Poems

for Marisa Foz del Barrio You divorced on the first day it was legal, were imprisoned three times as a Communist under Franco, still dyed your hair blonde and – at the age I am now – still lived with your parents’ bourgeois furniture (those impossible beds), the drapes and porcelain from another era, one you’d rebelled against but kept close by, as if to understand yourself better. I think of you sitting under your father’s army awards, a carpet-style brocade over the table and over your knees, a lamp at your feet, like an old woman, your rollie constantly giving up in the green ash tray. And me, curled on the stiff sofa, trying to follow every word – you never spoke in English, never explained.

You lie so quiet on your bed, You hear the sound and turn your head. I wait and hope, perhaps a chance, The faintest smile – I hold your glance But no – no hint of recognition. I press your lips and take your hand And move aside a greying strand – You seem surprised – there’s no embrace. The smallest incline of your head I close, my tears upon your face. ‘Who are you?’ ‘A friend’ I said. You lie so quiet on your bed, I enter soft, you turn your head. Your arms reach up and clasp and hold And in a trice the years unfold A tenderness of memory. A union of heart and mind The rapture when our bodies bind – You slump and break – the thoughts are gone Back with the demons in your head.

After the years at the gym, the diets and the supplements, he comes — nevertheless — to the time of shoring up. Now he is under the aegis of the Holy Trinity of Dentistry, Cardiology and Urology whose gods must be placated and obeyed. He turns towards his bathroom reflection, to assess the state of affairs: chest braced, mouth closed (pending the next dental refurbishment). Mercifully, the glass steams up, and his blurred gaze looks younger every minute.

Let’s celebrate the solitary meal: the serendipitous trawl through the fridge; the hopeful foray into the deep freeze, the obliging egg and — on a good day — the last hurrah of a cheesecake or a cold Jersey potato, pleading for release from its stiffening cocoon of mayonnaise. No waiting for a table here; all you need is your fork, your plate, your glass, and your scallop-shell of quiet.

after Robert Hooke, Micrographia (1665)   A warm wall, heavy leaves, hard green grapes     and a cluster of berries         spun out of cobweb.   They were packed with brown roe, or, later,     an anarchy of hatchlings,         scattering crawlers   scarce larger than the eggs they once were,     two eye-dots on a body         the shape of an egg.   I counted nine scales at the rear end,     two whiskers, a two-pronged tail         six legs underneath.

The matador scowled at the back of the bar, and sipped his beer. He wanted to stab the people who stared at him. His black tie, his black suit didn’t shield him from their eyes. He ordered testicles, his unique entitlement, and a carafe of deep red wine. He flung his right arm around, as if he was twirling his cape, and declaimed a line of poetry, then giggled, and apologised. Tomorrow he was going out against a bull from Miura. Where was the flashbulb reception? He fixed his eyes on a bearded man who might be discussing him — he sipped his wine, remembering the white-socked bull in Toledo. He could never be defeated.

As soon as you stop and rest you see more hills ahead, Great chains of hills to some improbable horizon. Will it always be like this? you ask yourself. Don’t let the hills tower over you, Don’t let their shadows creep before mid-afternoon And when they come, savour the blue. Enjoy the flatness of the land you’re on, lend it your weight And don’t look up too high; Ideally don’t lift your head at all, look straight. Remember, you are not being cowardly or slack, You have worked and now deserve to rest. Just think: no hills, no flat, Or, if you prefer, regard them as clouds, those hills, Great bubbling folds of gentle gas. Leave it at that.

My fiancé has coined a word for Saturday recuperation which describes what much of the world does to allay its tension. From schoolchildren to the orthodox this is a time to reboot, rest, restore and relax, but none of these words quite suit in the way his term translates, acknowledging the week’s angst which the process encapsulates, as we purge the Sturm und Drang.

He was checked in under the name Immortality, Mr Immortality — but on the vanity were the little capsules of mouthwash and shampoo, a packet with needle and thread, and letters from his father, who was dead. (And books to write, and letters of instruction, to have read.) He’s a valued guest at the Clarion, at the Shelburn, like others in this inferno though I miss him most. ‘Time is a monster,’ he said before calling down for another hour. He had to spell his name to the woman at the front desk. ‘I am mortality,’ I heard him say between kisses I remember to this day.

Of course the bride’s dog came to the wedding and was allotted a chair at the top table at which he sat with a gloomy expression and a chewed satin bow. The groom fed him morsels of pheasant — laughing rather theatrically when his finger was nipped and the blood dyed his table napkin a shade to match the azaleas. A honeymoon is no time for blood poisoning. Surely it was sunstroke or an allergy to the spiky local fish? Excitedly aghast, the wedding guests re-assembled for the funeral. The dog was left at home but he didn’t seem to mind.

Near the dogleg turn of the lane down to the ponies’ field, skulking in summer among cow parsley and meadow sweet, in winter with their streaked black corrugated walls laid bare, were the half-dozen Nissen huts my father refused to mention. A prisoner of war camp for Italian soldiers, my mother told me, but also part of the silence my father had brought back with him ten years before from Germany which now could not be ended although the reason for that was one more thing he never gave. Why spoil an early morning stroll bringing halters for the ponies so we could lead them home to the stable yard then saddle up?

In reply to Ann Baer, aged 101, of Richmond-on-Thames.   Your handwriting, so perfect for its style And firmness, made me feel that this must be A brilliant schoolgirl. Hence my knowing smile At your comparing of my maple tree   With Tennyson’s. But further down the page, And seemingly in passing, you revealed The secret of your learning: your great age. In your day, verse was not a special field,   It was a language, so to speak: a tongue For all who read books. No such luck today, Alas. Just look at how it keeps you young, This love for words that time can’t take away   From anyone touched with it early on. No wonder that you write a hand so fair.

L’acqua di Bonifazio This spa town sparkles on its hilltop: hydros, park       For ballo liscio; stands For full dress orchestras, where guests remark       On benefits for glands And organs as they feel the waters percolate,       Diuretic. So, to springs Stiff couples waltz off to another date       With porcelain. Dusk brings Relief: cool hands are kissed; pipes play delightfully       On lawns; and you resist Until regretful sighs say there must be       Another fox trot missed.

How many times these days I say those words, Muttering them quietly under my breath Or petulantly as the telephone rings Or shocked at some reported piece of news Or simply as a constant formula For things that pass by daily, and are gone Into the nowhere that life seems to be Day after day, as if unceasingly. Too soft to be an expletive, too repetitive To have distinction, more sigh than cry of rage, How many times these days I say those words And may well say them till the day I die When everything’s worn out and stiff with age And I have nothing else to say but ‘Why?

To draw conclusions from the precise force Exerted by a handshake or a kiss Is to confuse a delta’s civilities With the ambiguous thunder of its source, And what the fingers or the lips endorse Could be misleading. It comes down to this: Emotions are such things as you might miss. The river is the mystery of its course. And so it may not seem to matter much If you react with unexpected fright To what was thought to be a welcome pressure, Or quite inconsequentially delight In disappointment, taking a guilty pleasure In the dismaying lightness of a touch.

The soot sunk clouds have gone — to blacken someone else’s landscape. The tugging, ripping, girl-fight wind that stole the weekend’s peace has been abracadabra’d away as though life’s difficult days never even happened. Sometimes the stirred world stills. The trees refitted and re-greened appear overslept and drowsy. How long have you been sleeping? How long in life wintering? Only the rustling get-to-it birds seem to have understood the new year is well and truly in, beyond beginning. Full of early summer’s song; watch the paired up love-struck teenagers career and chase crazily all over the place.

She was considered the cleverest girl in the school, and deservedly so, and as such started the lower sixth with no trepidation, so who could not feel for her when she stretched back in her chair, casually, in a lesson-break on an autumnal afternoon, remarking, ‘Live long and prosper… that was Horace, right?’ There was a brief outbreak of disbelief then the boys’ eyes curled; they were on hand, forever after, chevaliers, free with the sign of the vulcan.

As if a turtle you have laid your eggs in a bowl of sand. Unlike the turtle you sit next to your own heap overlong considering the wondrous thing    you’ve done, the babies wrestling in the gritty dark. And all the while the land cools steadily, a small white light somewhere over    the sea, over the sea out there and finally, deeply and slowly you remember it. You’re setting off now. Here are your    paddles, this is the pale underneath of your shell scraping the pebbles beneath the    moon’s glare. Yourself, one thing alone now. Can    you feel the water’s lift? You are already there.

There it is, the wren. Keep still. Breathe in. The tiny bird with stumpy tail has landed near the windowsill and moves from twig to stem as quietly as rain. Feathered and breathing, it matches its portrait on the copper farthings of my childhood sixty years ago but look away and it has gone again from then to now.