24 Lines

Reading:

Lines

‘A straight line is the shortest 
Distance between two points.’ 
Or so the teacher said 
When I was all of twelve.
Lesson One in geometry. 
From that moment I could see
That maths was not for me.

Even in the First Form though
Lines had a non-Euclidean
Connotation. You got them
As punishment for mischief. 
‘Come and see me after school. 
I’m fed up with your larking.
You’re nothing but an irritation.
I’m going to give you lines.’ 

So I sat down, all on my own
To write the following injunction:
‘I must not interrupt the lesson
When others are trying to work.’
Five hundred times. You daren’t hasten.
Careless writing was not counted. 
With ink and pen - no biros then -
I scratched away as tedium mounted, 
On and on till repetition reached
Delirium. My wrist ached for a week.

Even in the Sixth I was never good at geometry
And I struggled with trigonometry.
Only when I was growing up and began to think
That I might one day make a life creating things
Did I realise that different kinds of lines give meaning 
And what’s more, can of themselves be pleasing. 
The lines of this poem may be an instance. 
Then there are those other ones, more teasing
That you need to read between. But getting 
Lines down onto the page is often a fight.
Pens are too light for poems that might 
Withstand the fickleness of taste and run the distance.
If you want your work to last, ‘Take a chisel to write!’ 
(A metaphor from monumental mason Basil Bunting.) 
What I’ve discovered looking back, whether with
Ink and pen  -or trusty Mac -is that this strange mission
To go on writing lines of verse is also in its way, an imposition. 

Lines came into painting too. Those that encompass
The volumes of a nude in a Life Class are a good case. 
‘Forget about contours, you should be able to describe
The form without them. Get angles right instead!’ 
So said my drawing master at the Slade.
But I never mastered that with only light and shade.
A firm outline had to be put down before a head
Say, looked quite right. Nor could I ever subscribe
To Hogarth’s Line of Beauty. Too curly for me.
Poussin was my man. I loved his solidity.

Beyond these linear abstractions that hope
To call up life by means of pencil on a page 
Or in the written sounds of poetry
Are lines that life inscribes
On each of us unnoticed as we age. 
Tender lines that spell out who we are
And what our feelings meant to others: 
Anger or, as it might be laughter, even tears.
Crows feet where the eyes end, 
Record of a life of smiles, or their contrary:
Those wavy lines furrowed on the brow
Which tell of frowns frozen over the years. 
As for me, those curving verticals
Running down each cheek bespeak anxiety.
They started in my boyhood long before,
Away from home, tormented by my fears 
Of what would happen to my parents in the war.

Most mysterious of all, my darling one, 
Are those upon your lovely face 
For they are invisible, leaving you 
Forever as I saw you first when
You were twenty. What line of mine
Could ever catch that beauty?