Poems

The place was out beyond an old farmhouse,a path through woods,a clearing, sky; the others gathered close,bounded by what each of us withstood.The limestone scree tumbled down the hillsideintermittently, clouds covered the sun.I shook the crushed femur and fibulaof peppered ashes, watched them weightless glidelike spores, and faintly salt and taint the tongue,slow majesty of bone-dust candelabra.Your half-brothers, behind me, began to singin harmony –Christian, Bach – joining and gently weavinguntil they filled the improvised canopythat we, unchurched, brought to the blue hillside.

Like regrets drifting through consciousness,They glide through the streets of our cities,Untouchably themselves,Silently intent on their purpose,Counting eternities with each corner they turn.Belonging to no time or place,They appear in our hearts,Offering up the flowers we never sentAnd the words we never spoke,Only to disappear once moreInto the great flow of lifeAnd the great flow of death.I wonder what obsequiesAre spoken over themWhen they at lastReach the end of their own road,These discreet and faithful guardiansOf all that we have failed to be?

Regent’s Park, November   I pick a tree, from all those rows,ruggedly gesturing, voiceless,braced for the fall of shaming snows,a captive in its stark undress.   At my feet the thousand-piecespuzzle in countless shades of brownattests to a handful of specieswhose leaves the recent winds brought down:   English oak, sycamore and plane,dropped from nearby if not above,plus singletons a whispering campaignseems to have carried from some grove-   cum-library of rumours from afar –silver maple, pin oak, liquidambar.

Often it disappears – from hotels, harbours, airport carousels… but always it comes back to him.   Trusting in the umbilical dance of instrument and player he stays calm in its absence.   Amongst the cosmic flotsam orbiting Earth this minute There! Tauseef’s harmonium.   On the sea bed, flexing its gills for ghazal-hungry shoals Listen! Tauseef’s harmonium…   sometimes for years until, missing his voice on the air, it plunges through the atmosphere   or, surfacing back to the light, steals in on the tide’s concertina to appear at Tauseef’s paddling feet –   a child’s shadow through frosted glass after all hope has been lost.

The year after my brother died,I was out on my threadbare Vespain countryside south of Bradford.The day was warm and blue;I let myself get lost, turn by turn,until I rode solo along the lanes.Low, overhead of me, a plane flewwith a single propeller,its undercarriage painted cloud-like:its span the shape of a Spitfire,or other kin from boyhood books.I stopped in the road,cut the engine, and took off my helmet;and heard it made no sound.I was untethered in those yearsby grief that made my life unreal.I stood and beckoned to this ghost.

The windows of the tight old houses bulgeAcross the fishhead cobble, a rope that moorsThe sea to a church with its back to the quay.The sky is stuck fast in the tower tabs.See now the worried wives, thronging and blocking,Peering and peering through swollen glassTo watch the catch of bodies hauled uphill,The dead from the sea laid out in the gate.The lids of graves are hatches propped right upBy ancient seamen, peering and peeringThrough swaying weed that hangs their bones and brows.Sea pearls are lodged in the o of hope, andAnno Domini is a rusted spar.Stained-glass and shipwreck light in the church;Heaven has rot, fish swim through the aisle interments.Into the tide the bridge of the chancel twists.In the tight houses panes writhe with faces.

Whit Sunday, blustery heat, and you in three-piece suit to read the Second Lesson.   The day before, I’d excavated Arctic Rolls from ice-shelves in the local store’s deep freeze.   We ate them reverently, like miracles we didn’t quite believe in.   I threw up first and stayed in bed. You soldiered on through hymns of praise   till hot air swayed the church and God stopped leading you in upright ways,   an almighty adjustment that left you face down in the Benedictus, eating dust.

One summer I’d a plague of them –they looked so pretty in their red and black I didn’t mind them fluttering round but then I’d find one on my pillowor leaving smears across the panes.The boldest liked to totter on my fingerthen take me under her wing –it was lined with finest satinwhich she unfolded like a sheet.For months she hung around the windowtill a gust or rumour took her off. I remember the smooth curve of her backand how she’d tumble from the bed to fetch up madly wriggling on the floorhelpless as an overturned coracle.

I thought about going to a support group. I looked into it in the yellow pages and other outmoded data sets. I came upon a strange group of surly Sues and churlish Chads. We sat around and made high-pitched whines for about an hour. It was a pre-verbal kind of vibe. Some of us barked. We were all royally pissed off by something or other but no one was allowed to say what. That was the beauty of it. In Week Two, we harmonised and made a lovely Whingey Symphony. A person from an Adult Ed course down the hall put their head round, looking for their dog, Brian Eno, who had strayed. We went full-scale Allegro con Moans.