Collected Poems, page 19
flew away home to furnish each room of the house,
shuffle his plastic with hers, deal them out in the shops
for cutlery, crockery, dishwashers, bed linen, TV sets,
three-piece suites, stereos, microwaves, telephones,
curtains and mirrors and rugs; shrugged at the cost,
then fixed up a loan, filled up the spare room with boxes
of merchandise, unopened cartons, over-stuffed bags;
went on the Internet, shopped in America, all over Europe,
tapping her credit card numbers all night, ordering
swimming pools, caravans, saunas; when they arrived,
stacked up on the lawn, she fled, took to the streets,
where the lights from the shops ran like paint in the rain,
and pressed her face to the pane of the biggest and best;
the happy shoppers were fingering silk, holding cashmere
close to their cheeks, dancing with fur; she slept there,
curled in the doorway, six shopping bags at her feet.
*
Stone cold when she woke, she was stone, was concrete
and glass, her eyes windows squinting back at the light,
her brow a domed roof, her thoughts neon, flashing on
and off, vague in the daylight. She seemed to be kneeling
or squatting, her shoulders broad and hunched, her hands
huge and part of the pavement. She looked down. Her skirts
were glass doors opening and closing, her stockings were
moving stairs, her shoes were lifts, going up, going down:
first floor for perfumery and cosmetics, ladies’ accessories,
lingerie, fine jewels and watches; second for homewares,
furniture, travel goods, luggage; third floor for menswear,
shaving gear, shoes; fourth floor for books, toyland,
childrenswear, sports; fifth floor for home entertainment,
pianos, musical instruments, beauty and hair. Her ribs
were carpeted red, her lungs glittered with chandeliers
over the singing tills, her gut was the food hall, hung
with fat pink hams, crammed with cheeses, fruits, wines,
truffles and caviar. She loved her own smell, sweat and Chanel,
loved the crowds jostling and thronging her bones, loved
the credit cards swiping themselves in her blood, her breath
was gift wrapping, the whisper of tissue and string, she loved
the changing rooms of her heart, the rooftop restaurant
in her eyes, the dark basement under the lower ground floor
where juggernauts growled, unloading their heavy crates.
The sky was unwrapping itself, ripping itself into shreds.
She would have a sale and crowds would queue overnight
at her cunt, desperate for bargains. Light blazed from her now.
Birds shrieked and voided themselves in her stone hair.
Work
To feed one, she worked from home,
took in washing, ironing, sewing.
One small mouth, a soup-filled spoon,
life was a dream.
To feed two,
she worked outside, sewed seeds, watered,
threshed, scythed, gathered barley, wheat, corn.
Twins were born. To feed four,
she grafted harder, second job in the alehouse,
food in the larder, food on the table,
she was game, able. Feeding ten
was a different kettle,
was factory gates
at first light, oil, metal, noise, machines.
To feed fifty, she toiled, sweated, went
on the night shift, schlepped, lifted.
For a thousand more, she built streets,
for double that, high-rise flats. Cities grew,
her brood doubled, peopled skyscrapers,
trebled. To feed more, more,
she dug underground, tunnelled,
laid down track, drove trains. Quadruple came,
multiplied, she built planes, outflew sound.
Mother to millions now,
she flogged TVs,
designed PCs, ripped CDs, burned DVDs.
There was no stopping her. She slogged
night and day at Internet shopping.
A billion named,
she trawled the seas, hoovered fish, felled trees,
grazed beef, sold cheap fast food, put in
a 90-hour week. Her offspring swelled. She fed
the world, wept rain, scattered the teeth in her head
for grain, swam her tongue in the river to spawn,
sickened, died, lay in a grave, worked, to the bone,
her fingers twenty-four seven.
Tall
Then, like a christening gift or a wish arriving
later in life, the woman had height, grew tall,
was taller daily.
Day one saw her rising at 8 foot
bigger than any man. She knelt in the shower
as if she were praying for rain. Her clothes
would be curtains and eiderdowns, towels and rugs.
Out. Eye-high with street lamps, she took a walk
downtown. Somebody whooped. She stooped,
hands on both knees,
and stared at his scared face,
the red heart tattooed on his small chest. He turned
and fled like a boy.
On. A tree dangled an apple
at bite-height. She bit it. A traffic-light stuttered
on red, went out. She lit it. Personal birds
sang on her ears. She whistled.
Further. Taller
as she went, she glanced into upper windows
in passing, saw lovers in the rented rooms
over shops, saw an old man long dead in a chair,
paused there, her breath on the glass.
She bowed herself into a bar, ordered a stiff drink.
It came on the rocks, on the house. A drunk
passed out or fainted. She pulled up a stool, sat
at the bar with her knees
under her chin, called
for another gin, a large one. She saw a face, high
in the mirror behind the top shelf. Herself.
Day two, she was hungover, all over, her head
in her hands in the hall, her feet at the top
of the stairs, more tall.
She needed a turret,
found one, day three, on the edge of town, moved in,
her head in the clouds now, showering in rain.
But pilgrims came –
small women with questions and worries, men
on stilts. She was 30 foot, growing, could see for miles.
So day six, she upped sticks, horizon-bound
in seven-league boots. Local crowds swarmed
round her feet, chanting.
She cured no one. Grew.
The moon came closer at night, its scarred face
an old mirror. She slept outdoors, stretched
across empty fields or sand.
The stars trembled. Taller
was colder, aloner, no wiser. What could she see
up there? She told them what kind of weather
was heading their way –
dust storms over the Pyramids,
hurricanes over the USA, floods in the UK –
but by now the people were tiny
and far away, and she
was taller than Jupiter, Saturn, the Milky Way. Nothing
to see. She looked back and howled.
She stooped low
and caught their souls in her hands as they fell
from the burning towers.
Loud
Parents with mutilated children have been turned away from the empty hospital and told to hire smugglers to take them across the border to Quetta, a Pakistani frontier city at least six hours away by car.
(Afghanistan, 28 October 2001)
The News had often made her shout,
but one day her voice ripped out of her throat
like a firework, with a terrible sulphurous crack
that made her jump, a flash of light in the dark.
Now she was loud.
Before, she’d been easily led,
one of the crowd, joined in with the national whoop
for the winning goal, the boos for the bent MP, the cheer
for the royal kiss on the balcony. Not any more. Now
she could roar.
She practised alone at home, found
she could call abroad without using the phone, could sing
like an orchestra in the bath, could yawn like thunder
watching TV. She switched to the News. It was all about
Muslims, Christians, Jews.
Then her scream was a huge bird
that flew her away into the dark; each vast wing a shriek,
awful to hear, the beak the sickening hiss of a thrown spear.
She stayed up there all night, in the wind and rain, wailing,
uttering lightning.
Down, she was pure sound, rumbling
like an avalanche. She bit radios, swallowed them, gargled
their News, till the words were – ran into the church and sprayed
the congregation with bullets no one has claimed – gibberish, crap,
in the cave of her mouth.
Her voice stomped through the city,
shouting the odds, shaking the bells awake in their towers.
She yelled through the countryside, swelling the rivers, felling
the woods. She put out to sea, screeching and bellowing,
spewing brine.
She bawled at the moon and it span away
into space. She hollered into the dark where fighter planes
buzzed at her face. She howled till every noise in the world
sang in the spit on the tip of her tongue: the shriek of a bomb,
the bang of a gun,
the prayers of the priest, the pad of the feet
in the mosque, the casual rip of the post, the mothers’ sobs,
the thump of the drop, the President’s cough, the screams
of the children cowering under their pews, loud, loud,
louder, the News.
History
She woke up old at last, alone,
bones in a bed, not a tooth
in her head, half dead, shuffled
and limped downstairs
in the rag of her nightdress,
smelling of pee.
Slurped tea, stared
at her hand – twigs, stained gloves –
wheezed and coughed, pulled on
the coat that hung from a hook
on the door, lay on the sofa,
dozed, snored.
She was History.
She’d seen them ease him down
from the Cross, his mother gasping
for breath, as though his death
was a difficult birth, the soldiers spitting,
spears in the earth;
been there
when the fishermen swore he was back
from the dead; seen the basilicas rise
in Jerusalem, Constantinople, Sicily; watched
for a hundred years as the air of Rome
turned into stone;
witnessed the wars,
the bloody crusades, knew them by date
and by name, Bannockburn, Passchendaele,
Babi Yar, Vietnam. She’d heard the last words
of the martyrs burnt at the stake, the murderers
hung by the neck,
seen up-close
how the saint whistled and spat in the flames,
how the dictator strutting on stuttering film
blew out his brains, how the children waved
their little hands from the trains. She woke again,
cold, in the dark,
in the empty house.
Bricks through the window now, thieves
in the night. When they rang on her bell
there was nobody there; fresh graffiti sprayed
on her door, shit wrapped in a newspaper posted
onto the floor.
Sub
I came on in extra time in ’66, my breasts
bandaged beneath my no. 13 shirt, and put it in
off the head, the back of the heel, the left foot
from 30 yards out, hat-trick. If they’d thought
the game was all over, it was now. I felt secure
as I danced in my dazzling whites with the Cup –
tampon – but skipped the team bath with the lads,
sipped my champagne in the solitary shower
as the blood and soap suds mingled to pink.
They sang my name on the other side of the steam.
Came on too in the final gasps of the Grand Slam clincher,
scooped up the ball from the back of the scrum, ran
like the wind, bandaged again, time of the month
likewise, wiggled, weaved, waved at the crowd, slipped
like soap through muddy hands, liked that, slid
between legs, nursing the precious egg of the ball,
then flung myself like breaking surf over the line
for the winning try, converted it, was carried
shoulder high by the boys as the whistle blew.
They roared my name through mouthfuls of broken teeth.
Ringo had flu when the Fab Four toured Down
Under. Minus a drummer, the gig was a bummer
till I stepped in, digits ringed, sticked, skinned,
in a Beatle skirt, mop-topped, fringed, to wink
at Paul, quip with John, climb on the drums,
clever fingered and thumbed, give it four to the bar,
give it yeah yeah yeah. The screams were lava,
hot as sex, and every seat in the house was wet.
We sang Help!, Day Tripper, Money, This Boy,
Girl, She Loves You – John, Paul, George and Moi.
It was one small step for a man for Neil
to stand on the Moon, a small hop for me
to stand in for Buzz, bounce in my moon-suit
over the dust, waving a flag. I knelt, scooped out
a hole in the powdery ground, and buried a box
with a bottle of malt, chocolates, Emily Dickinson’s
poems. Ground Control barked down the line. Houston,
we don’t have a problem, I said. It comforts me now,
the thought of them there, when I look at the moon.
Quietly there on the moon, the things that I like.
And when Beefy fell sick in the final Test,
I stepped up, two of his boxes over my chest,
and hooked a four from the first of Lillee’s balls.
He bowled so fast you could hear his fingers click
as he spun off the seam. I lolled at the crease –
five months gone – and looped and hooped them about
like a dream, googlies, bosies, chinamen, zooters,
balls that dipped, flipped, nipped, whipped
at the wicket like bombs. I felt the first kick
of my child; whacked a century into the crowd.
Motherhood then kept me busy at home till my girl
started school. Not match-fit, I was talked
into management when Taylor went, caretaker role,
jacked that in after the World Cup win – Beckham
free-kick in extra time – and agreed on a whim to slim
to the weight of a boy, ride the winner at Aintree –
Bobbyjo, ’99 – when the jockey dislocated his neck.
After that, I pulled right back, signed up to write
a book of my life and times, though I did play guitar
for the Band in LA when Bob gave me the call.
And when I look back – or my grandchildren ask me
what it was like to put Mohammed Ali on the deck
when Cooper was scratched from the scrap, or stand in
for Graham Hill to be Formula One Grand Champ
in the fastest recorded speed, or to dress up
as Borg in bandana and wig and steal the fifth set
at Wimbledon from under – You cannot be serious –
McEnroe’s nose, or to kneel, best of all, first woman there,
on the Moon and gaze at the beautiful faraway earth –
what I think to myself is this:
The Virgin’s Memo
maybe not abscesses, acne, asthma,
son, maybe not boils,
maybe not cancer
or diarrhoea
or tinnitus of the inner ear,
maybe not fungus,
maybe rethink the giraffe,
maybe not herpes, son,
or (text illegible)
or jellyfish
or (untranslatable)
maybe not leprosy or lice,
the menopause or mice, mucus, son,
neuralgia, nits,
maybe not body odour,
piles,
quicksand, quagmires,
maybe not rats, son, rabies, rattlesnakes,
shite,
and maybe hang fire on the tarantula,
the unicorn’s lovely,
but maybe not veruccas
or wasps,
or (text illegible)
or (untranslatable)
maybe not . . .
Anon
If she were here
she’d forget who she was,
it’s been so long,
maybe a nurse, a nanny,
maybe a nun –
Anon.
A girl I met
was willing to bet
that she still lived on –
Anon –
but had packed it all in,
the best verb, the right noun,
for a life in the sun.
A woman I knew
kept her skull
on a shelf in a room –
Anon’s –
and swore that one day
as she worked at her desk
it cleared its throat
as though it had something
to get off its chest.
But I know best –
how she passed on her pen
like a baton
down through the years,
with a hey nonny
hey nonny
hey nonny no –
Anon.
The Laughter of Stafford Girls’ High
for T.W.
It was a girl in the Third Form, Carolann Clare,
who, bored with the lesson, the rivers of England –
