Poems

As when a man who has been dementing for years –old friends burst into tearswhen they see the ruins of his mindold lovers in despairlook up the rules for Dignitas – when he dies at last, gently, in deep sleepand one by one for the rest of usthe memories sweep back,how he listened, how he believed in dialogueand held warmth in his heart to the end – so, looking down from the cliffI watch the wild Greek ocean-going waveswith their cargo of flotsam and saltroil around the rocks, fan up in spray, spread their all-embracing murmur on the shore, and never stop.

Some of us can’t see the wood for the piles of notes obscuring the windows – notes on paper, in the making of which the established view has had to be dismantled. We try another tack, bend our minds to an alternative approach, but down on the beach it’s high-note tide, the smooth and shiny stones all lost beneath a swell of notes. We construct an origami boat, roll up notebooks for oars and paddle staunchly to the horizon where novel observations are reeled aboard like minnows and several drownings are noted. Those of us who make it back to shore find much has changed since we set off – even the words sound different now.

Who invented the clock, pray tell, time’s division, the ticking spell? An ice-cold man that hated song, who sat and thought the whole night long and listened to the starved mice brawl and beetles pacing in the wall. What invented the kiss? I’ll tell: a lovely mouth, you know full well, that kissed and did not think at all; it was in May, the wondrous call of bird and bloom adorning earth, the sun-god roaring golden mirth.

Awful you were christened on the eighth daywith a name that was like any name the christener’s gift.   Awful you were christened because your actswere so awfully and obsessively oddand broke every law of the house.Who would have known you served another lawthat advised your awe-filled dreadof what on earth would happen if you didn’t flickthe switch ten times, or hide the keys?Who would know you brought to the houseyour many awful and unlawful actsso awfully lawfully, so awfully full of awe?

Take back your big green foam rubber balland the red one with teeth marks, and the shuttlecock. Take the leather sandal kidnapped from next door.Take your chewed KFC packaging, plus the sachet of sauce, the paper napkinand the surgical mask you scavenged from the pavement. Replace the mountain of earth you dug outfrom under the roots of our sycamores, and the panel of fencing you knocked overon the way to trampling my bedding plants, snapping off tall foxgloves at the root,and dragging down my Rosa Mundi. Go squealing and scrapping in some other garden,with all your trappings. You have ceased to be cute.

They’re trying to hold the shapeof their smiles while wrestling with their darlings who, it seems,would rather be anywhere than planted on their knees: mum and thunderous son,dad clutching daughter, as she flails towards something in flight.The photographer clicks anyway. They’ve made an effort: the knitsare new and ties are properly knotted. Poor parents. These are the cuckoosthey let into their cherished nest.

If I still remember the termsprotasis and apodosisfrom Latin grammar days at school, why can’t I exchange this knowledgewith its minimal relevanceto my subsequent life, in which sentences trot along quite wellunparsed and without their clausesneeding precise designations, for instant access to the namesof acquaintances approaching,all smiles, at social gatherings?

Not regret at what could have been said              but regret, half way down, at what was said  (… this will be called the fifth tread of ten). Not only regret at what was said but that it was said before it knew it was said (… this will be called the sixth tread of ten). Not only regret at what had been said but that it will cause other things to be said by way of reprisal for what was said and by way of knowing will be said again and so much regret is a foot mid-stride on what will be called the tenth tread of ten.

Enough to walk –  enough to walk, untied enough to move together side- by-side, to let the words occur to let the world occur around. Scrap  the table in between, the stare and all  it means, enough to brush a shoulder, let a misstep cause two hips to touch.  Enough a glance, a glancing off at what a plane can teach, what  might be learnt from an edge.

When he was a young reporter, writing  for the Straits Times on the Korean War,  my brother-in-law was based in Japan. His girlfriend, Itsuko by name, taught him  certain refinements concerning hygiene  that had not been part of his upbringing: for example, to dry between his toes. Sometimes I embarrass friends by asking  if they include this in their own routine – although that implies a further question:  do they, in the first place, wash between them?  Apparently not everybody does.