Poems

From reception they followed stringboards upstairs to the photocopying room, through accounts, into the main offices. Miles of white cables   overpowering skirting boards, pinned around door frames. And where they came up short, taped to woodchipped walls or burrowed beneath fitted carpets – those ripples never went back   quite the same. Superhighways of glossy-coated wiring off the spools of the intercom, computer and telephone men I cursed for gunning on another; electricians bamboozled   by which were live. Few takers now for packets of cable pins, backing up on racks in hardware stores. I miss them. We talk to ourselvesstepping about, the skirting tops are ledges for dust.

The streets are closed with hazard tape,wrecked by big oil and snaky traffic jams.The road crew works by geosat to tracethe burnt-out cable where a blackout starts.Last week, the spigots flooded, storm drains blockedand now a drop in gigawatts clears the streetand turns the dragon-headed streetlights out.Crew men strap head LEDs on to help them thinkin the electric buzz of town where a forest stood.It might have been a landscape for a myth,a quest, romance, a creature killed or kissed.Now everywhere’s an access point,the grid and wire where cyberspace beginsand Burger King died when the lights blanked out.Kitted up in high-end tech and clumsy clothesthe crew consult a heat map from the skythen face the smoking serpent in the pit.

Dismounting lightly as a thoughtful child,The tiny king looked younger than his years,And older than eternity. He smiled,But Van Dyck noticed a faint sheen of tearsIn his unguarded gaze. Then, with a sigh,Charles asked: ‘How long until you’re done, d’you say?’‘It will depend, Your Highness, on the eye,’The painter answered, glancing at the grey.‘Your Highness’ mount is fine and full of grace.An eye more honest I have rarely seen.’Charles brought his head toward the horse’s face.‘Marry, I think we both know what you mean.’And how will you, my beauty, end your life?He turned. ‘I must unto the Queen my wife.

Red Swingball bats and the Disney eyeof an inflatable dolphin pressed against the hatch of the Renault 16 in front.   Lorries ahead, cabs to trailers to cabs; faces at coach windows, all lanes blocked. I slump in the back seat. We edge forwards.   I twiddle with the window winder. Nearer the bridge. And see it: black smoke,down the embankment a white car,   a man on the hard shoulder. Almost home, round my mate’s, tell him about the joke shop on the pier, the big dipper, that car on fire.

Let’s take a knifeand our differencesdown to the hazel wood.   Two strokes eachconverts to fourstakes in the ground.   Let’s run these roundwith rope to makea ring, then step   in. Let’s box. Or let’skneel before a sacredcourt. Either way   we’ll agree that justiceshould be outsourced,or the fight fenced   off, so our grievanceswon’t grow intofeuds, battles, wars.

Late winter elbows past in wind and rainwhile teenage waiters bearing lemonadeand shandy take away my mother’s pecked-atYorkshire pudding. Back behind the bar   Michael Jackson blames it on the boogiein the beer-and-whiskey half-dark as weescort her to the car, one at each elbow,each sparrow elbow, as if making an arrest.   My sister will drive her home to kitchen kettle,phone and new commode, her days behindthe wheel, she’s finally admitted, over.   I ask about the doctor. My usual plea.God has moved his armchair over Tewkesbury.

All it takes is an Alice moment ducking my head to go down the passageinto house number seven and my huswif’s eye takes overapproves the stone dresser(not much dusting), the handy storage cells,the fit and bulk of the front door’s slab,the mattress of bracken, the sheepskin rugs.And outside a neighbourly village of six tidy middens, some barley fieldsand the Bay of Skaill spread in blue welcome.   I’ll take it. Move in yesterday.

They do not walk the world, our fragile dead:They do not stalk our streets or pace our floors; They do not stand behind unopened doors, Rehearsing all the words that went unsaid.They cannot walk our world as we would walk:They cannot choose to see a much-missed place, They cannot choose to see a much-loved face; They cannot seek a quiet spot to talk.And so we have to walk the world for them:We have to seek the sacred places out,To pace the lonely ways of loss and doubt, And stumble clumsily to Bethlehem.But sometimes on that road, they’ll take our hand,And squeeze our palm to say, ‘I understand’.

(i.m. Marie Colvin, 1956-2012)   All autumn, the chafe and jarof nuclear war     — Robert Lowell, ‘Fall 1961’     My father, who’d had‘about as much as he could take’by ’44, and still wokeswearing at flies and soaked in sweat,   read the Telegraphin dread and disbeliefover his first cigarette,narrowing his eyes against the scroll of smoke...   Only half-awake,dreaming a bitter,penitential cupof coffee, we squintat a screen instead of print,   swipe throughand see plump child-men jerked by the strings of Twitter,their sad posturings   that could turn us to smokebefore we can even laugh. A father’s no shieldfor his child – nor a husband for his wife...

Our honeymoon weavedfrom Hampton Court to the pavementlabyrinth of Chartres, then on tothe high hedged puzzle of the Villa Pisani,where he delighted in my wrong-footedconfusion. All the while his notebookoverflowing with looped alleys, abruptdead ends, sly, coiling traps. Back homeI soon came to feel the practiceof his art, no day complete withouta fresh pattern of deception, cursed myselfeach time he led me up the garden path,for not seeing the straight and narrowwould never be enough.

The heatwaves that would have filledmy tubs and cones never came.‘O sole mio’ falling flat as I drovethrough my hard fought for patchon the outskirts of Aldershot.The Whitby Morrison will have to go,it won’t fetch much, mouths to feed,another on the way and barely enoughto stretch to a penny lick. The collapseddream of a gelato empire with parloursof chrome and glass, has brought an arcticcoldness to my other half, nothing I door say will thaw her now, it would takean ice pick to reach her heart.