Bright Coast
For Bryan Angus
i.
this is understood:
drawn line of horizon
stretched across a bay
the gods died making,
morning’s urgent grave
upon the gable end
and hands above
a woodblock, trimming
the void to light
as another day
answers for itself
ii.
art school of the brae
and cherryburn wren;
this valley thick with corn
and morning’s ink of light;
return to me a childhood
type-high to the now
of a silver shilling;
gift me the sea’s slow prism
and the lumen hours
of a northern shore
always at my shoulder,
always prone to rain
iii.
how it alters colour, how it
makes and unmakes shadow;
how it comes ready-made
by morning to the folded cliffs,
drawing at the core of it all,
as the winter sun’s candela
scorps the six-hour day
from the hollow of my palm,
thumb along the blade,
resurfacing the light:
everything feeds into this
iv.
idiom of line and light,
the moon overprints
itself upon the block
of night
down
hillside
to the shore’s rake;
drops Fresnel
onto slate roof
and dormer;
ghosts
among the lanes
of the sleeping town;
silversmiths
form into
well-wrought
dreams
of home
and the full-house
of this dark
ocean
v.
not simply the eye
alive to now
but a mind awake
to time and
the composite days
of this sickle strand,
its clarity of air,
patinas of slate
and sharply angled light,
askance upon
the boxwood:
these marks we make,
centre to edge,
block on the sandbag
aligned to the Pole.
About this poem
This poem was chosen by Aoife Lyall as part of the Scottish Poetry Library’s ‘Champions’ project, a guest curatorship programme to help extend our national reach.
Lyall says, ‘Martin’s poem is one that responds to the idea of ‘vision’ with visions, and the understanding that any one thing can, and is, and, perhaps most importantly, should be seen from and through a multitude of perspectives and experiences. And what better conduit for this message than that of a lino cut; an art form we create through what we take away?’
Malone says, ‘Given this project’s central theme of ‘vision’ this is very much a poem to do with ways of seeing.’