A Birthday Triptych by Peter Scupham
Poetry Nation 1, Number 1, 1973
I.
Birth days: as of the spirit.
She cannot dissemble.
We break a fiery bread.
How should we navigate
The waves' coarse turmoil
Without appointed stars?
A luminary day, then.
Light of the first magnitude,
Confirm our chosen course.
Tides, in their slow recession,
Delay about your fingers
A light sweet freight of shells.
When fresh seas break,
May that beached, miraculous wrack
Still hold its water lights.
On this your name day,
Under Janus, God of thresholds,
Past and future both become you.
II.
The true gift claims us.
Look! The flowered paper
Spills and crinkles.
A drift of white tissue:
Snow wreaths in May
We missed last winter.
And the small sign disclosed
Says in a new voice:
I tell of love in the world
To steady and delight you.
A long draught fills our horn;
We cannot exhaust her.
We read a common language
Runed in each offered hand.
Here, riddles are their answers.
Eyes rehearse tender cues.
All images compose and celebrate
The selves we have become.
III.
None can walk safely.
The roads are dark, unsigned,
The sky precariously blue.
We must endure
Flowers, the rain's refreshment,
Each beautiful absurdity;
Accept with clear laughter
The dissonance of white hair,
Pain at the source.
A tree shakes at your window
Her brilliance of leafwork.
Admiration heals us.
Our vulnerability preserves.
To counter such a strength
Time's tactics have no skill.
Love sustains. By this avowal
We cancel fear,, whatever tremors
Approach us from the bowed horizon.
Peter Scupham was born in Liverpool in 1933. Since 1972 he published over ten collections of poetry. With John Mole he founded The Mandeville Press and ran Mermaid Books, a second-hand book business in Norfolk. He received a Cholmondely Award in 1996 and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His 2022 Collected Poems was followed by Borrowed Landscapes in 2011. His final collection, Invitation to View, is published by Carcanet in July 2022. He passed away in June 2022 at the age of 88.
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