After Clacker had roared into the deserted school playground in the works pickup, he wouldn’t budge from his cab. He left it to us to flip the clips to free the tailboards. We took our time dragging the ten-foot sections of Mills scaffold frames and boards off the bed, while he sat in a bubble
Severed from the rest of what it wasI nab it, pulley-wheel it forty footto the top of the scaffolding. Just after eight,the cars crawling over the flyover,the sun will soon be level with me; here,away from all forgettable activity below,sat on this dry board I settle to my work. What better place to be? What
They are happy, the subjects of the pictures,After a fashion. For, however terribleThings may be, and they seem so even there,They have a peace: the magnificent marble,The red bricks’ warmth that the artist captures,The postures of inhabitants who shareThat space will not fold into the rubble,Nor will they suffer horrors other thanThe ones that they
i.m. Julia Bentham Thirteen children wheel your bed down the road to the shingly tide-line, the sea’s great oxygen machine. Plugged into a featureless moon it sucks in the pebbles, pauses, exhales, breathes for you, before you set sail. The waves practise their scales, feel for arias between the stones. Thirteen children kneel,
I have a flat now, three rooms and a view,a place, should your ex-wife think to enquire,of paint tins, crazy paving, sprays of blueconvolvulus on sagged and laddered wire,a bedroom lit all night by passing cars,a kitchen diner, mug-rings, missing tiles,a lounge with peacock feathers in a vaseto add, the landlord says, that touch of
Sure, which serious wannabe poet hasn’t? I mean,that Keatsian/Chattertonian quit-while-you’re-aheadvibe is a persistent buzz and trope — think Dean,Hendrix, Joplin or Jim — but let’s face it, once dead that’s that, it won’t matter how perfect a cadaveryou bequeath to the world since worms and fireare immune to beauty so, these days, no, I’d ratherbe
In order to seeRilke closed his eyesMonique Saint Hélier said.In order to speak he employedthe costly services of silence.How illness surprised them alllying in wait in dark hedgerows.When death stepped into the roada slender white figure, a strangerasking for directions to the community.Then some form that thrives unseenand is only imagined, changes directionfrom that place
(after Mallarmé) Those zeroes, foam, that clear line echoes but a glass’s rim as, far away, there plunge slim sirens into sea-blue wine; we voyage, O my diverse friends, I upright on the stern whilst you, at the sharp prow, turn brows to lightning, tides, winters. A fine intoxication compels me to raise this toast,
From his work in the garden – those strips of wildnesstamed, the carpet lawn watered at the end of day –the gardener goes to his rest. Snails have been salted, roses stand corrected,hawthorn hedges are cut to the back of the headof a West Point cadet. Harebells, foxgloves, the white trumpetsof convolvulus – all have
The letters will be found in the spidery tomb. The madman laughs aloud. There’ll come a time When the characters are together in a room To hear about a codicil or crime. The swindler knows at last he’ll be arrested, The drunken baronet falls up the stairs, The patient women, being sorely tested, Rebel at
Your dream remains one of distance,away from shoddy parents,this lukewarm suburb,its limp bus service.You take on any part —cad, butler, toady. In rehearsals,you hone timing, gestures.Volume, even.Remember to stride across the boards,your performance directed towardsrows of church hall chairs. Regarding praise — you tryto float on your backamongst the heave and ebbof egos cast adrift,aspiring,
His brother is sitting by the window. The nurse has tipped a jigsaw puzzle on the table in front of him, clumps of grey cardboard, a twiggy heap nobbled as the oak leaves thick under the trees in the grounds outside. My father struggles slowly through the Day room lifting his stick as he looks
The butterfly, rolled in the blind,A shape of grey against the gold,Becomes its shape again, unrolled,Still as a photograph, definedBy sun that shadows it, behind. Leaves of the roses, too, are castUpon this theatre of light,Stirring like wings prepared for flightBut, like the butterfly, caught fastThis bush, this blind — nothing will last. Not even
words like acrimony and amertumebefore somebody came along trying to cram the hard graininess of disagreement into languagebefore all that, there were birds some really quite big ones—a rude person might say elephantine which would be harsh because the thing is they still flew, that’s the miracle of it —however wide of girth and unwieldy they were with their big,
i.m. Abdul Gaffar Choudhury Above us, sparrows are acrobats in dripping banana trees. A downpour hisses out of the white, suffocated sky. People lined the streets when your body passed in its refrigerated van. Your image still hangs at the gates. Water is falling, falling blindly, pooling along your grave. A stray dog drinks its fill. Thunder stamps the air in
The Ship of State is rolling on,rolling on to its fate. The Captain is elsewhere.A cardboard mirage stands uponthe Bridge. Officers bustle round,looking important, achieving little. The Crew come and go,seemingly as they please, do enough, just enough, to keepthe enterprise afloat. But so much is automatic —and for the rest, the mantra is: avoid
From the painting by Claude Monet Look closely, and you’ll see sand in the paint from the beach at Trouville, where I sat with Camille that summer. From this, you would hardly guess that war was coming; that Prussia had lured us in; that the clouds were not clouds, but the report of cannon fire.
Eventually we get Dad down into the boatwhere he loudly invites all the elderly ladiesto a seat on his lap‘as the benches are so squashed’.He is talking too much –it’s the joy of a captive audiencebut he’s been off the boards too longand needs to rediscover his art. The boat swivels off in a flourish,a
We no longer hold hands because you use a walking-stick to stand. Instead we slip together afternoons, stretch across the double-bed we can’t use nights now you’re so restless. I lie fingers on your arm, toes against your skinny tibia and it’s enough through seaweed feet to slither deep, not to sleep but into another
As when a man who has been dementing for years –old friends burst into tearswhen they see the ruins of his mindold lovers in despairlook up the rules for Dignitas – when he dies at last, gently, in deep sleepand one by one for the rest of usthe memories sweep back,how he listened, how he