A Poet’s Profile of Terry Sweetman

A Poet’s Profile of Terry Sweetman

Brought up on the Isle of Wight, his later education revolved around University College London, Westfield College and the Rutherford Laboratory. Finally taking a Doctorate in sub-nuclear physics, he worked at the Cavendish Laboratory Cambridge for a while, before moving into IT for many years, including managing an Information Technology Centre, then to full-time educational management and early retirement in 1992. Aside from teaching assignments part-time with the OU, he has also taken a BA in Social Sciences with the OU and is currently studying for a BA in Humanities and reading a fair amount of philosophy.
Though he has been reading poetry most of his life the names quoted as most influential are, Geoffrey Hill, RS Thomas, Philip Larkin, TS Eliot, Adrienne Rich, Donald Justice, Horst Bienek, Carol Ann Duffy, and most recently John Burnside and David Hart, who he says is writing some terrific stuff and achieveing national recognition. Terry has published two collections, "Moving On" in 1995 and "Life Masks" in 1997. He is currently working on a third collection called "Conversations With the Dead."

These first four poems are from

"Moving On"

Figures: Of Speech

The thing is
            (she said)
I've had it up to here:
            (chopping gesture to head)
I'm at the end of my tether:
I can't take it anymore: enough's enough.
Figuring
            that she'd got out
                            of the wrong side
(and that discretion was the better part etc)
                                I held my tongue.
But later, unwisely,
                            well wound up myself,

            advised her
                            not to get her knickers
                                                    in a twist

every cloud etc and
                            it's an ill-wind.
At which                             she stormed out
                            muttering
                            all men are bastards.

Echoes

Even here,
far from motorway and market
the old gods are largely absent,
retreated northwards long ago
with the ice
and wolf and bear.

Holed up perhaps
in mountain fastnesses or
shrinking woods
remote
beyond the wild marsh
and moor.

Displaced
by warmer myths,
imported deities
from the farther shores
of that tideless
southern sea.

We find them now,
if at all,
only in the random roll
of thunder, the jolt of fire
splitting an angry sky,
the still silence of an ash grove
at dusk or the too-familiar rhythms
of the naming
of our days.

Family Games At Christmas

Mother,
having outstayed
what little welcome
this house held,
now perches awkwardly
on a hall chair
long after her music
has stopped.
It's time for leaving,
for moving on: time
to change the game.

Rising to the echoes
of an earlier, far-off tune,
she passes me her suitcase,
her still-wrapped gifts,
and crying softly,
walks with me to the car.

Off Stage

Soon after
the end of history
the bells fall silent
and things go on
pretty much
as before.

Fruit ripens and falls,
the tide lifts and lowers
the boats at anchor,
children play on the beach
build sandcastles, rest,
and begin again.

The grander narratives
are yellowing,
curling at the corners.
We can burn the books now
and start all over.
The insistent breeze
of the commonplace
is gently turning
the unwritten pages
of our days.

The following three poems are from "Life Masks"

Fallen Angel

Lucifer,
with nowhere
further to fall,
is now incongruously lodged
with a side-gallery coin collection,
(a rackety heater behind)
inviting the furtive glances
of the tea room crowd.

The wings are frozen,
as useless as a dodo's.
With no hope of flight,
he's fixed here for eternity,
harmless, exposed, riveted to a block
until the final reckoning.

His empty pupils
gaze beyond our heads,
beyond our time,
seeking perhaps a former peace
in some lost paradise,
a universe away.

(Epstein's bronze: Birmingham Art Gallery)

Munch: Self-Portrait 1940-42

Beyond caring now.
The scream long stopped.
Balding, tieless,
collar buttoned,
you stand immobile,
trapped like a blind and ageing valet
between the faceless coffined clock
and an empty institutional bed,
its cover too bright; discordant
as the featureless full-length nude
hanging unseen
behind the opened door.

Frozen, drained,
you must pause like this forever.
I picture, at your left hand, a suitcase,
packed for a journey
that you will never make.

The Treason of Images

My new keepers,
breathless, excited,
chant miracle!
rebirth!
new life!

Keen to display
their tumultuous, whirling world
they grasp my hand and gesture
they grin, they prattle;
point, gesticulate.
They say: bus, house, pillar-box.
They shout: car, dog, aeroplane, tree.

I have become their child.
They tug me onward.
There, they cry, a bird,
and there a train
that, a cup,
that a picture, this a pipe.

Bewildered, I find only blur and noise:
confusion.
I close my eyes
and reach within
for touch and sound
and shape and form.
Felt and weighed, familiar,
measured against memory.

At dusk,
when my unwanted guides
at last withdraw
I seek refuge in my former darkness,
open the now-forbidden book,
and dance my fingers eagerly
along its embossed
and richly textured tale.

Finally, three longer pieces from

a planned sequence called: "Conversations With the Dead"

Parallel Texts, Converging..?

'ALL IS TRANSIENT'

        When one sees this
        he is above sorrow.
        This is the clear path.

Once the victims had been crammed in for their
'disinfectant shower' and the doors sealed,
the sound from the gas chambers, an SS officer
later recalled, was like the humming of bees...

'ALL IS SORROW'

        When one sees this
        he is above sorrow.
        This is the clear path.

With the four crematoria functioning from mid- 1943,
between two and three corpses could be burnt
every minute of every day…

'ALL IS UNREAL'

        When one sees this
        he is above sorrow.
        This is the clear path.

The ovens burned so fiercely in reducing the corpses
to cinders as to damage the overworked chimneys,
bonfires of human flesh burned into the night

Yellow leaves hang on your tree of life.
The messengers of death are waiting.
        How can there be laughter
        How can there be pleasure
        When the whole world is burning?

VESALIUS: fragments

                 I
The audience applauds
settles, falls silent,
craning forward.
It is time.
I call for a corpse
and they bring me
a greyhound bitch
fresh killed from the street
and pregnant too.
The half-formed pups
eyes closed, steaming
spill upon the marble.
In the name of God
how can I display divinity
in the entrails of a cur...

                    II
Another court, another country.
The journey almost done.
In my chambers "De Corporis" lies;
completed, bound like a Bible
an atlas of my life
our lives, of what we are.
See, here is the framework
the scaffolding of bone,
the silted tributaries, sinews
tissues, eyes and skin.
Reduced to woodcuts on the page
unmoving, lifeless, stilled forever.
Is this all? Is it not enough?

                    III
The candle gutters. I close the page.
For good, or ill, the work is finished.
I have passed my yesterdays
in eager conversations with the dead,
mapping their secret unseen places
failing to find their unlived dreams.
Now, an old man, and weary,, I slip
towards sleep and uneasy images:
Our Lord upon the cross;
shipwreck, death by drowning
a tawdry resurrection in another country
far from here; naked and unrecognised
under a stranger's questioning knife.

BLAKE IN FELPHAM
                I
Before my window
two small harrows, and a plow
and beyond, the hedgerow,
and a fine view of the sea.
Time flies fast, and merrily.
We print little,
and that mostly in black:
rough, but not without Virtue.
Sussex is a happy place
and our cottage
the sweetest spot on Earth.
The Ladder of Angels ends at my cot.

                II
The year has turned.
The days shorter now,
the sea winds chill,
and little news from Town
that does not disconcert me.
Our work proceeds but slowly.
They would have me confined
by Business, and mere drudgery
and I am made uneasy.
They well know my o'erriding interest
lies with Science, and the True Religion.
The Messengers of Heaven whisper
Day and Night, and I cannot rest.

                III
I tire of this place
and long to leave.
My wife's sickness
is a dire sorrow.
Rheumatism and the Ague
are constant Enemies
and she is much worn down.
My mind is troubled.
I see Temptations to left and right
and can scarce outpace the roaring Sea
of Space and Time behind,
My three years Slumber here is nigh at end.
I must scotch these slanders of Sedition
and turn again to Town.

Terry Sweetman