Poems

Glad I decided against the tie, the polka dots. That freelancer Houghton is covering the Festival.I’ll buy him a pint during the break.Doubtless he’ll bang on about his latest cricket book,how well it’s selling in India. I’ll start with an icebreaker. A dog poem.Follow say with three poems about Wanda —what went right then wrong.I hear rumours about her —migrated to far North Queensland,living with Noel, an itinerant shearer…volunteering in an orphanage in Kolkata,managing a cattery in Edinburgh…She was always restless,going straight to the travel sectionof any bookshop… I’ll finish my set with a series of poems about objects —a white ceramic tea strainer,a colourful box of Epsom salts,a small brass model of the Eiffel tower.

Out by the river, picking over driftwood bleached like bone. Or digging in the earth             for a succulent root,                         when the light once forged in an ancient star is found. Nugget of fire from a neutron             bomb so bright                         that the sky still burns. Now rolled in a palm.

Stood for ages waiting for the sun to turn up and pay homage to a clutch of brilliant orange poppies. It declined. But the poppies couldn’t be bothered to get hung up on feelings of betrayal and bobbed about — ditsy and undimmed — perhaps slightly drunk on some fringe classic I couldn’t catch beneath the growl of road construction. Sonata for a cabbage white, solo -fluttered? Maybe a soft-shoe shuffle from the ants?

Clown School convenes at midnight sur la plage — a maverick constellation of old sea-dogs and post-humous grands personnages. Chateaubriand has on a red nose and does the rope trick to a tee. Degas draws his Dead Fox in the air but wobbles and the ears go askew. Cue a snicker from Corneille that triggers in the mind of Berlioz the need to leap up and instantly pom-pom his way through an entire rendition (plus chromatic modulations to accommodate the gulls) of Ouverture to Le Corsaire, an abrupt and sprightly fantasy he put together as a precursor to — nothing (which, coincidentally, is the kind of pre -cursor Clown School can really get behind).

We smashed china cups, saucers, sugar bowls, plates, teapots on slabs of paved-over lawn – ripped apart bodies of teabags, scattered their unholy remains amongst the splintered finery – out of plastic kettles, we sloshed hot water, drenched the mess in pretend, ritual sterilisation – and then we boogied, in the latest footwear, on our cemetery site – boozed up, music blaring from shiny, postmodern sound devices.

                        Lacing up gleaming skates, then off the rein             At last, kids shuffling gouts of steam We elbowed into churned-up tracks and packed the train             Of bodies bent and wobbling in the stream                         That watched in awe below the mirror ball             As denims and drape jackets paid the price For slinging scuffed hired skates into the hall             To join.

1979 Break time. Out of the staff room window through             The fug of pipes and cigarettes The landscape of industrial decline             Has empty smokeless chimneys signal debts To history that never will be paid             Except by demolition. Cleanliness Of plate glass far prefers the playing fields             Whose straight white lines mean to impress. But as exhaust-filled smog rolls in, it seems             The goalposts move. What do we hear? ‘She’s right, the country needs...’ What, modernise?

Wild garlic after sudden rainthat left as suddenly –each curlicue sunlit again –was part of all that kept her lonely: they’d noticed it, like everything,every spring. The firstyear alone, surely, you’d think,would be hardest, worst. It’s not, she said. I felt her shoulder.We walked back to our cars,hugged. She left. I glanced back overtheir million stars.

i.m. She bends back over the bush,pursed hand biting for curvatureamong the green, and rainsthree more to the tub at her feet. Then she finds a last one, hunches,lifts and rattles her find, is goneinside. A tractor’s been pacingthe field next door all morning,towards, back, towards, back.She went unnoticed, unnoticing. And we’ll have gooseberry tart –as tart as her love, its stout fruitas coarse and hard to sense, whenhidden and wasting in its thicket.

(after Tracey Herd) most, is not the goal, the finish-line, but the start, (do any of us know where we are heading), the assortment of people, the runners I mean, stretching, going for last minute pees, doing their weird warm-up routines, and the straggle of loved ones congregating in Holyrood Park. I barely remember the first five miles down Edinburgh’s deep streets, I remember hitting the coast, the exposure at Portobello beach, the surprise of space, the sudden release of the sea’s shore.