Matthew Paul: Poetry & Stuff

Fine though the ‘Travelling’ sequence in Variations is, it is the second half of the book, the ‘In Suffolk’ sequence, which is its true heart. From the start of section I, the reader can sense his relief at being in what would become his permanent, final home:

So many moods of light, sky,
Such a flux of cloud shapes,
Cloud colours blending, blurring,
And the winds to be learnt by heart:
So much movement to make a staying.

The mood is lyrical and light, yet each line contains unforced enlightenment.   

In section III he writes about the North Sea coastline, a few miles east of his house in Middleton, taking delight in what he perceives and in the names of other creatures, and giving free, breathtaking rein to the quirky syntax as one for whom English was not his mother tongue:

And what such jetsam tells
A man of the sea’s kinds:
Whelk spawn cluster,
Cuttlebone, kelp,
Jellyfish of the sea’s
Own and oldest making—

Made, unmade, still.

Not yet, though, or ever
one landscape, seascape, skyscape
But flux, only flux
To be learnt again and again,
Looked for, approved, accepted
Against the moment when seeing
Ends, because eyes have turned
Inward, fixed on a light
Less mutable, stiller, like that
In cornelian, agate, amber
Washed up on a shore, after winter tides,
And blindly the mind makes maps.

There is a beautiful, intrinsic humility to this poetry; and a deep recognition that the natural world has more to teach us about our place within this world than we can ever learn in our lifetimes.