To the Letter

   ‘To be traceable 

however small; to be material; 

to have status in the record; 

to have the rest, 

the unwritten, 

even more easily scrapped.’ 

                  Roy Fisher 

Sometimes, my window is swung 

by unexpected chords 

scored by the page, and the memory. 

Today, Roy Fisher's Red Lead 

struck a note above two-stroke 

and a Vespa throttled skywards 

from the booster seat. 

Four Star chimes the Tristan chord – 

the tinny voice of school keyboards – 

the rattle of gales on single glazing; 

an anamnesis when knots and scales 

could cloak his unfocused penumbra – 

small hands stretching a fifth across ivory 

counterpoint a 20-year sus4, envelope 

attack snappy, release set to ad infinitum – 

as red and lead klanged, 

so vertigo fell 

to the unity of units. 

* 

Now equipped with reason for a second visit, 

on the class trip Sellafield was merely mechanical. 

The rainbow arcing the Irish Sea 

became the work of prisms 

and the Guardian was hidden. 

Schooled in, certainties were as easy to assimilate 

as racism. A division addiction, started young, 

enriched us through derision. Those who gorged 

rose quick and earned gold stars. 

Cut grass forced down shirt collars 

left skin and cotton lime and crimson, 

fading to umber as life decayed. 

I watched the process, 

absorbed. 

* 

A self emerged, so assured and sincere, 

it had no need to write 

* 

so now we struggle to welcome it in, 

to make memories ring true with a time 

when the rhythm of vision was Euclidean, 

gridded the waves of wind through bracken, 

measured its reddening under the sun. 

The encounter smiles a protracted smile 

that I feel across my lips, and self-songs 

sing in major keys, all minor modes shoved 

aside with pomp and circumstance. 

Don't you want to live? 

Notmy lips mouthed with their instrumental grin – 

If you don't want to harm then sink, 

let the much-imagined drift of cells 

into trees and mycelium sift you 

into others, 

but don't expect to write 

a letter home. 

Ben Dorey writes poems concerned by the way madness shapes our experience of the world and of each other, influenced by his own lived experiences of madness and his work and research in the area, both in NHS services and peer groups. He has a pamphlet, Seven Hills, published by Spirit Duplicator, and a PhD delving into to madness and literature via an autoethnographic exploration of reading William Blake from the University of Sheffield.

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