge around, brushing things aside. For earth-encrusted
Uprootings visit High Beech: the elephants’ grave-yard.
These once–airborne pachyderms have been laid low
By the hurricane. Here was a galleon. Now it’s a hulk,
Its carcass prone against the slope. And no escape
From a pang of guilt. It’s where I might have scattered mother;
Not where I did, within earshot of the motorway.
Mock the superstition of us atheists. Andrew, alert
For the third bloody magpie, veering off the central lane.
* * *
Here the hunt rides also, here things are killed and eaten,
All their remains gone over again, by ants, and again
By the mites that feed on their leavings. The forest
Laps at the fringes of our constructions, its birdsong
Drowned by the traffic, its thresholds clogged by garbage.
Choppers flutter overhead. The M25 now separates
Upshire and Boadicea’s monument from reinforcing
Greenery. Planes drone like insects as they cross
Clearings of sky glimpsed through a spray of leaves.
Let’s move away from the parking spot, getting into stride,
Overtaking other walkers waiting on their dogs.
Our destinations are circles: hikes that incorporate landmarks –
The Buddha tree, the inkpond, the camp.
In this built-up county now, the forest is a patch;
Though once the perilous everywhere else, reaching from
The dunes to the mountains: a vegetable Tsunami
Effortlessly smothering the isles of our urbanity.
Land’s prevailing sea – of illusions formed from reality:
Death, disease, dissolution – fostering shoots and larvae,
Husks of things becoming loam like night.
Elsewhere there are werewolves and the misted retreats
Of the sages. Elsewhere there are chasms, table-fastnesses…
Unkempt hinterland hangs from unreachable heights
And chokes impenetrable depths. Elsewhere the bush is agog,
Its temples drowned in lianas, orchids and
Be-fronded cobras. Water-holes quench the jungle’s thirst.
Steaming swamps fill a holy river’s reaches.
What we’ve got, beyond the 406, are hillocks wrapped in copses,
Low-lying mire obstructing holly bottle-necks,
And tracts of heath, where, among clumps of furze,
Token cattle shake long horns at flies. A hidden golf-course
Backs away from birch, then oak, and then prodigious beech
- Seal-grey, lopped at antler-height, and squat,
Or left to soar above the make-shift graves
Hurriedly dug by near-by London’s murderers
Behind those nettles ranked beside poached rides.
Deeper, an earthwork circles above its fosse
- Prohibited to boys on mountain bikes.
Here may be stumbled across the ingle of the gipsy witch,
And the lair of Turpin, rather than the glade of some Apsaras.
Here we have our wood-nymphs and the goblins
Who leer from our pollarded hornbeams. Are these
The cousins of those blue devils who prompted Clare
To commit himself to Epping’s lunatic cell?
Remember, Wordsworth lived here as well
At High Beech. Did Clare know his hero
Was just within reach? The “brook without a bridge
And nearly dry” is Epping, where the brooks begin as
Runnels clogged with leaves. And Clare observed
The dogs that still get exercised “where weeds
Are gifts too choice to throw away.”
But honestly, a forest’s hornbeamed bogies
Can’t be brought to book for a poet’s instability.
Hard to discover a rickety bridge here
Or dine on a tile from a ginger-bread house.
Herne, you’ll find, and a ragged staff brandishing bear.
It could be worse, be leshie, raksha, drude.
Or are these just inventions of the town
Whose Gherkin hives a forest-phobic populace:
Canary Wharfers, toasting to the Shard…
No need to invent those fish-net spangled birches
Flirting so seductively above their rooted boots.
Things are decidedly spooky. For instance, on magnetic
Hunter’s Hill, you cannot tell if you’re going up
Or if you’re going down the slope, just as Turpin
Had no clue, as he rode for York, he rode towards the rope.
Farms well-placed for poaching fetched the highest rents back then,
When pock-marked highwaymen handed ladies down
On the Cambridge Road. They’d split the loot
At Loughton Camp. A white hart was a sign to them.
@ Anthony Howell
Read by Anthony at the Tottenham Trees Poetry evening, March 2017
Epping is the first part of the "Songs of Realisation"
