A few years ago, I was involved in a local campaign to save a patch of green space from the builder’s excavator.
In researching the history of the green, I discovered that on 7 May 1928, during the construction of a tennis court, a crouching female skeleton, likely to have been Saxon or older, was found in a 3ft circular grave.
I reimagined this skeleton as the remains of a pre-Christian female deity, who fell to earth and whose eye remains as a pond, but also as a portal to another world.
Learning Italian, when I heard the word ‘aldilà’ meaning afterlife, heaven, or hereafter, I immediately thought that it was an ideal title for this uncanny Halloween collection.
Above you can see a section of the Ordnance Survey map of the area, showing where the skeleton was found.
The sequence starts with The Fall…
The Fall
She fell
hit her head
on the planet.
Her head is dented,
world-shaped.As the sequence unfolds over the next couple of weeks, I’ll add notes alongside each section – sometimes a quotation that has caught my eye and I feel has some special relevance to the themes and feelings in the piece as a whole; at other times a record of the inspiration or instruction received that generated that section; at others again a random thought triggered by the words I’ve written, or adding a section that’s not included in the final version of Aldilà . I’ll add images too with a brief explanation.
The sequence continues in a quietly observed garden…
The Garden Pond
Green weed-walled, layered lily-leather, red glide,
cupped leaves, black plastic fountainhead, no spray.
Red glide beyond white sky, within it, no weather;
the black plastic mesh of the skewed lily basket, disarray.
Fish inside, glide aimlessly, gleam, begging
nourishment. The dank mess, yellowing tissue, decay
contained within brick, boulder, broken block edging.
Wasp taunt hovering, the fish an idea forming, say
there’s a breach, an impending, an occluded ending.
Two small black eyes, bullet head, wide mouth pushing
a small feather, tease of food, across the surface meniscus.
Another tugging at the weed-wall, splishing,
dappled dibbling, quietly louder than the traffic,
the chainsaw, the hammer knocks, the rushing,
the train horn. The clownish headstands of goldfish,
the other side of lily pads’ uplifted chorus
of waiting; someone, watching.
Look out for more of Aldilà tomorrow…
