Another poem written and spoken by Bert Biscoe: one where every word should be savoured to appreciate the full thrust and vigour of his message.
A cup of tea at five in The Ale House
Old comrades speak quietly
In shady corners of anonymous bars –
They talk of waiting, biding,
Sitting at the heart of webs
Beside corporate water-butts
Connected by flaking downpipes
To empires, bureaucracies,
Unions, democracies – sadness
Pervading their whispers,
They turn to inspect over shoulders
Shop-girls before their buses
Taking cocktails and cosmetics
To wash away the taste of servility,
The rudeness of consumption
And conflict bred by ‘the great bargain’
Between income and time –
They stride on patent heels
In pencil skirts, turning heads
And beguiling demons of escape
To sink salvation to a ring
And rosemary proposal – we hush
Our murmurs of revolution,
Incitement, promotion, subversion,
For fear of being overheard –
We know the risk of night-club gossip
In mysterious and distant corners
That gleans our knot and extends
Lacquered scarlet nails to pick
And undo, for the networks
Which fester in loneliness and curiosity
And their jackboot, a rapping glove
And bayonet, the herding, the wire…
To the splintered door and mind,
For nothing more than a turn
Of phrase, a glance across the table,
An idle thought on the worst of days,
And doubts, always kindled
By fear and jealousy – but we go on,
We replenish our cups,
We remain when buses have departed,
And music returns to claim the night;
We lend an ear to murdered ballads
Strangled in tuneless throats
And strain to catch a bedroom tune
Reversing towards the soul
Whilst bears and apes down their ale
And curdle brains in alcohol
And pirates bawl rebellions
Of martyrs, mates and mariners,
And slowly turn the capstan
Which clicks the compass home
Around the waking clock – old friends
In shadows, power and influence
At the service of nation,
And nation prone, inert, weary,
Tossing injustice and spinning coins,
Lying awake beyond the lights,
Beyond the owl, and hearing
Only claws and whiskers
Searching for inspiration
In the tunnels, between bins,
In the rub of shame and pride
Where resistance begins, where partisans
Mark out camps and move
Amongst the trees, and quietly
Patient minds sit tight,
Content to wait and watch,
To see what stillness sees –
The time must come,
Ambition and stasis rub
Sticks together over stones
Of self between impatient knees –
To belong is not the song
Of mercenaries, communion
With yews and stones,
With garlic bones and memories,
These are things of childhood
Which grey and lengthen, strands
Of manes, thatches of identity
Which burn between executives
And labourers from the bench
And slate to the lychen gate,
And roar at rugby in revolution
Until the penny corrodes the eye
And haunting gulls, souls
Of the dead, on muscular wings,
Snatching crusts and cones,
And, flying low in screeched revenge,
Terrorise weekends, divebomb pastries,
Howl from lamposts, muster over ploughs,
And, in open landfill wounds,
Gather confidence and garbage
To convince, persuade and hasten
The end of apes, of bipedal dominance
And estuarial waters under caps
And ribbons, the widows’ weeds
Of city and town, of republic and crown –
From the bar she steps
To gather empties and wipe
Our conspiracy from her table,
The damp cloth sweeping drops
And smears, crumbs and flakes.
We stand and swear in silence,
For we each know love
In a different way, not for heart
Or hand, but rather, for our Land –
A passion draped in nation,
A line from a song, a tripwire
Of explosion in early thought
That here, and only here,
Is the only one of all the places,
All the tangles of myth
And superstition, of epitaphs
And banners, all the consolation
And inspiration, all the cliffs
And moors can give – this is our land
And we must prevail – even as
The hammer strikes
Calvary’s nail and screams
Penetrate soundproof walls of heaven
To momentarily awake
The old wizard and his boy-king
From the deepest sleep of pain –
We know we will come to whisper
In the dark corner, hidden under
Shopgirl gossip from microphones
And paranoia – and we’ll tell ourselves
‘Not long now! Something
Eventually must change – soon
It will be summer, then winter,
And plucking on the string of order,
Then it will be ours, Spring,
And the time to pull the sword,
To rise on the red-legged crow,
To rouse the horde with a single word –
Then clench our fist and O!
Into the teeth of the howling storm
Cry ‘Kernow! Kernow bys vykken!’
And shout from Hellfire Corner,
Shout from Morwenstow, Rame,
Lizardh, Zennor – shout our name,
Till doors fly ajar and the scorer
Marks ‘Won!’ across his page –
Then shall begin our Cornish Age!’
More of Bert’s Cornish themed poems can be found on this site by making a word search on his name.
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. For many years he represented 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’.