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Little Gods by Jacob Polley Find!

Last Thursday some of the Grange Reading Detectives, plus members from the other three reading groups based in Grange Library, were treated to a very special evening with Jacob Polley. Jacob was born in Cumbria and still lives in Carlisle and came to the library to talk about his first novel "Talk of the Town" which Helen has already listed as a find. However Jacob is also a poet of great distinction and concluded the evening with a short unplanned poetry reading which the audience really appreciated. It is such a treat to listen to an author reading from their own work and the final poem that Jacob read on Thursday night, from his second collection "Little Gods", captured for me the essence of the Reading Detectives project so here it is and I hope it speaks to you as much as it does to me.

The Byre

There's a boy in the byre after dark, after school,

with his hands on the flanks of the beasts

as they breathe. And the coffin paths and drovers' roads

and yellow-lit farmyards stand utterly still.

The running waters with their overspill,

the woods and the wetlands: all wait.

Far off, the Princes' Streets and circuses,

the bypasses and contra-flows,

the crawler lanes, carriageways, viaducts and rails

groan with their masses and traffics and freights

while delis and arcades and paper shops glow,

and the boy in the byre after dark,

after school, listens to the breathing cattle

clatter on the byre floor and knows

their heat as his, his presence as their peace

and their peace as his. The folded hills

are full of snow, the cars parked, the dogs in.

Far off, the cities grind on their axes

of orange light, while owls sweep the field's edge,

and old mines and caves of focused slate

crowd their dark around each drip as it drops.

Nothing stops, upland or low.

See who sleeps or serves, keeps or lets go,

herds or heals, builds or grows.

See the boy who brings his thoughts

to forget among the animals at nightfall -

how he leaves them quietened in the stalls.

3 October 2009 from Mary Rossall

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