Collected Poems, page 7
The TV set an empty head which has the same
recurring dream. Mushrooms taste of kisses. Sherry trifle
is a honeymoon. Be honest. Who’d love me?
Paul Henreid. He lights two cigarettes and, gently,
puts one in her mouth. The little flat in Tooting
is a floating ship. Violins. Big Sue drawing deeply
on a chocolate stick. Now, Voyager depart. Much,
much for thee is yet in store. Her eyes are wider,
bright. The previous video unspools the sea.
This is where she lives, the wrong side of the glass
in black-and-white. To press the rewind,
replay, is to know perfection. Certainty. The soundtrack
drowns out daytime echoes. Size of her. Great cow.
Love is never distanced into memory, persists
unchanged. Oscar-winners looking at the sky.
Why wish for the moon? Outside the window night falls,
slender women rush to meet their dates. Men whistle
on the dark blue streets at shapes they want
or, in the pubs, light cigarettes for two. Big Sue
unwraps a Mars Bar, crying at her favourite scene.
The bit where Bette Davis says We have the stars.
All Days Lost Days
Living
in and out of the past,
inexplicably
so many things have died
in me.
In and out like a tide,
each tear
holds a tiny hologram.
Even this early
I am full of years.
Here are the little gravestones
where memory
stands in the wild grass,
watching the future
arrive in a line of big black cars.
All days
lost days, in and out of themselves
between dreaming
and dreaming again and half-
remembering.
Foreign
Imagine living in a strange, dark city for twenty years.
There are some dismal dwellings on the east side
and one of them is yours. On the landing, you hear
your foreign accent echo down the stairs. You think
in a language of your own and talk in theirs.
Then you are writing home. The voice in your head
recites the letter in a local dialect; behind that
is the sound of your mother singing to you,
all that time ago, and now you do not know
why your eyes are watering and what’s the word for this.
You use the public transport. Work. Sleep. Imagine one night
you saw a name for yourself sprayed in red
against a brick wall. A hate name. Red like blood.
It is snowing on the streets, under the neon lights,
as if this place were coming to bits before your eyes.
And in the delicatessen, from time to time, the coins
in your palm will not translate. Inarticulate,
because this is not home, you point at fruit. Imagine
that one of you says Me not know what these people mean.
It like they only go to bed and dream. Imagine that.
Postcards
It was a courtship of postcards
which linked the love in London
to the love in Lancashire, franking-machines
pressing their ink kisses
over her name.
She was adored
by the sender of Renoir’s summer women,
Grimshaw’s rainy streets,
the Clouseau fan against the Beumb.
I miss you, L.
Some days the weather
had been moved to tears
by landscape,
like the view from Heptonstall,
blurring the words.
My Darling . . . when . . .
Or she laughed at the moustache
upon the Mona Lisa,
kept Mae West a week
upon the mantelpiece
asking her up.
A white card
with A Hole to See the Sky Through,
nothing else, arrived
and, mirror-written on the back,
Three words in a thought bubble
from Chairman Mao
reiterated Ronald Reagan’s words
once more with feeling. Even
Thatcher loved her.
O’Keeffe. Picasso. Donald McGill.
The last one
was a photograph of Rodin’s Kiss
without a stamp
and wishing she were here.
Correspondents
When you come on Thursday, bring me a letter. We have
the language of stuffed birds, teacups. We don’t have
the language of bodies. My husband will be here.
I shall inquire after your wife, stirring his cup
with a thin spoon and my hand shall not tremble.
Give me the letter as I take your hat. Mention
the cold weather. My skin burns at the sight of you.
We skim the surface, gossip. I baked this cake and you
eat it. Words come from nowhere, drift off
like the smoke from his pipe. Beneath my dress, my breasts
swell for your lips, belly churns to be stilled
by your brown hands. This secret life is Gulliver,
held down by strings of pleasantries. I ache. Later
your letter flares up in the heat and is gone.
Dearest Beloved, pretend I am with you . . . I read
your dark words and do to myself things
you can only imagine. I hardly know myself.
Your soft, white body in my arms . . . When we part,
you kiss my hand, bow from the waist, all passion
patiently restrained. Your servant, Ma’am. Now you write
wild phrases of love. The words blur as I cry out once.
Next time we meet, in drawing-room or garden,
passing our letters cautiously between us, our eyes
fixed carefully on legal love, think of me here
on my marriage-bed an hour after you’ve left.
I have called your name over and over in my head
at the point your fiction brings me to. I have kissed
your sweet name on the paper as I knelt by the fire.
Telegrams
URGENT WHEN WE MEET COMPLETE STRANGERS DEAR STOP
THOUGH I COUNT THE HOURS TILL YOU ARE NEAR STOP
WILL EXPLAIN LATER DATE TILL THEN CANT WAIT STOP C
COMPLETELY FOGGED WHAT DO YOU MEAN BABY? STOP
CANT WE SLOPE OFF TO MY PLACE MAYBE? STOP NOT POSS ACT
NOT MET WITH RAISON DETRE STOP B
FOR GODS SAKE JUST TRUST ME SWEETHEART STOP
HATCH IT HURTS ME TOO WHEN WERE APART STOP
SHIT WILL HIT FAN UNLESS STICK TO PLAN STOP C
SHIT? FAN? TRUST? WHATS GOING ON HONEY? STOP
IF THIS IS A JOKE IT ISNT FUNNY STOP
INSIST ON TRUTH LOVE YOU BUT STRUTH! STOP B
YES I KNOW DARLING I LOVE YOU TOO STOP
TRY TO SEE PREDIC FROM MY POINT OF VIEW STOP
IF YOU DONT PLAY BALL I WONT COME AT ALL STOP C
PLEASE REPLY LAST TELEGRAM STOP
HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN THAT NIGHT IN MATLOCK? C
NO WAS TRYING TO TEACH YOU LESSON PET STOP
ALSO BECAUSE OF THESE AM IN DEBT STOP
TRUST WHEN NEXT MEET WILL PASSIONATELY GREET STOP B
NO NO NO NO GET IT THROUGH YOUR THICK HEAD STOP
IF SEEN WITH YOU AM AS GOOD AS DEAD STOP
THE WIFE WILL GUESS WEVE BEEN HAVING SEX STOP C
SO YOURE MARRIED? HA! I MIGHT HAVE GUESSED STOP
THOUGHT IT ODD YOU WORE STRING VEST STOP
AS SOON AS I MET YOU I WENT OVER THE TOP
NOW DO ME A FAVOUR PLEASE PLEASE STOP STOP B
Telephoning Home
I hear your voice saying Hello in that guarded way
you have, as if you fear bad news, imagine you
standing in our dark hall, waiting, as my silver coin
jams in the slot and frantic bleeps repeat themselves
along the line until your end goes slack. The wet platform
stretches away from me towards the South and home.
I try again, dial the nine numbers you wrote once
on a postcard. The stranger waiting outside stares
through the glass that isn’t there, a sad portrait
someone abandoned. I close my eyes . . . Hello? . . . see myself
later this evening, two hundred miles and two hours nearer
where I want to be. I love you. This is me speaking.
Space, Space
1 Searching for Moons
There is something to be said but I, for one,
forget. That star went out more years ago
than we can count. Its ghosts see dinosaurs.
The brain says No to the Universe, Prove it,
but the heart is susceptible, pining for a look,
a kind word. Some are brought to their knees,
pleading in dead language at a deaf ear. Spaceships
float in nothing in the dark, searching for moons
to worship with their fish eyes. It must be love.
2 Astronomer
In love with space, stares up
as breath smokes signals into night.
Light years, loneliness, dark waves
lapping moons. From there sees absences,
gone worlds; from here perceives
new galaxies where nowhere is.
Lovesick
I found an apple.
A red and shining apple.
I took its photograph.
I hid the apple in the attic.
I opened the skylight
and the sun said Ah!
At night, I checked that it was safe,
under the giggling stars,
the sly moon. My cool apple.
Whatever you are calling about,
I am not interested.
Go away. You with the big teeth.
Strange Place
I watch you undress by household candlelight.
We are having an early night. On the wireless
news from other countries half distracts me.
Each small movement makes a longer shadow
on the wall. I lie here quietly as garments fall.
A faint voice talks of weather somewhere else.
But we are here and now, listening to nothing blindly,
where there is no news or weather. Love, later,
I will feel homesick for this strange place.
Only Dreaming
A ghost loves you, has got inside you in the dark.
Whose face does he wear? He changes his features
all night whilst you tell yourself you’re dreaming,
only dreaming, but he puts his tongue in your mouth.
Yes, you say in your sleep to nothing, Darling.
He wears a dead face, a woman’s face, you fold
into yourself and feel her breasts, talk gibberish.
You tell no one of this unfaithfulness in the small hours.
The ghost is devoted, stares into your eyes behind the lids.
This is the real thing. He has turned your face
to the pillow, mouth open, breathing his warm breath
for him. Name him. Say it. Come on, c’mon.
Your hands grasp him, pass straight through, wake you
touching yourself, crying aloud into the room. Abandoned.
By Heart
I made myself imagine that I didn’t love you,
that your face was ordinary to me. This was in our house
when you were out, secret, guessing what such difference
would be like, never to have known your touch,
your taste. Then I went out and passed the places
where we’d go, without you there, pretending that I could.
Making believe I could, I tried to blot out longing,
or regret, when someone looked like you, head down,
laughing, running away from me behind a veil of rain.
So it was strange to see you, just ahead of me,
as I trailed up the hill, thinking how I can’t unlearn
the words I’ve got by heart, or dream your name away,
and shouting it, involuntarily, three times, until
you turned and smiled. Love makes buildings home
and out of dreary weather, sometimes, rainbows come.
Warming Her Pearls
Next to my own skin, her pearls. My mistress
bids me wear them, warm them, until evening
when I’ll brush her hair. At six, I place them
round her cool, white throat. All day I think of her,
resting in the Yellow Room, contemplating silk
or taffeta, which gown tonight? She fans herself
whilst I work willingly, my slow heat entering
each pearl. Slack on my neck, her rope.
She’s beautiful. I dream about her
in my attic bed; picture her dancing
with tall men, puzzled by my faint, persistent scent
beneath her French perfume, her milky stones.
I dust her shoulders with a rabbit’s foot,
watch the soft blush seep through her skin
like an indolent sigh. In her looking-glass
my red lips part as though I want to speak.
Full moon. Her carriage brings her home. I see
her every movement in my head. . . . Undressing,
taking off her jewels, her slim hand reaching
for the case, slipping naked into bed, the way
she always does. . . . And I lie here awake,
knowing the pearls are cooling even now
in the room where my mistress sleeps. All night
I feel their absence and I burn.
Deportation
They have not been kind here. Now I must leave,
the words I’ve learned for supplication,
gratitude, will go unused. Love is a look
in the eyes in any language, but not here,
not this year. They have not been welcoming.
I used to think the world was where we lived
in space, one country shining in big dark.
I saw a photograph when I was small.
Now I am Alien. Where I come from there are few jobs,
the young are sullen and do not dream. My lover
bears our child and I was to work here, find
a home. In twenty years we would say This is you
when you were a baby, when the plum tree was a shoot . . .
We will tire each other out, making our homes
in one another’s arms. We are not strong enough.
They are polite, recite official jargon endlessly.
Form F. Room 12. Box 6. I have felt less small
below mountains disappearing into cloud
than entering the Building of Exile. Hearse taxis
crawl the drizzling streets towards the terminal.
I am no one special. An ocean parts me from my love.
Go back. She will embrace me, ask what it was like.
Return. One thing – there was a space to write
the colour of her eyes. They have an apple here,
a bitter-sweet, which matches them exactly. Dearest,
without you I am nowhere. It was cold.
Plainsong
Stop. Along this path, in phrases of light,
trees sing their leaves. No Midas touch
has turned the wood to gold, late in the year
when you pass by, suddenly sad, straining
to remember something you’re sure you knew.
Listening. The words you have for things die
in your heart, but grasses are plainsong,
patiently chanting the circles you cannot repeat
or understand. This is your homeland,
Lost One, Stranger who speaks with tears.
It is almost impossible to be here and yet
you kneel, no one’s child, absolved by late sun
through the branches of a wood, distantly
the evening bell reminding you, Home, Home,
Home, and the stone in your palm telling the time.
Miles Away
I want you and you are not here. I pause
in this garden, breathing the colour thought is
before language into still air. Even your name
is a pale ghost and, though I exhale it again
and again, it will not stay with me. Tonight
I make you up, imagine you, your movements clearer
than the words I have you say you said before.
Wherever you are now, inside my head you fix me
with a look, standing here while cool late light
dissolves into the earth. I have got your mouth wrong,
but still it smiles. I hold you closer, miles away,
inventing love, until the calls of nightjars
interrupt and turn what was to come, was certain,
into memory. The stars are filming us for no one.
Originally
We came from our own country in a red room
which fell through the fields, our mother singing
our father’s name to the turn of the wheels.
My brothers cried, one of them bawling Home,
Home, as the miles rushed back to the city,
the street, the house, the vacant rooms
where we didn’t live any more. I stared
at the eyes of a blind toy, holding its paw.
All childhood is an emigration. Some are slow,
leaving you standing, resigned, up an avenue
where no one you know stays. Others are sudden.
Your accent wrong. Corners, which seem familiar,
leading to unimagined, pebble-dashed estates, big boys
eating worms and shouting words you don’t understand.
My parents’ anxiety stirred like a loose tooth
in my head. I want our own country, I said.
But then you forget, or don’t recall, or change,
and, seeing your brother swallow a slug, feel only
a skelf of shame. I remember my tongue
