The heatwave poem

And then there was the year we took a gîte near Bergerac, in the Dordogne region, taking our eldest son and his then girlfriend with us. The temperature was around 40 C, and we were in a car with plastic seats. It was, to say the least, uncomfortable. At some point, quite early on as I recall, our son and his girlfriend decided to cut short their stay with us and travel to her parents' place in Germany. We drove them to the station in Perigeux. It felt like a door had closed.

The poem was first published in Seven Senses (Diehard, 2000). 

Red

Only movement cooled,
driving round each curving canyon lip
towards Rocamadour.

We parked on a hairpin loop
for a comfort stop behind bushes,
and here the heat hit in slow gusts;
awesome heat bounced from red cliffs
to black road,
and up to faces
already embarrassed by the sun.
S. couldn’t go, afraid of creepie-crawlies
creeping.

In the town, J. bought a hat
with a silly flower - all the shop had -
and all the time
Moorish heat, hell-hot,
dessicated lungs,
plundered our will.
In the street’s shade
hot dark air led us to the Black Virgin,
a sooty little gnome in a hot grotto.

At Padirac, our roasting queue shuffled forward
before descending the Gouffre’s cool throat
opening to a cavernous cathedral,
out-doming any human shrine.

Afterwards, every cave, each mango sorbet,
any church or roofed bastide was welcome,
until Perigeux,
where we knew, at last,
we’d lost our son to someone else.

Heat-blind, heat-dumb, heat-deadened,
eyes full of dried tears,
we couldn’t watch their train depart.
We trudged from nave to altar,
unblessed, and too hot to touch.



Copyright © Colin Will 2000

The holiday poem

Whenever I go somewhere different, like Abroad, I make notes, keep a journal, but I also try to write poems, maybe a first draft. Then I come home and polish them. Back in 1996 we decided to take a gite in the South of France for our annual holiday, which was usually in July. We picked the property from a Gites de France catalogue, and booked it without knowing the region. Getting there was interesting. We drove down to the Channel Tunnel, then on to the Autoroute and down to the Languedoc. We did it in a single journey, without stopping, which was a bit crazy, but we were younger then, and we took turns driving.

We arrived in a small town called Paraza, not too far from Beziers, and on the bank of the Canal du Midi. It was very hot, and we were exhausted. The property was tiny, and on three floors, without air-conditioning. The toilet and bathroom were down a flight of extremely steep stairs in the basement, bedroom and kitchen on the ground floor, and the lounge upstairs. Half of the roof had been cut away to form a terrasse, which was pleasant in the evenings, but unbearably hot during the day. But it had THAT view over the Canal, which was beautiful. We explored the region, visiting Carcassonne and the Cathar strongholds. I started to learn about the history of the area, and had the first glimmerings of an idea for a novel (of which more later). 

I loved the place. The poem was published in Seven Senses (Diehard, 2000).

Out in the Midi sun

This is the place where fruit truly ripens.
In the shop I buy that dawn’s crop
of what we thought were pale boulders in the field.
The melon’s hard rind’s concentrically cracked
around the stalk’s remnants.
Revealed, the luscious perfumed flesh,
holding the night’s coolness,
has the tang of toffee.

A thousand and more miles from the cool crags
and liquid hillslopes of my grey home
I shade my eyes from a hot heaven sun.

Haze lifts off the heated ground
and builds to clouds
whose tops boil and billow
then float off on a sea-sucked breeze,
pulling in more Med moisture
until two cloud-heads merge
in a kiss of wispy fists.

I’ve half a month of Midi memories;
of rusted ochre gorges;
the dust-green of spiny bushes;
limestone pinnacles, fortressed
against the Inquisition’s prying armies;
of beaches where breasts are pointedly
not noticed;
where colours are all colours
and all shadows are black;
where a roadkill snake,
out from its orchard,
paid the price
for crossing back to Eden.

Bee-eaters buzz the plane-trees
in iridescent bomb-bursts,
and drowning cicadas somersault,
trying to fly through water.
Vineyards work harder in the heat,
transforming light into sweetness,
water into soft wine to warm
the awesome black and starry nights to come.

Copyright © Colin Will 2000