John Nicolson

John Nicolson Poems

The Best Poem Of John Nicolson

Ancestral Eye

Around the garden blew the wind
For a while so shrill it blew;
And in part, a cart lay here and there
And straw lay all a-strew.

Hens were cooped and scarecrows stooped,
Wild herbs in moonlight shivering,
Cracked statues stood in stoic stance,
Near piebald rushes quivering.

Around the garden grew a wood:
And when that wood was younger;
A wall of forty hands or more
Lay barrier to a stranger

And where that wall was apertured
Affixed were gateway palings
(That piked the clouds and spiked the moon)
That lay secret human failings.

The cart was whole, scarecrows erect,
Wheel spokes gleefully glimmering.
The statues stood as proud as popes,
Tamed herbs in moonlight shimmering.

Listen do you hear a sound?
Perhaps a foot-fall shuffling?
On cobbled stone a ghost like moan?
Perhaps a garment ruffling?

Could it be a vagabond leaf?
Or swirling sycamore seed-blow?
Or could it be a small kerchief
Like down from a dainty shadow?

And does the shadow take on form
As it moves from an arched awning?
From phantom zone to cobbled stone;
A mirage in moonlight swarming?

And when these molecules are stilled
As if encaptured by some painter:
Beauty's face and faun like grace;
Adorned with silk, a-decked with lace.
Then the clouded moon enshrouded
Makes that portrait fainter.

Shy, the moon peeps through the clouds:
Silver light descending;
Bathing mystic rays upon
A fine young lady bending.

She stoops to pick a kerchief from
The cobblestone. A bell rings?
With bated breath! As still as death!
In the garden? In the wood?
Is it bad? Is it good?
This sound the stilling wind brings?

Her face is taut, her senses caught,
Her eyes like warriors speaking
When overhead high pitched aloft
There hung reptile demons squeaking.

Oh, the oaken tree, the aspen tree:
The apple trees she'd nurtured;
The tinkling bell, the bats from hell
That hung from every tree in the orchard.

The statues cracked and cobble stone
Gave way to moss and bracken;
And slimy serpents slithered forth
As the silver light did blacken.

"Oh, help me God! " she cried aloud
As her knuckles viced her face.
"I pray that when you lift this cloud
That all will fall in place! "

‘Twas then the kindly Sister Moon
Shed her Satanic surplice
And the statues stood as proud as Popes
As the garden did resurface.

"Oh, what evil root did I imbibe
When last that I was dining?
Or did I dream these evil themes,
Or was it some Divining? "

She heard a whisper in the air,
A whisper from far away,
From further than the Sun and Stars;
From beyond the break of day.

Beyond the breaking of the day
And many day breaks after,
A whispering from far away;
A whispering filled with laughter.

The laughter then became a wind
That chilled her inner being;
That sought to distort all her thought,
To distort all her seeing.

Yes, laughter that begat a wind.
The wind begat a gale.
She saw a fleet of silent ships;
And each with golden sail.

She fancied that she was aboard
A ship on Spirit Sea;
Through serene voids, through asteroids,
Though not a bump felt she.

A ship with silent golden sails
Bulging from the Main blow.
Heading for a jewelled shore
Beneath an arched rainbow.

And on the jewelled shingled shore
Phantasmal and singing,
Were maidens bathed in aura light
Beneath a great bell ringing.

The bell! The bell! She knew that bell!
She heard it in the distance:
The bell that tolls its evil knell;
Though not from this existence.

"This porthole is but a window.
This cabin is my mind!
If I draw the curtain I am certain
The garden soon I'll find."

She shut her eyes though magnetised
By anguished souls beseeching
Who tumbled through unscrolling skies
Like fiery meteors screeching.

"Oh Jesu, who suffered for me,
I beg Your grace and pardon.
Take me from this hellish place
And return me to your garden! "

She felt a hand embrace her soul
With a warmth serene and kind.
She opened her eyes and in surprise
The garden she did find.

She shivered in her very being
For cutting was the wind,
When her dainty foot did step upon
The book she'd sought to find.

"O book I found you long at last!
I could not sleep for sorrow!
For ambling out this day passed,
Through long shadows evening cast,
I forsook you in the bower grassed;
And leather bound and gold embossed,
And horrored by an early frost,
I could not wait for ‘morrow! "

She curtsied low and clutched the book,
Then moved to the arched awning;
To climb high steps where fountains gushed,
Where gargoyles gurgled, yawning.

‘Neath the awning, through the arch,
Up the stone stepped camber,
By store of fuel, by vestibule,
By grates of glowing amber.

Through the gallery, through the hall
Where the talbot bitch was sleeping
Beneath the portraits on the wall
Where ancestral eyes were peeping.

She climbed the spiral casement to
Her chamber of ailing embers,
To go a-bed, to go asleep:
To escape forever
From where spook things creep,
Where serpents slide and demons leap;
To the rood deep in the altar of her mind,
To secure a shutter and draw a blind,
In a secret place so warm and kind,
As the talbot bitch began to bark
At shadows deeper than the dark
Which sail through Time on a cerebral Ark
… but my ancestral eye remembers!

Around the garden blows a wind,
A wind from long ago
And no one knows from whence it comes
Or where that wind will go.

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