Conran, time, jasper

I didn't want to suggest, in my last posting, that Tony Conran's poems were always difficult to fathom. Look at the imaginative power and directness of this - he was so good at poems for people he knew, for friends - he had a gift for friendship, and it fuelled his powerful imagnination.

Jasper for John Jones the potter
 
Waxwork of a crag, a model of sea rock
In gleaming maroon –
Hear the waves break on it, see the fish fly
Under the moon!
A piece of witch-stone, jasper,
Red chalcedony
With a tidewash of grey quartz still ebbing
Back like the sea.
 I was given it, it has lain in my hearth
Nearly a year
To give peace by arbitrary charm
To fingerers here.
Each hand that stroked it, gave to and took
Power out of it:
Love warmed it with whitsun, it knew
Fire-tonguing wit.
It felt stillness in half-light, it learned
Like a wild foal
To stand calm in a crowdful of noise
In its deep quartz soul.
It is Welsh rock, John. A vein of it runs
In the nape
Of the hanging coast where the oaktrees
Knot the Straits into shape.
Earth, water and fire! and a girl’s hand that gave it
Dearer to me
Than gold! – I send you this shard from the wheel
Of the Welsh sea.
Your potter’s eyes found glazes in red grit –
You made them yours,
The piebald debris of metallic earths,
Ragbag of ores.
We finger a pebble for luck, or chance
Magic try –
But your fingers have lived with luck so long
They must have it, or die.
And your hands chance no amateur magic:
The wheel must turn,
The wet grey clay must rise like a genie
To teapot or urn.
Yet now, because you have left Wales, and sold
Kiln and wheel
And because your cottage sinks down to its knees
In an overgrown field,
And the racks in your front room shop
No longer fill
Quietly, quietly with the cups and jugs
Of your fingers’ skill
And because now, though the potter’s gone
And the clay dries dead,
We are glad that the love of a bride
Has graced your bed –
That ancient, amateur magic of hands,
A love and a luck
Richer than even from clay
Ever was struck –
Because of all this, on your wedding day
I send
All the power in a stone I can
To make and mend:
A piece of witch-stone, jasper,
Red chalcedony
With a tidewash of grey quartz still ebbing
Back to the sea.

And now I'm feeling hiraeth for John and his work, and for the time I knew him a little; I have a jug or two of his. His cotttage sunk down to its knees in an overgrown field....

We humans are in love with the products of time. Unlike chalcedony, which simply is a product of time and has - no purpose...