Poems

Night is returning to teatime. Soon a coneof orange streetlight will be all he has to see her byas she touches her laurel, steps inside her homeon which he’s been keeping an eye while she’s at work, as no one else will.Only the postie or Amazon opens that gateand once he saw the latter with a parceltoo big to fit through the letterbox, knock, wait the stipulated minute or so, knock harder,step back, look up to blank windows for clues,check his handheld, try next-door – no answeralso – and finally make the walk of doom back to the white Transit. Adrenalin pumping,he considered intervention, but how?‘Did you need – sure, I live opposite, I’ll take it in…’He’d learn her name; teatime would bring her round.

Open the front door into waterBrown water with no heart in itOne side of the street to the other – Small shops drowned in itOur car drowned in itThe sun gleamed down on it like a joke Unseasonal, climate change thingAt an upstairs window an old womanStaring down like a question Water in the hall, the kitchen, floor-Boards bending, everything meltingOr seeming to, the roof crackling – The thin river was fat and roaringUnder the block-stone bridge and thenOver it. Reek of old mud. By evening the surge was downThe flood was a lover reachingFor a cigarette. It got what it came for.

The gutters glutted:rusty, fallen, ferrous stars. An avenue of beeches,gaunt, grey, naked, majestic on their red carpet,in a dream of dethronement.

I’m sailing to Tarshish as usual. The air is thick, Its walls are greyish white, This desk light flickers intermittently. Let me be plain: Being good in your sort of way Does not appeal to me. Why would I go to Nineveh? The parking’s diabolical And the people there Are not my type. Some send out for Domino’s every night, Most have no notion of eternity. How could you care for them? I have a feeling that you prefer them Which doesn’t seem right. They have no ear for music And why should they need to hear my voice When there’s always a catch to it? No one likes me on this ship But I’m indifferent. I’d rather suffer as I want.

Some endings have such richness in their flow,the night taking its temper from the day.You sport a smile when love gets up to go. Mirrors of time hold all you need to know,haloes of stars sustaining casual clay.Some endings have such richness in their flow. Far-off appointments, comet-like, will growinto your week-to-view, pointing your way.You sport a smile when love gets up to go. Sweet long goodbyes precede the sharp hello,foreseen, embraced and prompting one to saysome endings have such richness in their flow. Your hearth and home’s an archipelago,wild oceans calling all the while you stay.You sport a smile when love gets up to go. Resting, you relish teeming tides below,a gathering of kin, a quietening of play.

We left in a hurryand I had to leavemy solid-wood mahogany and spruce guitar. They said to bring only what we could carryand it would have taken both my armsto protect it from knocks and scrapes as I would a baby –for it too was made with love and in the belief it would last forever. Now I’m more sorrythan I should say, to know I will never hold it againand pluck the bass string and feel the low humtravel through me, earthing me. At night I crouch awake and worryabout the fire that melts and blackens and harries to ashall the carefully crafted truths we once lived byand which made life beautiful.

It’s gruelling to be wanted – the desirer’s eyesall over you, his lips mouthing your namelike a benediction. His love is a prison, or a roomwith flocked wallpaper where a mad aunt sleeps,her dreams fettered by demons. The desirer carves your name in trees and walls,letters trapped in love hearts piercedby feathered arrows. You no longer recognise itor come when called. You never owned it,only a name, shared with strangers pressed into those thin White Pages,like Frank and Bill and Jack – manly namesthat pack a punch, American nameswith ten-gallon hats and loaded guns.

In hibernation and a huff. No work for six months. Will I have to invent an illness as explanation? My desires are simple — a pot of English breakfast tea, a piece of nougat. I can’t affect ‘a lifestyle’. I am sick, though, of this view. Brick wall. Drainpipe. Grey tracksuit pants on clothes line. Norbert hasn’t telephoned. Best get a new agent. Tony will know someone.  Introduce my name into conversations. ‘The theatre needs invigoration.’ That sort of thing. Young. Is that plausible? I can play young. The wonders of makeup. What do I want to read? I want to read a script.

Her home, but not (she knows) her house.             It is his house, his wall, his garden.             She takes it hard, and means to harden So far as courtesy allows. Am I alone in feeling he             Could ease things with a breezy word             Or passing smile when they conferred About the rent? Damn charity, That blessing no one wants to name.

Seizing her axe she brought it down with blows One altered morning when the same sun rose Differently on her than him, which meant She knew the backyard aspen’s lease was spent. It fell to him to prise the stump’s grudge out. And yet how intergrown he was with doubt About it all, as whether a given tree Were ever uprooted really, or ought to be; Whether the nettedness in everything Meant that to strike at one root could only bring Stress to the covenants of knotted love Beneath our feet we’ve no conception of.