Anne Berkeley's "The bowser"

[a work in progress]

In Anne Berkeley's book, "Object Permanence", "The bowser" takes up over 5 pages. It's followed by the book's final poem, the title poem, which is over a page long and is also about the bowser. The cover photo features the bowser - a mobile water tank outside Cambridge, by a country track between Sawston and Whittlesford. I photographed it years ago and pass it every so often.

• The first stanza is "Stay still for a picture/ Each day I assess/ the cloud-stained field". Throughout the book the past has been mined, recorded and re-interpreted. Here initially it's the field (and the clouds' influence) that's being studied - nature's effect on nature.
• Later, there's "One morning, not there -/ no misremembered:/ between railway and bypass/ not railway and river". The path from Sawston crosses the bypass then a railway track before crossing the River Cam (a brook really) and passing the Hamilton Kerr Institute (where they study the conservation of paintings). Sometimes there are sheep in the fields. The bowser could have disappeared in the night, but no - memory is playing tricks. "Fescue, cocksfoot, meadowsweet/ half obscure it". The sheep have gone. The bowser's becoming part of the scenery - static, though it's close to river, road and rail.
• Then "I long to bang its side, hear it resonate/ to tell how empty it's become". The bowser's in a field beyond a fence. The persona considers trespassing (entering nature?) to get a better view, to "Take only photographs/ leave only footprints" - I've seen this wording on signs (though not by the bowser). First, do no harm.
• Then there's a stanza describing the external parts - manometer, faucets, trailer, etc - "The great round disc that seals one end/ hasn't been unscrewed for years".
• The tank is impenetrable, inscructable. "The iron flank is solid/ to the flat of my hand/ the bump of my fist/ it makes no sound/ I whack it with a stick/ expecting a gong/ hear the snap of wood". There is a pinhole, but "No one watches/ the camera obscura". Inside are "brewing bacteria, moulds, resentments".
• Then we're told that "The bowser is in pieces of paper/ I can't put it back together/ I don't know how the pieces work// Diagram:". Then there's a list of parts - more technical than the earlier list, including inner parts.
• The bowser becomes referred to as "you". "I found you tilted one morning/ broken axled". It's not fatal - "A train passes/ and the water/ shivers".
• There are 10 lines from the bowser's point of view - "There was a time when I was full ... my sweet water drawn daily/ for nursing ewes and skittish young"
• Finally there's a page in a new voice, summarising the preceding text - "O stubborn tank of stale water/ o lumpen iron emptiness/ o grim beacon of loyalty and decay ... young men trained in technical drawing/ designing taps and gaskets ... workmen who mend a joint with gaffer tape ... on your shoulders the years/ the years of rain and all/ that rain brings with it" ending with "useless lump of metal/ too heavy too expensive/ to tow away".

It's tempting to try an anthropomorphic gloss - bowser as old friend/relative; or bowser as the life support system for someone in a permanent vegetative state. The exterior ages gracefully, but what's happening inside? It's hard to tell. The visible parts can be described. The pieces (even the invisible ones) can be fully described individually, but assembling them is difficult. There's life in the old dog yet though. There's nostalgia for the good old days, then an honest (albeit linguistically romanticised) recapitulation. Rain, with its soot and pollen, contrasts with the once sweet water inside.

Or one could see the bowser as an enigma, something that resists description on paper, that can be written about but not in a way that supplies interiority. Is there any change in the observer? Their relationship with the bowser changes - first it's not the centre of attraction, it's an "it" then a "you" then finally it's eulogised.