West Penwith

West Penwith is the far south-western toe of the UK mainland; only the nail clippings of the Scilly Isles lie beyond.  Up on the moors behind Penzance is Carn Euny, a preserved Iron Age settlement of the Cornovii tribe. Fogous (rather crudely "caves") probably had a religious/ceremonial significance - there are several in West Penwith. The coastal village of Pendeen until 2014 had a massive working foghorn replete with signs to stay well away during poor visibility because the horn was so powerful it could damage your ears. (The disused foghorn is still there beside the Pendeen lighthouse.) 

   The poem, with just a little bit of grammatical stretch, is written in a single sentence. It is one of three written in the same rather jogging metre in 2021/22. The others are "Cornish Gorse" posted here on 24 October 2023, and "If You Want to Know What Sea Is" posted here on 25 November 2023.

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The cliffs are shook, the thyme is shaken,
The roar is such to waken the Kraken;
Dank mist like suds is flung from the sea,
Greyly streaming over stack and scree;
Sharp rain is piercing the grass and sedge
Clinging blackly to slab and ledge,
And the wind, the wind! like a searing flail
Scourges the cliffs and moors with hail:
Carn Euny, stark on its rising breast,
Has a view all ways, north-east, south-west,
But compass-open there’s no reprieve
From the air’s freeze, the wind’s heave;
Here the Cornovii built their huts,
Granite and thatch, their paths all ruts,
And wind-swept, damp-rotted, scratched their fields
For oats’ and barley’s skinny yields;
Some bony cattle, some goats and sheep
Graze the moorland with its constant creep
Of heather, bracken and yellow-eyed gorse
Grabbing ground with bullying force:
Arthritic, coughing, weather-scarred men
Hack the furze from the field walls again;
Their women, bent-backed, carry and cook,
The children learning by help and look:
And has much changed through centuries’ reach
(Some offer nostrums, others preach)?
But look, Penzance – harsh-granite-grey –
Hunkers as a rain squall swamps the bay,
Glinting grimly through the solid pour
Battering gutters with its ear-split roar;
The sea, the rain-drenched wind, the salt
Govern life and health from birth to vault;
And soon or late, folk to the grave
Crumple and fall like a stumbling wave,

Down at the Water's Edge

All the references will be well known to Penzance aficionados; Pen Sans is the "Holy Headland" around which Penzance is built. For my attempt to convey what it's like to be caught in bad weather at sea see my "Gale at Sea" posted here on 25 October 2023. And for my memorial of a genuine Penzance/Newlyn "character" see "Roger Nowell, A Cornish Skipper" posted here on 19 December 2017 and easily my most visited poem: it's astonishing how his memory lives on!

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When the wind blows and the scud is low,
Swamping St Clement’s Isle,
When the sea surges as black as pitch
And the cloud’s as brown as bile;
Then’s the time to gasp your last
And groan for cart or sledge:
“O, haul me out and let me die
Down at the water’s edge.”

Rattle me down through Chapel Street
Sinking below Pen Sans,
Hear! the rain is flung in swathes
Roaring like falling cans;
Drag me on to Battery Rocks
For I’m to fulfil a pledge –
Soaked, battered, it’s there I’ll die
Down at the water’s edge.

So many! In youth we were forced from the west,
Urgent for work and a wage,
In London town I sweated and jobbed
As the years became an age;
Now old, returned, in Gwavas Street
I sit in my window’s ledge,
Waiting the end when I wish to die
Down at the water’s edge.

St Peter in boots, with his oilskins tight,
Staggered along Heaven's pier,
The seas were high, the entrance rough,
Boats off wallow and veer:
“Ahoy,” he bawled, “there’s few will enter
Struggling with sheet and kedge,
But are you from the west and did you die
Down at the water’s edge?”

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© October-November 2022