Lay for the Day 4th January

A day for the adventurous to die.

T.S. Eliot, full of years, in 1965; Donald Campbell, suddenly, in 1967, in an attempt on the world speed record in his boat Bluebird.

The Fool

He comes down from the hill,
with a tiptoe, unclipped poodle
idling at heel,
a bending stalk of grass
between his teeth. The poppies shake
in summer wind;
the sky is behind him.
Tall rain-clouds, static, piled up on
the skyline, roll
at last over the crags.
Ditches burst, cisterns flooded, young
crops beaten flat.

Later, sat by the wall
looking down, watching the night fall,
dew wet the sedge,
he rose when the fat stars
of autumn started to glimmer,
drops on his face,
hitching up his collar
against the veering gust that drives
the small dead leaves,
drifting past the chapel
to a bed among the long stones,
speechless as them.

Meanwhile looms were busy,
yearlings trotted to the butcher.
Logs split and stacked,
we waited once more for
winter to cut off the passes.
He grew more grey,
like empty twigs of birch
against the light, stark and absent:
also filthier,
daily nearer to blent
with the dirt; thinner, more tattered
and somnolent.

When the ground was frozen
he passed away, whom we’d called “fool”
for no reason.
The doctor and priest both
attended, and were not required,
who’d also guessed
at a name for the care-
carved face we couldn’t place, but felt
we’d met before.
“The sea,” he said in death’s
fever, “the sea is beautiful.”
We took his word.

John Gibbens
from Ballads, Two

The Lay Reader: an archive of the poetic calendar