Richard Westcott's poetry

  Yes, eclipses with their threat of permanent loss of light can remind us of how old stories tried to explain and prevent what must have been potentially terrifying. Total loss of light, total loss of sight... My poem juxtaposes, perhaps even blends, my experience of eclipse (I draw on the 1999 eclipse which was more powerful) with that of the blinding of an Old Testament hero. Poor blinded Samson – brought down to Gaza, bound with fetters of brass, forced to grind in the prison house... the focus of derision. Until – 'suffer me that I may feel the pillars, that I may lean upon them' – momentarily empowered once again, he shared his own permanent darkness with his tormentors, bringing the world crashing down upon one and all. An eclipse to end all eclipses.   I reflect on the exclusion of light – in my case partial and temporary; in his, total and perpetual. Two voices, two very different endings. Eclipse  Birds fall silent at this false dusk. As circles ...

  So here it is – a bit of old chain from the dried-up mud floor of our barn. Yes, it was indeed a clever idea for someone to think of links – the way iron can be used to transmit power or resist force, flexibly.  So simple in retrospect, and so versatile.  Unlike archaeological photos, mine hasn’t got a scale to give you an idea of the size. Looking at this one then, the links might be tiny or huge; but whatever their size, they’re basically the same whether they're being used to tether a ship or decorate a neck, to drag a load or to restrain a slave. It’s interesting to reflect on such simple inventions from so long ago; practical ideas which subsequently enabled enormously important further developments. That's certainly the case for the chain.   But it travels further and deeper. As a metaphor, the chain has drawn forth chain smokers, chain reactions, house purchasing chains, mountain ranges and strings of islands, sets of shops or hotels, and just abo...

  On a hot summer's day, there's a quiet serenity associated with cows that's almost sacred. Ted Hughes certainly thought so, describing them when lying down in a herd as a ruined holy city, each a fragment of temple, almost unearthly, 'as if a ray from heaven still rested across their brows.' A remarkable reflection from a definitely unsentimental poet, which resonates with a similarly unexpected response in an entirely different medium over two hundred years later from the composer Haydn. In his oratorio The Creation, Haydn uses Raphael to tell us how on the sixth day God created the creatures, focusing on a representative selection. He begins with the lion and then moves on to tiger, stag, horse, cattle, sheep, insects and worms – each musically illustrated. Haydn introduces cattle beautifully with one of his loveliest melodies. So I find myself in good company when I am moved – or should I say settled – by their noble tranquillity bordering on holiness. ...

  Just me, and that sound. One man,  earth and time-bound; one bird, free in an empty sky. A unique occasion. But a moment shared by so many others... Which experience then, despite – or because even – of its unoriginality, I hope might justify another  poem.   Lark Is that it, that little speck – is that the bird which never stops to take a breath, the bird whose song someone called a silver chain of many links – can you see where it begins, this chain of sound linking me to somewhere high – like the string of a kite, a vanishing line which tugs with a life of its own, as if sounds by themselves could draw me up towards the origin of that song – while all I can do is strain my neck focusing upon infinity as I scan the sky, seeking the source of a singing that hints at eternity?

Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway Joseph Mallord Turner 1844   Run little hare, run for your life run through the rain as fast as you can run in a line like the monster behind you – to be saved by your speed, little hare try to outrun the thundering engine jink in a moment so that the giant rumbling by, as blind as Orion will travel away, way past a hare one sodden ploughman led by his horses two men in their boat trying to fish along with some others on the far bank – none of them noticed. No, no one saw you not even the man who wanted to see thrusting his head out of the window blinded by rain driven into his eyes straining to breathe through the steam and the speed to find himself falling back breathless like you – now at rest.  No need to run any more as the rain goes on raining, the river flows by and all those various people remaining continue to do whatever they do in no kind of hurry – unlike a train cha...

  A drawing given to us by an artist friend got me thinking and wanting to know a bit more about the subject – Jonah. Michael's drawing itself is curious – it's a drawing of the act of drawing, in which the observer/creator himself is playing a part, his hand occupying a large area of the paper as it produces the rough waves – even to the extent of the nib of his pen giving shape to the jaws of the devouring fish. At which point (no doubt like Jonah himself) I begin to feel a bit dizzy, tossed between the intriguing ancient story, the immediacy of the event with its storm and terrifying drastic action, the observation of the artist and my own fear as I imagine the scene – all the while conscious that the whole episode has been, and is actually being, made up. Having read it up, I realised it really is quite a story – one rich in lessons about obedience and disobedience, mercy and justice, repentance and compassion, weakness and power, the predictable and the totally unexpecte...

  . But maybe I should offer no apology. Poetry has the right, responsibility even, to deal with all that is human: to communicate, to share emotion, to stimulate thought and to help understanding – along with  much more of course. So listen then for a moment to a man, normal in many ways, convinced of his own normality and decency, yet deeply involved in evil. Evil is so complicated. Horrific actions can be justified; they may not even be seen as such by the perpetrator, when evil is all around and worse things are being done... Gold   My name is Hellinger.  I mine for gold. Not for me those specks of dust flushed down some distant stream, nor heavy work with spade and hammer upon unyielding rock.  The gold I find has been refined – I leave it to others to fire the furnace.  My finished gold falls in little balls to rattle in my bowl.   No fight, no piracy – this is not stealing, rather rescue. No gold rush here – t...

  Silver   Second-hand silver coming in second after those greater golden moments   this borrowed light will never dazzle yet softly pulls me out to where   there’s barely a shadow, though all around are pools, fulfilled and cool.   No gilding here or dear adornment – Eldorado’s far away.   May golden youth   enjoy its day while sunbursts flare. Still silver gleams and I reflect   on unseen oceans drawn like me towards a power beyond themselves –   in light like this the first must give way to that which will follow, as we wax and we wane.          

    As I said, old as Janus was, I’m sure his view wouldn't have extended to prehistory. Or, come to think of it, to us here now. My poem for this month looks back that far, way past Janus, into a boggy place here in Devon. A quarryman working in Kingsteignton in 1867 found a little wooden figure which could be held in his hand. Preserved by the clay, this model man is some 2,400 years old.  His body may be attenuated and armless, but somehow he exerts an extraordinary power.  The eroded face, carved in the late Iron Age, confronts us – you, me – one face facing another. Was he a religious idol, a gift to the gods or just a doll, the archaeologists ask? We can't answer that question. And, if I may say so, perhaps it doesn’t really matter.  He is what he is – like us. What we do know is that one's encounter with him remains etched deeper in the memory after a visit to the Royal Albert Memorial Museum than many another far more beautiful, grande...

  December’s the month of ends, and beginnings: the old year’s about to be left behind, a new one awaits. Christmas itself is of course a celebration of the arrival of a new life – a particularly special one for many, but then all new life’s nothing short of miraculous. Pause for thought. But where did it come from? What happened before? And where if anywhere does it go to? The story told by Bede which responds to these questions is well-known. We hear that an unknown seventh century nobleman related it to king Edwin of Northumbria, when he was considering whether to convert to Christianity. Illustrating the brevity and transience of life with a before and after existence, it seems to have convinced Edwin of the validity of the new religion.   For me however, the description of the bird’s flight through the brightly lit and noisy hall from darkness, silence and solitude into the same at the far end, the effect is equally powerful, though different. But this is no...

  This is a true story – I mean, it actually happened. By which I mean, a real person told it, much as I'm telling it to you now. But is it a True History in the sense that the story she was telling was true? This is where it becomes difficult.   She herself thought it was true, and –   however absurd if not incredible and so probably untrue as it may sound to us to us now – those who heard it treated it as definitely true.   With dreadful consequences. So, listen now to Bessie Dunlop of Lyne in Ayrshire. What happened as a result follows.   A True History   He helped me on my way as I was lost and it was dusk. He looked an honest older man, grey bearded, in a long grey coat – the sleeves were of the Lombard sort, old fashioned, and he wore a hat – broad brimmed and black, tied down below his chestnut face which creased and cracked around his eyes.  A wand of white he carried.  There is no more that I can tell...

  Some, perhaps many, would say poetry concerns itself (too much?) with sweet and lovely things – like birds and flowers, music and beautiful landscapes, not to mention love itself – with even poignant emotions like grief given a bitter-sweet flavour. But as we all know, life is littered with obstacles, formidable difficulties and frustrations. Not to mention excrement... please read on. Here's a man only half way through an appalling list of challenges, telling us about a particularly foul one. Little wonder then that in these circumstances he'd have been pretty foul-mouthed himself. We know that he had a vile temper, so I'm sure he'd have been an outspoken effer and blinder. Conventionally though, poetry – especially the afore-mentioned Fotherington-tomas stuff – would never ever have included such a vocabulary, even though these are words to be heard all the time, especially when emotions are running high. Which perhaps explains my difficulty wanting to use ...

What an admirable fellow is Jeremy Bentham! The basic principle underpinning his utilitarian ethics was that a ny action is right insofar as it increases happiness, and wrong insofar as it increases pain.  H e spoke up for the abolition of slavery, corporal and capital punishment; for women's rights (including the right to divorce), for wider and better education; for the extension of the suffrage; for animal rights; for the decriminalization of homosexuality – and much more. And likeable too. While serious in his advocacies, this clever and brave man, whose humanitarian reform ideas were heavily criticised, enjoyed a sense of humour, demonstrated for example by the engagingly curious smile on his (admittedly wax work) face. and his name for his cat – The Reverend Sir John Langbourne. But it was the instructions he left for his public dissection, preservation and exhibition in his familiar clothes and chair, along with the request that his auto-icon be occasionally wheeled out t...

  This is my 100 th post! It's interesting to wonder why the number One Hundred enjoys such special status. Is it because it's the first time three digits appear together? Or is it because, with the one and two noughts bringing an awareness of going back to the original, it feels like an entry into a new chapter, time, world even? It's certainly both an end and starting point, suggesting completion and new beginnings at the same time. So here it is – the unique symmetry of ten times ten creating this heavily serious number of One Hundred, the rhyming One Hundred. One hundred. one hundred, one hundred... That one hundred provides the per cent through which we tend to perceive and think about our fractionated world. And so much more... Those chronicled centuries rolling back in time… The tight-knit ranks of a defined unit commanded by the Centurion… The lines that the errant schoolboy was told to write… The occasion for a card from the monarch… The ...