Poems

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.

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.