Poetic TAG

! " ! " #$ #$ #$ ! # % ! #$ & ' & '* & ' % & ' ( ) ' ' ' ' $ -../' % & % % #$ & # 0" #$ % ) & '+ 1 & ' & '2 , 1 ' ' Melanie Giles The last Wold Ranger I They gave him a shed at the edge of the yard when the weather turned bad, rain sleeting over the tops. Snow had always brought the Rangers out from barns and quarries, set aside for men who couldn’t settle for one thing or another but brought a bottle, gossip, tack to the High Wolds farms. Hands for turnip-hoeing, hedge-laying, threshing: season-work. Other years he might have gone to ‘Spike’ (the casualty ward at York) for warmth, a bite, company, clean clothes. Leggy Slim. Dog Geordie. Soldier Tom. All of them were dead now. Kelly couldn’t make the walk and so he stayed, thought all the time of leaving. Where he’d go. Once a week, the farm-hands drove him into Malton, for the dole; ignored the smell, the foul-mouthed scorn, and – going home – the reek of drink. It would get to anyone, they said, and mostly left him to himself, a little mad. He coveted the bed, and lived off tins, but opening them he’d dream of hares and rabbits, poaching with Spanish Prince or drumming-up a stew With Methylated Annie; the chalk-pit bothy, her bare feet. He said he’d leave in Spring, hung up his coat. Three years later they carried him out, bootless. Hardly dressed for walking. 2 II ‘Have a look if you want, but watch that roof!’ We clamber in. The room smells of hessian and rain, the light from the window webbed with grime. Moth-wings dust the moulder of clothes and blankets on the bed. Boots lie where he left them, sprawled across the floor. By the grate, the chair sags with a thin and bony weight; a kettle lurches on the sackcloth at its feet. Shelves warp under the weight of tins, labels weep with rust. Tea-packet cards and clippings flake from the walls. ‘Kings and Queens of England’, ‘Bathing Beauties’, ‘Famous Battleships’. ‘He used to work the docks at Liverpool. We had the social out – thought he was deaf From shelling at the front. He never said.’ We touch nothing, uninvited. Photograph the way he fills the room with his absence; his heel-marks in the coal heap, the slack-shouldered shadow of his coat, staining the wall. 3 Inspired by the Boeotia Survey, Greece, some time ago. Names have been changed. With thanks to Anthony Snodgrass and the team... Michael Given There are those who stoop, and those who stand up straight and stiff: some are bored and walk too fast, some are bored and walk too slow: the stoopers lean on short iron sticks like caricatures of bent old men: they strike the stones before them as if blindly tapping their way across the fields: everyone clutches dirty plastic bags with little scraps of pottery. What are you doing? I was walking along the road, and saw all these people in my vine fields. I had no idea who they were; they couldn't be my family, as they're all in Athens now. So I came straight up to see. What are you doing? What are you looking for? rows of drying onions, rust-red in the sun, stretching across the dusty field fields of cotton on the next ridge, green carpet tiles on an undulating floor waving forests of water jets, the drooping fronds leaning across one another fig tree with hard green figs, and under it a block of concrete as a seat spots of straw-yellow in the lush green of the cotton, flowering pink sacks on the red-brown earth, the onions all gathered now stack of drainpipes, and an old encaked whitewash tin olives, hard and green and speckled, unripe hot and sultry this afternoon, and the rolling of distant thunder like the trucks in the marble works. The sky a blotchy slate grey with washed-out blues 4 and whites, the patches with sharp edges near the sun, and the sun stares out from behind them with a harsh, grey light. The peaks of Helicon rise greying and conical answering the patches of cloud above them Water jets in the wind, like dry ice streaming across a fertile green slope Look I'm sorry There's nothing we can do We've just got to get this bit done I'd do it as well, but I don't want to get my clipboard wet They're not really that bad anyway, you won't get that wet (Yeh, says Bob, they look pretty dry) Misty spray in our faces, driving downwind. A growing whisper as the jet comes nearer over the leaves of the cotton plants. Crouching behind a row as it passes over the top. Drumming, and the cold drops on your back 5 we finished a transect and heard simon calling us from the door of a small workshop where he was standing holding a whole hellenistic unguentarium, while an old man with grey stubble, pebble glasses and a dirty cap looked on delighted at our delight he told us how he found some while ploughing; there was a whole cemetery he said a hundred tombs. we tried to ask exactly where they were and when he had found them but he just continued talking vaguely about how impressive they all were, how big, and how deep, peering at each of us through his pebble glasses. he insisted that we should have a melon; we were english, he was greek, there was some special kinship and so we had to have some melon 6 Swishing through the stubble, high stalks with matted straw and a few ears of barley, not gleaned yet Teasing cotton, the soft and slippery wool loosening and spreading in my fingers, hard entangled seeds in the core Cracking open walnuts with a couple of rocks: green and brown mush, dark shell, shining white kernel Cutting into the granular flesh of the water melon with a breadknife, resting it on an inscribed and whitewashed column drum Paddling down the tomato plants beside the irrigation pipe, the mud sucking to my boots Harmonic jangling, the rustle of stubble, the whistles of the herdsman: a flock of white sheep and black goats crossing the hillside above us. The bells more distinguishable now as they come closer, steady rhythms as they step across the stubble field; the deep and high tones coincide, and drift apart, and syncopate: a beautiful mellow music. Old billy-goat stops and turns his head to watch me. His horns squint and twisting, thin and straggly beard hanging down onto the bulbous and battered bell. Where he was, a few half-eaten fig leaves. picking the lids off dried up poppies, watching the tiny flies crawling out of their cells old chap up on Misorahi picking figs and watching me as I sherded past him; looked at all the equipment hanging round me, and demanded to know what it was all for, compass, sherd counter, finds bag; halfway through my explanation he waved me on in the direction I was going; then stopped me, and wanted to know about our van; then waved me on again stepping through the cotton plants, the hard round buds knocking against my boots He was walking slowly down the road towards us. I was the nearest, and he gave me that little sideways shake of the head which means, 'What are you doing? Explain yourself.' I gave him my prepared speech about archaeologists and pottery and ancient villages, his grinning face and grey stubble a few inches away. He was interested, and we scuffed around in the dirt until we found a sherd. 7 Marjolijn Kok This pit This pit is not my pit This pit belongs to the land This pit belongs to the sky This pit is not my pit I may make this pit I may dig this pit This pit is not my pit I do not choose the place I do not choose the form I do not choose the content This pit is not my pit This is the season This is the place These are the objects This pit is not my pit This pit is not my pit This pit is not my pit 8 Erik van Rossenberg participant observation (museo nazionale preistorico-etnografico Luigi Pigorini, Roma-EUR) hold your breath and be quiet when you climb the monumental stairs and beware the flights of sizzling spears because this is where the world is guarded don’t throw the lot of boomerangs that are put on display forever like the people caught in videos forced to live over and over again be subjected to colonial rule stand still and adopt a deadly stare return the gaze of things in order and kill the objects showcases lay bare put aside the exposed remains of people and make space to lay yourself to rest on a bed of beads among ceramic vessels then close your eyes and take a deep breath 9 Alice Samson Hunebedden, September 2004 In overcast Loon we paced round our first megalith; Me with compass and notebook, she with indulgence (at me) and triumph (at finding the way) We watched a blue and yellow train in the distance, enter and exit the stones Like a stick in a river passing under a bridge in a child’s game. Further on in Balloo, we saw a vast insect form, Its exoskeleton green, lumpen under a circle of oaks. She suggested we camp, so we pitched in the damp, a little way off And got nervous from the sounds tents make you hear in the night. And so the days went on, busy with stones Linked by bike rides, shop stops, detours, Each hunebed found and photographed And attached to a memory by a conversation or something Our experiences structured by big rocks. 10 Wouter Waldus The journey Seagulls hover over the tidal flat while the sun catches waves unaware, as if nature is bored momentarily with a landscape so level and vast Where land and sea dispute the tides a farmer and eight of his cattle roam in line and sedately, without a moan making their way to the other side Leaving their tracks in the mud they imprint the flat with their journey to the land of the man’s yearning beyond a horizon, filled with clouds Darkening rain gets the traces soaked and reflects the dying rays of sun, a thought cherished for not too long of the trek along irretrievable roads. 15 November 2000; 15.10 [Translation: Erik van Rossenberg] 11