Are we too old for fish-‘n’-chipsToo well-dressed, perhapsTo queue in a place not found on mapsAs far from a taxi as it’s possible to beAnd whose idea was this anyway? We’ll take them back to mine; noSorry, yours. Am I staying over? EarlyRise, you say. I’d forgotten. Not thinking,And to be honest not feeling greatI’ll see you to your door. Sorry, gate. Not for the first time, I feel foolishOut of my depth, out of step, out of tuneWith the rituals.
After Clacker had roared into the deserted school playground in the works pickup, he wouldn’t budge from his cab. He left it to us to flip the clips to free the tailboards. We took our time dragging the ten-foot sections of Mills scaffold frames and boards off the bed, while he sat in a bubble of Radio Stoke, stony-faced, his eyes restlessly checking the dashboard clock, us in his mirror. He burst from his cab without greetings, as though ready to fight us, tugging on his gloves, yanking each frame, crashing them onto the concrete, chuntering it wasn’t his job to be handling scaffold for painters.
Severed from the rest of what it wasI nab it, pulley-wheel it forty footto the top of the scaffolding. Just after eight,the cars crawling over the flyover,the sun will soon be level with me; here,away from all forgettable activity below,sat on this dry board I settle to my work. What better place to be? What better optionsfor a board: a handy size for keeping outnext door’s cat, mixing cement on,boxing in pipes or as a speaker shelf.Once I’m done I’ll make it a Wet Paint sign,or slip it behind the electric cupboardin the basement for next time.
They are happy, the subjects of the pictures,After a fashion. For, however terribleThings may be, and they seem so even there,They have a peace: the magnificent marble,The red bricks’ warmth that the artist captures,The postures of inhabitants who shareThat space will not fold into the rubble,Nor will they suffer horrors other thanThe ones that they are used to. This is art,A country whose sure boundaries and strict lawsProtect its own. It lacks the strength or heartTo interfere outside when such a planWould undermine its state. Meanwhile, the warsBang on, lives snap and cities fall apart.
i.m. Julia Bentham Thirteen children wheel your bed down the road to the shingly tide-line, the sea’s great oxygen machine. Plugged into a featureless moon it sucks in the pebbles, pauses, exhales, breathes for you, before you set sail. The waves practise their scales, feel for arias between the stones. Thirteen children kneel, rest tired heads, a shoal of hands on your blankets. Not long now... The music rises, shoulders the heavy bed, eases away the land’s hold as we let go and your song, dear sister, returns to the sea.
I have a flat now, three rooms and a view,a place, should your ex-wife think to enquire,of paint tins, crazy paving, sprays of blueconvolvulus on sagged and laddered wire,a bedroom lit all night by passing cars,a kitchen diner, mug-rings, missing tiles,a lounge with peacock feathers in a vaseto add, the landlord says, that touch of style,and every night canned laughter through the walls,sit-coms and game shows all come round againto wake me in the small hours with applausefor thoughts I can’t afford to entertain.
Sure, which serious wannabe poet hasn’t? I mean,that Keatsian/Chattertonian quit-while-you’re-aheadvibe is a persistent buzz and trope — think Dean,Hendrix, Joplin or Jim — but let’s face it, once dead that’s that, it won’t matter how perfect a cadaveryou bequeath to the world since worms and fireare immune to beauty so, these days, no, I’d ratherbe a grump pushing my mortal span to the wire and look forward to eighty and a sympathetic nursewho will listen to my drivel as she wipes my arsethan fall prey to that adolescent narcissistic cursepromoting a life and oeuvre so limited and sparse.
In order to seeRilke closed his eyesMonique Saint Hélier said.In order to speak he employedthe costly services of silence.How illness surprised them alllying in wait in dark hedgerows.When death stepped into the roada slender white figure, a strangerasking for directions to the community.Then some form that thrives unseenand is only imagined, changes directionfrom that place no light reachesat the deepest part of the ocean.So she was left by the open windowas doctors and machines crowded in.Paris stole through like a cat at night,over-scented, quivering, mewlingfor human warmth and new prey,unknowing of the love she hadalready exhausted on that creatureexploring every room restlessly,ignoring the remembered portraitsshe was desperately sculpting,within a narrowing shaft of light.
(after Mallarmé) Those zeroes, foam, that clear line echoes but a glass’s rim as, far away, there plunge slim sirens into sea-blue wine; we voyage, O my diverse friends, I upright on the stern whilst you, at the sharp prow, turn brows to lightning, tides, winters. A fine intoxication compels me to raise this toast, standing tall and with no fear, a toast to whatsoever – solitude, star, coral coast – is worth our sail’s white concern.
From his work in the garden – those strips of wildnesstamed, the carpet lawn watered at the end of day –the gardener goes to his rest. Snails have been salted, roses stand corrected,hawthorn hedges are cut to the back of the headof a West Point cadet. Harebells, foxgloves, the white trumpetsof convolvulus – all have been destroyedin sweaty triumph. Only a few forget-me-nots,their eyes showing, are left, unrememberedunder the hedge. Into the last sunlight the ash raisesits rebel flame. Asleep in his armchair, the gardenerdreams of tree felling.
The letters will be found in the spidery tomb. The madman laughs aloud. There’ll come a time When the characters are together in a room To hear about a codicil or crime. The swindler knows at last he’ll be arrested, The drunken baronet falls up the stairs, The patient women, being sorely tested, Rebel at last and leave the page in pairs. Our histories are yet to be arranged. We like this freedom, though it’s all we’ve got. There are no drafts, and nothing to be changed. There are no chapters, and there is no plot.
Your dream remains one of distance,away from shoddy parents,this lukewarm suburb,its limp bus service.You take on any part —cad, butler, toady. In rehearsals,you hone timing, gestures.Volume, even.Remember to stride across the boards,your performance directed towardsrows of church hall chairs. Regarding praise — you tryto float on your backamongst the heave and ebbof egos cast adrift,aspiring, each, to be the causeof a FULL HOUSE noticein a West End theatre foyer. But the one you fancy for the spotlight of your bedremains unswayed by your lines off-stage,their delivery,your silken cravat. The kitchen fridgecontains one bottle of HP sauce.You sing ‘Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?’until interrupted by the landlordpounding on the door.
His brother is sitting by the window. The nurse has tipped a jigsaw puzzle on the table in front of him, clumps of grey cardboard, a twiggy heap nobbled as the oak leaves thick under the trees in the grounds outside. My father struggles slowly through the Day room lifting his stick as he looks around smiling. His brother has been told he is coming but beams in surprise when he sees him. I get some chairs. I want it to be special, an exchange of stories from the deep sequestration of ninety years shared lives, but they say almost nothing just find each other’s shaking hand.
The butterfly, rolled in the blind,A shape of grey against the gold,Becomes its shape again, unrolled,Still as a photograph, definedBy sun that shadows it, behind. Leaves of the roses, too, are castUpon this theatre of light,Stirring like wings prepared for flightBut, like the butterfly, caught fastThis bush, this blind — nothing will last. Not even that slow-burning star,Source of the greatest gift, our sight,Making our existence brightWith knowledge. Still, that time is farAhead. And this is where we are.
words like acrimony and amertumebefore somebody came along trying to cram the hard graininess of disagreement into languagebefore all that, there were birds some really quite big ones—a rude person might say elephantine which would be harsh because the thing is they still flew, that’s the miracle of it —however wide of girth and unwieldy they were with their big, blocky heads these massive prehistoric lumberers sailed upwards and coasted around on the westerlies and northerlies of ancient time — they didn’t feel gauche or non-svelte, they felt beautifulall airy and agenda-less, quite caught up in their meandering (sometimesbellowed) improvisations across vast expanses and serene — happy even in the knowledge they could be purple, if the mood took thembut a.
i.m. Abdul Gaffar Choudhury Above us, sparrows are acrobats in dripping banana trees. A downpour hisses out of the white, suffocated sky. People lined the streets when your body passed in its refrigerated van. Your image still hangs at the gates. Water is falling, falling blindly, pooling along your grave. A stray dog drinks its fill. Thunder stamps the air in gun salute. Clay here is blood red.We stand by the uprooted marble of your plot, waiting for the spoil to settle. Not for you, these street boys anointing themselves with laughter and wetness, nor the rapture of young women skipping puddles in drenched saris of fire and mango. The earth is taking a cast of who you were.Already, moisture has begun to evaporate. Note: A.G.
The Ship of State is rolling on,rolling on to its fate. The Captain is elsewhere.A cardboard mirage stands uponthe Bridge. Officers bustle round,looking important, achieving little. The Crew come and go,seemingly as they please, do enough, just enough, to keepthe enterprise afloat. But so much is automatic —and for the rest, the mantra is: avoid obvious danger,presume the conventional course. The Ship of State is rolling on,rolling on to its fate.
From the painting by Claude Monet Look closely, and you’ll see sand in the paint from the beach at Trouville, where I sat with Camille that summer. From this, you would hardly guess that war was coming; that Prussia had lured us in; that the clouds were not clouds, but the report of cannon fire. Our flags would never fly so proud again. Still, give us enough sunshine, and we will forget the world. On the promenade, one can hide from history beneath a parasol. But we cannot run from fate, just as we cannot escape our shadows. The slats of the boardwalk, hot beneath our feet, were the duckboards of future wars, the red boats on the waves, blood spilling on the green fields at Mars-la-Tour.
Eventually we get Dad down into the boatwhere he loudly invites all the elderly ladiesto a seat on his lap‘as the benches are so squashed’.He is talking too much –it’s the joy of a captive audiencebut he’s been off the boards too longand needs to rediscover his art. The boat swivels off in a flourish,a dark caliper of water widening from his stageand him spot lit in a column of sun.He jokes that I will steal thewater spaniel’s muzzle to put on him,but his words come out jumbledand all the owner hears is‘She’s going to steal your dog’. I look for something to distract himbut the landscape is still and serene.Just waders stalking the estuary shorelineprodding and stuttering the mud.
We no longer hold hands because you use a walking-stick to stand. Instead we slip together afternoons, stretch across the double-bed we can’t use nights now you’re so restless. I lie fingers on your arm, toes against your skinny tibia and it’s enough through seaweed feet to slither deep, not to sleep but into another world. My skin is listening to familiar haunting, little songs tuned to body, a pulse of openings and closings anchored where oceans form and dissolve, scatter and gather, changing as they remain the same. I peer at the elemental extraordinariness of lying there, chilly-boned, a flame passing through to do with all I breathe and am.