Down River – a poem

Down River – a poem

A poem by Phil Harris, inspired by a Blake200 video presented by Mark Vernon from the Temenos event at St George the Martyr, Holborn.

The poem arrived suddenly after Mark’s launch for the bicentenary year of Blake’s death. Mark Vernon’s enthusiasm is catching. His choice with Temenos of St George the Martyr, Holborn, is inspiring and catches the imagination. When I listened to Mark’s 30 second video, the occasion and location took my breath away.

Here are the co-ordinates. I understand a little of the emblematic motif above him; but I needed to check after writing the poem. The architect of the ceiling, Hawksmoor, had been mentored by Sir Christopher Wren and continued the ancient philosophy that still fascinated architects even after the Restoration. Blake enters the picture by attending the lectures of Thomas Taylor, who was insisting on bringing to 18th century Britain the Neoplatonism of Plotinus, which has had for some time an intuitive presence in my imagination.

Plotinus’s tributaries still flow into the river and might prompt us to stretch out, bridge even now to the sciences in our divided minds. Blake’s craft chemistry was pretty cutting edge, a heaven & hell, a purging? I must return to Mark’s book ‘Awake’. More than philosophy lingers along the walls and ceilings of St George Martyr and the streets of Holborn?

I was born and brought up, ‘upriver’.

Down River

Knowledge stands under a baroque sky,

Squares the circle,

Too many poems for argument,

Divinity on the water…

London is pretty in the sun

The trees will revive next year

If Vernon is right,

Blake is back…

Words stroll the street,

The sea has returned the waves of time.

About Phil Harris

I retired from plant science research (Scottish Office) in 1997, and from a European Commission consultancy in 2006.

I was born with two older brothers and then a younger brother, close by what had been a chalk stream flowing into the Thames, and with friends in late childhood discovered a remaining forgotten fragment. We roamed widely in the still recognisable if stunned agrarian countryside of southern England, the country of most of my ancestors. We were still boys when we rowed leaky old Edwardian skiffs on the Thames to Hampton Court. London was the great presence downriver and we could see St Pauls from the Surrey hills. 

I have written poems all of my life. The discovery of pre-Enlightenment poetry took place mostly out of school and I remember discovering Synge’s plays, and when I was 17/18, Yeats’s early work, after a bit of lucky bibliomancy. The rest follows, beyond The Waste Land and our predicament, resurgence, Kathleen Raine and Blake and rather late, c 2012, The Blake Society.