Poems

Without friends in low-doored cottagesBeside the lichened walls of churches,   Or wild associates in country pilesWith rotting sash windows,A sitting room just for the catsAnd drifts of broken-hearted furniture,   Or cousins who throw chaotic partiesIn that fine old barn beside the lakeWhere random guests rampage all summer nightAnd strip off intermittently for bathing,   And having no open-minded auntsWith famously hacked-about hairIn tiny little panelled flatsJust round the corner from this or that,   I wonder nonetheless –Were some of the above unearthed not far from here –If they might balk at the breath of my semi-detached, Its plastic double glazing and grey pebble dash,And their involuntary distaste give birth To an insurmountable awkwardnessCausing m.

Money is coarse. Her subjects take the taint.The humble glow. They smile their Sunday best.And everywhere she goes the Queen smells paint.   She’s there for them that is and them that ain’t.Toffs drop their aitches in the jabber-fest.Money is coarse. Her subjects take the taint.   Some pilgrims sell their souls to view the saint,her crown more halo than its jewels attest.And everywhere she goes the Queen smells paint.   Jewels outshine cash – imperially quaint,like stars, the wearer’s heavenly worth unguessed.Money is coarse. Her subjects take the taint.   Having paid her princes’ ransom in restraint,she pales, as shame starts rising in the west.And everywhere she goes the Queen smells paint.

Where did they flee to? Who wrote off their debtswhen, scuttled back into a gas mantled past,they left just this pair of foxed silhouettes inlaid to the depths of the shadows they cast?Their off-cuts, spiralled and coiled to the floor,were the shirts off their backs they left behindfor the brilliantined thief and the red-headed whorewho gave them the pox and robbed them both blind.   Brought out for the hanging, downlit, strung alongwith woodcuts and etchings from last season’s sale,mocked by a stag’s head knocked down for a songthey pose cock-a-hoop on a gold picture rail,price-tagged in guineas, cockeyed with surprise,sporting sold stickers, all set for their spree,two roués quick scissorwork snipped and excisednow fallen among the haute bourgeoisie.

They need to start believing in themselves.Like the cartoon character who runsoff a cliff before the animatorhas drawn solid earth below they expected more certainty than this.Already out of their depth they hesitateat the edge of the sea and wonderhow it feels to dive into the waves. They gaze at the blue-grey eternitybut don’t know if they can swim.

I found a gift-tag tailed with silver stringdropped by our bed, ironically heart-shaped,gold cardboard, unattached to anything,attracting bits of fluff and Sellotapeand, placed between your hairbrush and your pillswith ribbon from the final gift you wrapped,reflected in a mirror that revealedWith all my loveblue-biro’d on the back.   Your present, a belated jeu d’esprit,this black and orange clip-on kipper tie,its flourish of your old tomfooleryintended to, with love, mock-horrify,turned up too late to carry off the jokebut left me grateful, knowing how you’d tried,still hearing laughter, stifled as I woke,and truly, by the morning, horrified.

Next he told us how he’d creepto the edge of the tip with a broken chunk of cistern or sink raised above his head and before letting it go, them black rats, super quick, big as rabbits, tails fat as rope, gone. Other places where they usually get and that tea time was a good time – hardly anyone about, not many cars, when you could hear cutlery from opened kitchen windows. The waitress handed us the menus.

shuffling across the carpark from the pool in my dry robe like a damp, disconsolate Cistercian, I heard them, two peacocks: their proclamations launched wide into the whites of the Cumbrian sky, their maladroit plainsongcutting up the backdrop of chaffinch after chaffinch and as iffrom nowhere, two peacocks: (stately home dropouts? heritage park rejects?

A loaded presence in a biscuit tin,       The rounds of sandwiches they found             Were cut and dried as hard as tesserae;Forgotten in the airless wardrobe, play       Was innocent. Would they rebel Against the bounds of home? But looking inOne day back early, neither made a sound,And caught the two red-handed by the standard lamp,      Surprised with strawberry jamSpread on the prairie carpet with the large sliced white,             Preparing in the makeshift campProvisions for the wilderness.And where would they be going? ‘Well?

As the Taliban surged back into Kabul and the international correspondents looked more exhausted with every broadcast but not as exhausted as the refugees   I thought of my young second cousin Matthew, one of the four hundred and fifty-sevenflown back from Afghanistan in sealed coffinsto Wootten Bassett and then, in Matthew’s case,   to York for his military funeral in the Minster, after which the gun-carriageparaded him on a tour of the packed streets before beginning its sedate procession   to the cemetery while we, the mourners,plus vanloads of soldiery sped off ahead at a pace Matthew would surely have preferred,with sirens and flashing lights, to get there first;   all of which might have been designed to persuade his parents that being blown up by a bombat.

Across the great divide…   They kept them hidden till I stepped inside       One for a birthday card,Puzzled at first by what was there       And what was not. And what was there to hide?   Huge glossy frozen packs of pig’s feet, tripe,       Hog maws and chitterlingsAnd no promotions down the aisles       I recognised.

Years of working weekends, cashing in his holidays, dossing in loveless digs beside arterial roads or in vans to pocket his expenses.   He’d earned it, kept on how soon he’d be in Lido di Jesolo, a linen suit for evenings;us lot wouldn’t exist.   Back three days later, rubbing down skirting boards before we arrived. Couldn’t stand it:the kids, the heat, the wife.

We trudged the grounds of a country house       under a featureless skyas stark trees bled out with morning rain       and what light there was started to die,   and every time you grabbed for my hand       I felt a little thrill,unmentioned, ineffable.       I’m glad to feel it still –   I spent half a life being bad at that.       And here we were, noses to wind,simply happy, which nobody is,       but as close as I’ll ever find.   And in came her message. And later that night       I looked at it, then at her profile:smiley-faced. Husband gone. Three gorgeous kids.       Was thinking of you!