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| The Poetry of Nicholas Hancock The Poet of Despair Published by The British Hancock Society with the permission of the author. |
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IN NATURAL WOOD Straight as a young tree he strides the forest floor. Glancing at boughs and boles, head cocked, he estimates board feet. I swear he sees wood lustre vividly through bark. Grandfather crunches twigs; I steal behind, stepping through last year's autumn. Here a thrush is perched casting a spell of liquid hate. Grandfather files saw teeth, which hum through walnut wood releasing spores of sunlight into underbrush that's damp and grey. Three years have seasoned Grandpa's hunk of walnut wood, bringing my birthday near - my tenth. An oiled whipsaw cuts off a slice no thicker than my foot. A fine spray of sunlight incenses flagstones. Now he belts jigsaw to tractor. Fast it cuts an oval hole. Coarsely he sands the edges of his rim. I sneeze gold powder. Stained, shellacked and polished, it is fine- grained; it has a silky smoothness with its matching lid. I'm ten years old today, and my grandfather screws his walnut present to an ancient bowl named Shanks, etched black as if by Albrecht Dürer. There it glows, pure craft from adze to polish; on it I sit, proud grandchild to such a man. He's made a thing for me you'll buy quite cheap in any DIY, devoid of sympathy and hard-learned art. I reach deep down, compassionate, inside me for the source of love.
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