Poems

In memory of Bruce Chilton  Those unhurried afternoons we stood at our easels, muddying canvas with paint from a dinner plate. Schubert’s Trout Sonata on Radio 3. Tea stone cold, we were more Pete and Dud than Monet and Renoir, barely exchanging a word while the sun washed the room with light.  Occasionally, taken with the music, he’d give voice to a note or phrase, forgetting perhaps I was there.  There’d be a stop for a pipe; a pause for lunch – always sandwiches and soup. ‘Could I trouble you for some mustard?’ A little cricket talk, perhaps, or something about his motorcycle, some nuisance with the carburettor, or a tie he had his eye on in Jarrolds (‘But not at that price’).

Our walking-tour guide says sealsfor sails and crayeen for crown, leads usalong the Lagan to 70 foot Nualawith the Hula (aka The Beacon of Hope).For every jab at the IRA, there’s a quipagainst the UVF. Ask me my politics, my religion,you can’t shock me. A gauntlet thrownwith an ironic smile: to rip himby the roots, box and label,here where lamp posts flash allegianceand street names are fuses. The secret leaks into how we listen,refuses to break covenantwith neutrality, shields tribal DNAfrom trip wires of language.Some call them freedom fighters,some say terrorists, but I say bastards! Only joking – I say paramilitaries.

The first newspaper after the cyclone was surprisingly welcome, not so much for the news but for the paper itself, the newsprint, with its soft spot-colour, cartoons, non-jittery ads and above all for the puzzle pages aching for the press of biro and unhurried completion. Welcome, too, the simple foldable feel of it, just me and the daily rag, the global hordes pressing behind my personal screen negated for a bit, and me and the world none the worse for it.

Who are we to wish the clocks reverse and we are back to spring? Who would deny the falling leaves, the receding hairline of autumn? Who would wish away the change in air, hope to transformation? The elegance of gusty days, leaves flying in eddies of reminiscences, a quiet comfort to becalm the storm, to listen to the fury, out there, elsewhere. We embrace autumn and even winter has its charms, embraced in wonder. Time is a ghost, but we aren’t yet, we welcome new horizons, waiting.

The kettle doesn’t know it needs a cup To hold the water it was plugged to boil: Where was the I when nature thought me up? When air entered my lungs, made me uncoil? Now that the body starts to flinch and falter, There’s no way that the I is getting out. Nature persists as circumstances alter. The cup’s the part that’s broken, not the spout. Again, what of the primal soup so-called? What consciousness was lurking in that gloop To meet the grateful bowl that holds our brains? Brimful, our life, and what it all contains Is nothing but the sight of death, forestalled By stubborn hope of something more than soup.

We read poetry to each other by flickering glow,  leaning into lilting seas, an eloquent calling,  a mesmerising renewal, our whole world opens up before us, clear light, sensation of sand on  toes, warm and delicate as future memories, feelings of spring, a quiet warming of lives to all that’s to come. Voices gently tremble, so close to each other now, an opening up  of hearts and flowers. Candles flicker in distant breeze, articulation of poetry’s sacred grace,  something so powerful to articulate the stars, the whole universe is in our hands, lush oasis in the tempest, words and lips hold such power, books fall to the floor, the night is ours alone.

The years have taught me to take a B roadwhenever I can dodge the stress of work,and celebrate not hurrying alongto a deadline, meeting or appointment. Switchbacks and hummocks, valleys and bridges,warehouses and workshops, churchyards and pubsinstead of never-ending hard shouldersand motorway tarmac’s relentless thrum — longer, slower, even meandering,B roads let their tales unfold, mile by mile.They stop me pointlessly churning overwhat might happen at my destination.

Tilt of a planet brings the spring,buds and flowers burgeoning. Summer and sunlight feels so strong,mornings bright and evenings long. Enter the autumn’s yellow flakes,rust and bonfires, leaves and rakes. Into the winter on we gowith no escape from wind and snow. And what is season number 5?Nothing. Nowhere. Not alive until the spring again arrivesby resurrecting other lives.

I’d not go out there now if I were you –  not unless you have a taste for fire falling in flakes, for clouds of dust that leave an acrid chalky residue on wigs and epaulettes. If I were you I’d be inclined to stay inside at least until the ground had ceased to shake, the roads to crack – unearthing bad things we buried not that long ago. We’ve all been out enough by now to know it’s not the best of times to feign disinterest now the pillars of the temple are askew, now slates are flying, bridges burning and the big cats have bust out of the zoo.

A burden to the kind and noble I now depend on other people I did not want to feel the stroke which left me paralysed and stuck making noises instead of words blurting out sounds that sound absurd but I know what they’re meant to mean although I’m now a dud machine and cannot move with motor skills now brain is damaged in the skull from lack of oxygen and blood my face collapsed and mind went dead it felt like sudden suicide and sometimes now I wish I’d died.

The gurgle of a tap becomes the street’s first song, a busker tuning up for crumbs of daylight.                   His mother’s shadow tiptoes in, bends to his ear, hers the white dressing gown, the light breeze on his cheek whispering                    ‘Jack...   Jack... We have to get up early.’ ‘What’s a pearly?’ Beyond the window’s dinosaurs  streetlights go out, a robin sings. On a glazed road, shining, a snail’s odyssey begins.