This is a poem about leaving Penzance, so here's one about moving to Penzance, "John Davidson and I," written in June 2016 and posted here on 23 September 2021.
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When banished from Penwith
By work commitments in the cesspool east,
Elbowing every Jones or Smith
For commons at a grudging feast,
I joy to walk the streets
Of town or city where I’m glumly lodged,
Tracing the granite kerbs and leets,
Once fresh-installed now stained and bodged.
That granite, dimpled, grained,
Foot-smoothed and browned by rain and vehicle-splash,
In-minds me of my home, Penzance,
Salt-strewn and mottled, greyly-drained
By wind and sea’s cracked lash,
(Though, sun-hit, its granite lanes can gleam with quartz,
Light-livening the damp west air):
What helps? I’m exiled otherwhere!
This exile’s lust for home –
A grief, a lack-sick longing for what’s lost –
Leaps countless miles to Penlee’s combe,
Its quarry, now disused and mossed,
Where rock-hard men hewed stone,
The granite slabs and roadfill cobble shipped
Upcoast where, by the weather blown,
They kerb and face, unthought, tight-lipped.
I ache for Penwith’s moors,
Their wind-smacked inclines cleft by flooded pits:
“Hireth,” we say, its wist desire
Urging despite our games or chores;
For peace-in-being sits
Truly in landscape, be it town or shire,
Where, meaninged, each is nourished by
What’s loved: old streets, high moors, rough sky.
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© January 2024
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When banished from Penwith
By work commitments in the cesspool east,
Elbowing every Jones or Smith
For commons at a grudging feast,
I joy to walk the streets
Of town or city where I’m glumly lodged,
Tracing the granite kerbs and leets,
Once fresh-installed now stained and bodged.
That granite, dimpled, grained,
Foot-smoothed and browned by rain and vehicle-splash,
In-minds me of my home, Penzance,
Salt-strewn and mottled, greyly-drained
By wind and sea’s cracked lash,
(Though, sun-hit, its granite lanes can gleam with quartz,
Light-livening the damp west air):
What helps? I’m exiled otherwhere!
This exile’s lust for home –
A grief, a lack-sick longing for what’s lost –
Leaps countless miles to Penlee’s combe,
Its quarry, now disused and mossed,
Where rock-hard men hewed stone,
The granite slabs and roadfill cobble shipped
Upcoast where, by the weather blown,
They kerb and face, unthought, tight-lipped.
I ache for Penwith’s moors,
Their wind-smacked inclines cleft by flooded pits:
“Hireth,” we say, its wist desire
Urging despite our games or chores;
For peace-in-being sits
Truly in landscape, be it town or shire,
Where, meaninged, each is nourished by
What’s loved: old streets, high moors, rough sky.
====================
© January 2024
