GLOUCESTER QUAYS

Tags

barges, dredger, Gloucester Quays

Photos by Candia Dixon-Stuart

Advertisements

Mevagissey, Cornwall

Tags

Cornwall, fishing, Mevagissey

Last week….

All photos copyright candiacomesclean.wordpress.com

Head of Steam

Tags

Beeching, Cumbria, Federation of the World, iron mining, Lake District, Lakeside and Haverthwaite, Peter Rabbit, Pleiades, plutonium, railways, steelmaking, technological change, The Plough, turbines, Wordsworth

(Lakeside and Haverthwaite railway station

Photo: mattbuck 7/7/2013 Wikipedia)

Once that head of steam was up, rails were laid

and Wordsworth’s wooed wilderness converged upon,

prelude to trucks toting plutonium,

criss-crossing the land; scouring surfaces

as deeply as glacial striation.

Then Beeching came and railed against the lines.

Coal, iron mining ceased; steelmaking shot.

Peter Rabbit quaking in his burrow,

anticipates fracking with timid twitch.

Turbines wave their arms quixotically

at those on muddied foot and cycle paths,

attempting to revolutionise health.

The golden keys open every barred door.

Geology is sacrificed to greed;

the hills afforested with money trees;

the night sky, filled with commerce, blinds poets

to The Plough, Pleiades, meteor showers.

We cannot hear the curlew’s stony cry

and now The Federation of the World

will never float the European flag,

but, ruled by those profit-hungry traders,

will talk us through its groovy projections;

will take us on economic projections;

leave us in a mistaken metaphor,

in a siding, instead of skimming on

to an optimistic mainline station.

Science no longer moves slowly, slowly.

Evolution morphs to revolution.

Wordsworth, proud of his skill to reach a point

rowed, unswerving to his destination,

dipping his oars into a silent lake,

before the ringing grooves of change arrived,

with consequent unknown modes of being,

bringing a blank desertion and darkness

to a landscape loved by the choicest minds.

Katana

Tags

alloy, differential hardening, gohei, iadoka, katana, Moving Zen, nioi, nukitsuke, resilience, seppuka, tachi, tamahagane, yasutsuna

 

Then Yasutsuna

saw half the swords were broken

on the battlefield.

After thirty days he’d forged

curved, slaughter-proof blades.

 

The gohei protect

our tatara from evil.

Older steel will stretch.

By the flames’ colour, we know

when the curve must be straightened.

 

Burns just mark me out;

hammering gives me tremor.

I can’t stop half-way.

Cold alloy cannot be worked.

I cannot grip my chopsticks.

 

Thick clay is applied

to the blades, before quenching.

Resilience comes

with a gradual cooling:

that is how we gain our souls.

 

The visual effect

of differential hardening –

a bright, speckled band –

can be seen from long angles:

nioi can never be faked.

 

Sharpening gives shape:

it can take up to two months.

Some old tachi blades

can be converted, but lose

signatures in the process.

 

The nukitsuke,

or ‘Moving Zen’ as it’s called,

used by Iadoka

show two hands better than one:

tensile strength and grace revealed.

 

You protect your lord.

Seppuka preserves honour,

warrior, weapon:

Tamahagane’s fusion

of deity and mankind.

 

 

 

 

Diesel Recall

Tags

Bodleian, diesel, Douce, re-call, Venus, Volkswagen

 

 

(Venus Rides her Chariot: bodl_Douce 195; orig

uploaded by Tony Harrison)

 

Volkswagen

managed to adapt

their diesels.

Do It Yourself

Tags

15th century, City of ladies, Yorck Project

 

( Book of the City of Ladies: Yorck Project 15th century

Wikipedia)

 

When he said

his van had broken down,

I’d had enough.

She’s Leaving Home

Tags

Art Deco, Celestial City, Clyde, Clyde-built, dredgers, Dumbarton Rock, Flybe, Glasgow airport, Glasgow University, John the Baptist by Da Vinci, Kilpatrick Hills, Luftwaffe, Paisley, River Cart, Singer Factory, soor ploom, speug, Titan Crane

Yes, folks, I’m back.  Here’s a wee poem for you, describing my thoughts as

Flybe took me out of Glasgow Airport:

SHE’S LEAVING HOME 

Instead of a speug’s* view at ground level,

I have a skewed vista doon the watter.

There’s a lump in my throat like a Soor Ploom,

as my keen eye picks out Dumbarton Rock,

before the plane’s wing and cloud wisps obscure

the Ben and those Kilpatrick Hills – cradle

of my childhood.  The tributary Cart,

where mighty hulks dragged their chains,

buoyed up those liners that would cruise the world,

while dredgers kept the channel free of silt

and every vessel seemed to be Clyde-built.

A solitary crane marks the spot

where political tourniquets strangled

the life out of industry and population.

Patchwork fields look as if they have been stitched

into a quilt by a local giantess,

the boundaries hemmed in by Paisley thread,

before Singer stopped treadling out machines

and its Art Deco clock had its hands tied,

as the shriek of town sirens was stifled.

I see my house, my school, the High Flats,

where Luftwaffe rained down a thousand bombs,

before I saw the light of day.  Yon spire

of Glesca Uny soars toward the sky;

beckons to a Celestial City,

just like the finger of John the Baptist:

a pointer to a life outside the frame.

Education – the sky was the limit.

And now I can never come truly home.

Photo by Stephen Sweeney, Wikipaedia Commons

• speug- a sparrow
• * soor ploom- a sour plum-flavoured sweet