Salmesbury Bottoms by Dave Alton

Word is silent; my voice can be no more


Than resounding echo of that silence.


Whom these days have any time for church clocks


When a chip, little larger than a tear


Or a glob of blood from a wounded hand,


Is much more precise than venerable chimes,


However divine the charm. With there being


No church hard by and frayed Lancashire cloud


Weaving across the sky, even the sun’s


Become uncertain. A promise of rain


Has been broken, except on distant hills


To the north, where perseverant walkers


Are mocked by baffled resolve of church clocks


As their hearts and their boots fill with water.






Word be silent, my voice can be no more.


Turning from the Preston road, favouring


And unremarkable lane no doubt sold


As rural by estate agents, but bought


For being just near enough to suburban.


Two thirds down and it’s rough grazing for cars,


Metalled roads reserved for tread of pilgrims


Who, in some vague way, hope to expiate


Their doubt, about what they are not quite sure.


It is an unspoken need to gather


By the river, where pegged pavilions


Become canvas carapaces to art


In the garden and artists acting as


Both cultivators and hopeful vendors.






This is another year when the Darwen


Mumbles on its way, and no kingfisher.


There are new pathways though, shaven through woods,


And an old alarming footbridge, except


For kids who can keep fear in suspension.


Galvanised pyramid, quite recondite


As any in the Valley of the Kings,


Yielding up neither bounty nor curses,


Significance cloaked by banality.


Meanwhile, truth behind barbeques is proof


Of a quaint human instinct to gamble:


Delicious tension, tasteless apprehension,


Reward for pleasure, a prospect of pain,


But only after leaving the garden.






Does art really exist? Is it explained


As convention, arrangement of pigments


By process of natural selection?


Just a two dimensional illusion


At which primed brains innocently connive,


A trick of the light. Except it is not


The light – that’s the artist’s fabrication,


Spoken to conceal deeper mysteries –


But shadow, darkness defines, cloud gives shape


To Pendle, concocting a fallacy


Of its moods. Gem of a raindrop on a


Depicted bloom, transparent analogue


Of a tear for those petals to be shed:


Neither light nor darkness in extinction.






What pilgrims fail to see while buying plants


But not paintings, earrings and novelties


With no more than glances towards sculpture,


Is the wraith beckoning towards a tree,


Its roots drawing nourishment from treasure


Buried beneath in more troubled times past.


Assembled painters, even those who are


Truly artists, only depict her in


Their perspectives as momentary shade.


Leaving the poet to compose her tale


Which few will listen to and fewer read.


Unhooked landscapes swaddled in bubble-wrap,


Diaries marked for their re-hanging next year


As the poet nods to the wraith who smiles.






Word is silent, my voice can be no more


Than resounding echo of that silence.


Before any of this had been arranged


There could only be the artist, perhaps


No more than a vague potential artist,


Who, by realisation, became art,


Its flaws, its contrivance of chance and design,


A wilful act, the only evidence


For which are pigments deployed on canvas.


The forecast rain hardly came and numbers


Are up on last year. Sales so slow again,


But scones with cream and jam feed the moment.


Balances are precarious, pilgrims


Struggle to grasp a sense of perspective.