Collected Poems, page 30
the landscape glittering as if it were in love with light.
A laughing local bunch of lads ran by.
Mrs Scrooge went red!
‘I snogged that tall one once!’ she said.
‘They’re shadows,’
said the Ghost. ‘They have no consciousness of us.’
High in the sky there came an aeroplane, rare enough
to make the boys stand pointing at the endless, generous air
and yell out ‘Merry Christmas!’ to the plane.
‘This is the past,
it cannot come again,’ went on the Ghost, ‘It is the gift
your soul gives to your heart.’
Mrs Scrooge stopped in the road and turned. ‘Why show
me this?’ she asked. ‘Because,’ the Ghost replied,
‘Scrooge sends a message from the grave –
keep going! You shall overcome!’
‘No Runway Three!’ cried Mrs Scrooge,
the breath her words made
like a ghost itself, swooning, vanishing.
But when she looked,
the face of Christmas Past bent down,
just like a lover stoops to steal a kiss,
and then her lips were soft, then salty,
tasting tears, her own, and then she woke,
at home, and old, and all alone.
Not quite alone,
for Catchit dozed and snuggled at her feet,
visions of robin redbreasts in his head.
London’s moon,
the moon of Shakespeare, Dickens, Oscar, Virginia Woolf,
shone down on silent theatres, banks, hotels,
on palaces and dosshouses and parks,
on Mrs Scrooge,
who lay, wide-eyed and fretful, in the dark. She heard
a scrabbling noise inside the chimney-breast
and sat bolt upright in her bed –
‘Who’s there?’ she said –
then, with a thump, a flash,
a figure in a crimson Santa suit
glowed in the grate, as if the fire had taken human shape
and combed itself a beard from its smoke.
‘I am the Ghost of Christmas Present,’
boomed the Ghost. ‘Now rise, and come with me!’
Before she knew it, Mrs Scrooge sat in a sleigh,
being pulled by reindeers through the starry sky,
tying a ribbon round the earth;
the Ghost of Christmas Present talking as they flew, naming
the oceans, forests, mountain ranges far below,
until the Arctic Circle rose beneath them like a moon.
They landed,
skidding on the ice,
in a percussion of sharp hooves and jingling bells.
Tears, like opals,
fell, then froze,
on Mrs Scrooge’s cheeks as she looked.
She stood upon a continent of ice
which sparkled between sea and sky,
endless and dazzling,
as though the world kept all its treasure there;
a scale
which balanced poetry and prayer.
But then she heard a crackling, rumbling groan
and saw huge icebergs calving from the floe
into the sea;
then, further out, a polar bear, floating,
stranded,
on a raft of ice.
‘The Polar Ice Cap melting,’ said the Ghost.
‘Can mankind save it?’
‘Yes, we can!’ cried Mrs Scrooge. ‘We must!’
‘I bring encouragement from Scrooge’s dust,’ replied the Ghost.
‘Never give up. Don’t think one ordinary human life
can make no difference – for it can!’
The reindeers steamed and snorted in the snow.
Mrs Scrooge stretched out her hand to one,
stroking the warm, rough texture of its hide,
which seemed to alter, soften, into Catchit’s fur!
The North Pole vanished like a snuffed-out flame.
She woke again.
‘Old fool!’
said Mrs Scrooge to herself. ‘These are just dreams.’
She pulled her blankets up beneath her chin
and lay there, worrying about large things and small.
The wall flickered with strange shadows, shifting shapes –
a turkey, and then a bear, and then a hooded form
which pointed at her silently,
until it swelled and stood and spoke!
‘I am the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come! Rise now,
and follow me!’
It took her in its arms like a bride
and flew her through a winter wood
towards a clearing
and an open grave,
around which mourners stood,
then put her down.
‘My family!’ said Mrs Scrooge. ‘There’s Bob!
And that’s his lovely wife!
There are my grandchildren! Peter! Martha! Tiny Tim!
Look! They’re my dearest friends, the Fezziwigs! Their girls!
Why are we here? Who died?’
The Spirit pointed downward to the grave.
Mrs Scrooge crept near and peeped into a wormy, loamy hole.
She saw a cardboard coffin, crayoned brightly with a name,
cartooned with flowers, faces, animals,
covered with poems, kisses, hearts.
She turned . . .
At once, she stood beside the Ghost
inside a huge and crowded room,
her friends and family piling in!
In came a fiddler with a music-book
who started up a jig.
(Mrs Scrooge,
who loved a whirl,
restrained herself from dancing with the Ghost.)
In came Mrs Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile,
bearing a tray of home-made, warm mince pies; saying
‘She would have wanted it this way!’ In came
the Fezziwig girls with babies chuckling in their arms. In came
tall nephews arm-in-arm with little aunts.
In came old comrades
with whom she’d marched in protest
against every kind of harm.
In they all came,
aglow with life and possibility, old and young;
away they went, twenty couples all at once,
gay and straight, down the middle, up and round again,
the beaming fiddler trying to saw his instrument in half!
There never was
such a wake!
More dancing, then more music, someone sang,
several shed tears;
then mince pies, cake, mulled wine, cold beer,
more wine, more beer;
then Mrs Scrooge heard a cheer
and there was Tiny Tim, up on a chair!
There was a hush.
‘A toast!’
cried Tiny Tim. ‘To my grandmother! The best woman
who ever was! She taught us all
to value everything!
To give ourselves!
To live as if each day
was Christmas Day!’
Another cheer and Mrs Scrooge’s name rang out
from everybody’s lips.
She seemed to float
above them; all the bright, familiar faces
looking up,
raised glasses in the air.
She heard Bob say, ‘She really had a wonderful life!’
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come
pulled back its hood.
She looked into its smiling, loving, grey-green eyes
and understood.
Clash, clang, hammer, ding, dong, bell!
Bell, dong, ding, hammer, clang, clash!
It was St Paul’s again,
gargling its morning bells,
the room her own;
and dribbling Catchit
staring down at her from her chest!
Quickly, Mrs Scrooge showered and dressed.
She flung open the window and leaned out –
a clear, bright, jovial, cold and glorious day!
The doorbell rang.
Down she hurried,
opened wide the door,
and in they poured,
taking the stairs two at a time – Bob, Bob’s wife,
the grandchildren, the Fezziwigs,
their girls, babies, partners,
all shouting
‘Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!’
What news they had!
The credit crunch
had forced the property developers
to sell the empty flats below to the Fezziwig girls!
So come New Year, all three were moving in!
Hurrah! Hurrah! What did Mrs Scrooge think of that!
(And would she babysit?)
Bob came grinning from the kitchen
with a tray of glasses of Buck’s Fizz!
Mrs Fezziwig and Mrs Scrooge
cuddled and wept with joy!
And that delightful boy, Tiny Tim, called out,
‘Here you are, Grandma, the sweet that Grandad gave you
every Christmas that he lived! A . . .’
‘HUMBUG!’
exclaimed Mrs Scrooge!
‘God Bless Us, Every One!’ cried Tiny Tim.
The Christmas Truce
Christmas Eve in the trenches of France,
the guns were quiet.
The dead lay still in No Man’s Land –
Freddie, Franz, Friedrich, Frank . . .
The moon, like a medal, hung in the clear, cold sky.
Silver frost on barbed wire, strange tinsel,
sparkled and winked.
A boy from Stroud stared at a star
to meet his mother’s eyesight there.
An owl swooped on a rat on the glove of a corpse.
In a copse of trees behind the lines,
a lone bird sang.
A soldier-poet noted it down – a robin
holding his winter ground –
then silence spread and touched each man like a hand.
Somebody kissed the gold of his ring;
a few lit pipes;
most, in their greatcoats, huddled,
waiting for sleep.
The liquid mud had hardened at last in the freeze.
But it was Christmas Eve; believe; belief
thrilled the night air,
where glittering rime on unburied sons
treasured their stiff hair.
The sharp, clean, midwinter smell held memory.
On watch, a rifleman scoured the terrain –
no sign of life,
no shadows, shots from snipers,
nowt to note or report.
The frozen, foreign fields were acres of pain.
Then flickering flames from the other side
danced in his eyes,
as Christmas Trees in their dozens shone,
candlelit on the parapets,
and they started to sing, all down the German lines.
Men who would drown in mud, be gassed, or shot,
or vaporised
by falling shells, or live to tell,
heard for the first time then –
Stille Nacht. Heilige Nacht. Alles schläft, einsam wacht . . .
Cariad, the song was a sudden bridge
from man to man;
a gift to the heart from home,
or childhood, some place shared . . .
When it was done, the British soldiers cheered.
A Scotsman started to bawl The First Noel
and all joined in,
till the Germans stood, seeing
across the divide,
the sprawled, mute shapes of those who had died.
All night, along the Western Front, they sang,
the enemies –
carols, hymns, folk songs, anthems,
in German, English, French;
each battalion choired in its grim trench.
So Christmas dawned, wrapped in mist,
to open itself
and offer the day like a gift
for Harry, Hugo, Hermann, Henry, Heinz . . .
with whistles, waves, cheers, shouts, laughs.
Frohe Weinachten, Tommy! Merry Christmas, Fritz!
A young Berliner,
brandishing schnapps,
was the first from his ditch to climb.
A Shropshire lad ran at him like a rhyme.
Then it was up and over, every man,
to shake the hand
of a foe as a friend,
or slap his back like a brother would;
exchanging gifts of biscuits, tea, Maconochie’s stew,
Tickler’s jam . . . for cognac, sausages, cigars,
beer, sauerkraut;
or chase six hares, who jumped
from a cabbage-patch, or find a ball
and make of a battleground a football pitch.
I showed him a picture of my wife.
Ich zeigte ihm
ein Foto meiner Frau.
Sie sei schön, sagte er.
He thought her beautiful, he said.
They buried the dead then, hacked spades
into hard earth
again and again, till a score of men
were at rest, identified, blessed.
Der Herr ist mein Hirt . . . my shepherd, I shall not want.
And all that marvellous, festive day and night,
they came and went,
the officers, the rank and file,
their fallen comrades side by side
beneath the makeshift crosses of midwinter graves . . .
. . . beneath the shivering, shy stars
and the pinned moon
and the yawn of History;
the high, bright bullets
which each man later only aimed at the sky.
Wenceslas
The King’s Cook had cooked for the King
a Christmas Pie,
wherein the Swan,
once bride of the river,
half of for ever,
six Cygnets circling her,
lay scalded, plucked, boned, parboiled,
salted, peppered, gingered, oiled;
and harboured the Heron
whose grey shadow she’d crossed
as it stood witness,
grave as a Priest,
on the riverbank.
Now the Heron’s breast was martyred with Cloves.
Inside the Heron inside the Swan –
in a greased cradle, pastry-sealed –
a Common Crane,
gutted and trussed,
smeared with Cicely, Lavender, Rose,
was stuffed with a buttered, saffroned
golden Goose.
Within the Goose,
perfumed with Fruits, was a Duck,
and jammed in the Duck, a Pheasant,
embalmed in Honey
from Bees
who’d perused
the blossoms of Cherry trees.
Spring in deep midwinter;
a year in a pie;
a Guinea-Fowl in a Pheasant;
a Teal in a Fowl.
Nursed in the Teal,
a Partridge, purse to a Plover;
a Plover, glove to a Quail;
and caught in the mitt of the Quail,
a Lark –
a green Olive stoppered its beak.
The Christmas Pie
for the good King, Wenceslas,
was seasoned with Sage, Rosemary, Thyme;
and a living Robin sang through a hole in its crust.
Pot-herbs to accompany this;
Roasted Chestnuts, Red Cabbage,
Celery, Carrots, Colly-flowre,
each borne aloft by a Page
into the Hall,
where the Pie steamed on a table
in front of the fire;
and to flow at the feast,
mulled Wine, fragrant
with Nutmeg, Cinnamon, Mace,
with Grains of Paradise.
The Lords and Ladies
sat at their places, candlelight
on their festive faces.
Up in the Minstrels’ Gallery,
the King’s Musicians tuned the Lute
to the Flute
to the Pipe
to the Shawm, the Gemshorn, the Harp,
to the Dulcimer
to the Psaltery;
and the Drum was a muffled heart
like an imminent birth
and the Tambourine was percussion as mirth.
Then a blushing Boy stood to trill
of how the Beasts, by some good spell,
in their crude stable began to tell
the gifts they gave Emmanuel.
Holly, Ivy, Mistletoe,
shredded Silver,
hung from the rafters
and the King’s Fool
pranced beneath
five red Apples,
one green Pear,
which danced in the air.
Snow at the window twirled;
and deep, crisp, even,
covered the fields
where a fox and a vixen curled in a den
as the Moon scowled
at the cold, bold, gold glare of an Owl.
Also there,
out where the frozen stream
lay nailed to the ground,
was a prayer
drifting as human breath,
as the ghost of words,
in a dark wood,
yearning to be
Something
Understood.
But Heaven was only old light
and the frost was cruel
where a poor, stooped man
went gathering fuel.
A miracle then,
fanfared in,
that the King in red robes, silver crown,
glanced outside
from his wooden throne
to see the Pauper
stumble, shiver,
and sent a Page to fetch him
Hither.
Then Wenceslas sat the poor man down,
poured Winter’s Wine,
and carved him a sumptuous slice
of the Christmas Pie . . .
as prayers hope You would, and I.
Bethlehem
A mild dusk; the little town
snaked
on the edge between desert and farmland;
camel prints in the sand
like broken hearts;
the call and response of sheep
among dry shrub.
To the West,
the whispering prayer of olive groves;
incense of rosemary, cedar, pine, votive
on purpling air.
Everyone there who had to be there.
