St Ives is a town that is annually inundated by visitors, vehicles and property speculators. It is very easy to feel disillusioned by all this. But time and again hope comes back, as the town re-emerges from the depths. Like those drowned towns in myth and legend, the buildings and the people can be seen and heard again. Echoing the ballads of W H Auden and the Cornish poet, Charles Causley, this poem makes use of traditional form and rhyme, as well as Kernewek as a reminder of the town’s pre-Anglophone history. It challenges the reader: Who are we? Who are you?
The Drowned Town
O what can I hear
Coming from under the sea?
Only church bells, dear.
But what are they saying to me?
We are the bells of a town
That slowly was drowned,
Slower than a flood tide fills,
Slower than a gill net kills.
And sometimes at night
If the wind is right,
Beneath the knells
And the peal of the bells,
There are voices as well.
Piw on ni?
Who can tell?
Piw on ni?
And sometimes in a drought
The church tower sticks out,
And figures can be seen
Moving like fish in a dream,
Like fish in a seine.
Piw os ta?
They are saying.
Piw os ta?
O the moon is as bright
As scales on a herring,
And the wind is just right
And the church bells tolling
Time and the state of the tide.
Let’s go down to the town
That almost was drowned,
That is rising from the under sea.
8 August 2022