Peter

Peter

We cast our nets again and again
into the grey-black early morning sea.
My hands, rubbed red against the cold
of sea-salt, cutting ropes, held fast
in failure. Only days ago, just days,
repeating in my mind, just days,
just days ago denied my Lord I
did deny my Lord. And what of rising,
asked the cold, and what of lifting
one bright hand out to the morning?
If he has risen I am dead: just days,
just days ago denied my Lord I
did deny my Lord.

And what of voices from the shore?
My hands, rubbed red against the cold
of sea-salt, cutting ropes, held fast
in failure, even when the nets were
filled, just days ago denied my Lord I
did deny my Lord. And then they cried It is
the Lord, and my hands dropped
the filling nets, the strange new nets,
the cold and some wild love filled up
my heart and flung I all my failed self
out toward the shore, carved up the sea.
If he has risen I have risen oh I
have risen too.

Sanded down

Sanded down

All we know of Barcelona is that Queen sings a song about it, about how it was the first time that they met, and it's glorious.

When we meet Barcelona for the first time it looks like a bit of rubble by the ocean, a pile of broken shells, glinting in the sun under the airplane, reflected in the snow on the mountain behind it. When we come in to land the plane swoops close over the surface of the sea, and it seems as though we're going to slide right into it, under the ships making wide circles, finely-drawn wakes, right into the blue. But we land instead, on a strip of tarmac kissing the beach.

Outside the plane the air is pungent with salt and swept clean with sun and a breeze that the Spanish find wintery, and which, after England's pearly greyness, its graceful withdrawal of warmth, feels like bliss to us, feels like the month of May.

We are cheap tourists in Barcelona, guidebook-wielding hosteling backpackers, knowing very little about the city beside its reputation for sangria. We have nothing to offer but a devalued pound sterling and faces starved for sun. We are tired.

But Barcelona welcomes us as though we were royalty.

At night in Barcelona I dream the old year and wake up tired, but when my eyes open the city is already singing: motorcycles in the street, Spanish through the walls, a humming vacuum, road works. On the balcony the morning rushes to meet me. People are moving in the streets, and my sun-washed holiday-morning eyes interpret them to be leisurely people, people who treat Monday morning like a gift, turning it over and taking time to look at it.

During the day in Barcelona we find the city has lain paths for us, trails leading to mosaic-lighted buildings, pillars, fountains, stone, water.

How to pull water from stone? We pull stones from the water, shells, ancient things washed up on the beach, carvings from another world. They are as detailed and fragile as Picasso's paintings. I stand in the shallows and the sea rushes forward and pulls back with an offbeat rhythm, tugging my feet, my legs, and any remaining shreds of dreams break up and disappear, foam on the surface with the bottom washed clean, changed, sanded down, made new.

Springs

Springs

I go walking every day
around the bases of buildings,
feeling the strange bursting updrafts
and smelling their refuse or sweetness,
the coffee shop on the corner and the
flower stalls. The city is a forest
and we wander in it, looking for
the springs the buildings promise.

One day we will find them.

Grief

Grief

No-one can tell you what you feel.
Your thoughts, half-real, half false
Are dice on a board that gives nothing away.
If they say you should collect yourself,
shelve despair and smile as though
the riverflow of grief had petered out,
the shout and clamour of your hurt
had gone inert, had drifted to their ‘light’
that sight has rarely shown you, if they
remain to lay their heavy awkward hands,
dark grieving bands, upon your heart,
you can refuse them and depart. You must believe
your grief belongs to you. No-one can tell
its ceaseless swell to stop; it is for you
to wander through, and one day slip away
into a complicated world, made new.

An excuse

An excuse

I wanted to explore
the back lanes, the red
bricks behind the high street,
the foot bridges over
dark tunnels of highways
at night when leviathan was hiding
just under the lip of the cave.

I wanted to capture shots
of slain vehicles, rotting
behind brooding tenement blocks,
and pots
cracked round the edges
empty of flowers,
stacked in shaky pires
barely visible through the fence.

I wanted to walk and walk
until I found the corner of the city
where its heart must still be beating,
lounging in an open cage, mangy,
resisting kindness
out of ingrained habit,
and settling into rust.

I wanted to go but I wondered
what I would do if I found it,
not knowing its real name,
and fumbling for the truth
with my lens—
and did I really want to know?
In the end, I didn’t go.