(4) Now for the words themselves, or as you teach us to say, Ms Martin, the lexis.
(a) When we see the word ‘darkness’, we immediately think of ‘no light’, the absence of light. And we know that this means we cannot see anything with our eyes. We also know it is easy to get lost in darkness or to stumble or bump into things.
(b) But we notice there is a dash after the word. And this makes us feel (as much as think) that something else is about to follow. It means that the line, which in this case consists of only one word, is in some way attached to, or leads to, or is part of the next line.
(c) We go to the next line, which has two words, ‘your hand’, and another dash. We assume this means that another person (we do not know which gender, just as we do not know the gender of the ‘I’ of the poem) is present and has given her/his hand to the ‘I’ person. The dash leads us to the next line.
(d) We read ‘light enough’ as meaning that the other person’s hand helps the ‘I’ to find the way and is therefore like a light and is sufficient for the purpose.
(5) But because we assume this is a poem and not prose, we also know more is being said than this very prose-like meaning. Which is what?
Here are possibilities, which I had in mind when writing the poem (there may be more, which I have not thought of, but which I’d like it if other people find in the words. You told us once, Ms Martin, that there are critics who say that the reader is as much the creator of a poem, or of any piece of writing, as the writer. We all said this was
As soon as I could get out of her clutches I called Will’s mobile. Not in use. So I texted him: cal quik c. Then cycled home in a swivet and paced about my room, fuming. Delayed anger molested me. I began to tremble. My body felt weak because I knew I’d been weak of mind, weak of will. Morally weak. I hadn’t stood up for myself. I’d allowed myself to be put upon. Suborned is the word I needed but didn’t know: to be incited, bribed or blackmailed to commit a wrongful act. I’d promised to do something I didn’t want to do and shouldn’t do. I’d betrayed myself, and I’d betrayed Will.
I will not do it, I thought. I will not!
But I’d promised.
Was it right to keep a promise to do something wrong?
I had to keep my promise. But how could I without lying and without doing wrong?
All of a sudden I had to go to the loo. My body wanted to be rid of the rubbish that was clogging up my insides.
I’d hardly finished when I heard my mobile ringing.
Will, of course. ‘What’s matter?’
‘Where are you?’
‘Rehearsing for our last gig. I told you.’
‘Did you? Forgot. Listen. I’ve got to see you.’
‘Why? What’s up? Are you all right?’
‘No. Must see you. Really must, Will. Now.’
A pause – I thought, Why does he always have to weigh things up? – before he said, ‘Kissing tree in half an hour. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
Too agitated to hang about in my room, I cycled straight to ‘our’ tree, the one by the river in the field where we sat and had breakfast during our first run together and where we always took a breather every time we ran that route. Will said the tree was a common alder. It had four trunks fanning out from the ground. One of them had grown low over the river before bending up, which made a seat from which you could
rubbish, especially you, Ms Martin. But I think in this case it is true):
(a) ‘darkness’ can refer to the inside of us as well as the outside. We say we are ‘in the dark’ when we do not understand something. We can have ‘dark feelings’, which are feelings of anger perhaps, or confusion or sadness.
(b) In that case, if someone who matters to us – a lover especially – gives us his/her hand, this can ‘lighten our darkness’. It can make us feel comforted and feel better. It can clear away worries about whether or not the other person likes or loves us. If we are in trouble or having a bad time, ‘to be given a hand’ means to be helped.
(c) To be helped or to be reassured about someone’s love gets rid of heavy, gloomy feelings and makes us feel better. When we feel better, we feel lighter. Therefore the light in the poem can be meant in three senses: (i) light as in the light we see by, (ii) light as in weight, and (iii) light as in comfortable, happy feelings.
(d) This poem could therefore be a love poem (which is what I meant it to be). It could be (for me, it is) about a lover reassuring the loved one by giving his/her hand, perhaps after they have had an argument or have fallen out or have been unhappy for some reason. Or perhaps something unpleasant or sad has happened to ‘I’ and the lover has taken hold of her/his hand to show support and give help and show love.
(e) If the hand is the hand of the lover, and it is ‘light enough’, then it means that the lover is just right, is not too heavy for the loved one. So the poem also means that the lovers are well matched. They can go hand-in-hand through life, however dark and difficult their journey might be.
(f) I think this poem is also about touch rather than sight, and about touch rather than words. Some things can be said better by touch than by words. And some things that we cannot ‘see’ in the other person, we can tell by the touch of
dangle your feet above the water. Its leaves, almost heart-shaped, didn’t turn into autumn colours but only deepened as they aged until they fell like dark-green confetti in November, carpeting the ground and floating away in the river. The bark on the field side of one of the trunks was rubbed smooth where cattle had used it as a scratching pole. Strands of fur were caught in the cracks.
We called it our kissing tree because Will would lean against the trunk nearest the river, where we couldn’t be seen from the cycle path, I’d press myself against him, and we’d kiss and talk and cuddle. Whatever our troubles, whatever was going on between us, we always felt calmed when we were there. It was a special place, and we were vexed if we found other people occupying it. Afterwards, we always cleared away any sign these squatters had left before we reclaimed it for ourselves.
Will arrived, out of breath and sweating, having run fast all the way. He had to stand, bowed before me with his hands on his knees, panting for a minute or two, before we could kiss and hug and breathe each other in. When it was time for words he wanted to know what the matter was and why it was so urgent. I was still wondering how to keep my promise while finding out what I needed to know. This was one of those occasions when the answer came, not by thinking it out, but by living it.
I said maybe I was panicking because I knew he would be going away in a couple of days and I dreaded losing him and it just came over me that I had to see him. (This was not a lie. I had panicked, I did dread losing him, and I always wanted to see him, every minute of the day.) It’ll be okay, he said. Why did I think I’d lose him? Because, I said, we’d be apart for weeks on end and there were bound to be interesting girls, interesting women at the college, who would know all about trees (which I did not) and who would take him from me. He laughed and kissed my closed eyes and said it
their hand. Hands can talk just as well as words. A lover’s hand can lighten our darkness.
I know my poem is very very simple. And it is probably rubbish. I know it doesn’t use many poetic techniques – like rhyme or assonance or alliteration, etc. I know I have a lot to learn as a would-be poet. I modelled my poem on the ancient Japanese ‘tanka’ (short poems) written by Izumi Shikibu and the other poets my Japanese friend Izumi gave me. I like their simplicity and the way they make poems about things (feelings especially) without mentioning the things (the feelings) themselves. I think this is called ‘allusion’. In my poem I have not mentioned love or the kind of darkness I mean, but I have alluded to them. And in the way I have put the words together, I hope I have left the reader enough clues to construct the various meanings for herself, and also to make the poem mean what is obvious to her.
I hope I have shown that by making the poem in this way I have given darkn
ess a being, which allows it to mean more than prose can mean when using only the same few words. I have done this by the choice of words, the arrangement of the words in lines, the absence of punctuation, and by the use of the dash (which I have learned from Emily Dickinson). And I hope this shows what I mean when I say that in my opinion a poem should be as well as mean, and that it will mean what it means because of the way it is made.
From writing this essay I have learned that a poem is an object (like a piece of sculpture or a painting) as well as a message. I have learned that what matters most about a poem is the special ways it uses language. And I have learned that a poem is like a piece of music. You told us, Ms Martin, that someone (I forget who) has defined poetry as ‘a kind of music whose meaning becomes plain’. I agree that this is right.
wouldn’t happen, and I said, how did he know? and he hugged me tight and said, ‘Because I know.’
I said nothing more. Better than words to be held tight, and smelling him, and his body surveying mine, and feeling his love filling me. But he hadn’t said he loved me. He’d never said that. I so wanted him to say it. Particularly today, after his mother. Perhaps if I kept quiet and held onto him he might feel my need and might say it at last. But he didn’t.
You never said you loved me,
It doesn’t seem quite fair.
After a while he let go and sat on the trunk-seat and hitched along so that I could sit beside him, our feet dangling over the river. He put his arm round me and snuggled me to him. I remember the wet patch of his T-shirt under his arm, the cushion of his bicep on my shoulder, his hand like a cap on my head, his fingers playing with my hair, my cheek on the bones of his chest, the iambic beat of his heart, ti-tump ti-tump.
I asked if he’d seen my email that morning. Yes, he said. I asked what he thought about it. He said, ‘You mean, coming with me and living together?’ I nodded against his chest.
‘We can’t,’ he said. Which is what I expected him to say. I knew it couldn’t happen. Pie in the sky. But Little C was strong in me just then and her childish perversity made me ask why not.
‘It wouldn’t work.’
‘Why not?’
‘Money, for one thing. Where to live, for another. And for another, I’ll be working all the time. It’s not like ordinary college. We have to study, but we have to do practical work as well. And some of the work is in other parts of the country. I’ll be away for two or three weeks at a time. There’s not much time off. We’d hardly ever be together. And you’d be stuck in some dead-end job and in some poky room on your own and hating it. You know you would.’
Please, Ms Martin, say this is QED! I honestly do not think I can do better or that I can do more at the moment.
Cordelia: This is an outstanding piece of work. Well done! You were right to use one of your own poems. It was successful because you wrote about it in an unsentimental way and without over-estimating its importance.
I think we should consider entering this and the other two pieces (with a few edits!) instead of your descriptive piece on ‘What I love about the country I live in’ (which I agree was a daffy topic for exam assessment). This should bring your coursework folder up to A* standard, which is correct, because a starred A characterises most of what you write.
I’m sure my Year 8s would find your discussion of poetry very helpful. They are struggling a bit at the moment. Would you mind if I showed it to them? It will also give them a standard to aim for in their own writing. JM.
Ms Martin’s story
This is what Ms Martin told me while we were sitting in her kitchen having a meal one Saturday morning not long before my seventeenth birthday. I’d been having a difficult time, which I’ll tell you about later. I asked Ms M. what she believed.
From the beginning, she said, she was good at school, enjoyed learning, developed a passion for reading. She was the apple of her father’s eye. He was a factory worker. Her mother looked after the family and did cleaning jobs to supplement their income. She had a brother who joined the army, was injured during a training exercise, was discharged, and, embittered by the way he had been treated, emigrated to Melbourne in Australia. A few years later her parents followed him.
None of her family had been academic. Her father wanted
He was right, but I wished he hadn’t said it. I wished he’d said, Yes, let’s do it, who cares what the problems are, we’ll manage, and it’ll be worth it just to be together. I wished he’d be irresponsible for a change and impractical and unreasonable and wild and dangerous. I’d have felt he really loved me then, and been excited, even though we’d come down to earth twenty-four hours later and be all grown up and face facts. But that wasn’t Will.
I said, ‘What you mean is, you and your trees come first.’
I hadn’t meant to sound bitter, but I did. He removed his arm and I sat up. We stared at the river stretching away, tree-lined and bushy. A heron was standing on the bank a hundred metres away, still as a sculpture.
Will said, ‘Told you before –’
‘Needn’t repeat it.’
‘I have to do what I have to do.’
‘Yes. I know. It’s okay.’
The heron took off and sailed away in its slow lolloping disdainful flight.
I said, ‘Have you talked to your mother about it?’
‘Why should I?’
‘Just wondered. Wouldn’t want her to think I’d – you know – tried to make you do anything – stupid.’
‘It’s nothing to do with her.’
‘I know we can’t.’
‘No.’
‘But I wish we could.’
I saw him look at me askance.
He said very seriously, ‘One day. I know we will – live together I mean. One day.’
I hitched onto the bank. I didn’t want him to see the tears welling. He came up to me and hugged me from behind and kissed the top of my head.
‘We’ll phone and em,’ he said. ‘And I’ll be home for holidays. It won’t be too bad.’
her to go to university so that she would have a successful career and a better life. But when she was about sixteen something happened that turned her life upside down. One day, she was very upset, she didn’t tell me why, and went into her local church, St James’s, on her way home. She wasn’t religious. She regarded what her father called ‘all that church stuff’ as old-fashioned nonsense. So why she went into St James’s she didn’t know, except that she didn’t want to go home till she had calmed down and the church was a place where she could hide and be quiet.
She sat at the back. No one else was there except an old woman who was arranging flowers beside the altar. Ms M. watched her for a while, impressed by the care she was taking, the kind of care that people give to a labour of love. But Ms M. didn’t want the old woman to feel she was staring at her, so she picked up a Bible that was lying on the seat beside her, opened it at random, and read the first passage that met her eye.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
As she read those words the book and everything around her suddenly seemed to glow. And she felt she was seeing colour for the first time in her life. Not just the colours of things, but colour itself, the very body of colour – the redness of red, the blueness of blue, the yellowness of yellow, the greenness of green, the deep white emptiness of black. It was as if colours were living things. And she saw that they gave life to everything else – to the ancient mellowed wood of the pews, to the grey stone of the pillars, to the bright sharp brass of the cross and the candlesticks on the altar. All were as alive because of their colours as the old woman arranging the flowers and as Ms Martin herself. What was even more astonishing to her was that she also felt the world – the entire universe – was as alive, as conscious, in its own way as she was in hers. She felt she was being ‘looked at’ by the
I wanted to trust him, wanted to believe it would be all right. But still I doubted.
I said, ‘I
don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.’
He could hear the tears in my voice. He turned me to him and smoothed them away with a finger.
‘You won’t,’ he said.
He lifted my face to his and kissed me.
And when we were done, he said, ‘Come to the gig tonight. Go on piano for your songs.’
I shook my head. ‘I’d break up.’
‘Shall we make a disc for you? A memento.’
I nodded.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Let’s do something special tomorrow night.’ The night before he’d leave.
I stood back, holding his hands in mine and said, making myself smile and be light, ‘We’ll go for a posh meal. I’ll decide where and it’ll be my treat. And we’ll dress up.’
I wanted to be strong and romantic and not peevish.
‘Done,’ he said and laughed. ‘All right now?’
‘Fine.’
‘Good,’ he said, and laughed again.
If a boy, if a man, asks you if you’re all right and you say yes, he’ll always believe you and get on with what he wants to do. It’s just the way they’re made.
shards of his laughter
splinter my mind
cut to the bone
tears of blood
like evening dew
Will ran back to his band. I stayed by the river.
Up to that very day, if I’d been as upset as I was then, I’d have rushed home and hidden in my room. But now, within a few days, everything in my life that had seemed stable and certain
world and everything in it, just as she was ‘looking at’ the world.
She was so shocked by this ‘revelation’, as she called it, that she couldn’t move. But she remembered some lines of poetry by William Wordsworth, which she had learned by heart, ready for use in an exam.
… I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour