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Palimpsest

7/10/2018

6 Comments

 
Picture
Dust motes reflected light 
in the still air behind chapel windows.
The smell of mould the only paean in a vernacular of damp.
A last stand of hymn books regrouped at the end of pews
as the rain finally came in.

In the dream time
there were walls, ditches, sheepfolds,
homesteads, castles, stone circles.

With  tireless devotion
time and weather smoothed
and reduced the traces, 
grass healing the scars.
.
Below, the purleius of Raven and Curlew
of wolf and wildcat.
Roman roads, 
imperial courts
Warlord's Lys
ancient homesteads, 
polished smooth under grass
their memories lying like lazy beasts
asleep in the sun.

Of course, they weren't the first here.
Megalith builders wandered along the dod man's sight lines,
hilltop notch and tump, 
looking for minerals
bell pits sounding for magnetic iron.
The romans looked for lead
and found gold at Daulcothi.

All left their signatures 
for the company of mine adventurers
to read and consider.

At the dawn of the industrial age
oak, elm, ash and birch
were sucked into hungry iron furnaces.
The wolf retreated into the mountains.

Methusalem Jones woke from a dream
legend says
saw vastness of slate 
at Diphwys.
So the old man mined,
pulling what was inside, out.
Grey mountains of negative space
looming over the boom town.

The miners had given their souls 
to the chapel
the best part of their lives to the owners
their money to the company store.
When the market for slate fell away,
with the speed and finality
of  a rock dropped down a shaft
the owners looked away, 
picked up other shiny things.

All the hoggia chwarel  cast aside,
their monument: the crabbed handwriting  
of history on the hillside.
Longhand, copper plate.
Blottings, scratchings, overwriting, crossings out.

A silence descended.
Up on the tips
a few old boys worked a slab here, a pillar there...
robbing the dry stone mills and barracks
building shelters, stumbling over the ruins-
Heath Robinson, their ropeways and machinery.

In the 21st century
The new quarryman emerged.
Tooled up with big Cat and bang, 
a handful of men where once thousands toiled.
Where the old man walked nine miles to work
he rolls up in the HiLux, Costa coffee on the go.

Bothering the daylight chambers 
before burying them 
in a mountain of
traprock.

the locals work the mine
with credit card readers 
no jwmpars, or black powder
just smoke and mirrors.
Checking the tourists' tickets
no callouses on their hands, just time.
The old chambers are rigged with underground trampolines,
Zip Lines, son et lumiere;
things the old man could not have imagined
as he toiled down there in candlelight.
Topsides, the mountain bikers descend the singletrack,
speeding down, facebook ready.

In the north, a chromatograph of shanty towns spreads,
stained around Primark, Top Shop and Costa.
Handy for Snowdonia, capital of adventure
the trompe l'oeul wonderland.

Perched in the Cat's cosy cab. 
the lone quarryman looks down 
on the chaos of his morning's work
The planners quarried  a hole in the national park for just this eventuality. 
Brown envelopes were not in vain.

Cut to soft focus
his taid
climbing up the rock to drill a shot hole.
A cut of slab wagons comes groaning up from Tuxford
Uncle Dewi at the crimp.
Other men everywhere, building, working.
Smoke, steam, shouts, laughter
water wheels turning, saws screaming. 
The mwg cur y pen hangs over the pit.

He blinks, shakes his head
Moves the joystick 
the Cat's arm obeys
moves towards the No.9 floor drumhouse,
reducing it 
and the graffiti  of a horse
inscribed 1896
instantly. 

Slate dust rises
shapes catching like ghosts on the breeze.

Another scribble on the palimpsest.


mwg cur y pen- the smoke from blasting, literally "headache smoke".

6 Comments
Laura
11/10/2018 12:33:57 am

I cried.

It was a beautifully laid-out poem giving organic, living descriptions of various methods and moments of mining, or of living as a miner, but then you threw in the modern quarryman. For him to see the past and to still destroy, completely and utterly as if it's nothing more than a video game, a relic with its ghosts still haunting it, was a moment of pure grief. It was as if you led us down the primrose path, la-di-da, and then smashed all those dreams with your well-chosen words. The final line I can't even read without feeling as if I'm there as a witness to such atrocity, reduced to just a scribble, so i just weep.

I did go searching for "mwg cur y pen" as I couldn't remember what it meant and didn't realize you'd detailed it at the end (thank u) But I did end up at the http://www.llechicymru.info/IQTQuarryandBlasting.english.htm site which wonderfully put together some of the Welsh terms in English sentences. I hadn't known that they mainly used black gunpowder, for instance, so powder house has a new meaning for me. And that they could only wear copper-soled shoes inside of the powder house makes me suspect you've used that knowledge in some of your poems with the double-entendre effect :)

p.s.
Edit these parts out as needed!

On another note, going back to Viggo Mortensen, I was trying to find the site that had some of his photographs, and I believe that the home page of https://www.percevalpress.com/ has a running ribbon of some. But I came across an even more interesting site: http://www.alveni.de/eos/frame.html since this one discusses his photos but doesn't actually show them. This link should take you to the page where Viggo talks about how and why he created some of his photos; it was interesting browsing anyway...

I couldn't seem to find the reference you made to Viggo and finally decided you must have deleted that very personal blog entry. I had meant to ask you to do that as I didn't think it appropriate for what your blog is about! I tend to write as I think and don't do social media enough to have learned to curb my brain... yet, haha, so please, moderate as needed and if it's missing I'll know you read it and that's all that matters.. :) But beware: I may end up writing a book if I know you're going to "burn after reading." My thoughts tend to segue unexpectedly and you're a captive audience (huge devilish grin here :o)

All the best!
Laura

Reply
Iain Robinson
11/10/2018 06:16:36 pm

Ah, I'm very sorry that the poem upset you, but thank you so much for your observations and very perceptive thoughts. Most young people, through no fault of their own, just don't "get" the industrial history unless it's packaged for them and turned into a video game experience or some kind of a thrill ride. All power to the folk that run underground experiences, they are helping to stem the tide of ignorance. There's also the fairly keen need to make money locally, and industrial archaeology is always going to come off worse there. It upsets me deeply.
I always read my poems first to Petra, and if they don't elicit a tear from her, I go away and re-work them :-)
The powder houses are something of an obsession, we often visit somewhere just to find the powder house...I did a blog post about them on my old blog here http://robinsonmaps.blogspot.com/search/label/powder%20stores I've got a lot more examples now, I will have to write a new post soon.
Thanks for the links about Viggo Mortensen, I will go and have a look. I'm sorry about deleting the comment, I didn't mean to, I didn't realise that Weebly won't let you trim things down in comments...so I am pleased that you are not upset with me!
Thanks again for your lovely comment and observations, always a pleasure to see a note from you :-)

Reply
Laura
12/10/2018 02:28:21 am

Oh how interesting, all of it :) Love the part about having Petra have to cry in approval, that's so terribly moving... But no, for me it wasn't really being upset, it was being overwhelmed by emotion, which to us women is not at all the same thing :) A big part of me feels like my kid, and his peers, are really missing out, but half of what they're learning is way beyond me, so perhaps it all balances out... But it's still up to us "old folks" to be there to explain the how's and why's of past events since they nearly always link us to the future.

Well, phooey to Weebly for not letting you moderate, which seems like a necessary eventuality of having a blog... I think it would help keep the discussion "on track" :) I really do miss you on Flickr, and I know you're tired of hearing it as you're not ready to face those particular issues yet, but the in-mail was quite handy! Seeing your photo displays was like seeing a solo art show with the addition of background info to round it all out... You really do make the most of whatever medium you use! Which reminds me a bit of how Viggo chooses various means to display his many artistic sides. I think you will get a lot out of the link; his artistry is as varied and compelling as yours... :) I showed Joseph a couple photos of the models you put on Flickr and he leaned way in and asked in a bewildered voice, "So those bricks aren't real? This is a model?" He called you an eagle spirit for having fine-tuned visual skills to create those and the magnificent photos ;)

Reply
Laura
13/10/2018 01:30:51 am

Ok, I think I see what you mean by the powder houses; they appear to be unique and personalized, or at at least built-to-suit, rather like the barns that I hunt down. This week my work computer died and I drove some back-up disks up to the repair shop, a good half hour away. The road I took I had noticed before had a couple barns but this time I went further and counted at least 8, only two of which I have photographed but the light was wrong then... It becomes like a treasure hunt (haha! can't believe I just fell into that one :) of discovery, photography, and research and it's just plain fun. Not to mention the possible historical rewards down the road. I imagine you've had your share of revisits that were huge let-downs though. (Full circle to the palimpsest ghosts....)

Iain Robinson
13/10/2018 10:34:48 am

Thanks, Laura- yes, it is like hunting; the kind where nobody gets hurt...it's also like being a detective, because I search these places out on the 1880 maps, then look on Google earth to see if there is anything left, then plan a visit...only to find that what I thought was a powder house was a tree and a shadow :-) My great regret is not having covered the ones that have been destroyed recently, but the hunt goes on and it is hugely enjoyable, like you with the barns. And, you and I, we are recording something that will soon be gone. Recording physically and metaphorically. Yes, full circle to the palimpsest :-)

Reply
Iain Robinson
13/10/2018 08:21:39 pm

Meant to say, Laura, thank you to Joseph for calling me an eagle spirit...I'll take that one :-) It would be very handy to be able to soar like an eagle and find the mines that are so difficult to access! Thanks again.

Reply



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