Collected Poems, page 4
till night. Artichoke and mushroom
shift cycle till stop. Damp loam
humming at the moon. Eyes water
at the little onions. See.
Except you, Daddy.
Oranges and lemons singing singing
buttercups and daisies. Bang.
Will ye no come back again?
My true love. Bang. Two turtle doves.
Bang. The cat is spider is grass
is roses is bird fish bang.
Bang. Bang.
Except you, Daddy.
Poker in the Falklands with Henry & Jim
We three play poker whilst outside the real world
shrinks to a joker. So. Someone
deals me a queen, face up, and the bets roll.
I keep a straight face up my sleeve and peep
at the ace in the hole. Opposite me
the bearded poet raises on two kings. In my country
we do this. But my country sends giant
underwater tanks to massacre and I have
another queen. The queens are in love
with each other and spurn kings, diamonds
or not. A quiet man coughs and deals. Wheels
within wheels within worlds without words.
I get a second ace and raise
my eyebrows imperceptibly. A submarine drones on
amongst dolphins. Fifty and raise you fifty
for the final card. The cat is nervous as
Henry tells me any second the room could explode
and we would not know. Jim has three jacks
but I have three queens, two aces and a full house.
Perhaps any moment my full house might explode
though I will not know. Remember
one of us is just about to win. God.
God this is an awful game.
Borrowed Memory
He remembers running to the nets, in early summer,
in his cricket whites. Then there’s a blur
until he’s at high tea, with Harry Wharton and the rest,
in Study No. 5. What larks they had, what fun
the long terms were.
She remembers skating on the pond
and how she laughed when Jo and Laurie slipped
upon the ice. A Christmas tree. Sitting by the fire
whilst sipping hot rum punch. But sleepy,
so the picture’s not quite clear.
Or was it
at a midnight feast? A bite of sardine sandwich,
then of cake until you felt quite ill. He’s positive
he won the rugger prize, can see the fellows’ faces
as they cheered him on.
On their shelves
the honour of the school has gathered dust.
These fictions are as much a part of them
as fact, for if you said Are you quite sure
of this? they would insist.
As, watching demonstrations
on the box, they see themselves in shelters by the candlelight,
with tons of tuck to see them through. Fair Play Bob
and Good Egg Sue have nursed their fantasies for years.
And they will make them true.
Shooting Stars
After I no longer speak they break our fingers
to salvage my wedding ring. Rebecca Rachel Ruth
Aaron Emmanuel David, stars on all our brows
beneath the gaze of men with guns. Mourn for the daughters,
upright as statues, brave. You would not look at me.
You waited for the bullet. Fell. I say Remember.
Remember these appalling days which make the world
forever bad. One saw I was alive. Loosened
his belt. My bowels opened in a ragged gape of fear.
Between the gap of corpses I could see a child.
The soldiers laughed. Only a matter of days separate
this from acts of torture now. They shot her in the eye.
How would you prepare to die, on a perfect April evening
with young men gossiping and smoking by the graves?
My bare feet felt the earth and urine trickled
down my legs until I heard the click. Not yet. A trick.
After immense suffering someone takes tea on the lawn.
After the terrible moans a boy washes his uniform.
After the history lesson children run to their toys the world
turns in its sleep the spades shovel soil Sara Ezra . . .
Sister, if seas part us do you not consider me?
Tell them I sang the ancient psalms at dusk
inside the wire and strong men wept. Turn thee
unto me with mercy, for I am desolate and lost.
The B Movie
At a preview of That Hagen Story in 1947, when actor Ronald Reagan became the first person on screen to say ‘I love you, will you marry me?’ to the nineteen-year-old Shirley Temple, there was such a cry of ‘Oh, no!’ from the invited audience that the scene was cut out when the film was released.
Lap dissolve. You make a man speak crap dialogue,
one day he’ll make you eat your words. OK?
Let’s go for a take. Where’s the rest of me? ‘Oh, no!’
Things are different now. He’s got star billing,
star wars, applause. Takes her in his arms.
I’m talking about a real weepie. Freeze frame. ‘Oh, no!’
On his say-so, the train wipes out the heroine
and there ain’t no final reel. How do you like that?
My fellow Americans, we got five minutes. ‘Oh, no!’
Classic. He holds the onion to water such sorrow.
We need a Kleenex the size of Russia here, no kidding.
Have that kid’s tail any time he wants to. Yup.
The Dolphins
World is what you swim in, or dance, it is simple.
We are in our element but we are not free.
Outside this world you cannot breathe for long.
The other has my shape. The other’s movement
forms my thoughts. And also mine. There is a man
and there are hoops. There is a constant flowing guilt.
We have found no truth in these waters,
no explanations tremble on our flesh.
We were blessed and now we are not blessed.
After travelling such space for days we began
to translate. It was the same space. It is
the same space always and above it is the man.
And now we are no longer blessed, for the world
will not deepen to dream in. The other knows
and out of love reflects me for myself.
We see our silver skin flash by like memory
of somewhere else. There is a coloured ball
we have to balance till the man has disappeared.
The moon has disappeared. We circle well-worn grooves
of water on a single note. Music of loss forever
from the other’s heart which turns my own to stone.
There is a plastic toy. There is no hope. We sink
to the limits of this pool until the whistle blows.
There is a man and our mind knows we will die here.
Someone Else’s Daughter
Scratching at the air (There’s nothing there)
she is snowing constantly, coming to bits, she chips
at her smooth, white arms with needles. Her kitten laps
at a glass of cold blood and stares reproachfully
straight to the centre of her pinned blue eyes.
Beneath the skin, small volcanoes sigh and draw in fire.
She covers them with make-up, itches, slopes out.
Herpes and hepatitis set off on their journey
from the mind to elsewhere. No Surrender.
Cunt and liver erupt as the thin hand shoplifts.
On the wall of the waiting-room a snake eats itself,
tail first. This is your last chance. I know.
Why do you do this? I don’t know. She smokes
a trembling chain of cancer cells. She devours everything.
She drains the listener. She is eating herself tail first.
One day there will be nothing left for those
who love her. She will shrink to a childhood snapshot
as someone else’s daughter moves into the squat.
She will shrink to an earlier memory. A child
gobbling so many Easter eggs she was sick for a week.
A Healthy Meal
The gourmet tastes the secret dreams of cows
tossed lightly in garlic. Behind the green door, swish
of oxtails languish on an earthen dish. Here are
wishbones and pinkies; fingerbowls will absolve guilt.
Capped teeth chatter to a kidney or at the breast
of something which once flew. These hearts knew
no love and on their beds of saffron rice they lie
beyond reproach. What is the claret like? Blood.
On table six, the language of tongues is braised
in armagnac. The woman chewing suckling pig
must sleep with her husband later. Leg,
saddle and breast bleat against pure white cloth.
Alter calf to veal in four attempts. This is
the power of words; knife, tripe, lights, charcuterie.
A fat man orders his rare and a fine sweat
bastes his face. There are napkins to wipe the evidence
and sauces to gag the groans of abattoirs. The menu
lists the recent dead in French, from which they order
offal, poultry, fish. Meat flops in the jowls. Belch.
Death moves in the bowels. You are what you eat.
And Then What
Then with their hands they would break bread
wave choke phone thump thread
Then with their tired hands slump
at a table holding their head
Then with glad hands hold other hands
or stroke brief flesh in a kind bed
Then with their hands on the shovel
they would bury their dead.
Letters from Deadmen
Beneath the earth a perfect femur glows. I recall
a little pain and then a century of dust. Observe my anniversary,
place purple violets tenderly before the urn. You must.
No one can hear the mulching of the heart, which thrummed
with blood or drummed with love. Perhaps, by now,
your sadness will be less. Unless you still remember me.
I flung silver pigeons to grey air with secret messages
for men I had not met. Do they ever mention me
at work and was there weeping in the crematorium?
Dear wife, dear child, I hope you leave my room
exactly as it was. The pipe, the wireless and, of course,
the cricket photographs. They say we rest in peace.
Ash or loam. Scattered or slowly nagged by worms. I lie
above my parents in the family plot and I fit neatly
in a metal cask in ever-loving memory of myself.
They parted his garments, casting lots upon them
what every man should take. A crate of stout.
Small talk above the salmon sandwiches. Insurance men.
But here you cannot think. The voice-box imitates
the skeletons of leaves. Words snail imperceptibly and soundless
in the soil. Dear love, remember me. Give me biography
beyond these simple dates. Were there psalms and hired limousines?
All this eternally before my final breath and may
this find you as it leaves me here. Eventually.
Practising Being Dead
Your own ghost, you stand in dark rain
and light aches out from the windows
to lie in pools at your feet. This is the place.
Those are the big oak doors. Behind them
a waxed floor stretches away, backwards
down a corridor of years. The trees sigh.
You are both watching and remembering. Neither.
Inside, the past is the scent of candles the moment
they go out. You saw her, ancient and yellow,
laid out inside that alcove at the stairhead,
a broken string of water on her brow.
For weeks the game was Practising Being Dead,
hands in the praying position, eyes closed, lips
pressed to the colour of sellotape over the breath.
It is accidental and unbearable to recall that time,
neither bitter nor sweet but gone, the future
already lost as you open door after door, each one
peeling back a sepia room empty of promise.
This evening the sky has not enough moon
to give you a shadow. Nobody hears
your footsteps walking away along the gravel drive.
Dies Natalis
When I was cat, my mistress tossed me sweetmeats
from her couch. Even the soldiers were deferential –
she thought me sacred – I saw my sleek ghost
arch in their breastplates and I purred
my one eternal note beneath the shadow of pyramids.
The world then was measured by fine wires
which had their roots in my cat brain, trembled
for knowledge. She stroked my black pelt, singing
her different, frantic notes into my ear.
These were meanings I could not decipher. Later,
my vain, furred tongue erased a bowl of milk,
then I slept and fed on river rats . . .
She would throw pebbles at the soil, searching
with long, gold nails for logic in chaos;
or bathe at night in the moon’s pool,
dissolving its light into wobbling pearls.
I was there, my collar of jewels and eyes shining,
my small heart impartial. Even now, at my spine’s base,
the memory of a tail stirs idly, defining that night.
Cool breeze. Eucalyptus. Map of stars above
which told us nothing, randomly scattered like pebbles.
The man who feared me came at dawn, fought her
until she moaned into stillness, her ringed hand
with its pattern of death, palm up near my face.
*
Then a breath of sea air after blank decades,
my wings applauding this new shape. Far below,
the waves envied the sky, straining for blueness,
muttering in syllables of fish. I trod air, laughing,
what space was salt was safe. A speck became a ship,
filling its white sails like gulping lungs. Food swam.
I swooped, pincered the world in my beak, then soared
across the sun. The great whales lamented the past
wet years away, sending their bleak songs back
and forth between themselves. I hovered, listening,
as water slowly quenched fire. My cross on the surface
followed, marking where I was in the middle of nowhere . . .
Six days later found me circling the ship. Men’s voices
came over the side in scraps. I warned patiently
in my private language, weighed down with loneliness.
Even the wind had dropped. The sea stood still,
flicked out its sharks, and the timber wheezed.
I could only be bird, as the wheel of the day turned slowly
between sun and moon. When night fell, it was stale,
unbearably quiet, holding the breath of the dead.
The egg was in my gut, nursing its own deaths
in a delicate shell. I remember its round weight
persistently pressing; opening my bowel onto the deck
near a young sailor, the harsh sound my cry made then.
*
But when I loved, I thought that was all I had done.
It was very ordinary, an ordinary place, the river
filthy, and with no sunset to speak of. She spoke
in a local accent, laughing at mine, kissed
with her tongue. This changed me. Christ, sweetheart,
marry me, I’ll go mad. A dog barked. She ran off,
teasing, and back down the path came Happen you will . . .
Afterwards, because she asked, I told her my prospects,
branded her white neck. She promised herself
in exchange for a diamond ring. The sluggish water
shrugged past as we did it again. We whispered
false vows which would ruin our lives . . .
I cannot recall more pain. There were things one could buy
to please her, but she kept herself apart, spitefully
guarding the password. My body repelled her. Sweat.
Sinew. All that had to be hunched away in thin sheets.
We loathed in the same dull air till silver presents came,
our two hands clasping one knife to cut a stale cake. One day,
the letter. Surgery. When the treatment did not work,
she died. I cried over the wishbone body, wondering
what was familiar, watching myself from a long way off.
I carried the remains in an urn to the allotment,
trying to remember the feel of her, but it was years,
years, and what blew back in my face was grey ash, dust.
*
Now hushed voices say I have my mother’s look.
Once again, there is light. The same light. I talk
to myself in shapes, though something is constantly changing
the world, rearranging the face which stares at mine.
Most of the time I am hungry, sucking on dry air
till it gives in, turning milky and warm. Sleep
is dreamless, but when I awake I have more
to contemplate. They are trying to label me,
translate me into the right word. My small sounds
bring a bitter finger to my mouth, a taste
which cannot help or comfort me. I recall
and release in a sigh the journey here . . .
The man and woman are different colours and I
am both of them. These strangers own me,
pass me between them chanting my new name. They wrap
and unwrap me, a surprise they want to have again,
mouthing their tickly love to my smooth, dark flesh.
