Poems

A man walks the black soil of a reaped field. He pauses to kneel and parse the earth for old coins or unearthed aluminium. He is twenty-two. He is fifty-eight. He’s not a man but a child with a dog. He’s my boss. He’s a gamekeeper, he’s a bailiff at my door. Three buzzards form an ellipsis in the sky, then the scene changes. There’s snow on the ground. Stars in the damp night. I can see his breath. The man is my father, and he walks the perimeter of hedgerow like a sentry, halting occasionally to scrape a hole in the hoarfrost with the heel of his steel capped boot. I never see what he buries. I’ve never seen his face. He’s outlived his failures or he hasn’t. He casts no shadow in the moonlight.

holds no truck with comparisons. Holds no truck with anything  much besides sunlight and dust swirls and the breezy clip -clop-clip of heels upon endless parquet. The Second Longest  Corridor does not deceive itself. Knows there are sidelong glances, spindly remarks (also-ran, windy thing) from those who  complain that it drags on so — can’t take a hint, can’t just politely  trail off. (The Second Longest Corridor has never trailed off.)  Wends its way along and down and past and up, watching  the unkind comments disperse around its furthermost bend.

Two tables pushed together, the beer coming in timely and convivial rounds. A song, a chorus joined and hilarious failures at games we played. And then you plucked from the air an offence in a foreign theatre of war and I caught in your group-beguiling tone, the note of the Commissar prepared to burn a village, its music halls and fields of play.

‘Mais il fut flottant, mon berceau’ – Corbière Sleep, sleep, my floating boy!A plunge of Northern gannets ridesthe air above your head; collideswith silver fish that shoal below.Let these ravens’ krok-kroksooth and lull you as you rock –sleep, sleep, my floating boy!Sleep, sleep, my floating boy!The herring-hunting humpbacks soundand ring their bubble nets aroundyour cradle as it pitches inthe waves. Their underwater howlswill take the place of Breton owls –sleep, sleep, my floating boy! Sleep, sleep, my floating boy!As sailors pass, you’ll hear them callto keep the timing as they haulthe anchor up from choppy seas.Accompanied by wave and spray,they sing out ‘haul-two, haul-belay’ –sleep, sleep, my floating boy!

Some of us are not cut out to be happy.  Our role is to suffer undramatically, quietly,  at home, while the world goes by outside.   We are the ones who pay for your daily joys. Our marriages fail; our health; our wealth;  our prospects turn to dust.  If we pluck up the courage to venture  out into your world, we become  scarecrows to frighten the black birds  from your sunny fields.  How we make you laugh!  You think we’re pathetic.  At dusk, when we close our eyes, the birds  gather on our outstretched arms and crow.  This is the best we can do: to sing  along with the black birds at evening.  So you can find us funny.

Naming these things is the love-act – Patrick Kavanagh Brighton House and MerrendenRoslyn Villa by Milford House Arthur Cottages one at AnnanElmwood and St Leonards meet Charnwood and the Park View HouseMalvern is three down from Cedars Shakespeare nods down to MiltonLike Poplars on a Holly Bank Tennyson knows the Lindum HouseFern Bank and Carew too Ashwood House VictoriaThe Stamford and the Ashley Villas An East View of MorningtonPark stretches down to Woodbines Wardley Cottage by a Daisy BankElma and the Oban House Adolphe Cottage Fernly VillaMelbourne dreams in Myrtle Bank.

How many years since we ate here – nine, ten? We called it the smoky café before the ban, took the kids upstairs for pasta each time they stayed with us. Now they wake inside their lives, miles away, and we (who feared this place had shut) share pizza on our return: olives dotted over cheese, as if minutes are mushrooms, aubergines like cities we love. Sure, the manageress behind the bar has a subtle map of lines across her face, though her hair-dye is red as history. The leaning tower fades on the wall above our forks. We’re old, not wise, savouring chips with mayo, crusts and wine.

from 20 Days in Mariupol, directed by Mstyslav Chernov After the bomb burst the hospital, her wounds were incompatible with life, the life she should have had to include dancing and, when this is history, if not a piece of theatre, chasing her laughing toddler along the beach. Yet she had life to give. They filmed her stretchered to the ambulance, to bump off full speed for Hospital Two in Mariupol.  Having started, the story must finish. They did reach Hospital Two, outlined her scene one, guessing her thirty or so years. Gynaecology was noisy. Stretchers kept coming in. But a doctor grabbed a moment for the camera. ‘She was Irina. Shattered pelvis. We got her baby out and tried to make it cry.

Somalia breaks off relations in 1963 so hurried packing is the order of the day and there she is in black and white swishing down the years in a gauzy frock past hat boxes and tea chests while servants hammer down the lids. Mosquito nets predict a breeze. The camera leaks her fear and sweat. My father won’t believe his eyes or ears. ‘And me?’ he roars, unable to account for scenes in Mogadishu where my mother is the star and he’s not even a prop or a walk-on part, just a scrap of footage casually dropped on history’s floor.

Leckhampton chimney has fallen down’ – Ivor Gurney In fact, it’s still much as it was,if you can find it, and if the dogs(nobody walks the hill without one)will leave off for a moment jumpingto press their muddy scrawl on you. Out here, I’m protected, surelywith three jackets. I missed the bus,lost the path, then climbed the mostdifficult route, up the oldtram incline to this stack of limestone. Walking, he imagined its collapse,yet here it is. Smokeless. Solitary.A cenotaph for something quarried.Headquarters, chapel, school,government building, home, asylum. The Devil’s Chimney. Its partial viewof Gloucestershire makes it seema healthy peaceful place, but hardespecially on lungs. In Stone House,he walks and walks the level grounds.