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Life Cycle and Other New Poems 2006â"2016

Collected Poems Volumes 31â"34

John Hunt Publishing Ltd.

31

LIFE CYCLE 2014

Life Cycle

"At the start of the mid-year break [in Baghdad], on 18 January 1962, we flew to Basra. In the air above Ur, sitting with my eyes closed, I received the words 'Life Cycle' and scribbled down headings for a work on a whole life and its cycle."

Nicholas Hagger, My Double Life 1: This Dark Wood, p.142

    I. Garden

    I sit in my garden in autumn sun
    Above a dozen curved, perfumed rose-beds
    Whose flagstone paths present a Union flag –
    That still holds in our dwindling, fractured time –
    Around a fountain plashing to a bowl
    And gaze past oaks and fields to the dark wood
    That inspired my view of my double life
    On this rim of the crater round seven hills,
    And muse upon the ages of my life
    And on the stages all lives pass through from 10
    Their hatching and larvae to winged flight.
    In the arbour near a camellia bush
    I look beyond the pool at buttercups
    Like those that filled my childhood fields and muse
    On my twelve seven-year ages that grew me
    And the twelve cycles that propel all growth:
    Twelve cycles like medieval labours.


    II. Reflection: Twelve Seven-Year Ages

    Birth, infancy and childhood spring and strain.
    Species, once born from womb or hatched from eggs,
    Transmogrify into their final form. 20
    Animals' life cycles metamorphose
    Through three or four stages and life cycles:
    Fish, mammals, reptiles and birds are born from
    Mothers or hatch from eggs, are young, then grow
    Into adults; amphibians like frogs,
    Which hatch from spawn into wriggling tadpoles,
    And newts metamorphose from gills to lungs,
    Breathe under water and then air on land;
    From eggs insects become wormy larvae,
    Inactive pupae, then adults that fly; 30
    Dragonflies, grasshoppers and cockroaches
    Pass from eggs into nymphs and then grow wings
    In three stages, not four; spiders have three;
    Reptilian snakes hatch from eggs as snakelets;
    Birds hatch from eggs to chicks, fish and brown bats
    Are born as pups as are all great white sharks.
    Transforming paths of metamorphosis
    Take species from three to seventy years.
    Humans waul and grow towards adulthood
    Through families and schools, strict pedagogues. 40
    I bang my high-chair tray, map on the wall
    Of Europe showing front lines in the war,
    At peace as my mother moves like a giant.
    I sit among buttercups and acorns
    In a gold field and bask in gold sunshine
    In harmony with the blue universe,
    Under the dome of the One-sheltering sky.
    But at night I cower within my bed
    As the sky fills with droning doodle-bugs
    And my father sits and reassures me 50
    And then limps off from childhood polio,
    And I shudder at transitoriness
    Beneath the enduring, sheltering heavens.
    My forebears dug, pruned trees or vines, sowed seed
    Under Aries, the ram, in the night sky,
    Symbol of Amon-Ra shown with ram's horns,
    At the start of the zodiacal year,
    The Great Year whose labours begin in March,
    And cycle of existence, spirit's birth.
    Amid my memories of lopping lime-trees 60
    And forking beds and making piles of weeds
    To prepare for growing and sprouting seeds,
    The Wheel of Life shows One revolves many.
    The Wheel of Life shows One becomes many.

    Youth, school-days. First in short trousers, then long,
    A child of the socialist Welfare State,
    I grew away from Nature under rules,
    Nightly homework and organised ball games.
    I caught tadpoles in the Strawberry Hill pond.
    I studied newts and spotted butterflies, 70
    And alone in a dark garden I gazed
    In wonder at a night sky full of stars
    And felt I was one with the universe.
    But school work closed round me, I ceased to see.
    Textbooks intruded on the mystery.
    I munched meals at the high nursery table
    In my family, worked and went to bed
    And now my path was through my school's classrooms
    And playing-fields, and not the universe.
    I had three sisters who did not survive 80
    Post-war infancy, and I lamented
    The transitory, fleeting lives we have
    Beneath the sunshine and the cloudless blue
    And the faint breeze from an eternal source.
    My ancestors planted, picked flowers, hunted
    And I recall the zodiacal bull
    As I hoed in the garden of my soul.

    Adolescence brought me my destiny.
    Nature still warmed me like a summer's day.
    I relive long grass below the first tee 90
    And clacking grasshoppers and warm sunshine
    And again blend into the universe
    And live above the buzzing of the bees.
    I see Eden sitting beside Churchill,
    Stand up for our Empire, speak on Suez
    And watch bemused as he withdraws our troops.
    And sitting on a seat on lower field
    On a spring day at school, at seventeen,
    I read The Faber Book of English Verse
    And know I will one day be a poet. 100
    A month on I bend by Horace's spring
    And scoop its limpid water in cupped hands
    And know that I will pen odes of my own.
    I was in harmony with a great power
    I glimpsed in moments, as when at college
    One early March morning, a cloudless sky
    Torn between two guides like heavenly twins,
    I took my father's letter to the lake,
    Walked through an arch and sat on a stone seat
    And read that I could change to Literature, 110
    Griffins and sphinxes round me on the stone,
    Fabulous imaginary creatures.
    I had escaped the Law and, rising, stood
    Beside the lake, my shadow before me,
    And gazed at the reflection of the sun,
    The bending trees and sky, and blended in
    With what I saw. And now the universe
    Was one, including me, and I the breeze
    Within the surface of the sunlit lake
    And knew a oneness behind all I saw 120
    That pulsed through me and rippled through the leaves.
    I am transported to that sunny lake's
    Weeping willows and relive that morning
    That changed my course and shaped who I am now.
    A shield with martlets and a spiral stair
    Up to the library, I worked all night
    And now my path veered from legal cases
    To great works by past writers and poets,
    Away from lawyers' fees to deft phrases,
    Quests for the One and skewering vices. 130
    But back whence the letter came, a sadness:
    A brother diagnosed diabetic,
    Syringing twice daily and weighing food.
    The future beckoned but the transience
    Of our home life weighed heavily on me
    Amid my studies of my ancestors'
    Hawking and dallying in courtly love.

    Early manhood. A lover and husband,
    I sweltered in the Baghdad desert heat.
    Above Iraq, flying high over Ur, 140
    Sitting eyes closed I received 'Life Cycle'
    And wrote it down, not sure of what it meant.
    In years to come I probed the life cycle
    Of civilizations, and then of all
    The flowering, creeping, prowling, flying forms
    Of Nature's ordered scheme, all births and deaths,
    And now, fifty-two years on, I apply
    These words to the progression of all lives.
    I grew to my full size and fatherhood
    And learned how my father had cared for me. 150
    I lived in a Japanese bungalow
    With bamboo round my study window-panes
    And sat among Zen seekers with closed eyes
    And peeped for Light near sawing cicadas
    And glimpsed a shaft amid my early drafts
    And saw the oneness in raked, swirling stones.
    I walked in horseshoe valleys by the sea,
    Pinned snakes in forked sticks beneath swooping shrikes
    And found a whelk shell on the empty beach.
    In China, talking with a sick student 160
    I spied the Cultural Revolution
    Which was too startling to be believed,
    And in Saigon I heard guns thump at night.
    And back in my forest I saw a pond
    Blend sky and mud into a universe
    That blazed with dazzling harmony in sun.
    My family gave me a new meaning
    And I was on a path of fulfilment
    Between our walks, my work, my study desk.
    But I thought back with sorrow to the months 170
    When my father was ill in heart and brain
    And told me "This is the end" and then died
    And I mourned the frailty of fragile
    Closeness that seems as if it will endure
    But fades away, leaving just memories.
    I was a smart young man among roses
    And my praised faith in art procured my pain.
    All round me as I burrowed like a crab
    I saw barefooted peasants cutting rice
    And thought of the hay harvest on home farms 180
    And all the mowing and shearing of sheep
    Our medieval ancestors once did.

    Adulthood, and a secret grieving time.
    In desert heat I met my controller
    And was driven down Tripoli's waterfront
    And debriefed under palms and crescent moon,
    And in harm's way I lost my family,
    Watched them fly off to safety and new life,
    Leaving me alone near the Sahara
    Where between a great sweep of sand and sky 190
    I saw a lone Tuareg stand in oneness
    With Nature and sizzled with harmony.
    Amid the bougainvillaea and palm trees
    I loved the silver light of evening sea.
    Like Orpheus I went to the netherworld
    And, looking back, lost my Eurydice.
    And back among London's surveillance squads
    When streets become a nightmare of footfalls,
    Fighting in the Cold War for Africa,
    I opened to the Light which flooded in 200
    And filled me with purgation's energy.
    My fingers glowed from influxes of Fire
    And I was on a path of inner growth
    That would lead to projects I had in me
    Like seeds hidden under a spruce cone's scales.
    But I was still forlorn as I had lost
    A marriage that seemed strong but, swept away,
    Now seemed transitory, an illusion.
    Now on Cold-War business, followed by groups,
    I strutted and prowled the streets like a lion, 210
    My mind on reaping and the wheat harvest
    But having to flail facts for my masters.

    Manhood, and new marriage and family
    And new responsibility as I
    Marshal, organise and administrate
    As Head of Department in a large school
    And move into a large Victorian house,
    A former vicarage where at bedtime
    I tuck up two young boys and read stories
    And make a snowman in our walled garden. 220
    I gaze at the red Virginia creeper
    Cascading down a wall, and a pear-tree,
    And feel a peace among these garden fronds.
    And my path leads through my new family,
    Through leafy works and Light, and more visions.
    I am settled and fertile, but lament
    The transitoriness of this great house
    Which will be sold to a well-known actor.
    We will leave its permanent solidness.
    In Virgo I dream of my ancestors 230
    Who threshed the grain in fields and lived quiet lives
    Close to the seasons and twilit fireside.

    Early middle age and financial growth
    As I take over my old school and stand
    By the old oak-tree amid buttercups
    Where I lay in the sun among acorns.
    I mow the fields in decreasing circles,
    Pass harvest mice swinging in grass and chug
    Past prehistoric plants beyond railings,
    At one with my cradle ringed round with trees, 240
    Oaklands! ever dear, a benign nanny,
    Who trained me as a child and nurtures me
    Now I am her curator and her guide.
    I am in harmony with her hawthorns
    And with the breeze that swishes through the leaves,
    And also with the sea that washes in
    Round the small harbour where we holiday,
    Which I look down on from our seaside house
    And across to the Black Head promontory.
    I built a house by the blue acacia 250
    Cedar, a stone's throw from the Wren door I
    Installed by where the Nature table stood
    When as a boy I watched newts paw the glass
    Of the aquarium filled with pondweed
    And now my path will lead through schools and words
    For I will have leisure to write my work
    And block Communist imperial designs.
    But I mourn the passing of my mother
    From heart attacks and strokes, and her transience.
    She seemed so permanent but now she's gone. 260
    In Libra I recall my ancestors
    Who hunted and harvested and trod grapes
    As I read Peter Rabbit to my boys.

    Middle age and further financial growth.
    I found a school and gaze at a holm-oak
    Planted (it is said) by the Virgin Queen.
    I wander in the walled garden and cross
    The stream among old trees and in the Hall
    Find the room where Churchill came to succeed
    Lord Liell as MP, and his wartime room 270
    Where he slept nearby wounded officers
    In the now requisitioned stately home.
    I drive up its lane each morning, and write
    My books under Oaklands' blue acacia
    Cedar, pour Light into their moulds like bowls
    In harmony with all that warm summer
    When the Berlin Wall fell and East joined West,
    My path now running schools and writing books,
    The first two of which were launched in London
    By three 'elder statesmen' who were so warm 280
    And seemed enduring but were transient.
    Two died and one grew old, all receded.
    I found the pattern of world history:
    All civilizations pass through stages
    Which individuals battle or bring in:
    One man, like Churchill, cannot on his own
    Rescue an empire whose loss he laments;
    One man, like Lenin, brings a new stage in.
    History has a pattern of progression.
    Alongside my forest, in Scorpio, 290
    I got words in my head down on paper,
    I grew my businesses where ancestors
    Ploughed fields and sowed their seeds for next year's crop.

    Late middle age and new maturer works.
    I travel round Europe and stand before
    Hitler's home and recall the flying bombs
    That terrorised my childhood and made me
    Aware of imminent death in the nights.
    I retell the story of Churchill's war
    And pen poems and stories, and 'think' books, 300
    And revive a historic Tudor Hall
    Moated and unchanged amid time's cruel winds.
    I stand under roosting peacocks and walk
    Round the knot-and-herb garden with actors.
    I was rooted in seven centuries
    Of bricks and beams, nooks and crannies that leaked
    Memories of America's founding.
    My path took me past faces of the dead
    Who spoke to me as if they were alive.
    It seemed I would live there until I died 310
    But, a third school crowding, it proved transient –
    Hall, actors, history and their visitors –
    And now is just a memory like gone mist.
    Now I think of the archer with his bow
    And of my ancestors' hunt for acorns
    They scooped into held aprons for their pigs,
    And sigh for Tudor dreams that are no more.

    Early old age, and now at this great house
    I toil long hours and collect all my works,
    Bent near a screen, bundles in plastic box, 320
    Sifting, sorting, preserving a life's work.
    9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq –
    I stood up to fundamental Islam.
    I write on terror and world government,
    Retired from schools which a strapping son runs,
    And dandle my new grandson on my knee
    Aware how transient is his infancy.
    With a banking crisis looming, alert, I sell
    Properties by the sea and Essex farms,
    Bought as investments, to fund new building. 330
    They seemed so enduring, were transient.
    I have come to rest within my forest
    Which nurtured my boyhood, whose tossing trees
    Measure unseen wind like the inspired breeze
    That wafts words to my head and down cramped hand.
    I wander to my pool to feed my carp
    And muse at the lily rooted in mud
    That glows above the pictured trees and cloud
    And as I fling handfuls of feed that float
    I feel in harmony with fish and sun 340
    And the long line of trees that sweeps the sky
    And reflect I'm near the end of my life.
    My path now leads backwards through my old works
    And then forward with offerings I've found.
    I recall the goat now firmly tethered
    And how my ancestors killed pigs and baked
    For a feast at this time of the Great Year.
    I live with memories on a forest heath.
    Old age and forty books all round my head
    And I have not slowed down or got ill, yet. 350
    But I'm slower, don't dash around as much
    Though still go to the gym every Friday,
    Don't drink, eat vegetables and bowls of fruit.
    In my garden hang a dozen bird-feeds
    Where comes the woodpecker, nuthatch, goldfinch
    And flit a host of blue tits and small birds
    Watched from beneath by magpies and jackdaws
    Waiting to peck dropped seeds, while on the lawn
    Green woodpeckers hunt worms and tap on trunks
    And ten green parakeets flash between trees. 360
    I sit and watch their toings and froings
    As the sun climbs and sundial's shadow creeps,
    My shadow still before me in cold sun,
    In harmony with flittings and swoopings
    Against the blue sky and the red sunset
    As the blood sun sinks and black bats cavort.
    And in this Paradise in which I toil
    A flow of projects overbrims my mind
    And plashes into my fountain's still bowl
    Amid the roses in Union-flag beds. 370
    All round secularism challenges
    As does the Arab civilization.
    My grandchildren are wide-eyed as they play,
    Hunting for conkers to put in pockets,
    As sun shines, rain squalls, winds gust round the oak
    Before the field that shields this house from gales.
    I stand and watch them absorbed in the now.
    My path is onward as I make an end,
    Go through my papers, label them in piles
    And prise remaining works out of my skull. 380
    For forty years my wife has kept my house
    And now after two new hips and a knee
    She is less mobile, and I have to face
    The transience of the long walks that she made
    In four continents, as when, clambering
    Over boulders, we found albatrosses.
    Water gushes down into my fish-pool.
    Thinking of the water-pourer who poured
    Two too truthful views of my double life,
    I recall how my ancestors carried 390
    Wood for their fires, hunted and then feasted
    Towards the end of their Great Year and life.

    The final seven-year cycle is ahead:
    Advanced old age and attendant complaints.
    I see myself sitting in a wheelchair
    Beside the twelve beds of the rose garden
    Whose paths describe a Union flag, and then,
    Rug on my knees, a nurse not far behind
    Under the apple-trees, and looking down
    Beyond the arbour to field and meadow 400
    Where rabbits scamper and a lone fox prowls
    And glimpsing Death the Reaper with sickle
    And knowing I still have time left before
    He reaches where I sit in harmony
    With the twilit universe and swallows
    That skim the waves of grass and sweeping bats,
    In last serenity and contentment,
    In quiet happiness after struggle.
    Back in my study I sit at my desk
    And see in alcoves – Rodin's 'Thinker', busts 410
    Of Milton, Homer – and the human skull
    I bought at a school's closing-down auction,
    A memento mori, a reminder
    Of the fate that awaits when I am done,
    When my work's finished, when I've reached an end.
    I calmly face approaching death and bless
    The essence of a well-led, rounded life
    That has sought wisdom and understanding,
    Good knowledge of life and humanity,
    Transcendence of my experiences 420
    And the elegiac tone of my youth.
    Time that has creased my face wastes my body
    But my soul, my universal being
    Beneath my ego, follows timelessness.
    I know with Einstein, time's an illusion:
    The past and future are like north and south,
    Everything's happened simultaneously
    And so the future already exists
    And the universe can supply all needs,
    Obeys commands and sends 'future' events 430
    From 'south' rather than 'north', gives what we want.
    The eternal world wears the cladding of time,
    And so my death has already happened.
    My path leads onwards to this peaceful skull
    And, in my memories, which slowly flick
    Across my mind like moving screensavers,
    Photos drawn from scanned-in places I've been,
    I am aware of transitoriness,
    The transience of all the images
    Of my life, of all I saw, thought and did, 440
    Which I reflected in my mirroring
    Of our Age and left behind to a new
    Generation, the distilled truth I found,
    Evidence for my quest and life's follies,
    My probing of its vices and my work
    In letters, philosophy and history.
    I reconcile time's transitoriness
    And the eternal, ringing infinite.
      A -A = zero,
    Time the eternal = the One. 450
    I think of my fish and in Pisces smile
    At my ancestors sitting by their fire,
    Their caught fish being cooked and heart twanging,
    Wood cut, ditches cleared and new-born lambs fed,
    Warming their hands beside the leaping hearth
    And warming their souls at their Great Year's end.
    I am in harmony with the great One
    In the face of coming death and stillness.

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Excerpted from Life Cycle and Other New Poems 2006â"2016 by Nicholas Hagger. Copyright © 2016 Nicholas Hagger. Excerpted by permission of John Hunt Publishing Ltd..
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