Poems

One day a man forgets a sea, a continent, a planet he forgets the features on his father’s face the prints of his own hand he forgets the flash of his eyes in another’s and the sound of water in his head he forgets the timbre of his own voice and the noise of his dreams that wakens everyone, but him he forgets the suit and the house he lived in the street and the city that forgot him forgets love, revelations, death: the mirror that no longer redeems his image A man will forget himself one day forget he has forgotten.

after Humphrey Spender’s ‘Dominoes’ Near as dammit to Orwell’s ideal, this,or at least his pub’s essential qualities:no radio or piano; the quiet blissof talk and its vital communality;good honest beer; uncompromisinglyVictorian in its architecture;tobacco smoke like a light fog on the sea.These barmaids know each Bolton regularby name. A southern foreigner, Spenderfelt out of place in worktown’s dark-bricked streetsbut found an everyday poetry here:his photographs candid, unfussy, discreet.Take this domino game between working men:each making their move, until they start again.

Do you remember the feelingof how things appearedwhen you went home earlyfrom school, alone? I had a sense ofthis is how the world iswhen I’m not in it. Hedges and houses seemed new –more themselves, differentto 7.20 hedges, and home-time houses,as though they weren’t expecting me back so soon. Brick and leafbreathed, or seemed tofill their molecules more easily,at ease with each other. I would wonder, withoutthe words to wonder:we are all former friends, one bodyof space dust, mingling. I walked the seven minutes or so,from bus stop to door,through the still village,marking off milestones: here’s the church clock face,the pub, the friendly horsecoming up to the fence and a dog bark or birdsongwould announce themselvesas the main playersin our place.

11 April 1876, Hobart, Tasmania – There is but one survivor of the Tasmanian race still alive, her name is Mrs or Queen Truccanine, she lives here ‘en famille’, the kind people who have taken her under their protection for some years get a government grant of £60 to help defray the expenses of her keep. I believe it’s a common practice of visitors to go and inspect her, but we didn’t know till we had left & she kicked the bucket a fortnight after. (From the journal of Victor Emmanuel Smyth) Can I describe her, whose voice is so long gone  whose language is remaindered in the wind whose mother British sailors stabbed to death whose sisters were enslaved and sold for sex   whose uncle British soldiers shot.

after Humphrey Spender’s ‘Scout Parade’ Each day has its care, but each care has its day a proverb proclaims from a church billboard as a scout parade files through its archway. Half these young men look solemn, half bored, caught between the effort and the reward of endeavour; the same way today they’d seek out their tribe online, feeling ignored by institutions twenty times as staid, committed to doctrines wholly displayed. Or choose to look again: see uncertain boys finding their way; how for all the charade community is less brick-heavy burden than the self’s solid foundations, come what may: each day has its care, but each care has its day.

An island is one great eye gazing out the poet once said, an image I like  for its stubbornness, solitude’s drought holding firm before the garrulous strike of water’s insistence. Say you hike the fell of yourself to this clear summit, become its focused pupil, childlike to rediscover the wholly private needn’t mean the selfish or desolate. Night blurs, as fields of waves far around vanish, replaced by clear-eyed planets and stars opened to all without a sound. Lie down, till down is up and up down, you’ll find yourself verb instead of noun.

A friend of mine from college days once told me his greatest pleasure was cooking a meal and then dropping it on the floor. He’d dropped every kind of dish in his time from lasagna and stew to a full roast. What seemed to excite him most was the moment before the plate of food actually hit the floor and was in mid-air. He invited me round for supper once, but I said ‘What’s the  point it’ll end up on the floor.’ ‘It might not’ he said ‘it depends what mood I’m in and anyway you can enjoy the smell of it cooking.

When you are sad, and imminently grey, Will you take down my poems and say ‘That bastard took and took and took From me, for the sake of his lousy book’ —And have me, who am truly old and grey Terribly in handcuffs taken away?

scaturiginichthys vermeilipinnis One day do IMeet the Red-finned Blue-eye?Everybody said IMet the White-finned Red-eyeAnd folks say in town IWooed the Blue-finned Brown-eyeBut did I or do IMeet the Red-finned Blue-eye? In another place and time IKnew the Jade-finned Lime-eyeAnd dark rumours hold ISought the Black-finned Gold-eye,I’m willing to suppose ISquired the Green-finned Rose-eye,But, anybody, do I,Meet the Red-finned Blue-eye? Historians will say IWed the Mauve-finned Grey-eye,In a wild waking dream IFace the Plum-finned Cream-eye,Therapists all think IMean the Jet-finned Pink-eyeBut none will ever know IMet the No-finned No-eyeIn the mirror crying Do I,Do I?

His eyes brim with the patience of his vigil. Time hangs like heavy pendants from his ears. His dewlap spreads like some contorted hill Of larva, frozen for a thousand years.  He will lie here quite motionless until The door is opened, and the man appears. And when the man appears, the waiting dog Will leap, and bark, and sniff, and thrash his tail, Delirious with happiness, agog That life continues, and will flail Like porpoises and wrap himself like fog Around his master’s legs, and howl and wail. The man, recalling how he’s spent his day, May simply touch his head, and walk away.

Beneath the towering oils of holy deaths — Cascading thunderstorms of crucifixion, Hands tortured into final benediction, Forgiveness in so many final breaths — They stand, a little dull, a little pale, A little worn by all the years of prayer, As if the hopes still hanging in the air Had left them strangely tired and sad and stale — The painted saints of plaster, wood and stone, So far beyond our grasping human reach, With nothing but their wordlessness to preach What lies beyond all breath and bone. They teach us in so many silent ways — A missing hand, a still uplifted gaze.

not just in the stretched sunsets and ticking clocks of poets but in the microwave – those four insistent bleeps Pachelbel’s Canon the word ‘lachrymose’ having to google the word lachrymose and the breathless stop when you spot                         what could be a new mole on your back or hear the guy who voiced your favourite cartoon                                                     &.

Among late summer’s casualties, their dry retreats, their whispering  in falls and drifting piles of leaves, her going went the worst for him with foxgloves where wire fencing sags, a sozzled hollyhock’s nosedive, the foxes’ feast of ripped bin bags anemones somehow survive; entangled heaps of splintered canes, their broken-backed tomato plants and, rattled by what heat remains, a poppy head’s ghost of a chance   that she might, with no more to save from his neglect than spores and seeds, steal back in March to nod and wave red-handed through next summer’s weeds.