Penelope Shuttle

Door


I opened a door    found myself in a city under the sea
where everyone knew me by name
and no one thought it a problem to go with the flow
breathing salt water instead of air    I must be in heaven (I said)
but a woman murmured    no    you’re in Lyonesse


*


Legends


The lions of Lyonesse
were legends
in their own raw lunchtime

If a lion might swagger past you
or bask
all afternoon in your courtyard

you’d look the other way
show respect –
no child of the city
ever play-roared back at a lion

Day and night
their meat-breath mocked the city

No salt-sharp air
no sea-garden lavender after rain
sweetened
that ravenous pong

The lewyon of Lionville
knew their place
no one    and nothing above them

those golden guys with manes
and gaping slavering jaws
the piss-backward lords of Lyonesse


*


My Friend


Sometimes I glimpse my friend
glinting beneath
the shape-shift silvers
of the waves
I don’t know how she got down there
so near and so far from the blessed isles nor how long she’ll stay
but there she is
            fathoms deep
pacing the boulevards of Lyonesse
searching each casement and porch
of water-wounded temple and storm-shattered fane
hauling her sorrow through the coral crossways
She isn’t alone    my friend
Others while away the long hours
treading alley and ope of that green translucency
looking for the ones    who will never be found
down there in a city laid-out    in its own legend


*


new lamps for old


sang the harp

prepare for sorrow
and silence

for sleeping alone
on the bare floor

new lamps for old
sang the harp

learn to eat alone
in the cold kitchen

to walk golden cliff
and sunlit tide line alone

get used to the hard work
of it    sang the harp

silver spoon
in time’s mouth

new lamps for old




*


husband


of the quarries and dug-outs of the sea
            husband of the sleep-tight tide
husband near the bare hedge
            where the wild ponies feel the pinch
husband of winter rain on the holly and the ivy
            trails through old woods
husband of all he surveys
            a thousand footsteps in the empty house
husband of the greenways and cliffs
            of the western ocean    our playground
husband of fancy-dress clouds by night
            and stars shining down as if they cared
husband of the open book
            stone page where the world ends
 

11     Preface

LYONESSE
    19     Door
    20     Palm Sunday
    21     The Gownshops
    22     Our Cradle Sea
    23     Strike, strike the bell
    24     Make a Wish
    25     Kelpy
    26     easy
    27     Inscribed on a Stela found on the seabed
    28     Sentimental Customs
    29     Night Gate
    30     by the hoar rock in the drowned wood
    32     here’s my Lyonesse
    33     Legends
    34     Fortuna
    35     Owls
    36     clad me naked
    37     Why the Maidens prefer future funk to a Sumerian goat
    38     Interviewing Neptune
    39     My Friend
    40     In the dark
    41     Saturdays & Sundays
    42     When the Devil seals the seam with hot pitch
    43     Midsummer
    44     Lizzie
    45     Willow o’ the Wisp
    46     Holy Father Lions
    47     O Shake That Girl with the Blue Dress On
    48     Boat-drawn
    49     Rusalka
    50     Siren Scholarship
    51     The Foster Brothers of Kernow Speak
    52     Sewing Lesson Under the Sea
    53     land under sea
    54     An Account of the Submergence
    57     land under sea
    58     Church of the Crayfish Christ
    59     Up jumps the shark
    60     Starlit
    61     On St Mary’s Quayside an old salt button-holes a passer-by
    62     Many brave hearts are asleep in the deep, so beware, beware
    63     Jackie Onassis orders new dancing shoes
    64     Twinned with Canopus
    65     They say the voiced angel is an invention of the English
    66     More deadly than the Siren’s song is the Siren’s silence
    67     We are the servants of lions
    68     Sea Street
    69     The Restorer
    70     May the Holy Ghost blow your sailboat home
    71     The Devil
    72     Praise the Crayfish Christ striding over the waves!
    73     Mermaid sightings here
    74     Cradle-rocker’s Report
    75     Prospectus: Lyonesse College
    76     The Foster Brothers of Kernow Speak
    77     My Old Lover
    78     Lions on a love prowl
    79     Wooden Lady
    80     My own volition
    81     Time in the World
    82     Blues
    84     Solo
    85     Who’s down there
    86     Sermon of the Crayfish Christ, or The Latitudes
    88     When and If
    89     Blessing
    90     Goodbye

    93     Notes


NEW LAMPS FOR OLD
    99     cup of evenings
    100     what is the air made of?
    101     new lamps for old
    102     husband
    103     home
    104     Dusk coming on
    105     sevenfold
    106     fly-by-night
    107     some strange hour of night
    108     Swarthmoor Hall, Ulverston
    117     my house
    118     St Olave’s Church
    119     Village of La Baleine
    120     as long as the thorn tree stands
    121     Kandinsky at the Tate
    122     Hell
    123     longing is part of it
    124     the train is
    125     Ruby Loftus screwing a breech ring for a Bofors Anti-Aircraft Gun
    126     break of day/this one evening
    129     glance
    130     other elements
    131     love letters
    132     May time
    133     Ann Boleyn’s Music Book
    134     May evening
    135     Under Ragged Stone Hill
    143     clouds in the sky
    144     wild rose
    145     Malvern Link
    146     the four queens find Lancelot sleeping
    147     found poem: Swarthmoor Hall
    148     Three Years
    149     in the mirror

    153     Notes
 

‘Penelope Shuttle, as both thinker and poet, seems to me exemplary in her use of the intuitive faculty: a self-forgetful procedure for the renewal of awareness which one might describe as the making of leaps, rather than the taking of "logical" steps, or what Virilio, discussing Proust, calls "the Sophist idea of agape, the suddenness of this possible entry into another logic".’ – John Burnside, Poetry Review

‘One of our most compellingly sensuous poets… Shuttle is a poet of immense reach, both in the range of her subject-matter and the breadth of her language. She is both an acute observer and an inventive fiction-maker. One senses that she has her life perfectly in tune with her poetry, so that it registers the slightest variation in her state of being. In this sense, the narratives of emotional, erotic and maternal love that can be traced through these poems collocate into the drama of a life lived in the full flood of being.' – Gerard Woodward, TLS