In The Poetry

Granny Is

Granny is
fried dumplin’ an’ run-dung,
coconut drops an’ grater cake,
fresh ground coffee smell in the mornin’
when we wake.

Granny is
loadin’ up the donkey,
basket full on market day
with fresh snapper the fishermen bring back
from the bay.

Granny is
clothes washin’ in the river
scrubbin’ dirt out on the stone
haulin’ crayfish an’ eel from the water
on her own.

Granny is
stories in the [...]

In 2004 I stayed in a hotel in Copenhagen for a weekend, and the emergency sign on the wall – in almost-perfect English – went, “The fire alarm sound – colon – is given as a howling sound. Do not use the lifts.” and I wrote this down thinking it was faintly amusing, and [...]

Incident at Grantley Manor

Seven o’clock, the time set in his mind
Like herbs displayed in aspic, as the chimes
Were striking. Then the squeaking of his shoes’

Black leather tread, pacing those measures down
The first-floor hall, where sunset’s apricot
Was oozing nectar through the open doors.

Her voice, conspiratorial and astonished,
Called him across the bedroom’s drowning cube
Towards the window. How [...]

Later

Later. I look out at the moon.
I lived here once.
I remember the song.

Later. No sound here.
Moon on linoleum.
A child frowning.

Later. A voice singing.
I open the back door.
I lived here once.

Later. I open the back door
Light gone. Dead trees.
Dead linoleum. Later.

Later. Blackness moving very fast.
Blackness fatly.
I live here now.

1974

The Good Neighbour

Somewhere along this street, unknown to me,
behind a maze of apple trees and stars,
he rises in the small hours, finds a book
and settles at a window or a desk
to see the morning in, alone for once,
unnamed, unburdened, happy in himself.

I don’t know who he is; I’ve never met him
walking to the fish-house, or [...]

The second book had to do with some ‘Prelude’ poems about a greenhouse that I grew up around. That’s a metaphor – I mean my unconscous is going to be (?) It’s terribly labyrinthine the whole process. One called ‘Child on Top of a Greenhouse’.

Child on Top of a Greenhouse

The wind billowing out the seat [...]

Here we have a sad poem that records the time I went to my Grandma’s funeral.

Until Gran Died

The minnows I caught
lived for a few days in a jar
then floated side-up on the surface.
We buried them beneath the hedge.
I didn’t cry,
but felt sad inside.

I thought
I could deal with funerals
that is
until Gran died.

The goldfish [...]

Another poem, really about aging. It’s called ‘Who’s Joking with the Photographer? Photographs of Myself Approaching Seventy”

Not my final face, a map of how to get there.
Seven ages, seven irreversible layers, each
subtler and more supple than a snake’s skin.
Nobody looks surprised when we slough off one
and begin to inhabit another.
Do we exchange them whole [...]

The Immigrants

They are allowed to inherit
the sidewalks involved as palmlines, bricks
exhausted and soft, the deep
lawnsmells, orchards whorled
to the land’s contours, the inflected weather

only to be told they are too poor
to keep it up, or someone
has noticed and wants to kill them; or the towns
pass laws which declare them obsolete.

I see them coming
up from the hold [...]

‘From his Childhood’ is a fantasy about a severe governess or nanny remembered from somebody’s early years. A woman full of moral maxims and stern instructions and her influence is destructive though the storyteller has eventually grown out of her. She is not my own nanny or governess – I had no such thing – [...]