Collected Poems, page 8
shedding its skin like a snake, my voice
in the classroom sounding just like the rest. Do I only think
I lost a river, culture, speech, sense of first space
and the right place? Now, Where do you come from?
strangers ask. Originally? And I hesitate.
In Mrs Tilscher’s Class
You could travel up the Blue Nile
with your finger, tracing the route
while Mrs Tilscher chanted the scenery.
Tana. Ethiopia. Khartoum. Aswân.
That for an hour, then a skittle of milk
and the chalky Pyramids rubbed into dust.
A window opened with a long pole.
The laugh of a bell swung by a running child.
This was better than home. Enthralling books.
The classroom glowed like a sweet shop.
Sugar paper. Coloured shapes. Brady and Hindley
faded, like the faint, uneasy smudge of a mistake.
Mrs Tilscher loved you. Some mornings, you found
she’d left a good gold star by your name.
The scent of a pencil slowly, carefully, shaved.
A xylophone’s nonsense heard from another form.
Over the Easter term, the inky tadpoles changed
from commas into exclamation marks. Three frogs
hopped in the playground, freed by a dunce,
followed by a line of kids, jumping and croaking
away from the lunch queue. A rough boy
told you how you were born. You kicked him, but stared
at your parents, appalled, when you got back home.
That feverish July, the air tasted of electricity.
A tangible alarm made you always untidy, hot,
fractious under the heavy, sexy sky. You asked her
how you were born and Mrs Tilscher smiled,
then turned away. Reports were handed out.
You ran through the gates, impatient to be grown,
as the sky split open into a thunderstorm.
Sit at Peace
When they gave you them to shell and you sat
on the back-doorstep, opening the small green envelopes
with your thumb, minding the queues of peas, you were
sitting at peace. Sit at peace, sit at peace, all summer.
When Muriel Purdy, embryonic cop, thwacked the back
of your knees with a bamboo-cane, mouth open, soundless
in a cave of pain, you ran to your house,
a greeting wain, to be kept in and told once again.
Nip was a dog. Fluff was a cat. They sat at peace
on a coloured-in mat, so why couldn’t you? Sometimes
your questions were stray snipes over no-man’s-land,
bringing sharp hands and the order you had to obey. Sit –
At – Peace! Jigsaws you couldn’t do or dull stamps
you didn’t want to collect arrived with the frost.
You would rather stand with your nose to the window, clouding
the strange blue view with your restless breath.
But the day you fell from the Parachute Tree, they came
from nowhere running, carried you in to a quiet room
you were glad of. A long still afternoon, dreamlike.
A voice saying peace, sit at peace, sit at peace.
Hometown
In that town there was a different time,
a handful of years like old-fashioned sweets
you can’t find anymore. I lived there.
What am I wearing as I pine for the future,
alone, down by the river by the Brine Baths
longing to get out? But I only threw a stone
at the face in the water and went home,
while behind me my features vanished,
trembled, reappeared, though I could not see.
Those streets, the gloomy shortcut by the church,
the triangle from school to home to the high field –
below which all roads sped away and led away –
and back again. Wherever I went then, I was
still there; fretting for something else, someone else,
somewhere else. Or else, I thought, I shall die.
And so I shall. Decades ahead of this, both of me,
then and now, pass each other like ghosts
in the empty market-place, where I imagine myself
to be older and away, or remember myself
younger, not loving this tuneless, flat bell
marking the time. Or moved to tears by its same sound.
Translating the English, 1989
‘. . . and much of the poetry, alas, is lost in translation . . .’
Welcome to my country! We have here Edwina Currie and the Sun newspaper. Much excitement. Also the weather has been most improving even in February. Daffodils. (Wordsworth. Up North.) If you like Shakespeare or even Opera we have too the Black Market. For two hundred quids we are talking Les Miserables, nods being as good as winks. Don’t eat the eggs. Wheel-clamp. Dogs. Vagrants. A tour of our wonderful capital city is not to be missed. The Fergie, The Princess Di and the football hooligan, truly you will like it here, Squire. Also we can be talking crack, smack and Carling Black Label if we are so inclined. Don’t drink the H2O. All very proud we now have a green Prime Minister. What colour yours? Binbags. You will be knowing of Charles Dickens and Terry Wogan and Scotland. All this can be arranged for cash no questions. Ireland not on. Fish and chips and the Official Secrets Act second to none. Here we go. We are liking a smashing good time like estate agents and Neighbours, also Brookside for we are allowed four Channels. How many you have? Last night of Proms. Andrew Lloyd-Webber. Jeffrey Archer. Plenty culture you will be agreeing. Also history and buildings. The Houses of Lords. Docklands. Many thrills and high interest rates for own good. Muggers. Much lead in petrol. Filth. Rule Britannia and child abuse. Electronic tagging, Boss, ten pints and plenty rape. Queen Mum. Channel Tunnel. You get here fast no problem to my country my country my country welcome welcome welcome.
Mrs Skinner, North Street
Milk bottles. Light through net. No post. Cat,
come here by the window, settle down. Morning
in this street awakes unwashed; a stale wind
breathing litter, last night’s godlessness. This place
is hellbound in a handcart, Cat, you mark
her words. Strumpet. Slut. A different man
for every child; a byword for disgrace.
Her dentures grin at her, gargling water
on the mantelpiece. The days are gone
for smiling, wearing them to chatter down the road.
Good morning. Morning. Lovely day. Over the years
she’s suffered loss, bereavement, loneliness.
A terrace of strangers. An old ghost
mouthing curses behind a cloudy, nylon veil.
Scrounger. Workshy. Cat, where is the world
she married, was carried into up a scrubbed stone step?
The young louts roam the neighbourhood.
Breaking of glass. Chants. Sour abuse of aerosols.
That social worker called her xenophobic. When he left
she looked the word up. Fear, morbid dislike, of strangers.
Outside, the rain pours down relentlessly.
People scurry for shelter. How many hours
has she sat here, Cat, filled with bitterness
and knowing they’ll none of them come?
Not till the day the smell is noticed.
Not till the day you’re starving, Cat, and begin
to lick at the corpse. She twitches the curtain
as the Asian man next door runs through the rain.
Too Bad
It was winter. Wilson had just said
we should have one in The Dog. So we did,
running through the blue wet streets
with our heads down, laughing, to get there,
down doubles in front of our drenched reflections.
The barmaid caught my eye in the mirror. Beautiful.
We had a job to do, but not till closing-time,
hard men knocking back the brandy, each of us
wearing revenge like a badge on his heart. Hatred
dresses in cheap anonymous suits, the kind
with an inside pocket for a small gun. Good Health.
I smiled at her. Warm rain, like blood, ran down my back.
I remembered my first time, my trembling hand
and Big Frank Connell hissing Get a grip.
Tonight, professional, I walked with the boys
along a filthy alley to the other pub, the one
where it happened, the one where the man
was putting on his coat, ready for home.
Home. Two weeks in a safe house and I’d be there,
glad of familiar accents and my dull wife.
He came out of a side door, clutching a carry-out.
Simple. Afterwards, Wilson was singing dada da da
Tom Someone, hang down your head and cry.
Too bad. I fancied that barmaid all right.
Weasel Words
It was explained to Sir Robert Armstrong that
‘weasel words’ are ‘words empty of meaning, like an
egg which has had its contents sucked out by a weasel’.
Let me repeat that we Weasels mean no harm.
You may have read that we are vicious hunters,
but this is absolutely not the case. Pure bias
on the part of your Natural History Book. Hear, hear.
We are long, slim-bodied carnivores with exceptionally
short legs and we have never denied this.
Furthermore, anyone here today could put a Weasel
down his trouser-leg and nothing would happen. Weasel laughter.
Which is more than can be said for the Ferrets opposite.
You can trust a Weasel, let me continue, a Weasel
does not break the spinal cord of its victim with one bite.
Weasel cheers. Our brown fur coats turn white in winter.
And as for eggs, here is a whole egg. It looks like an egg.
It is an egg. Slurp. An egg. Slurp. A whole egg. Slurp . . . Slurp . . .
Poet for Our Times
I write the headlines for a Daily Paper.
It’s just a knack one’s born with all-right-Squire.
You do not have to be an educator,
just bang the words down like they’re screaming Fire!
CECIL-KEAYS ROW SHOCK TELLS EYETIE WAITER.
ENGLAND FAN CALLS WHINGEING FROG A LIAR.
Cheers. Thing is, you’ve got to grab attention
with just one phrase as punters rush on by.
I’ve made mistakes too numerous to mention,
so now we print the buggers inches high.
TOP MP PANTIE ROMP INCREASES TENSION.
RENT BOY: ROCK STAR PAID ME WELL TO LIE.
I like to think that I’m a sort of poet
for our times. My shout. Know what I mean?
I’ve got a special talent and I show it
in punchy haikus featuring the Queen.
DIPLOMAT IN BED WITH SERBO-CROAT.
EASTENDERS’ BONKING SHOCK IS WELL-OBSCENE.
Of course, these days, there’s not the sense of panic
you got a few years back. What with the box
et cet. I wish I’d been around when the Titanic
sank. To headline that, mate, would’ve been the tops.
SEE PAGE 3 TODAY GENTS THEY’RE GIGANTIC.
KINNOCK-BASHER MAGGIE PULLS OUT STOPS.
And, yes, I have a dream – make that a scotch, ta –
that kids will know my headlines off by heart.
IMMIGRANTS FLOOD IN CLAIMS HEATHROW WATCHER.
GREEN PARTY WOMAN IS A NIGHTCLUB TART.
The poems of the decade . . . Stuff ’em! Gotcha!
The instant tits and bottom line of art.
Job Creation
for Ian McMillan
They have shipped Gulliver up north.
He lies at the edge of the town,
sleeping.
His snores are thunder in the night.
Round here, we reckon they have drugged him
or we dream he is a landscape
which might drag itself up and walk.
Here are ropes, they said.
Tie him down.
We will pay you.
Tie Gulliver down with these ropes.
I slaved all day at his left knee,
until the sun went down
behind it
and clouds gathered on his eyes
and darkness settled on his shoulders
like a job.
Making Money
Turnover. Profit. Readies. Cash. Loot. Dough. Income. Stash.
Dosh. Bread. Finance. Brass. I give my tongue over
to money; the taste of warm rust in a chipped mug
of tap-water. Drink some yourself. Consider
an Indian man in Delhi, Salaamat the niyariwallah,
who squats by an open drain for hours, sifting shit
for the price of a chapati. More than that. His hands
in crumbling gloves of crap pray at the drains
for the pearls in slime his grandfather swore he found.
Megabucks. Wages. Interest. Wealth. I sniff and snuffle
for a whiff of pelf; the stench of an abattoir blown
by a stale wind over the fields. Roll up a fiver,
snort. Meet Kim. Kim will give you the works,
her own worst enema, suck you, lick you, squeal
red weals to your whip, be nun, nurse, nanny,
nymph on a credit card. Don’t worry.
Kim’s only in it for the money. Lucre. Tin. Dibs.
I put my ear to brass lips; a small fire’s whisper
close to a forest. Listen. His cellular telephone
rings in the Bull’s car. Golden hello. Big deal. Now get this
straight. Making a living is making a killing these days.
Jobbers and brokers buzz. He paints out a landscape
by number. The Bull. Seriously rich. Nasty. One of us.
Salary. Boodle. Oof. Blunt. Shekels. Lolly. Gelt. Funds.
I wallow in coin, naked; the scary caress of a fake hand
on my flesh. Get stuck in. Bergama. The boys from the bazaar
hide on the target-range, watching the soldiers fire. Between bursts, they rush for the spent shells, cart them away for scrap.
Here is the catch. Some shells don’t explode. Ahmat
runs over grass, lucky for six months, so far. So
bomb-collectors die young. But the money’s good.
Palmgrease. Smackers. Greenbacks. Wads. I widen my eyes
at a fortune; a set of knives on black cloth, shining,
utterly beautiful. Weep. The economy booms
like cannon, far out at sea on a lone ship. We leave
our places of work, tired, in the shortening hours, in the time
of night our town could be anywhere, and some of us pause
in the square, where a clown makes money swallowing fire.
Talent Contest
At the end of the pier, an open-air theatre, a crowd
who have paid to come in, wooden slats, the sea slopping out
like beer in a cracked plastic cup, one scrunched cloud
like a boarding-house towel, grey. You’re a contestant.
Take my advice, leave now. Head for the Gaiety Bar
or the rifle-range. Better still, slink to a seat, knot your handkerchief
over your head and watch. The spoon-player has no chance.
Farmyard Noises takes out his teeth. Ambitious. In for the lot.
Why do you sneer? A cheap song sung badly
pleases the crowd. The tap-dancer spreads out his arms
and grins, a man tortured. Beware the ventriloquist,
the dark horse, whose thrown voice juggles the truth.
You don’t want to hear this. Poweran moneyan fame you say to yourself
like a blessing, then you’re into the act. Make ’em laugh. A seagull
shrieks at you out of the blue. Make ’em cry. A baby
sobs and sobs in a pram at the end of a row.
Applause. A show of hands from plonkers with day-jobs. Cheers.
You’re kind to the yodeller later, sneaky and modest, not letting on
you thought it a piece of piss. Talent. A doubt like faraway thunder
threatens to ruin the day, that it’s squandered on this.
Ape
There is a male silverback on the calendar.
Behind him the jungle is defocused,
except in one corner, where trees gargle the sun.
After you have numbered the days, you tear off
the page. His eyes hold your eyes
as you crumple a forest in your fist.
The Legend
Some say it was seven tons of meat in a thick black hide
you could build a boat from, stayed close to the river
on the flipside of the sun where the giant forests were.
Had shy, old eyes. You’d need both those hands for one.
Maybe. Walked in placid herds under a jungly, sweating roof
just breathing; a dry electric wind you could hear a mile off.
Huge feet. Some say if it rained you could fish in a footprint,
fruit fell when it passed. It moved, food happened, simple.
You think of a warm, inky cave and you got its mouth all right.
You dream up a yard of sandpaper, damp, you’re talking tongue.
Eat? Its own weight in a week. And water. Some say
the sweat steamed from its back in small grey clouds.
But big. Enormous. Spine like the mast on a galleon.
Ears like sails gasping for a wind. You picture
a rope you could hang a man from, you’re seeing its tail.
Tusks like banisters. I almost believe myself. Can you
drum up a roar as wide as a continent, a deep hot note
that bellowed out and belonged to the melting air? You got it.
But people have always lied! You know some say it had a trunk
like a soft telescope, that it looked up along it at the sky
