AtOne
Journeying Inside
Ardèche
Vesseaux
The land is sparse,
Primeval almost.
Trees on the rocky slopes,
Open scrubland on the tops,
Like moor land yet differently coloured,
With browns, reds, yellows.
Here is a place of intensity,
Heat, crickets, lizards,
Dryness, hot stone and olive groves.
The skies are dark and blue here,
The sun is brassy hot.
St Gerbier de Jonc
Rock, and the sound
Of rock on rock as we walk,
Dry foliage, clinker sounds.
Steep.
Soon to be hot.
Grey sky, soon to be blue.
Blue slopes roll into the distance,
While twisted gnarled conifers
Crawl like dragons all around,
And in between leap the hopping creatures
With their brilliant blue and red wings
Flashing as they fly,
Their calls whirring from every crack.
A high, foreign, tinder-dry land.
Gold
Green-gold of the vines
As autumn pricks the air.
Grey-gold of the stones
In the ancient vineyard barns,
Red-gold of the trees
On the forested slopes,
Blue-grey-gold of the sky
Patchwork-fretted with cloud.
Grotte Chauvet
Light flickered on the wall
As the horses galloped
Timeless, and the bison charged,
Fleeing from the lions
That stalked relentless,
Caught forever by ancient hands
That daubed and scraped
And smoothed their patterns
Onto the cave walls
In the firelight.
I wonder who they were,
What did they hope to catch
With their charcoal
In the deeps
Of the nameless wastes
Of long ago?
Painting
How did the torchlight
Flicker in the deeps?
How did their voices
Echo in the hills?
Who were these fathers
Of our forefathers,
Grinding their rocks,
Mixing their colour,
Charring their wood
To make forms so fluid,
So alive, so enduring
That we see them,
And return…
To the flickering torchlight
Of the lonely cave,
And stand once again,
Feeling the fear
Of our forefathers
As the lion prowls
In the shadows of the cave,
Or beyond the firelight?
Back
Images dance on the walls.
You can see the torchlight flicker -
Flame in the endless night.
You can hear hushed voices,
A flute, a drumbeat, chanting,
Smell the smoke of the charcoal burning,
Hear the grist of the mortar grinding.
Who were they,
These lone wanderers,
Small in the vastnesses
Of the empty nights,
Making tiny fires on the lonely plains,
Wandering, hunting
Through the empty millennia
Before memory was born?
Who were they that we
Can suddenly feel their fear,
Their love, their awe,
Living in the lines
They left on these walls
In the emptiness of long ago?
Terre des Sucs
Lonely and cold,
The mountains and moor,
With the rowans
And the soughing wind,
Ever singing through the branches
And the autumn grasses.
Sky a brassy blue,
Leaves and berries
Gold and red, orange and brown.
Tiny flowers huddle
Among the grass stems;
The only noise
The lonely wind in the trees.
Zen
The water is dark and still here,
Quiet and smooth.
Fish prick the glassy surface
And the ripples flow
In their perfect circles,
Out, and out, and out,
Eternally,
Leaving behind
A mirror of perfect peace
At the heart of it all.
Heat
Oh how the wind whispers here
In this hot, hard land,
Rustling the dry leaves
In the thirsty trees:
Sighing and still, sighing and still;
Bringing no relief of promised rain,
No clouds to the hot blue sky
To take the sting from
The merciless sun above,
But sighing and still, sighing and still,
Rustling the leaves
And the dry autumn grass.
Looking
High on the hills
I look far away
To the mountains
Marching in the East;
To the hills rolling away
Mile on mile
In the afternoon sun
Of the West;
To the South,
Where the light changes
And a silver haze hangs
Whispering promises
Of the sea far away.
