Michael Brokensha has always had an interest in poetry and the way words can convey atmosphere and mood as well as meaning. He was moved to publish only recently and Rough Passage marks an impressive debut as a poet. A resident of South East London for many years, he now lives and works in the South West of England.
Rough Passage is a collection of mainly recent poems full of atmosphere and intensity. The voice is unique and evocative whether in an impressionist, descriptive or symbolic mode. Meaning, movement and rhythm are often created through powerful phrases and images. At times the touch can be light and sensitive at others dark and compelling. Often the boundaries between what is on the inside and what is on the outside blur at the interface of reason, imagination and dreams. In these poems the lid is lifted on Pandora's jar. The struggle is to find hope.
The house holds its secrets.
Search long and hard and you will
Find little prows of silver,
Magnetic monuments
Of unspoken memories,
The delicate dance of dust
To the song of ancient hearts,
Unfolded and wrapped around the tongues
Of men and women in spoken moments
Of meant to be truth.
The house will utter a slight
Cough at its core.
A feint auric tremor.
In this house my parents
May have dusted off the skin of their liaison,
In unguarded moments,
Or stamped their passion
On the crust of walls
And floorboards.
What passed between their lips
Lay to rest on Edwardian mantle pieces
And broken mantle clocks.
My grandfather’s hands clipping hair
And exchanging bookies bets
In the canopies of cupboards
And under stairs lairs.
The street lamp bares its nippled light
On the silhouetted couple at the bus stop.
Damp the cold sweat glazed tarmac
And the grass moist with the livered
Bile of remnant autumn.
Brown leaves slug-like in their decay
Nestle in a swathe of moonlight
Cold blue in its affection.
A passing car, incandescent in
The loitering light fog of evening,
Condenses the air with puffs of phantom vapours.
The couple barely speak in their frozen art form embrace
For they are faceless,
A monument and memory for any time,
For any place.
The night is silent in waiting for silhouettes,
Silhouette of a bus, its warm deck of hope
And home for young lovers, Silhouette
Of a jewelled evening
In a squirreled nest of a cinema seat,
Silhouette of forgotten values and neo-50's romantic perfume
Of a night like this. Silhouette of a time before these dark skies.
The slow primal pulse of this vespered world,
Adagio in requiem,
Pristine in its majesty and calm measure,
Awakens the imagination
And sharpens the senses.
Now the moon is gothic high and eerie bright
Above the swirling night-time mist and bliss of the lovers
Final embrace.
The sweet kiss of promises on the shifting air
That can so easily fade in the first blades of sunlight.
The loosening grip before the parting, a necromantic
Void filled with new born feelings
And silhouettes of ghosts,
Tremulous yet tender,
Of a night like this.
On a nearby hillside
four horses were silhouetted against the evening sky.
A few drops of rain fell like the drips of conscience from a previous time.
But now there are no sacred values and nothing to look back on.
On a fascia gargoyle of the village church
a crow perched,
his beak clogged with black coal dust.
With almost human askance the bird registered the distaste
and indigestibility of the gluepy carbon sediment.
and jerked instinctively, convulsively for fear of choking.
It was the twighlight of Remembrance Day.
A small gathering drifted from the churchyard
to the gothic wrought iron gate.
Impaled on the gate
was a cross of the crucifixion.
Cold comfort to the dwindling congregation.
The crow put to flight at the sound of the iron gate creaking.
Bits of coal dust dropped to the ground as it managed several caws of irritation.
That day Harold had been buried.
Dear Harold, sweet Harold,
Harold who in the long months of his death throe
would constantly mutter,” Oh dear, Oh dear, Oh dear.”
Uttered between short gasps of breath.
“Never mind, can’t complain, far more worse off than me,”
he would oft refrain, instinctively, convulsively,
in plaintive apologia and blessed meek submission.
“ Complain you bastard, you poor dear bastard
Why not? —your body and mind so riddled
with cancerous affliction. You have every right to rant and rave
as you have ever done.
To bear witness to the hideous nature of your torturous demise.
Why? ---then witness the bloody minded in this world
as they caw to kingdom come. Best die in the heat of battle with your soul on fire
and not in blessed meek submission for what you shall inherit.”
But who am I to talk? Who am I to know
what pain you were going through? Your death so imminent,
so long imminent. I just administered kind
faith and a loving hand before your heart surrendered
quietly to its armchair death.
Were you immaculately dressed then in best tweed suit,
polished shoes and tie, a gentleman for all occasions.?
I believe so for your manners were made in heaven
and the world is lost without your kind.
Now deep shadows crowd in, in gormenghast madness.
As for the rest of us, how long have we surrendered before we die?
Sometimes it feels like I have been all my life ill and trying to get better.
Feint hope against hope. Trying is no salvation.
Still never mind. Far more worse of than my kind!
As the iron gate shut and the congregation
dispersed, the crow baulked in flight and landed quickly
to keel over mortally afflicted.
The four horses on the hillside stirred at the crow’s descent.
One horse kicked its hooves and flicked up its tail erect before cantering away
some distance. The others followed.
Nightime was gathering.
