'Roped For the Fair' - Ivor Gurney

Originally there was nothing strange About

him, except that he was quiet And often

listened to the BBC.

A good farmer, his hay was always in

By mid-August, nor did he ever need

To work on Sunday. Even in the fifties

He was able to buy modern machines

By some miracle of husbandry.

The odd thing about it was, of course,

That it was the new sixties affluence

Which turned him revolutionary,

Until one April day he studiously

Placed his Taiwanese transistor underneath

His tractor wheels and drove over it,

Back and forth, twenty times, until he could

No longer see its cunning inner workings.

He had, to put it plainly, lost his reason.

He read books about Russia, and talked

(When he talked at all) about Mao Tse Tung.

The family turned a blind eye to it

And made excuses for him at Mass where he

No longer went. On Sunday morning

He'd walk out and look south-west to Mangerton,

Smiling, leaning over his five-barred gate.

He'd even, in a further stage of mania,

Started to feel sorry for his body,

Its hardworking limbs and members: and how

It couldn't even sleep without invasion

From Consciousness who crept around the door

In the half-light and was waiting silent,

Menacing, at the bed-end when he woke up,

Ready to resume its joyless, daily vigil.

It seemed as though he'd—to late—fallen in love

With something he'd once been, and then been

Deprived of. He cast about for images

To fix what was slipping: the big Pyrex plate

Of thawing ice that no longer quite touched

The side of the barrel so a sole finger

Could push it under the surface of the water;

His life seemed, like that, unwieldy.

Or like bread that has been kneaded out

Until it's too floppy for any baker's hands.

Or maybe like a plane caught suddenly

In pockets of turbulence which cause

Its wings to rock and quiver in a wild

And flimsy reaching out for stableness.

It couldn't last, and in the course of things

Inevitably, they carted him away,

Kindly enough. After nine months of treatment

He came back: "a new man", they said.

He spoke, if that was possible, even less

Than before. He rode a bike to Mass (something

No-one did in those days) so he needn't

Make conversation by falling in step

With neighbours or by sitting in with them.

He still leant across his gate, except

Now he wasn't smiling at the prospect

Of the mountains. Neither was he probing

For an image to enclose it, once for all.

He looked in vain for happy living things

That might bring him back to some affection:

But the straightbacked greenfinch on the berries

Scorned him in the grudging drawing out

Of the misted early days of February;

The blinding crimson of its brother goldfinch

Inclined him towards panic. Could he hold out

Until the warblers came again in April?

Were the birds now saying "Change for a pound.

Change for a pound"? Not that he was without

All hope or ambition: biding his time,

He was waiting for the chance to go along

With the first decent flood of the coming spring.

Remnants

For years we never took there anything

That would do in a real house: just a fridge

That leaked its gas, a toaster you had to

Hold down by hand, a rocking-chair thrown out

From an old people's home in North Yorkshire.

The carpet was an offcut with a hole in it

Covered by the table. The record player

Worked fitfully, slowing year by year.

Since then, things are both worse and better:

A new fridge, bought cut-price in Barrack Street;

On the other hand, a typewriter

That looks perfect, but doesn't work at all.

And suddenly, I see what it was all about:

That begging for bed-irons, spotted near gateposts

In Dingle and given with grave perplexity:

'Tå meirg orthu'; why I'd rather pay

For these dying objects than replacements.

I hoped thereby to bring back to life the people:

Jack Sweeney, Phil Micheäl and Mary-Ann John Riordan

Who prayed and prayed well into her nineties.

(Tå meirg orthu: they are rusty)