Richard Westcott's poetry

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...