Ah! We’ll sit beside the aching Bal
To hold our heart between its knees –
Still hands, uncalloused now
Stir melancholy’s slow reprise –
It suits the eye to always choose
To stare at slowly moving ground
Beneath soft sandalled shuffled soles
Where nail’d steps once rang their sound,
And, pressed beneath the spirit,
Prone as mermaids conjured, to weep!
It suits despondent pity to bless
The labours passed of they who sleep –
It is for plough-wrought brow
And tremulous mournful voices
To ignore the sounds of Crofty now
A-brim with modern ‘total’ noises –
Knockers speak tomorrow’s tongue
Of element and indium, conductor tin,
Of sun and rain, all weather reversed,
And young the ancient to again begin –
Too soon by far to lament the end
And wise the Cap’n who shines his shoe,
Who takes the call to once more descend
As lode and price come right to hue –
Wheels turn and rock gives up its ore,
What is lost will find itself the prize
As fortune seeks to reward good hope
And damn the fool for self-deceiving lies.
(Photo Steve Tanner)
Vyager gans Geryow (Bert Biscoe) lives in Truro. He is a poet and songwriter whose work draws on his interest in history, politics, social justice and language. He represents the people of Boscawen Division on Cornwall Council. The Division was formerly called ‘Moresk’ – an unbroken link from civic administration to the hurried escape of Tristan and Iseult from the vengeful wrath of King Mark – Bert tries to invest Cornish values into the demand of modern life. His work is fun, and best read aloud – which he does whenever the opportunity arises, especially with fellow Cornish poet, Pol Hodge. ‘Living in Trurra’ he says. ‘Means that there is a constancy of running water beneath your feet – there are two clocks which ring the hours dissonantly and out of step – a good environment for poems to flourish in the cracks and shadows. Nowadays, the mullet listen attentively in the lee of the Old Bridge’.
