Down by Putney Bridge
slow day descending
into darkness –
river high
but not unduly
temperature falling
but not that cold –
late joggers
back and forth
ducks and geese
on the causeway –
first lights of evening
I watch the waters flow
I think of you
your one betrayal
after another
John Lyons
Words are not love
just as leaves
are not autumn
dismissive gestures
and empty smiles
as the questions
tumble one by one
between your world
and my world
there is a world
of a difference
I too have crossed
Brooklyn Bridge
in the blazing heat
of a distant summer
dust upon my shoes
and city grime
etched into my collar
you were a shape once
you were a sense
you were a direction
full of promise
now nothing but words
sounds corralled
into a meaningless grid
of petrified ambition
John Lyons
Parksville NY, John Lyons (30 x 25 cm, oil on canvas)
Just after the dawn dust
had settled
after the larks had risen
into the vacant sky
I chanced upon
this fork in the road
a yellow wheat field
and in the distance
the deep dense green
of ancient woodland
and who knows
where a road might lead
or what awaits us in our day-to-day
as we make our way
along paths known or unknown
how for better or worse
a random choice may change
a life forever
John Lyons
Text revised
How he describes her
her easy allure
a truth to go to
each day
Stability and assurance
in all weathers the same
judiciously loving
in her own way
birdsong at dawn
and owls at play
in the silence
of night rapture
doubtless boundless love :
and true to her word
long may her chosen
stars hold sway
John Lyons
Nothing changes
from generation
to generation
but the thing seen
and that makes
composition
writing and painting
are like that in that
what is observed
whether internally
or externally
provides the material
necessary to live
as an outlaw
in defiance of rules
and totally open
to the unexpected
that is why lovers
are always ahead
of their time
because they create
something entirely new
a bond composed
of myriads of affinities
alongside refreshing
disparities—
love like that
is always beginning
is never ending
is a fount of constant
innovation and harmonious
consolidation
art poetry and love
are the natural trinity
in which beauty and truth
are enshrined
John Lyons
And so to Deptford
to St Paul’s
where death lies buried
in the empty grounds
where fresh-blown roses
are washed in the dew
petals gone in a final gasp
to dust
In the broken darkness
the birds fly silently
from oak to ash to sycamore
and strands of light
filter through the dying leaves
Here we remember
her silken hair
her rosy lips
the shape of her smile
the taste of her kiss
her gentleness of voice
What lies here
under the earth
is love and beauty
held on a threshold
by the edge of the creek
the ash of stardust
awaiting resurrection
Here lie the remains
of sweet young lovers
laid bone to bone
in everlasting embrace
in the darkness
while all around them
the swirl of autumn light
the frail dust
of day-to-day debris
piled high in the gutters
and — long forgotten
the ghost of silenced voices
never to be heard again
John Lyons
St Paul’s in Deptford is a Grade 1 Listed Building designed by the architect Thomas Archer, dating from 1730. It is one of the places of worship built following the 1711 Act for building new churches in London and its suburbs. These are generally known as the Queen Anne churches. The poet, John Betjeman, described St Paul’s as “a pearl at the heart of Deptford”, and it is indeed a remarkable and important example of English Italianate Baroque.
Thomas Archer was specifically influenced by two churches in the Historic Centre of Rome: the interior, by Francesco Borromini’s restyling of S. Agnese in Agone, Piazza Navona using Corinthian pillars, 1653 onwards, and the portico by the semi-circular porch of S. Maria della Pace, (which is just off the Piazza Navona) by Pietro da Cortona, constructed 1656-1661.
A note on Deptford to place St Paul’s in its context: The deep ford which gave Deptford its name crossed the River Ravensbourne at what is now Deptford Bridge. It was on the ancient road from London to Canterbury and Dover, and Deptford is mentioned in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. One part of Deptford grew up here, beside the ford and the later bridge. The other part was the fishing village beside the Thames called Deptford Strand. There were fields between the two settlements until the nineteenth century.
In 1513 Henry VIII founded a dockyard at Deptford to build ships for the Royal Navy. In the eighteenth century a Victualling Yard was established alongside, where ships stores and provisions were assembled. The Dockyard closed in 1869.
After use as a cattle market and in other military and industrial capacities, the area is now being redeveloped for housing. The Victualling Yard remained until 1961. Its site is now occupied by the Pepys Estate. Samuel Pepys often visited the Dockyard when he was Clerk to the Navy Board, and his friend and fellow-diarist John Evelyn lived here, in the manor house called Sayes Court.
In this big house that nobody knows
With its façade, its walls caught
Between stone and human existence,
With the air that envelops it and always about to pulsate
With its secret life that makes a window rattle
Or rather showers it with tears,
In this big house a lamp shines day and night
It shines for no one
As though the Earth were uninhabited
Or as though hope had already withdrawn from the world.
And when I attempt to dash to catch the light
My legs go awry beneath me
And for an instant my heart
glimpses glacial eternity.
But perhaps one day the lamp
Constrained to move as when ice melts
Will spontaneously approach me to shine and reveal
Its colour to my soul
Its ardour to my spirit
And their true shape.
Meanwhile I must live without glooming about such gloom.
What’s called noise elsewhere
Is nothing but silence here,
What’s called movement
Is a heart’s patience,
What’s called truth
A man chained to his body,
And what we call tenderness
Ah! what would you have it be?
Jules Supervielle
Translation by John Lyons
Jules Supervielle (1884-1960) was born into a French-Basque family living in Uruguay. Aged ten, he was sent to Paris, where he completed his education at the Sorbonne. For the rest of his life, he divided his time between Uruguay and France. He was friends with André Gide, Paul Valéry and Jacques Rivière, and in 1923, he met the Austrian poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, a crucial influence on his later work.
Memory of fish in deep coves,
What can I do here with your slow memories,
I know nothing about you except a little foam and shade
And that one day, like me, you’ll have to die.
So why do you come to question my dreams
As if I could be of help to you?
Go out to sea, leave me on my dry land,
We weren’t made to share our days.
Jules Supervielle
(translation by John Lyons)
Mémoire des poissons dans les criques profondes,
Que puis-je faire ici de vos lents souvenirs,
Je ne sais rien de vous qu’un peu d’écume et d’ombre
Et qu’un jour, comme moi, il vous faudra mourir.
Alors que venez-vous interroger mes rêves
Comme si je pouvais vous être de secours?
Allez en mer, laissez-moi sur ma terre sèche,
Nous ne sommes pas faits pour mélanger nos jours.
See also I dream you from afar.
A light blue and a dark blue
and a faded pink
what do they make ?
An arrangement of shapes
suggestive of other shapes
an odd kind of ornament
There were swans on the Serpentine
on Monday resplendent in the sunlight
their plumage a deep titanium white
Swans are never careless
they know exactly what they are doing
at all times without fail
Most flowers have their season
but once they are cut
their days are numbered
So what is the lesson?
That some things last
and others do not ?
It’s hard to believe that the stars
are gliding through space
they seem so fixed in the heavens
Lovers who would be guided by their stars
can very often lose their path
they must trim their sails to the cosmic wind
John Lyons
The extract below from Proust’s monumental novel, À la recherche du temps perdu, recounts the infamous scene in which the Duke and Duchess de Guermantes, impatient to leave for a grand evening dinner, can barely find time to talk to their dear friend Charles Swann, who has little time to live.
In this incident, Proust captures the petty, selfish, and superficial side of those occupying the highest circles of the Parisian aristocratic world.
“Listen, Basin, I’d like nothing better than to follow you to the moats of Vincennes, or even to Taranto. And by the way, my dear Charles, that’s exactly what I wanted to tell you when you were telling me about your St. George’s in Venice, you see Basin and I, are thinking of spending next spring in Italy and Sicily. If you were to come with us, just think what a difference it would make! I’m not just thinking of the pleasure of seeing you, but imagine, after all you’ve told me so often about the times of the Norman Conquest and ancient times, imagine what a trip like that would become if you came with us! I mean to say that even Basin, I mean, Gilbert, would benefit from it, because I feel that even the claims to the throne of Naples and all that sort of thing would interest me if they were explained by you in old Romanesque churches or in tiny villages perched on hills like primitive paintings. But now then, let’s take a look at your photograph. Open the envelope,” the Duchess said to a footman.
“Please, Oriane, not tonight; you can look at it to-morrow,” implored the Duke, who had already been making signs of alarm to me on seeing the huge size of the photo.
“But I enjoy looking at it with Charles,” said the Duchess, with a smile at once archly sensuous and psychologically subtle, for in her desire to be friendly to Swann she spoke of the pleasure which she would have in looking at the photo as though it were the pleasure a person who is unwell feels he would find in eating an orange, or as though she had managed to combine a jaunt with her friends with giving information to a biographer as to some of her favourite pursuits.
“Very well, he can call on you again with that in mind,” declared the Duke, whom his wife was obliged to obey. “You can spend three hours poring over it, if that’s what amuses you,” he added ironically. “But where are you going to stick such a monstrous whatnot?”
“Why, in my room, of course. I want to have it in my sight.”
“Oh, just as you please; if it’s in your room, I’ll probably never get to see it,” said the Duke, without thinking of the revelation he was so blithely making of the negative state of his conjugal relations.
“Very well, you will take it out with the greatest care,” Mme. de Guermantes told the servant, multiplying her instructions out of politeness to Swann. “And see that you don’t crumple the envelope, either.”
“So we must respect even the envelope!” the Duke muttered to me, throwing his arms up. “But, Swann,” he added, “I, who am only a poor married man and thoroughly prosaic, what I really admire about this is how you managed to find an envelope of that size. Where did you dig it up?”
“Why, at the studio of the photographer who’s constantly sending out these sort of things. But the man’s a fool, for I see he’s written on it ‘The Duchess de Guermantes,’ without putting ‘Madame.’”
“I’ll forgive him for that,” said the Duchess nonchalantly; then, seeming to be struck by a sudden idea which enlivened her: “Well you haven’t said whether you’ll come to Italy with us?”
“Madame, I’m afraid that really won’t be possible.”
“Oh well! Mme. de Montmorency has all the luck. You accompanied her to Venice and Vicenza. She told me that with you one saw things one would never see otherwise, things no one had ever thought of mentioning before, that you showed her things she’d never dreamed of, and that even in the well-known things she’d been able to appreciate details which without you she might have passed by a dozen times without ever noticing. Obviously, she has been more highly favoured than we are to be…. You’ll take the big envelope with Mr Swann’s photograph,” she said to the servant, “and you’ll deliver it, courtesy of me, this evening at half past ten to the home of Mme. la Comtesse Molé.”
Swann burst out laughing.
“I’d like to know, all the same,” Mme. de Guermantes asked him, “how, ten months beforehand, you can tell that a thing will be impossible.”
“My dear Duchess, I’ll tell you if you insist, but, first of all, you can see that I am very ill.”
“Yes, my dear Charles, I don’t think you look at all well. I’m not happy with your colour, but I’m not asking you to come with me next week, I’m asking you to come in ten months. In ten months one has time to get oneself cured, you know.”
At this point a footman came in to say that the carriage was at the door. “Come on, Oriane, horsey up,” said the Duke, already pawing the ground with impatience as though he were himself one of the horses that stood waiting outside.
“Very well, in a word tell me what’s to stop you coming to Italy,” the Duchess asked as she rose to bid us good-bye.
“But, my dear friend, it’s because I shall have been dead for several months. According to the doctors I consulted last winter, this thing I’ve got—which may, for that matter, carry me off at any moment—won’t in any case allow me more than three or four months to live, and even that is a generous estimate,” Swann replied with a smile, while the footman opened the glazed door of the hall to let the Duchess out.
“What on earth are you saying?” cried the Duchess, pausing for a moment on her way to the carriage, and raising her fine eyes, their melancholy blue clouded by uncertainty. Caught for the first time in her life between two such different obligations as getting into her carriage to go out to dinner and showing pity for a man who was about to die, she could find nothing in the code of conventions that indicated the correct ruling to follow, and, not knowing which to choose, felt it better to make a show of not believing that the latter alternative need be taken seriously, in order to follow the first, which at the moment demanded less effort on her part, and thought that the best way of resolving the dilemma would be to deny that any existed.
“You jest,” she said to Swann.
“It would be a quite charming jest,” he replied ironically. “I don’t know why I am telling you this; I’ve never said a word to you before about my illness. But since you asked, and as now I may die at any moment… But above all, I don’t want you to be late; you’re dining out, remember,” he added, because he knew that for other people their own social obligations took precedence over the death of a friend, and he was able to put himself in her place thanks to his instinctive politeness. But the Duchess’s politeness enabled her also to perceive in a vague way that the dinner to which she was going must count for less to Swann than his own death. And so, while continuing on her way towards the carriage, she let her shoulders droop, saying: “Don’t worry about our dinner. It’s of no consequence!” But this put the Duke in a bad humour, who exclaimed: “Come on, Oriane, don’t stop there chattering like that and swapping tragic stories with Swann; you know very well that Mme. de Saint-Euverte insists on sitting down to table at eight o’clock sharp. We need to know what you want to do; the horses have been waiting a good five minutes. I beg your pardon, Charles,” he continued, turning to Swann, “but it’s ten to eight already. Oriane is always late, and it’ll take us more than five minutes to get to old Mme. Saint-Euverte’s.”
Mme. de Guermantes strode towards the carriage and uttered a final farewell to Swann. “You know, we can talk about this another time; I don’t believe a word you’ve been saying, but we must discuss it calmly. I expect they gave you a dreadful fright, come to lunch, whatever day you like” (with Mme. de Guermantes, lunches always resolved everything), “you’ll let me know the day and time,” and, lifting her red skirt, she set her foot on the step. She was about to get into the carriage when, seeing this foot exposed, the Duke cried in a terrifying voice: “Oriane, what were you thinking, you poor creature? You’re still in your black shoes! With a red dress! Go upstairs quickly and put on your red shoes, or rather,” he said to the footman, “tell the lady’s maid to bring down a pair of red shoes at once.”
“But, my dear,” replied the Duchess gently, annoyed to see that Swann, who was leaving the house with me but had stood back to allow the carriage to pass out in front of us, could hear, “since we’re late.”
“No, no, we’ve plenty of time. It’s only ten to; it won’t take us ten minutes to get to the Parc Monceau. And, after all, what would it matter? If we turned up at half past eight they’d have to wait for us, but you can’t possibly go there in a red dress and black shoes. Besides, we shan’t be the last, I can tell you; there’s the Sassenages, and you know they never arrive before twenty to nine.”
The Duchess went up to her room.
“Well,” said M. de Guermantes to Swann and myself, “us poor, down-trodden husbands, people laugh at us, but we are of some use all the same. Had it not been for me, Oriane would have been going out to dinner in black shoes.”
“It’s hardly an eyesore,” said Swann, “I’d noticed the black shoes and they didn’t bother me in the least.”
“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” replied the Duke, “but it looks better for them to match the dress. Besides, you needn’t worry, she’d no sooner have got there than she’d have noticed them, and I’d have been obliged to come home and fetch the others. I’d have had my dinner at nine o’clock. Good-bye, you youngsters,” he said, gently pushing us away, “hurry along, before Oriane comes back down. It’s not that she doesn’t like seeing the two of you. On the contrary, she’s too fond of your company. If she finds you still here she’ll start talking again, she’s worn out already, she’ll get to the dinner table quite dead. Besides, I tell you frankly, I’m starving. I had a wretched lunch this morning when I got off the train. There was a hell of a béarnaise, I admit, but despite that I shan’t be at all sorry, not at all, to sit down to dinner. Five to eight! Oh, women, women! She’ll give us both indigestion. She’s not quite as tough as people think.”
The Duke felt no compunction speaking this way of his wife’s ailments as well as his own to a dying man, because these ailments interested him more, seemed more important to him. And so whether simply out of good breeding and good humour, after politely leading us out, he bellowed in a stage voice from the porch to Swann, who was already in the courtyard: “Now look here, don’t let yourself be knocked back by the doctors’ nonsense, damn them. They’re asses. You’re as sturdy as the Pont Neuf. You’ll bury us all!”
(Translation by John Lyons)
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