Bosustow’s meditation

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A few years ago we were sitting at Predannick on a hot day looking across Mount’s Bay. We were joined by John Bosustow, who had come to see who was taking a rest on his land. We got talking. I asked if he’d always lived on the Lizard. He pointed across the Bay to Mousehole to a farmstead called Bosustow. ‘Tha’s where I come from’. He said. ‘How long you been here?’ I asked. ‘O! Couple of hundred year I spawse!’ Much later, I discovered a family tree researched by my Mother, Joan Biscoe. I was suprised to find that, in 1911 my relative, John Goodman, had married Mary Bosustow of The Lizard. They left Cornwall and settled in New Zealand. Mary died in 1962. Funny old world. I always wondered why that chance encounter at Predannick just sticks around in my head. Bert Biscoe.

 

Bosustow’s Meditation

(An audio version read by Bert Biscoe)

 

The thorn found its spot,

Slap-bang in the tip,

The index tip, right hand,

Which takes the root note

Of any chord, and points

The way of melody,

A spriggan tip, half-curved

In arthritic willingness

To work and please, to

Indicate across the glaring

Bay the dip behind a village,

The narrow eye and simple

Words squeezed to sound

A larynx of day, a surrender,

A giving-way – ‘that is

The hamlet which bears

The name beside my dates

In registers and accounts –

Who knows now why

We moved. I don’t know

If they came by road

Or by boat across the Bay,

Under the nose

And magistrate’s gaze

Of the Mount. It wasn’t

To improve their land,

That’s for sure! I look

Over there. Now and then

I stop my ranging round,

And sit just here to stare

Over the water and light –

If I could I’d stop

A cormorant, buy it lunch,

And ask it what it knows –

O! I have seen them,

Stealthy and quick,

Just above the waves,

Slip unperturbed

From harbour rock –

Marker of Spanish graves –

To thump-thump the air

And bear a covert signal,

A coded cypher scroll,

Reports of observation –

For none can know the mind

Of navigators, skippers

And traders on occasion

Enquiring for direction,

Sepulchral tudor caps

And wide-brimmed puritan

Mitres, darkly haloed

To shade the earnest faith

From salt-spray

And inquisition of the sun,

And fresh from Newlyn shute

To be gone to argue

And article a republic

Out of buffalo plains

And tribal burial grounds –

None but a cormorant

Watching on the rock

Can know such things –

I have always ploughed

As my father’s father

Always inwardly vowed,

Around the upright stones,

And paid my tithes

In labour to clear the yard

Of garlic, to ease

The digestion of ghosts

Whose endless suppers of clay

Fill the silence

With suggestion, and passing

The time of dawn-drained

Dusks kneaded and turned

Into urns and eternal tasks,

I take a clutch of flowers

To my queen of kitchen’s domain

To pouch beneath her chin,

In case the old woman

Who came a-calling had left behind

Some fragment or

Fingerprint of original sin –

We’ve had a car

Since twenty-three – for

Market and the bank,

And driving brides to weddings,

And to wave au revoir

To the marching khaki rank,

The dread of telegram,

The coming home and healing

Of an unseen sleepless scar,

And silence behind the plough,

The harvest of anxiety,

The inner crying neck, the hope

Of fortune from a wreck,

Temptation to go to sea,

A glance across the mowhay

Enough to know ‘All’s well!

There’s peace and quiet

And numbness

Down there in speechless Hell –

The bugle, the leaded list

And the name I share

With the dip behind the village

Across the Bay, over there,

Not in the solemn column –

Despite the means

And encouragement of friends,

I have never been,

Never ventured on Sunday drive,

To meander unfamiliar

Yet back-of-my-hand lanes

To stare through bars

Of bramble gates into eyes

Of windows, over gables

And flaking fascias under slates,

To see old generations

Move behind the nets,

Bring water and towels

And lower boxes over stairs –

It was not far, but yet

It is a world away – a world

At least – and if I went

What would I find? Not

So much between the posts

Of gateways which one of mine

Undoubtedly set to speak

With menhir eloquence

To any and all who lean

Or lift the harvest latch

Or call the fattening fortune

Home – what would I find

Beneath the garlic pouch,

The corner patch of celandine

Left for spriggan’s

Moonlit dance for lucky corn

And dry September’s straw –

Myself, I fear, and others

Too near to be mere brothers,

Sprites and echoes,

Cold breaths of seasons

Measured in lichen letters

Across a lurch of slabs,

Of epitaph verses, of dates

And biblical names, a line

Perhaps of Deuteronomy

Or Ezekiel or Revelation

Along the foundation strip

Of a northern aisle’s narrow

Stained depiction

Of crucifixion and ascension –

The truth of exile across the Bay,

It’s reasons beyond the aye and nay,

Reasons indeed to go

Anywhere but there, that dip

Behind the brow of Mousehole,

In the nape of Kernow’s neck –

Despite, or perhaps because

My reluctance brings me here

To show you

What is of little use to you,

Though I could never visit

Or wander amongst the graves,

Or inhale the gatepost spirit,

Or mutter under the eaves –

Though I know it’s there,

And centuries lie between us,

Though it feels like yesterday –

How Time circles it Square! –

I’m glad I have always

Had it in my circling sight,

For someday,

Or rather night, I might

Creep away, and return

To look across the invitation

Of this bay

To land which bears the clay

Of my hand, and thus, trapped,

I might pass back and forth,

Five bars latched between

Twin posts and shut

To keep the restless self

Grazing and lying, waiting

For rains that turn the blood

To water which drains

To freshen the harbour,

To signal to an apocalyptic

Cormorant the moment

To begin its covert flight –

That’s where I come from,

And over there, a cousin,

Pointing along a crooked finger,

To declare: ‘That’s where

I come from – over there!’

That’s why I come here

To sit quite still and stare.

 

(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’.

 

 

 

 

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Vyager gans Geryow (Bert Biscoe) lives in Truro. He is a poet and songwriter whose work draws on his interests 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’.

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