EASTBEAT

Saturday 19th December 2020

Mike Parsons reads Jack Clemo's poetry from "I proved thee at the Waters"; The Testimony of a Blind Writer's Mother - Eveline Clemo and, Map of Clay.

Meeting-points

by Jack Clemo (for Charles Causley)

He burst into my pit-land, grit-land,

Before I turned from it towards the sea

And his flying images have spanned

the continents,

wholesome as that broad greeting.

Frolic of rhyme from cruising fancies,

Or the snatch of a carved, compassionate memory:

Slum delinquents, a grim moor-backed killing;

Ship's roll in soft Pacific tremors

Suddenly trounced by guns; or he's pitching

Today's pew and schoolroom through a breeze of antiquity.

And now I lounge at Aggie Weston's

Near his birthday, near grinding Chesil.

Sailors play darts, ask a gospeller questions,

Rest their bare feet and sing.

I think of his shore leave, the mind's homeward voyage,

The thrust through wordy torrents until

The apt phrase was shaped and shining.

I can fancy the poet's hand

As close as when it passed me the ring

In the grey light of a Cornish chapel.