Poems

take this moment beside the rapids, where sunlight clips the old weir wall, knowing itself to be only a faint replica of sunlight, not the sort found in other places, like Pisa or Nairobi, but without undue dismay at its shortcomings andinvisibly corpsing, here and there, as only the old style comics knew how, with little, hiccupy giggles incorporated seamlessly into their acts, which is what this bit of sun does out of glee, perhaps or relief to find itself; watery— yes, ravaged — sure, but hitting the black waters soundly and giddy with it. Going nowhere fast.

All it takes is an Alice moment ducking my head to go down the passageinto house number seven and my huswif’s eye takes overapproves the stone dresser(not much dusting), the handy storage cells,the fit and bulk of the front door’s slab,the mattress of bracken, the sheepskin rugs.And outside a neighbourly village of six tidy middens, some barley fieldsand the Bay of Skaill spread in blue welcome.   I’ll take it. Move in yesterday.

They do not walk the world, our fragile dead:They do not stalk our streets or pace our floors; They do not stand behind unopened doors, Rehearsing all the words that went unsaid.They cannot walk our world as we would walk:They cannot choose to see a much-missed place, They cannot choose to see a much-loved face; They cannot seek a quiet spot to talk.And so we have to walk the world for them:We have to seek the sacred places out,To pace the lonely ways of loss and doubt, And stumble clumsily to Bethlehem.But sometimes on that road, they’ll take our hand,And squeeze our palm to say, ‘I understand’.

(i.m. Marie Colvin, 1956-2012)   All autumn, the chafe and jarof nuclear war     — Robert Lowell, ‘Fall 1961’     My father, who’d had‘about as much as he could take’by ’44, and still wokeswearing at flies and soaked in sweat,   read the Telegraphin dread and disbeliefover his first cigarette,narrowing his eyes against the scroll of smoke...   Only half-awake,dreaming a bitter,penitential cupof coffee, we squintat a screen instead of print,   swipe throughand see plump child-men jerked by the strings of Twitter,their sad posturings   that could turn us to smokebefore we can even laugh. A father’s no shieldfor his child – nor a husband for his wife...

Our honeymoon weavedfrom Hampton Court to the pavementlabyrinth of Chartres, then on tothe high hedged puzzle of the Villa Pisani,where he delighted in my wrong-footedconfusion. All the while his notebookoverflowing with looped alleys, abruptdead ends, sly, coiling traps. Back homeI soon came to feel the practiceof his art, no day complete withouta fresh pattern of deception, cursed myselfeach time he led me up the garden path,for not seeing the straight and narrowwould never be enough.

The heatwaves that would have filledmy tubs and cones never came.‘O sole mio’ falling flat as I drovethrough my hard fought for patchon the outskirts of Aldershot.The Whitby Morrison will have to go,it won’t fetch much, mouths to feed,another on the way and barely enoughto stretch to a penny lick. The collapseddream of a gelato empire with parloursof chrome and glass, has brought an arcticcoldness to my other half, nothing I door say will thaw her now, it would takean ice pick to reach her heart.

Like regrets drifting through consciousness,They glide through the streets of our cities,Untouchably themselves,Silently intent on their purpose,Counting eternities with each corner they turn.Belonging to no time or place,They appear in our hearts,Offering up the flowers we never sentAnd the words we never spoke,Only to disappear once moreInto the great flow of lifeAnd the great flow of death.I wonder what obsequiesAre spoken over themWhen they at lastReach the end of their own road,These discreet and faithful guardiansOf all that we have failed to be?

Regent’s Park, November   I pick a tree, from all those rows,ruggedly gesturing, voiceless,braced for the fall of shaming snows,a captive in its stark undress.   At my feet the thousand-piecespuzzle in countless shades of brownattests to a handful of specieswhose leaves the recent winds brought down:   English oak, sycamore and plane,dropped from nearby if not above,plus singletons a whispering campaignseems to have carried from some grove-   cum-library of rumours from afar –silver maple, pin oak, liquidambar.

Often it disappears – from hotels, harbours, airport carousels… but always it comes back to him.   Trusting in the umbilical dance of instrument and player he stays calm in its absence.   Amongst the cosmic flotsam orbiting Earth this minute There! Tauseef’s harmonium.   On the sea bed, flexing its gills for ghazal-hungry shoals Listen! Tauseef’s harmonium…   sometimes for years until, missing his voice on the air, it plunges through the atmosphere   or, surfacing back to the light, steals in on the tide’s concertina to appear at Tauseef’s paddling feet –   a child’s shadow through frosted glass after all hope has been lost.

The year after my brother died,I was out on my threadbare Vespain countryside south of Bradford.The day was warm and blue;I let myself get lost, turn by turn,until I rode solo along the lanes.Low, overhead of me, a plane flewwith a single propeller,its undercarriage painted cloud-like:its span the shape of a Spitfire,or other kin from boyhood books.I stopped in the road,cut the engine, and took off my helmet;and heard it made no sound.I was untethered in those yearsby grief that made my life unreal.I stood and beckoned to this ghost.