I S S U E 6
Kate Bingham
‘Not Suitable for Motors’
Once, this narrow downhill track
was smooth uninterrupted tarmac
graded, cambered, drained
with passing-places either side
one caravan, or tractor, wide
a nearby farm maintained.
Money meant to benefit
inaccessible close-knit
coastal communities
reduced congestion and delay
for visitors on holiday
driving to the sea,
and every summer people found
scenic short-cuts speeding round
the sunken Devon lanes,
where overhanging branches dropped
glowing golden leaves to rot
through heavy autumn rains,
and every winter, whipped and thinned
by North Atlantic gale-force winds,
the trees along the road
scattered strands of twiggy crud
on gullies ankle-deep in mud
and ditches over-flowed.
It was only common sense
to cut a branch or mend a fence,
no one praised or paid
the farmer who had flailed and scraped
and kept the passing-places ship-shape
since the road was laid,
and when at last he grew too old
the land beside the road was sold,
the house above the sea
became a stylish second home
in renovated slate and stone,
the barn a B&B.
Across the country, small farms failed
as economies of scale
briskly rearranged
the business of producing food
that supermarket-shopping skewed.
Spending patterns changed.
Expanding international air-freight
flew soft fruit from field to plate,
people, in return,
budgeted for seats on planes
to lie beside the sea in Spain
and freckle, tan or burn,
and each year, as the hedgerows grew,
councils losing revenue
would have to recommend
local services and schemes,
initiatives and funding streams
to cancel or suspend.
Hazel, thorn, and sycamore,
risen from the valley floor
into roadside woods
of scrappy poor unmanaged trees
alive with mosses, ferns, and ivies
falling as they stood,
were left to lean or creep and tangle
like a soggy English jungle,
summer’s chlorophyll
above a century of brown
organic matter sliding down
and climbing up the hill
as generations of machine
bumped along the road between—
clanking slurry tanks,
diggers with pneumatic claws
and tractor-loads that snagged and tore
the steep and narrow banks,
adding their own little trail
of leaves and branches, grit and shale
to a millennium
of human journeys as they rolled
thick wheels in-and-out of potholes
grinding into crumb
the bitumen and gravel packed
in layers over old cart tracks
and footprints left behind
by all the working men who went
from settlement to settlement
following the fall-line.
It’s been more than 50 years
since a car last crawled through here,
sliding off this road
the Transport Ministry declared
not suitable, beyond repair.
Walking-boots erode
continental shelves of slab
and break off island chunks of drab
debonded aggregate,
pressing thistle-down and dust
across the freeze-thaw fractured crust
next year’s weeds will split,
and when it rains the surface streams,
water soaks between the seams
and washes over screed
to fill the tiny craters, spool
in twisting threads from pool to pool,
sowing earth and seed
along the stony hairline cracks
that flower into cul-de-sacs
and open in the heat—
bare root, bedrock, broken slate,
the road returning to a state
of forest at my feet,
and I don’t know, I don’t know how
to think about the future now
when here it is already
on a shiny square blue sign
beside the faded ‘give way’ line
for anyone to see
and still the roadmap seems to show
this is the only way to go,
sweeping down the lane
towards the river, dazzled by
the sun in green behind your eye
and up the hill again,
rubber gripping dusty tarmac,
body pressed against the seatback
weightless, as the car
accelerating leaves your mind
to stagger, out of breath, behind
and wonder where you are.
Sestina
Something woke me in the small hours, rain
I guess, and now I can’t get back to sleep.
A mile away, in my left ear, the sea
and in my right, as usual, this ringing,
loud tonight, its false alarm the sound
of lying quietly beside my husband.
Quiet in the dark beside my husband
not to wake him, I’m expecting rain,
my ears are full of waiting for the sound
as if to hear again what broke my sleep
and set the body’s sharp alarm bells ringing—
tiny hard rain louder than the sea
like stones against the window, or the sea
itself, a mile away. Between my husband
on his side beside me and the ringing
in my ear, awake to hear the rain
I’m waiting up for send me back to sleep,
I need my head to overflow with sound,
rolling decibels and waves of sound
to wash my night thoughts downstream for the sea
to lift and weigh and settle while I sleep.
I lie completely still beside my husband,
waiting for a sudden breath of rain
to drown my nervous system’s faintly ringing
shiver of alarm which has been ringing
so long now I know it like the sound
of my own voice, or when it’s going to rain.
Sometimes I love to listen to the sea
but I’m on edge tonight beside my husband
breathing as he breathes when he’s asleep,
or when he’s just about to fall asleep,
or just pretending. He can’t hear the ringing
ringing true in my right ear, this husband
in my head whose voice is just the sound
of lying in the darkness with the sea.
All I can do is hold my breath for rain.
Like my husband, I pretend I’m sound
asleep but in my ear a wrong note ringing
keeps me listening for sea and rain.
By the Fire
There was a bomb, Mum said. Mad men had
their fingers on the button. An alarm
would go off and four minutes later—boom
—we’d all be dead.
I watched a flame burn down and turned to Dad.
What can we do? His voice was soft and calm.
The sun is like the fire that heats this room—
in time, he said,
it will go out completely. Don’t be sad.
Embers seemed to settle in their arms,
orange radiating through the gloom
to darkest red.
They always told the truth, however bad,
as if they thought the truth could do no harm.
Even now, their bright disasters loom
when I’m in bed
and counting blessings when I should be glad.
Ice grinds over villages and farms
and towering white-hot explosions mushroom
in my head.
Kate Bingham’s latest book is the pamphlet Archway Sonnets (New Walk Editions, 2020)