[Tim Murphy]

Cherryburn
for John McPake

Cherryburn, a farmstead set in a rural stretch of the upper Tyne valley, was the birthplace of the wood-engraver, Thomas Bewick (1753-1828). Though Bewick spent most of his professional life in Newcastle, the images included in his “tail-pieces”, as he called them - small decorative prints, often pointing a moral, and inserted on title pages and at the ends of sections - reflect the landscape of his youth.

Here by the gate the valley drops
Past a broad stand of oak and ash,
And the stone barn, to a smaller copse -
All birch and alder - where, in a flash
Of autumn sun, the river pours
Steadily down from the high moors.

Late afternoon: the air so still
That sounds float up distinct and clear.
A farm dog barks along the hill;
Somewhere a tractor changes gear;
While close at hand across the wall
Two donkeys stir in their dark stall.

This even light makes what is far -
Those printed fields, the lines of trees,
And all the shining things that are -
Draw near, perfected and at ease,
As if, in the ambit of the eye,
Nothing once seen could ever die.

Such the skilled engraver knew,
Who carved into the stubborn grain
A pig, some geese, a draggled ewe,
A snowy field, a muddy lane,
Making an art of what he found
Upon this rare, sequestered ground.

And this? The dead man who has hung
All day above a swollen stream?
A woman pissing in the dung?
Over their meal two magpies scream,
The dog caught helpless in a snare.
These, too, the engraver did not spare.

His burin cut from dark to light;
But now the day begins to fade,
And the world sinks in a long night.
(What place was this in which we strayed?)
The farmhouse cat is on the prowl,
And that pale, shrieking thing’s an owl.

Now shadows deepen on the hill,
And cottage chimneys start to smoke:
The October air is turning chill.
In the soft darkness, ash and oak
Have slipped away. The hour is late;
Supper, a good fire, bed await.


Cherryburn, 13th October, 2001

[Richard Wilbur]

This poem puts me in mind of all those 18th-century poets who composed the landscape as in a Claude glass; but Mr. Watkins is doing something else, and is altogether original. The poem's transitions and architecture are remarkable. Its argument moves from the clarity of the actual scene in afternoon light to the reminiscent engravings of Bewick (first the "light" ones, then the "dark"), and thence to the actual scene again as night descends upon it. A tractor, in stanza 2, enforces the presentness of the initial vision; "printed" and "lines" in stanza three, together with the stanza's first line, make a transition to Bewick's preservation of the place in art; "ash and oak," in the dark last stanza, recall and reverse the "oak and ash" of line 2. There is much art in "Cherryburn," while at the same time it flows clear and easy. If there is any line to which I don't respond, it would be the parenthetical "What place is this in which we strayed;" but when I read the poem next, that line may work.

[Rhina P. Espaillat]

What a wonderful poem! It suggests the way art focuses, if it's honest, on all the "things of this world," the dark and the light together.

[Clive Watkins]

Dear Tim

Please pass on to Richard Wilbur my gratitude for his generous comment about "Cherryburn". You know that in the past I have expressed reservations to you about this poem. Naturally I am "chuffed" that Richard Wilbur found something worthwhile in it.

Thank you, as well, for having promoted this very special forum.

To adapt some lines from a poem by Hans Carossa:

Rejoice that in this place we are not alone.
How many walk abroad in the starlight,
And others journey towards us, yet unknown.

Best wishes!

Clive

[Clive Watkins]

Dear Rhina

My thanks to you, too, for your kind comment. Such remarks are most affirming.

Best wishes!

Clive

PS I look forward to the opportunity of meeting you at West Chester this summer.