The Other Side of Countryside - four poems by Rupert Mallin

These four poems were written in the late 1970s/early 1980s and are variously about the "other side" of countryside. Includes Stubble Fires which became part of the narration for my BBC Radio 4 play 'Overspill,' 1993.

I 've purposefully left this recording rough and ready because it is, after all, live. A transcript of the poems is included.

Transcript

THE OTHER SIDE OF COUNTRYSIDE

Brought up in a Suffolk village, I well appreciate the beauty of the countryside but never, ever be fooled that the big landowners and landlords are gatekeepers of this beauty for they are the ones eager to destroy what is not profitable! I have seen the other side of countryside: twice I witnessed the hunt rip foxes to pieces (once in my school playground). I have seen mountains of dead fish pulled from the River Stour.

It’s not thieves and arsonists who have scrubbed out hedgerows and burnt the straw. It’s not poisoners who fill the earth with pesticides and poison the rivers. It’s not some crazy people who trap animals and shoot birds. 

In this first poem, Blood Brook, I try to bring the two sides of “countryside” together. It was written in 1979 and came fourth in the Hammersmith Open poetry competition in 1980. After I read it at that big church in Hammersmith, the kindly judge said I would have won the competition if he had heard the poems, not just read them. No money in fourth place though. Oh well. It was subsequently published in the volume ‘Suffer Suffolk,’ 1987

BLOOD BROOK

I mistook the cold dark birds

for terminals on the distant power lines,

my thumbs all bone, wrapped in fingers

and pressed into my palms.

They caught the tiny flying dot, the fox,

in a ditch between two fields of newly cut furrows; 

caught and shredded the fox

like the unrubbed tobacco Old Bill

would break in his palms,

pressing down the wire-fine ends

into the bowl of his old pipe with a thumb.

Hooves pass on tarmacadam

as I unthaw my hands on a bathroom radiator,

eyes dazzled by scarlet.

I place crusts, fat and nuts on a table

for thrushes, tits and sparrows, 

and listen to them above a frying pan

spitting flecks of agitated fat

from sausages and liver.

Plates of ice hang outstretched

above the shallow Chiltern Stream,

running vermillion from the slaughterhouse

with the blood of horses and cows,

where Suicide Jack hung up his boots

above black cobbles a year before the Cod War.

The cold dark birds are huddled tight on the wires

as dusty fingers of snow spread into the corners

of our backyard. I tell myself that my hands

are clenched to improve the circulation, and indeed

the blood is warming, the blood is furious.

This next poem ‘Darker Hearts’ was written in the early 1980s and in some ways is quite nostalgic as I’d left Suffolk and was studying in London. However, with nuclear war on the agenda, the dark side stalks the light. It was also published in ‘Suffer Suffolk.’

DARKER HEARTS

Flies pepper the curling skins of marrows

on the compost

as jets cast fleeting shadows

over the acid green

of leaf beat newly risen from the plot.

Worms spaghetti the lawn with casts

and gently turn the earth beneath wigwams

of peas and runner beans,

hanging from nets like a mass assault

of toy marines.

Hedgerows deckle lanes; thrushes and sparrows

of undergrowth’s mosaic

stroke the sensibilities of the middle-ear;

woodbine spiral binds wild rose stems;

flowers, like city litter, shimmer;

beads of water

glitter on broad waxy pads on the Stour.

Cherry tree stumps, held down by tar,

subversively spread their roots beneath

the summer house

in soil as dark as hearts still pumping.

Moon’s chilling chiaroscuro catches

swans on the mill pool

and makes ghostly snow of apple blossom

which stirs across the path.

Behind horizon’s lip an electric storm

wells up, alludes to battle in a nearby town.

Dawn breaks: a black kite over corn

cracks its sail

and colludes with a pulse of orange

from a rotating drum

to startle rooks on their first light raid.

Above the curling skins of marrows a jet

trails its mark upon the sky

and life is taken underground to burrows,

bolt-holes, to the darkness under leaves,

to hollows in sand, between the bark and its tree.

Only the farmer in his Land Rover is unaware

of his susceptibility.

This third poem is shorter. Seasons of the Axe. This was written in the late 1970s and included in ‘A Road to the Sea,’ Magic Pen Press 1989

SEASONS OF THE AXE

Footprints in the snow on Little Box Meadow,

Lovers loping up Leather Bottle Hill in winter,

Courting beneath conifers in the steamy cold,

Burning bare fingers on railings round the green.

Metallic axe in the shop window

In a fat-saturated sycamore block

Poised to portion meat, come tomorrow.

They stare.

She holds in her hand a wedge of flint

from which they unfold an entire community.

Back home, her black mac drips

Onto ice blue linoleum. Love tightens.

Her hands fill with face and impending Monday.

The flint is so sharp, beautiful.

The sycamore weeps fat.

Blood money.

This last poem Stubble Fires is a rant. Though stubble burning was banned in the 1980s, I’ve used the image. It is a poem very much of its time – the brilliant struggle by the Greenham Women to halt cruise missiles being stationed here – for instance.

‘Stubble Fires’ was published in Suffer Suffolk, 1987, and later used (in part) as an element of narration in my BBC Radio 4 play ‘Overspill,’ 1993.

STUBBLE FIRES

It’s dirt and grime and nine to five,

Commuters in the city. But in the country:

Rolling fields and river weirs;

Greene King pubs and village dances;

Lorries rolling, blister-holing;

Factories slack as board room stomachs;

Camouflaged trucks and barb-wire fences.

Christmas card blackbirds on a wire

And frogs caught leaping in stubble fires.

Roller coaster, walks in Cromer;

Clare and Kersey and Sizewell B –

A giant toaster on the coast!

Rainy days in caravans on golden sands;

Foxglove and cowslip and Cherry B

At a “Vicars and Tarts” Bar-B-Q”

In a tent behind the Boot and Goat;

The Sauna solarium was once

The old umbrella mender’s;

CAUGHT NUDE BATHING,

A Suffolk Free Press shocker;

Through pesticide alley

Mother walks her cocker;

Suffolk pinks, rude, nostalgic faces ale-glazed;

From Spalding to Great Tey, Everest double-glazed;

Gentle undulations, contours of home improvements:

TEXAS – the Big One!

ANDREX – the Soft One!

Eight green wellies for family nuclear:

Public Enquiry – tick “good works well done;”

Christmas card blackbirds on a wire

And frogs caught leaping in stubble fires.

Francis Bacon, home from home in Wivenhoe;

Lorries rumbling down a lane

With strike-break coal and mountain grain;

Missiles overhead and in the fields;

Out of the woodwork, in a council chamber,

The old “independent,” a farmer,

Will last forever – for forever’s for the dead;

Yields per acre, profits per tonne;

Nitrogen Brook, an adventure for the young;

Cavity insulation, cabbages in tins;

Midnight greasers on farting bikes;

Stag night, stag shot, shotgun loves;

In Bell Hotel, drinking “champers” to the fox’s blood;

And there are wild life craters in the wood;

A platoon on night patrol in Thetford;

U.S. Airforce skimming overhead;

Haywain’s haywire, around it tourists cruise;

“Bugger you kids – I got my B-Reg;”

Telecom vandals aerosol loos;

Happy homes, pine-stripped, waxed in a pledge:

Turtle wax from Sainsbury’s will fulfil our desires!

Candles burning, women dancing, cutting wires;

Frogs caught leaping in stubble fires;

Keep hearts burning, keep on dancing, keep on keeping on…