July 2019
Robert Nisbet
robert.nisbet042@gmail.com
robert.nisbet042@gmail.com
Note: I was born and brought up just after the war in a small Welsh market town at the heart of a farming region. We ourselves were a town of shopkeepers but one in which cow dung was tramped out into the streets on the weekly mart day.
I’ve been back in that area for many years now, with only shorter spells in the English town of Colchester and Wales’s capital city, Cardiff. But the old farming regions are changing very rapidly now and some of my poems recently have tried to capture an ambience before it is gone forever.
I’ve been back in that area for many years now, with only shorter spells in the English town of Colchester and Wales’s capital city, Cardiff. But the old farming regions are changing very rapidly now and some of my poems recently have tried to capture an ambience before it is gone forever.
Farm Sale
The notice just gave details of acreage,
of arable and pasture. In The Journal’s later piece,
the interview, Owen’s phrases seemed to have halted
within him before they were written down. He simply said,
It wasn’t just a livelihood. He made some reference
to the obvious things, the shearing, branding,
calving, milking, the haymaking when cousins
and neighbours came, swigged brown ale from flagons
in the top of the barn as the heat built up.
But Owen did not mention, could not explain,
the one green image haunting him, those last few days:
the centuries’ clump of foliate oaks,
up by the main road, overhanging the milk stand,
the churns, the milk leaving for the creamery.
The Cattle Dealer
You’re probably bored with a lot of
what you have: Faculty Boards, retail
initiatives, official forms. While he ..
It needn’t be cattle necessarily.
Maybe antiques, or second hand, it’s just
that there should be something there
of mart grounds and the countryside,
where petrol and hedgerows blend
(that sharp reek cutting through
the sumptuousness of May and June,
engines staking out journeys in a
January cold), and on to sale rooms,
stalls and marts, where he will peel
a fold of banknotes from his arse pocket.
The sales enlivened by the breath of beasts,
there will be auctions and the rattle of
character. Roast dinners in pubs which
were cooking such pre-war, when the
very same marts and sales were on.
There’ll be a log fire too. This is all real.
Don’t forget that or them,
in case we find ourselves, one day,
stripped to a colder future.
The Bus Down
We were talking about you, much of the time
on the bus down from Aber, due to reach your cottage
at about the time night comes stealing up on afternoon.
And the picture of your cottage up that lane
claimed us: the fox whose bark cracks across your windows
two nights in five; your wealth of bramble,
heavy with berry every August; the tiny summerhouse
with crazy trellis-work, half in use. And your well.
The handle hasn’t worked since just before
the Second War, but it’s your well, rusted maybe
but its depths plumb-green.
Say what the world will, you are
our talisman, crop-tending, wood-burning, real.
“Farm Sale” was originally published in The Camel Saloon
“The Cattle Dealer” was originally published in The Seventh Quarry
“The Bus Down” was originally published in London Grip New Poetry
“The Cattle Dealer” was originally published in The Seventh Quarry
“The Bus Down” was originally published in London Grip New Poetry
© 2019 Robert Nisbet
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