Alderley Edge

[poliphilo]

ALDERLEY EDGE

The lips of the cave are chapped with carving-
Names, mostly illegible.
Copper-water sweats from the rock-
Viridian.

They were mining here
In the bronze age. In the modern era
Fortunes got made.

I double up
And crab-walk into the rippling passage
Till daylight snuffs. It's dark as the womb here,
Dark as the grave, but I want to push deeper.

Bob the Wizard told cracking tales
About the Edge. In the 1940s
Night-time ramblers heard ghostly music
Wavering up from underground.
It wasn't boggarts but local witches
(Bob was one) with a gramophone
In a disused working. They'd scull initiates
Over an underground lake and leave 'em
Stuck on a beach.

In the dark, of course-
The dripping, echoing, absolute dark-
Where if they left you for long enough
Odd things might come and look at you,
Lit up from inside like deep-sea fishes.

Bob has died and if he walks
He'll be walking here, another spook
For the caves to comfort.

I'm here to scout
For a T.V. show that ain't gonna happen.
We talk of helicopter shots,
Of running a steadicam through the woods
Out onto the ledge where one looks at Cheshire,
Of taking lights down into the caverns
To hunt our Snark.

People have worked here,
Played here, done peculiar things here
Thousand of years. The cave's chapped lips
Are forming an "O".

(I don't know why it is, but whenever I try to post verse in rich text it ends up double-spaced- which looks really attentuated and silly- so I'm taking this poem out of the last post and giving it an entry to itself.)

Comments

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Thanks for going inside for me!

This was lovely.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thank you...

But I only ever went inside in my imagination. I would love to explore under Alderley for real some day.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Why didn't you just walk up and go in? (I thought you had.)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Only for a few yards. It's pitch black in there and I'm afraid of the dark.

mystery

[manfalling.livejournal.com]

stuff like this reminds me that i feel no mystery like this is in my life. mystery like- ooh- what`s in the cave? dark and scary and powerful natural inhuman things. i suppose because the land and the history of the land is pretty much obliterated under your feet in japan- certainly tokyo. there is no nature except that which has been pruned and trimmed and stylised. the landscape is an entirely interchangeable parade of train stations, 7/11`s, and department stores.

this is part of the appeal of LOST for me i guess. nature mixed with the doings of long gone humans- which is almost the same thing as nature itself, as it is so alien.

sad thing about that is- EVERYBODY is getting excited about LOST. so i`m unlikely to get original material from it to write anything fresh with. whereas your trips to alderly and the graves- that`s rock on individualized inspiration...

where i live is just too NEW...

Re: mystery

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

There must be old, mysterious, corners of Japan. I know the Japanese are crazy for ghost stories. Have you come across the work of Lafcadio Hearne? He was an American consul (or something like that) who collected and published spooky Japanese folk tales round about the beginning of the 20th century.

[amritarosa.livejournal.com]

very nice!
may I repost it?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

By all means. I'm happy you like it that much.