You told me that you’d read, And were struck by That night in bed, A sermon on the naked limbs that lie Inside your soul, And as you told me so, Our youngest son, whose loud voice cried, rushed Usurpingly to climb Inside our sheets and quilt, with soaked pyjamas &n.
Her grief is like the shadow play of bones snapped in an old X-ray unsleeved to show what love had done to her and her bright skeleton. Lit up, half-cut, she starts to flag still clutching her green shopping bag of gin and ashes as she weaves through deep, midge-haunted silences exhausted to this break of trees where, in its pop-up sepulchre, the moon, as if consoling her, unearths a white owl’s requiem for her ripped dress, its unstitched hem come loose, as she herself has come bare-legged and torn to scatter him.
‘To arrive at the place you know not, you must go by the way you know not.’ – St. John of the Cross How many times the bloody GPS led us astray. It pointed us down stairs, over a cliff, into a pathless field barbed-wire barred and pocked with curious cows. Castel Gandolfo, where Pope Benedict lives out retirement from the Papacy, was a particular disaster when Ms. Garmin found a street of the same name in a completely different town. And how we found Pienza, only Jesus knows. Still it’s in Italy, and here we are, photographed sipping Strega in a bar, lamps lighting up the narrow cobbled street where soft rain falls and happy lovers meet.
Neutral as a wheel it is not culpable for what it picks up. Shock jocks, phone-in bigots, ministerial lies and bleating celebs. A cup cannot be blamed for what fills it. No judgment. No fear of offence just submission to whatever is snatched out of the air by chameleon range be it war, corruption, famine, peace, tsunamis, laughter, conferences, anger or simply a brilliant new tune hooking you from the depths.
The gardens are in bloom your mother loved. A jazz trumpet blares – ‘Stormy Weather’ – to a girl spread with her laptop on the grass. Delinquent for a day, you came to catch the last of summer on these paths or the bank grown perilous with out-of-control, knotted weeds, where your father fished at weekends, where, midweek, only tourists stroll and the river-god, Old Father Thames, cuckoo-spit shining in his beard, is unfazed by the pleasure-boat’s farting horn. How they clung here by their fingertips to respectability, slipping each year a little further down a terrible, almost-sheer drop into bottomless debt.
Richard Judge, Whitstable RNLI I was brought up on boats. Trawling, potting, netting. The harbour was very active at the time. We were using claxons and maroons so the whole town knew – there’d be quite a crowd, watching people running down. It’s more discreet now, the crew can click an app. I’ve got a lot of medals – doing things for a long time. Isn’t for anything brave. You put them ashore and think job done. But you’d hear them say – the only reason I held on was because I could see the boat coming. A good clear cut one – a life saved.
I have in mind a snapshot of our son Upheld by you in a prospect of snow, Taken when he was less than half of one On a cold mountain seven years ago. It was the first snow he was ever shown, Was blinded by and touched, and his cheeks glow. His puffer suit is white. His hat is green. Clearly the sky’s unmixed ultramarine. And I recall he slept a long time after, Upright in the car seat I’d pulled from the jeep And stood up underneath the cabin’s rafters, So we could eat a long lunch during his sleep And he’d not hear the clatter of our laughter While we’d in Vin Santo our biscuits steep. He left no footprints in the snow that day But made yours somewhat deeper I would say.
The lone stag’s crossing a field. He’s done with rutting. Outside Snape Maltings he listens to Alexander Gadjiev. He’s got Chopin in his head. He misses the girls. He’s missing an antler. The sky is blood-red. The sonata was perfect. He’s always had a thing about New York. He slips into the water at Bawdsey. His wounds are cauterised. He’s swimming to Old Felixstowe. He curls up in the bowels of the ship like Rimbaud. He’s not sure how things will go. The stowaway stag. He’s going to start again. He’d like some music. He’d like to play the cello. He’d really like a cigar.
Five of them dressed in black from head to foot. We do it in a circle, partly for the children, partly because we’re teaching the English words for arms, legs etc. Wednesday morning in St Stephen’s church hall. The children have already done heads, shoulders, knees and toes knees and toes. The ladies from Afghanistan do their best to join in, shaking a leg, in out, in out and so on though shaking it all about doesn’t come easily and as for the finale – shooting your arms up and shouting Hoi! That’s what it’s all about! – their faces suggest this is nuts.
May there always be a friend to write a letter — always time for silence between bars of music — always more stories, more music — always a flock of birds over the river — always old maps promising new journeys — always an island at which to moor and shade of trees. May the lonely routine bring wonder to strangers — may every little room open on wide worlds — may all the years be charts drawn in clear ink and none of the clouds to come veil the view from the summit.
With all the rain our great provider wished upon us this long winter, a brick-lined pit dug umpteen years ago (I had no inkling it was there), fell in. More than six foot wide, more than eight foot down. The shock. The fear of falling into piss, shit, bone-eating worms. My need to fill the wretched thing. How to bury a year of crumbling certainties? Last night North Norfolk’s moon went carnival, its light so stark, it would have lit that gap, chasm, abyss, in the dark – a hole that might have gone on swallowing flower beds, deer-molested shrubs and lawn – if the builder hadn’t traipsed to and fro, barrow after barrow, tipped in rubble on a bitter day, to fill it.
I close my eyes and sing her name, shape her ghost on the air. The trees are begging for Spring. One lane haunts another in Wales. This hedge lets in a saline wind though it’s been fifty years inland. The river’s genie snags on a thorn on its way to the sea, vague summers where time behaves differently, finds her curled up in a dune, creaturely in her sleep, her breath shaping a ghost from a ghost. Gifting me a young man’s pain, a brutal tide for a brittle shell, she has vanished again, returned to sand, the softness of dunes. And so these drowned songs surface in my ear, remember her.
I’ll stay young for you if you’ll stay young for me It won’t be easy Some things we’ll have to set aside Jogging along the promenade in shiny shorts I will not do It’s not helpful, you and I turning ridiculous I’m thinking it’s all in the mind. Keep it supple Read decent books, Keep up with current affairs, Above all, stay out of the Obituaries. Try a craft beer Discuss our family less Let them come to us. I’m not that fond of them. You get on with our kids, I never really did. I’m glad they’re not In our faces. They put a halt on us, I know you disagree. We were too young. We had Things to do That we never did and won’t do now.
Beneath you is the swollen city, markets and the plenaries of feral cats, their siestas under siege from cops with eyeshades up and windows down tooling around in old Buicks. There’s a whiff of stock footage about it – sex on the breath of my first lover from the interior. After light rain, elms take a stand in a foreign park. They spread their arms, raise lantern blossom against purple incoming. The years have issued a new print of our one film, which I watch daily, never mind the slow wow you suffer in playback, tailback, fanning out.
The trouble was it overwhelmed the land, The glistening waters gobbled everything, Not drowned, but living, everything: the grand, The not-so-grand, all thriving in the swing Of tails writhing, eager to be free, Each to its own expression and distinct, But indistinct; so many flapping, we Could only feel the force of them, all linked Into a swimming mass in one great surge Of different textures, different shades and skins. It left us thinking: what here would emerge With all this foaming madness, widdershins, Let loose by floodgates. Could we understand The trouble that had overwhelmed the land?
So much steam and shafts of sooty light. The porters look like Laurel and Hardy and I like the train driver’s leathery smell, the glow of hot coals, the crowded platforms. Our mums and dads are on the move, escaping wars, seeking lost weekends, travelling somewhere sad along with the dead. When I blink whole epochs are shunted off. On the holiday special where I once sat there’s a dazed aged man. He’s looking lost as landscapes hurtle past. All those hills and fields and cows on stilts. No wonder his mind is never at rest. Perhaps an old Punch and Judy Show still waits, as promised, at the very next stop?
Earth’s moon is never new, There’s no replacing her. Either you see all her wintered face Or she sends scraps Through bandages of shade. She doesn’t want your talk Assuaging, failing to assuage, Only your sleepless eyes As she gropes her way Across the cobbled stars, Clutches at sun To heal her secret hurt. She has too much to carry, Sees too far beyond our suburb To be happy exactly. She’s the sort of wreck Who knows what it may cost To unshape this abyss, Its quarterless dark, To get where we must go From where we are.
He’s riding a white horse. I was going to say he was riding into the forest. It’s more like a wood, a large wood with sycamore trees and silver birch and if you look you can see a Weeping Willow. There are deer in the undergrowth watching carefully and there are a lot of small animals. He’s talking to the horse and patting its neck. There’s no one else around and the wood has a beguiling music. The horse breaks into a canter. Rabbits listen and twitch. An oyster catcher flies overhead. And coming into view a long-winged buzzard. The horse slows and steps into the river – He’s a good horse, my brother’s a good horseman.
Or when their arms their legs their hands their clumps of feet entangled and she asks which of them belong to her and he murmurs Be patient.
She appears in the window. She appears to be watering the plant. I need to be in your hair he whispers into her ear. His tongue drains the room of light pitched with the fever of is there someone else is there is there In his voice she can hear a leaf loosening from its stem. Around him begins to lose its colour. His jersey slung across the back of a chair the photograph Blu-tacked to the wall of he and she locked arm in arm and on the table those cheerless chicken wings flailing in their marinade. Let’s get take-away she says. I need to be in your hair.