Peter Bennet

French Windows


The folly tower you noticed from the train
and thought of for the rest of one short journey
when you were young is where I choose to linger.
On all your birthdays I unfurl a banner
above the decorative battlements.
I do not age. I don’t forget.
Once there were people here. They went away
through tall French windows borrowed from the set
of some old-fashioned comedy
and left behind a well-found elegance.
The place is nowhere that a connoisseur
would classify as an essential structure
but stands its ground with dignity.
It would have suited you. Where have you been?


*


The Philosopher


I glimpsed a pale observer. I explored
upstairs to find his room, and here it is.
The key is stiff. I shake my head
away from cobwebs. There’s a second door
blocked off by bookcases. An old fur coat
across an armchair has begun to shed.
A plaster bust of a philosopher
on the dusty window ledge is set in place
as if to watch the garden where I stood,
the golf course and the dunes, and then the sea.
The heavy air is cooling as the day
wears on. The thought-struck face at this late hour
begins reflecting in the darkening glass
and all there is to ponder on is me.



*


After Dark at Lindisfarne Castle

      The great commander of the Gormorants
      The Geese and Ganders of these Hallowed lands.
           – Captain Rugg


Here’s the upper battery. Here is your ghost.
Thy presence seems composed, dear Captain Rugg,
of moistures of this summer night.
Thou didst not merely command cormorants
but culverins and demi-culverins,
sakers and falconets, master gunners,
a master’s mate and then a score of sojers.
At this dainty fort you were a genial host
and strangers did abide. Your bottle nose
became a beacon in the dying light
of Britain’s republic. I am not afraid.
Your hauntings hereabouts are just a jest,
thou hoaxer, Sir, thou hock of the hog,
thou gammon! Or are you waiting to be paid
by King or Parliament? You have no wants
your long-due wages could provide for now
methinks. I can make out, by looking through you,
lit windows of the borowgh toune all sett
with fishers very poore that is a markett
on ye Satterday, howbeit little used,
and then the tumbling Priory
that is the store-house of the garrison.
Perhaps we might talk poetry?
Like you, your couplets linger on.
But no, your nose swings further east
your finger to your lips and as you fade
I hear from off the Farnes the seals intone
the psalms that Cuthbert taught them as the sun
at dawn walks on the sea. I am alone.



*


Pastoral
(for Alistair Elliot)


Wherever I can find a meadow, ghosts
of mowers move in line like handwriting
across grass readied for the scythe by dew.
I’m shadowing their shadows, on their heels
and in their balance and their rhythm breathing
to stride into the cut and tug a string
tight to stop a frightened vole from running
up a trouser leg. There’s laughter here and song
exactly at the moment of its loss.
And I shall loiter among sheaves
to drink the peace they leave, the purple glow
when they go home down lanes and into graves.
I’m aftermath, foggage and bullimong,
an upstart in the poetry of fields.

    9     The Place I Am
    10     The Riddle
    11     Miss Hood in the Nursing Home
    12     Old Fashioned
    13     Auberge
    14     The Unsafe Landing
    15     Tales of Tesco
    16     Boustrophedon Lang Syne
    18     The Comfort Service
    19     The Leopard
    20     The Laboratory
    21     La Morale de Joujou
    22     A Helpmeet for Protestant Mystics
    23     The Muse and the Fridge
    24     The Heiress
    25     Like Me
    26     Three of Us
    27     Listening to Bees
    28     The Old Stacks
    29     The Better Place
    30     After Dark at Lindisfarne Castle
    31     Gantries
    32     The Magic Castle
    33     The Unicorn
    34     Remission

    35     LANDSCAPE WITH PSYCHE

    42     The Turtle Holiday
    43     Proxy
    44     Next Time
    45     The Winpole Boy
    46     After Pevsner
    47     The Nuisances
    48     Pastoral
    49     The Ornithologist
    50     Resting Rats
    51     Virgil
    52     French Windows
    53     The Philosopher
    54     Barefooted
    55     The Trouser Button
    56     Sanquar

    57     LADDEREDGE AND COTISLEA

    67     The Gypsy Fiddle
    68     The Columns
    69     The Vapour Trail
    70     An Exhibition Catalogue
    71     Death and the Spinster
    72     The Cormorant
    73     Seasons
    74     News of a Death
    75     My Mother at Erbistock
    76     A Piano in Hobart
    79     Notes

Peter Bennet reads poems from Border (2013) and Mischief (2018)