MARKINGS
The Sea Garden Only Grows When the Tide
is Out
IM Michael Derek Jarman (1942-1994)
First published 1995,
revised 2009
Sitting in the sun thinking
of Montaigne,
who also was a Michael,
your first name,
dropped because your father
got there first. So
Derek stuck, sobriquet with a gusto
right for seafarers, but
lacking gravitas:
I cannot imagine Derek as
the fit moniker for an
archangel.
Able Seaman Jarman would
suit it well,
but a sailor-suit would
become you more
than wings and halo. You
kept close to shore
in your films, settling for
the ebb and flow
of pebbled beaches:
Caravaggio
liked to be ‘beside the
seaside’ when dying:
in Your England
gulls are the children crying:
in War the beached
salt who endeavours
to conch the ocean: The
‘Stormy Weather’
end to The Tempest.
Doors flung open. Shot
of sailors in ballroom
hopping a foxtrot.
‘As labour hardens us
against life’s pain,
doing nothing with
panache’, says Montaigne,
‘softens us for its
pleasures.’ The garden
you pottered in was both
tough warden
and sly prisoner of your
life and art.
Despite the towering winds,
it wasn’t blown apart
by salt-storms into sand.
Who’d have banked on
it flourishing on a
top-soil of plankton.
Self-portrait as ‘A Cabbage
with Heart’. ‘My head
will go to glorious seed
when I’m dead.’
Your mind’s marginal garden
enriches
itself on the prospect of
ostriches
springing from the punk
stalks and running round
after you are no longer
above ground.
You knew Marvell from
powdered milk. Though blind,
poetry nourished your amused
mind
which still had immunity
from self-pity.
‘I’ve asked for Long Life
with my cup of tea.
But it’s not on the menu
I’m afraid’,
and added this ‘green
thought in a green shade’,
‘I’ll have that curious
peach as a snack.
It’s meant to help my
appetite to come back’.
‘What wondous life.’
Extravagantly you’d bless
gardens returned to the
wild and excess
that’s not measured out in
medicine spoons
but with largesse, in
buckets from the dunes.
Even when colours faded,
you had the yellows,
and the flowers of other
men, unlikely fellows
who performed in a tableau.
The garland
you crowned them with was
what you had at hand -
wax bouquets and cat’s
cradle of string,
straw installations. Your
black winter had set in.
Saturated salt winds erode
the cold earth.
Though, briefly, crazed
tinctures of wild worth
excited the eye, it was
just a charade.
Orderly shadows treat your
light and shade
with the black and white of
the clinical lie.
The colours you sailed
under were a deeper dye.
After you died, high winds
laid waste the coast.
But your garden held back
the sea. You’d boast
no violence could destroy
it. The worst frost
can do is delay decay. Your
good work’s not lost.
The Croesus Factor
For John
Parsons, artist and haiku emperor
Now your pencil
is sharp,
and it’s time for
a poem,
or the sketch of
a bird,
no doubt, you’ll
make your mark,
and a world of
your own
at a stroke, or a
word
in the right
place, being led
by more than
lead. So head
down, he who
knows pure gold
doesn’t grow on a
tree,
except the leaf.
I’m told
you work by
alchemy.
Walking Dream
With Keats
A boy talking to
himself
passes me by. Forlorn!
the very word
like a bell
tolls me back…
Deceiving elf
(he hasn’t a
mobile phone).
Fancy cannot
cheat so well.
On passing, I
hear him chant
the plaintive
anthem… Adieu!
as he disappears
from view
with a slight
wave of his hand
up the
hillside to the vines.
A vision or someone extant?
I hear him as an
echo
in the next
valley, where pines
breathe the faint
Adieu! Adieu!
His sole self words
come and go
like a still
stream buried deep
in me… Do I
wake or sleep.