BACK AND BEYOND

BACK AND BEYOND

Coney Green

I finally take my long walk: Coney Green,

Across from the house that I live in.

A miniature take on the country, including

To scale dogs and walkers and a tiny

Village Church on the side. These empty steeples

That point are missiles now, scenting God,

Who sniffs straight back, clearly shrugging,

As each of us seeks direction and a locale

To replace damaged pride. All forms

Of redundancy roar, as the Devil abuses

Man’s purpose. Hillingdon’s Cheeky Chums

Nursery stands sun scorched and barren,

As if the children held in it had aged

And died, suddenly. Its board declares its intake

And the provided date echoes in me:

‘From Three Months to Five Years.’

As if this were the sentence that the Lockdowned

Were going to serve finally. How will the world

Have changed by that point, once this close

To cosy illusion has lifted, only to be replaced

By another, and then another again, when books

Burn? When will we find that the Fahrenheit

We all face will be as Ray Bradbury once predicted,

With all we knew and thought singed, then

Surrendered to the powers that oppose

Hearts that learn. I take a random road from

The Green, that I have never walked, having

Lived here for years, and turn into a star specked

The Green Light Tunnel Footpath

Light tunnel. It is a seemingly endless Public

Footpath (the U68) that delivers me from

The urban to a form of ruralised past.

Moving further still through this zone I pass

Elderly owners’ Allotments, or at the current time,

Their ‘Allessments,’ as people size their smallholdings

To measure the scope and scale of what lasts.

And so, I catch a glimpse of the place this once was,

A former breeding ground for the river, and fancy

I hear on the breeze former voices, colouring

The sunned and spectral air with times lost.

Shades that will never return, and in walking

Through, their fast fading remains to remind

And to honour Time’s shaping before the horrors

To come apply cost. Green gives way to Green,

As I turn into a larger enclosure. Spilling

From a long lip of houses the fat tongue

Of this field kisses me. It is in that single instant

Serene, before the relaying in of a near parade

Of Dog Walkers, which in turn becomes

Almost stately, as if each separate snare

Of confinement permitted the dogs

To walk people in some pale attempt

To feel free. But for that initial moment,

The field speaks of a much older England.

The movement of the grass in the breeze

Is a larynx, through which the ancient earth

Clears its throat. The sound that spills speaks

For trees, whose leaves weave and wave

Their agreement, as even scent casts opinion

And Mother Nature starts screaming,

In order to smother the joke that man

Has started to tell to keep the long invited

Dark in abeyance. But Aunt Gaia is appalled

At our mire and is raising the curse as we sit.

What dogs spend feeds the soil, but now,

Long forgotten airs comment on us.

They know that we in fact have no graces,

And that our scars coarsen landscape, as Covid

Flavours boredom with the texture and heft

Of our shit. I listen hard to the land, perhaps

Seeking forgiveness. In walking out, I have wanted

To both sacrifice and survive. Previously,

I had only ventured out to the shop,

But today I was actively tracing time travel,

Hoping against hope for renewal, as well as

Bidding those workers of old to revive.

And once more honour the land

So that the tempered earth might protect us,

But it has for far too long borne the insult

That we have trampled and pissed into it.

So, is this the world biting back, or another

Final Solution that the fascists frame

And then shatter as seven billion souls’ taste

Lime pits? Will and can we return across

The world at large and this country.

Or in the small green I return to,

Close to the bunker of books that’s my home.

No-one knows. We’ll know soon.

So, welcome the ghosts who call to you.

I seek and need their lost counsel, as cursed

And cut in my county, the Uxbridge Green and

Peasant land, begins singing. And so, I chorus

Back, scared, alone. How long now? I dare ask,

And cast my gaze, ever upward.

But the castle in cloud appears empty,

And I wait once more for the guidance

From an increasingly distant Throne

David Erdos May 6^th 2020

For more poems from David Erdos visit The Corona Diaries collection 

David Erdos is an actor, writer, director with over 300 professional credits. He is a published poet, playwright, essayist and illustrator. He has lectured on all disciplines in theatre and film for leading performing arts colleges, schools and universities around the world. His books include EASY VERSES FOR DIFFICULT TIMES, THE SCAR ON THE CLOUD, OIL ON SILVER, NEWS FROM MARS, CHANGING PLACES WITH LIGHT (penniless press) and BYZANTIUM with the photographer Max Reeves. He is a contributing editor for The International Times and maker of documentaries all over the world. David’s work has been acclaimed by many leading figures including Harold Pinter, Heathcote Williams, Alan Moore, Andrew Kotting, Chris Petit and Iain Sinclair in whose recent book THE LAST LONDON, David features. He can be reached at David.erdos@sky.com.

David Erdos

©    David Erdos has asserted his moral rights as author of his work and has full copyright.