24 Critical Quarterly

Poems by Rosemary Joseph THE MEASURE O F MOTION

How swiftly it seems to cover everything. Ivory sand, set with limpet and mussel shells, Rock beaches, pools, all is submerged by this jade green Flood with its cargo of wrack, leaping and breaking Into cascades of candytuft against rocks and sea walls. The murmur of the sea in its shells whispers it stole This place from the land, moulded it like a demonic Sculptor, carving this bay out of a great lake, Where, for aeons, the wind had fluttered the wheat yellow reeds.

Between then and now Hy Brasil lost, a country of builders In stone, whose architecture is their only epitaph. They cut corn with flashing crescents of bronze and sailed Out in skin boats, through tawny seaweed, farther Than the gulls dared follow, ploughing an invisible path Through the swelling ocean, tuning their flimsy craft To waves which would lift the prows skyward, As they pursued the iridescent herring, the barred Mackerel, while the tide rose higher every year.

Their land was a refuge which they had guarded against attack From the east with a line of fortresses bestriding the hilltops, Each one a stockade massively encircled three times With walls the height of three tall men and thick Enough for two to walk abreast on, and beyond the last sharp Slabs of limestone slanting out of the earth to cut up An enemy, but the enemy when it struck came from the west, A disaster which left three islands 5oating in the mist, Like slate blue clouds on the horizon and this memorial to time:

Three grey semi-circles of crumbling masonry High on the cliffs, a steep, stoney track leading Finally to a narrow keyhole in the innermost Wall, and through it a half moon of grass gently Sloping up to the sky, gulls suddenly rising From beneath its edge to warn of the giddying Drop to the ocean, beyond no trace of land, Only, to the south west, an aquamarine band Suggesting a sandy plain beyond the coast.

Poems by Rosemary Joseph 25

There is a legend that those about to die Can see the darkling traces of a sunken village Between the smallest island and the mainland. It is a vision for those formed and fashioned by The islands, rising at sunset in its robe of sea foliage, Glowing amber and claret as it brings its message To one who, like the lost men of old, has rowed Out in a currach, that in its anguish the troubled Water is beckoning him to where Hy Brasil lies.

T H E BEACH ROAD

Sky blue, sea bluer; Aquamarine over the ocean, Dappled with puff-balls of vapour, Ultramarine over the harebell Blue bay, the sky is this clear Warm air, drifting in from the west.

It comes full of the ocean, Stretching like prairies of bellflowers To the horizon, yet, warmed By currents from the gulf, will make No rain clouds until It has climbed the Twelve Pins.

By the side of the winding bay, Not quite a fiord, the road Dips to a rock strewn beach, Then climbs over low cliffs Where inaccessible sandy coves Tantalise with the whisper of waters.

Hedges of fuschia, wildernesses Of bracken, glowing with fiery Sprays of montbretia, left behind, Now the road is a grassy track At the foot of the mountain, open To the bay and the hills beyond.

Among grey, granite boulders, Jutting out from thin soil, Grow heather and gorse, scabius And yellow ox-tongue, the path Going on and on as though It would lead to where “if only” is.