The Nightfishing

1

Very gently struck

The quay night bell.

Now within the dead

Of night and the dead

Of my life I hear

My name called from far out.

I’m come to this place

(Come to this place)

Which I’ll not pass

Though one shall pass

Wearing seemingly

This look I move as.

This staring second

Breaks my home away

Through always every

Night through every whisper

From the first that once

Named me to the bone.

Yet this place finds me

And forms itself again.

This present place found me.

Owls from on the land.

Gulls cry from the water.

And that wind honing

The roof-ridge is out of

Nine hours west on the main

Ground with likely a full

Gale unwinding it.

Gently the quay bell

Strikes the held air.

Strikes the held air like

Opening a door

So that all the dead

Brought to harmony

Speak out on silence.

I bent to the lamp. I cupped

My hand to the glass chimney.

Yet it was a stranger’s breath

From out of my mouth that

Shed the light. I turned out

Into the salt dark

And turned my collar up.

And now again almost

Blindfold with the bright

Hemisphere unprised

Ancient overhead,

I am befriended by

This sea which utters me.

The hull slewed out through

The lucky turn and trembled

Under way then. The twin

Screws spun sweetly alive

Spinning position away.

Far out faintly calls

The continual sea.

Now within the dead

Of night and the dead

Of all my life I go.

I’m one ahead of them

Turned in below.

I’m borne, in their eyes,

Through the staring world.

The present opens its arms.

2

To work at waking. Yet who wakes?

Dream gives awake its look. My death

Already has me clad anew.

We’ll move off in this changing grace.

The moon keels and the harbour oil

Looks at the sky through seven colours.

When I fell down into this place

My father drew his whole day’s pay,

My mother lay in a set-in bed,

The midwife threw my bundle away.

Here we dress up in a new grave,

The fish-boots with their herring scales

Inlaid as silver of a good week,

The jersey knitted close as nerves

Of the ground under the high bracken.

My eyes let light in on this dark.

When I fell from the hot to the cold

My father drew his whole day’s pay,

My mother lay in a set-in bed,

The midwife threw my bundle away.

3

I, in Time’s grace, the grace of change, sail surely

Moved off the land and the skilled keel sails

The darkness burning under where I go.

Landvoices and the lights ebb away

Raising the night round us. Unwinding whitely,

My changing motive pays me slowly out.

The sea sails in. The quay opens wide its arms

And waves us loose.

So I would have it, waved from home to out

After that, the continual other offer,

Intellect sung in a garment of innocence.

Here, formal and struck into a dead stillness,

The voyage sails you no more than your own.

And on its wrought epitaph fathers itself

The sea as metaphor of the sea. The boat

Rides in its fires.

And nursed now out on movement as we go,

Running white from the bow, the long keel sheathed

In departure leaving the sucked and slackening water

As mingled in memory; night rises stooped high over

Us as our boat keeps its nets and men and

Engraves its wake. Our bow heaves hung on a likely

Bearing for fish. The Mor Light flashes astern

Dead on its second.

Across our moving local of light the gulls

Go in a wailing slant. I watch, merged

In this and in a like event, as the boat

Takes the mild swell, and each event speaks through.

They speak me thoroughly to my faintest breath.

And for what sake? Each word is but a longing

Set out to break from a difficult home. Yet in

Its meaning I am.

The weather’s come round. For us it’s better broken.

Changed and shifted above us, the sky is broken

Now into a few light patches brightly ground

With its rough smithers and those swells lengthening

Easy on us, outride us in a slow follow

From stern to stem. The keel in its amorous furrow

Goes through each word. He drowns, who but ill

Resembled me.

In those words through which I move, leaving a cry

Formed in exact degree and set dead at

The mingling flood, I am put forward on to

Live water, clad in oil, burnt by salt

To life. Here, braced, announced on to the slow

Heaving seaboards, almost I am now too

Lulled. And my watch is blear. The early grey

Air is blowing.

It is that first pallor there, broken, running

Back on the sheared water. Now the chill wind

Comes off the shore sharp to find its old mark

Between the shoulderblades. My eyes read in

The fixed and flying signs wound in the light

Which all shall soon lie wound in as it slowly

Approaches rising to break wide up over the

Brow of the sea.

My need reads in light more specially gendered and

Ambitioned by all eyes that wide have been

Me once. The cross-tree light, yellowing now,

Swings clean across Orion. And waned and very

Gently the old signs tilt and somersault

Towards their home. The undertow, come hard round,

Now leans the tiller strongly jammed over

On my hip-bone.

It is us at last sailed into the chance

Of a good take. For there is the water gone

Lit black and wrought like iron into the look

That’s right for herring. We dropped to the single motor.

The uneasy and roused gulls slid across us with

Swelled throats screeching. Our eyes sharpened what

Place we made through them. Now almost the light

To shoot the nets,

And keep a slow headway. One last check

To the gear. Our mended newtanned nets, all ropes

Loose and unkinked, tethers and springropes fast,

The tethers generous with floats to ride high,

And the big white bladder floats at hand to heave.

The bow wakes hardly a spark at the black hull.

The night and day both change their flesh about

In merging levels.

No more than merely leaning on the sea

We move. We move on this near-stillness enough

To keep the rudder live and gripped in the keel-wash.

We’re well hinted herring plenty for the taking,

About as certain as all those signs falling

Through their appearance. Gulls settle lightly forward

Then scare off wailing as the sea-dusk lessens

Over our stern.

Yes, we’re right set, see, see them go down, the best

Fishmarks, the gannets. They wheel high for a moment

Then heel, slip off the bearing air to plummet

Into the schooling sea. It’s right for shooting,

Fish breaking the oiled water, the sea still

Holding its fires. Right, easy ahead, we’ll run

Them straight out lined to the west. Now they go over,

White float and rope

And the net fed out in arm-lengths over the side.

So we shoot out the slowly diving nets

Like sowing grain. There they drag back their drifting

Weight out astern, a good half-mile of corks

And bladders. The last net’s gone and we make fast

And cut the motor. The corks in a gentle wake,

Over curtains of water, tether us stopped, lapped

At far last still.

It is us no more moving, only the mere

Maintaining levels as they mingle together.

Now round the boat, drifting its drowning curtains

A grey of light begins. These words take place.

The petrel dips at the water-fats. And quietly

The stillness makes its way to its ultimate home.

The bilges slap. Gulls wail and settle.

It is us still.

At last it’s all so still. We hull to the nets,

And rest back with our shoulders slacked pleasantly.

And I am illusioned out of this flood as

Separate and stopped to trace all grace arriving.

This grace, this movement bled into this place,

Locks the boat still in the grey of the seized sea.

The illuminations of innocence embrace.

What measures gently

Cross in the air to us to fix us so still

In this still brightness by knowledge of

The quick proportions of our intricacies?

What sudden perfection is this the measurement of?

And speaks us thoroughly to the bone and has

The iron sea engraved to our faintest breath,

The spray fretted and fixed at a high temper,

A script of light.

So I have been called by my name and

It was not sound. It is me named upon

The space which I continually move across

Bearing between my courage and my lack

The constant I bleed on. And, put to stillness,

Fixed in this metal and its cutting salts,

It is this instant to exact degree,

And for whose sake?

It is this instant written dead. This instant,

Bounded by its own grace and all Time’s grace,

Masters me into its measurement so that

My ghostly constant is articulated.

Then suddenly like struck rock all points unfix.

The whole east breaks and leans at last to us,

Ancient overhead. Yet not a break of light

But mingles into

The whole memory of light, and will not cease

Contributing its exiled quality.

The great morning moves from its equivalent

Still where it lies struck in expressed proportion.

The streaming morning in its tensile light

Leans to us and looks over on the sea.

It’s time to haul. The air stirs its faint pressures,

A slat of wind.

We are at the hauling then hoping for it

The hard slow haul of a net white with herring

Meshed hard. I haul, using the boat’s cross-heave

We’ve started, holding fast as we rock back,

Taking slack as we go to. The day rises brighter

Over us and the gulls rise in a wailing scare

From the nearest net-floats. And the unfolding water

Mingles its dead.

Now better white I can say what’s better sighted,

The white net flashing under the watched water,

The near net dragging back with the full belly

Of a good take certain, so drifted easy

Slow down on us or us hauled up upon it

Curved in a garment down to thicker fathoms.

The hauling nets come in sawing the gunwale

With herring scales.

The air bunches to a wind and roused sea-cries.

The weather moves and stoops high over us and

There the forked tern, where my look’s whetted on distance,

Quarters its hunting sea. I haul slowly

Inboard the drowning flood as into memory,

Braced at the breathside in my net of nerves.

We haul and drift them home. The winds slowly

Turn round on us and

Gather towards us with dragging weights of water

Sleekly swelling across the humming sea

And gather heavier. We haul and hold and haul

Well the bright chirpers home, so drifted whitely

All a blinding garment out of the grey water.

And, hauling hard in the drag, the nets come in,

The headrope a sore pull and feeding its brine

Into our hacked hands.

Over the gunwale over into our deep lap

The herring come in, staring from their scales,

Fruitful as our deserts would have it out of

The deep and shifting seams of water. We haul

Against time fallen ill over the gathering

Rush of the sea together. The calms dive down.

The strident kingforked airs roar in their shell.

We haul the last

Net home and the last tether off the gathering

Run of the started sea. And then was the first

Hand at last lifted getting us swung against

Into the homing quarter, running that white grace

That sails me surely ever away from home.

And we hold into it as it moves down on

Us running white on the hull heeled to light.

Our bow heads home

Into the running blackbacks soaring us loud

High up in open arms of the towering sea.

The steep bow heaves, hung on these words, towards

What words your lonely breath blows out to meet it.

It is the skilled keel itself knowing its own

Fathoms it further moves through, with us there

Kept in its common timbers, yet each of us

Unwound upon

By a lonely behaviour of the all common ocean.

I cried headlong from my dead. The long rollers,

Quick on the crests and shirred with fine foam,

Surge down then sledge their green tons weighing dead

Down on the shuddered deck-boards. And shook off

All that white arrival upon us back to falter

Into the waking spoil and to be lost in

The mingling world.

So we were started back over that sea we

Had worked widely all fish-seasons and over

Its shifting grounds, yet now risen up into

Such humours, I felt like a farmer tricked to sea.

For it sailed sore against us. It grew up

To black banks that crossed us. It stooped, beaked.

Its brine burnt us. I was chosen and given.

It rose as risen

Treachery becomes myself, to clip me amorously

Off from all common breath. Those fires burned

Sprigs of the foam and branching tines of water.

It rose so white, soaring slowly, up

On us, then broke, down on us. It became a mull

Against our going and unfastened under us and

Curdled from the stern. It shipped us at each blow.

The brute weight

Of the living sea wrought us, yet the boat sleeked lean

Into it, upheld by the whole sea-brunt heaved,

And hung on the swivelling tops. The tiller raised

The siding tide to wrench us and took a good

Ready hand to hold it. Yet we made a seaway

And minded all the gear was fast, and took

Our spell at steering. And we went keeled over

The streaming sea.

See how, like an early self, it’s loath to leave

And stares from the scuppers as it swirls away

To be clenched up. What a great width stretches

Farsighted away fighting in its white straits

On either bow, but bears up our boat on all

Its plaiting strands. This wedge driven in

To the twisting water, we rode. The bow shores

The long rollers.

The keel climbs and, with screws spinning out of their bite,

We drive down into the roar of the great doorways,

Each time almost to overstay, but start

Up into again the yelling gale and hailing

Shot of the spray. Yet we should have land

Soon marking us out of this thick distance and

How far we’re in. Who is that poor sea-scholar,

Braced in his hero,

Lost in his book of storms there? It is myself.

So he who died is announced. This mingling element

Gives up myself. Words travel from what they once

Passed silence with. Here, in this intricate death,

He goes as fixed on silence as ever he’ll be.

Leave him, nor cup a hand to shout him out

Of that, his home. Or, if you would, O surely

There is no word,

There is not any to go over that.

It is now as always this difficult air

We look towards each other through. And is there

Some singing look or word or gesture of grace

Or naked wide regard from the encountered face,

Goes ever true through the difficult air?

Each word speaks its own speaker to his death.

And we saw land

At last marked on the tenting mist and we could

Just make out the ridge running from the north

To the Black Rosses, and even mark the dark hint

Of Skeer well starboard. Now inside the bight

The sea was loosening and the screws spun steadier

Beneath us. We still shipped the blown water but

It broke white, not green weight caved in on us.

In out of all

That forming and breaking sea we came on the long

Swell close at last inshore with the day grey

With mewing distances and mist. The rocks rose

Waving their lazy friendly weed. We came in

Moving now by the world’s side. And O the land lay

Just as we knew it well all along that shore

Akin to us with each of its dear seamarks. And lay

Like a mother.

We came in, riding steady in the bay water,

A sailing pillar of gulls, past the cockle strand.

And springing teal came out off the long sand. We

Moved under the soaring land sheathed in fair water

In that time’s morning grace. I uttered that place

And left each word I was. The quay-heads lift up

To pass us in. These sea-worked measures end now.

And this element

Ends as we move off from its formal instant.

Now he who takes my place continually anew

Speaks me thoroughly perished into another.

And the quay opened its arms. I heard the sea

Close on him gently swinging on oiled hinges.

Moored here, we cut the motor quiet. He that

I’m not lies down. Men shout. Words break. I am

My fruitful share.

4

Only leaned at rest

Where my home is cast

Cannonwise on silence

And the serving distance.

O my love, keep the day

Leaned at rest, leaned at rest.

Only breathed at ease

In that loneliness

Bragged into a voyage

On the maintaining image.

O my love, there we lay

Loved alone, loved alone.

Only graced in my

Changing madman who

Sings but has no time

To divine my room.

O my love, keep the day

Leaned at rest, leaned at rest.

What one place remains

Home as darkness quickens?

5

So this is the place. This

Is the place fastened still with movement,

Movement as calligraphic and formal as

A music burned on copper.

At this place

The eye reads forward as the memory reads back.

At this last word all words change.

All words change in acknowledgement of the last.

Here is their mingling element.

This is myself (who but ill resembles me).

He befriended so many

Disguises to wander in on as many roads

As cross on a ball of wool.

What a stranger he’s brought to pass

Who sits here in his place.

What a man arrived breathless

With a look or word to a few

Before he’s off again.

Here is this place no more

Certain though the steep streets

And High Street form again and the sea

Swing shut on hinges and the doors all open wide.

6

As leaned at rest in lamplight with

The offered moth and heard breath

By grace of change serving my birth,

And as at hushed called by the owl,

With my chair up to my salt-scrubbed table,

While my endured walls kept me still,

I leaned and with a kind word gently

Struck the held air like a doorway

Bled open to meet another’s eye.

Lie down, my recent madman, hardly

Drawn into breath than shed to memory,

For there you’ll labour less lonely.

Lie down and serve. Your death is past.

There the fishing ground is richest.

There contribute your sleight of cast.

The rigged ship in its walls of glass

Still further forms its perfect seas

Locked in its past transparences.

You’re come among somewhere the early

Children at play who govern my way

And shed each tear which burns my eye.

Thus, shed into the industrious grave

Ever of my life, you serve the love

Whose motive we are energies of.

So quietly my words upon the air

Awoke their harmonies for ever

Contending within the ear they alter.

And as the lamp burned back the silence

And the walls caved to a clear lens,

The room again became my distance.

I sat rested at the grave’s table

Saying his epitaph who shall

Be after me to shout farewell.

7

Far out, faintly rocked,

Struck the sea bell.

Home becomes this place,

A bitter night, ill

To labour at dead of.

Within all the dead of

All my life I hear

My name spoken out

On the break of the surf.

I, in Time’s grace,

The grace of change, am

Cast into memory.

What a restless grace

To trace stillness on.

Now this place about me

Wakes the night’s twin shafts

And sheds the quay slowly.

Very gently the keel

Walks its waters again.

The sea awakes its fires.

White water stares in

From the harbour-mouth.

And we run through well

Held off the black land

Out into the waving

Nerves of the open sea.

My dead in the crew

Have mixed all qualities

That I have been and,

Though ghosted behind

My sides spurred by the spray,

Endure by a further gaze

Pearled behind my eyes.

Far out faintly calls

The mingling sea.

Now again blindfold

With the hemisphere

Unprised and bright

Ancient overhead,

This present place is

Become made into

A breathless still place

Unrolled on a scroll

And turned to face this light.

So I spoke and died.

So within the dead

Of night and the dead

Of all my life those

Words died and awoke.