Norland – background

Norland was a ferry that went to the Falklands’ War, in 1982 – years later, she took a party of Cheshire teachers on a Shakespeare tour of Germany, which might be a more interesting theme! HMS Antelope was sunk in San Carlos Water, by the Argentine Air Force. The Battle of Jutland was an indecisive clash between the Royal Navy and the IHSF of Germany in 1917. The Herald of Free Enterprise was a RoRo ferry that sank off Zeebrugge because the man responsible for closing her bow doors was asleep.

Norland was scrapped in India in 2010. Lord knows what happened to the painting.

MV Norland

In the Antelope Bar strangers of passage
gather to digest their dinner over drinks,
and slip away from England in brochured comfort.

Where we sit, a modest painting disturbs the wall’s
chromatic harmony. Enshrined in brassy light,
it’s artless tribute shows narrow land,
a brief, unsheltering sea, and two ships caught
in the trap of war: Antelope broken in two,
her risen bow an elegant finger of authority
in the defeating air; and Norland, black hulled
and squat, escaping an explosion of brush strokes
in the impassive water at her stern.

Tonight, in pastel pinks and greys, and trimmed
reflectively in chrome, she moves with safety
on the oily darkness, and we can share
with drinks and cigarettes, that necessary
spoil of war, indifference. But in
the disco, on the light shadowed floor,
where now two lines of swaying figures row
to the commands of music learnt in clubs
in safe English towns, they might have brought
the wounded, burned or bloody from the sea,
and lain them, the assault of air and history
still screaming in their ears. Beneath the bleary
excitement of the music, great engines turn.
There is a shiver in the soft clad floor.

And out there, in the stream of night’s ugly
tenderness, Jellicoe’s great Navy grappled
indecisively with the Imperial Fleet
of the usurper, and unvanquishable
dreadnoughts split their sides and poured their crews’
closed lives into the minute’s oceans.
To such tunes of glory as were played,
boys drowned, and ‘our bloody ships’ kept to their
schedules. Over such waters do we dance,
our moving pleasures measured by the closing
of the bar, a final slow paced sway
in careless arms, and coffee served to keep
awake the conversation. Beyond the glass,
a continent of wind sweeps past, unnoticed.

In the daylight, Zeebrugge’s harbour extends
two claws into the grey flecked sea. Norland
sails past immaculate where other tourists died.
The upturned bathtub boat, the TV lights,
the hand beneath the canvas shroud. Ungraspable.

Dawn and sobriety bring closer touches
of such ironies. Shivering from the cold,
we cluster to the funnel, and look out across
the half healed gulf in silence. From the ship’s
steel heart come shudders of warmed air. At last,
we go below to wait our final call.

 

[Background]

 

On a Moscow Train

from Prospects of Leningrad

A round of laughter down the corridor holds
a jam of students as we gather speed to clatter
towards darkness and the distant suburbs.
A massive locomotive crawls in a siding
as we pass. Monumental, heroic,
it is a barely moving block
of painted steel and unheard purpose.
Away from the centre, Leningrad dims
to street lights, and the muffled glow
of blocked and distant high-rise windows.

The samovar enshrined in the corridor
tangs the air with a delicate charcoal pungency.
The young attendant, black haired and humorous,
brings tea in rough edged glasses and silver holders.
“It’s Georgian,” he jokes. “Strong enough to make
your moustaches grow.” The smiling face of
Stalin conjured fades with the sweetness of
the tea we sip, and curtained Russia passes.
Sleep seals our train of citizens and tourists, and
holds, once more, dreams of Moscows of the morning.

Day brings birch forests and half hidden dachas,
the city of palaces and revolutions
and wide angled rivers is hours in the west.
Last night’s laughter stays asleep in its bunks –
its owners stir singly, and, clutching toilet bags,
go quietly past cabins in the grey blue light
for the morning’s morning water rituals.

The train touches the city on its lips.
Those most awake stand like visionaries
at windows, agape to have the new anatomised:
tall apartments standing, square faced and naked,
out of the open, end of winter ground;
paths passing silvered trees to litterless stations,
where people aroused to work, wait or talk,
unheedful of our expressed, passing interest.
Invisible, powerless to them,
we hardly exist. As if the gods of atheism,
we are allowed to be all seeing.

Then come the enterprises of every city:
the factories and workshops, long buildings
that contain their functions in fluorescent halls
behind their grime sheathed windows. The train slows
to its purpose, draws to a sharp, unsteadying stop.
Cases in hand, we stride the gap between
carriage and city, and then stand about
with luggage and each other in the chilly
sun. A station sign says three degrees,
much higher than it feels and we take it
as a gift of welcome, a metaphor
which means the place is warmer than its airs.

Ludwig’s Last Note

The pianist Murray McLachlan played Beethoven’s Last Piano Sonata [op 111, no 32] at a Northumberland Music Festival recital – and described the conditions under which it was probably written.

The second movement concludes the piece – no expected third – and it just winds quietly and thoughtfully to silence.

Ludwig’s Last Note

Beethoven at a Broadwood. Deaf, held in the cruelty
of jaundice, his life, as they say, a guttering candle
flickering defiance at his unlidded piano. Broken
quills litter a table; ink is open,

Spilled; paper is everywhere; staved off,
a tiny scrawl of etched entreaties, intentions,
demands.   Last movement, then. He strikes
the keys with rage he cannot hear, a tumult

of silence hisses its answer. He is pursuing
a simple theme and time keeps its distance.
His fingers seek new scales, arpeggios,
as they hammer noiselessly in his head.

Then, without a protest or the usual flourish,
they simply stop, a slowing to an absence, an emptiness.
And that’s it for the piano. He summons up the last quartets,
the European Ninth, then slips away to death.

That last sonata breaks the ground beyond.
Behind the weight of style and sound that was
his own, the sentence of that stop asserts a life
that suddenly is far too good to lose and then is gone.

 

[background]