In The Poetry

This poem is about two old blue Witney blankets which were the blankets on my bed when I was a child, and I didn’t see them for decades. I left home, had my life etcetera, then, when I was clearing out my family’s house after the deaths of my parents, I found these same two blankets and I took them home, and I now use them again, and they inspired this poem.

Blankets

The stuffy ground-floor bedroom
at the back of our flat. The bed,
covered with blue Witney blankets
bound with paler blue velvet.

Measles, scarlet fever,
influenza, whooping cough.
The night I tripped over the oilstove
Mother lit to warm the bathroom.

From hip to heel, burning
paraffin splashed. Weeks in bed
under a sort of cradle made
to hold the weight of the blankets off.

Bunches of flowers, orange and red,
climbed the faded papered walls
up to the ceiling. My eyes rolled back
in their sockets, counting the nosegays.

Nightmares under the blankets.
Like sodden tufts of moss
bulging virulently green,
mounting the window ledge

and oozing through the open gap,
sooty spores clogging my
nostrils and mouth, the touch
of velvet would make me scream.

I still sleep under those blankets
(their velvet binding rubbed bare)
the self-same ones I pulled around
my shoulders and hid beneath:

now potent and dangerous
as plague-infected blankets thrown
over the walls of a city besieged,
or exchanged for the sacred land

of people with no more immunity
to the pathogens they carried, than I
to the fevers of memory in the folds
and the weave of these old blue blankets.

This poem tries to put down on paper another aspect of childhood and it’s eating things and drinking and smelling and hearing and all that.

Childhood Tracks

Eating crisp fried fish with plain bread.
Eating sheared ice made into ‘snowball’
with syrup in a glass.
Eating young jelly-coconut, mixed
with village-made wet sugar.
Drinking cool water from a calabash gourd
on worked land in the hills.

Smelling a patch of fermenting pineapples
in stillness of hot sunlight.
Smelling mixed whiffs of fish, mango, coffee,
mint, hanging in a market.
Smelling sweaty padding lifted off a donkey’s back.

Hearing a nightingale in song
in moonlight and sea-sound.
Hearing dawn-crowing of cocks, in answer
to others around the village.
Hearing the laughter
of barefeet children carrying water.
Hearing a distant braying of a donkey
in a silent hot afternoon.
Hearing palmtrees’ leaves rattle
on and on at Christmas time.

Seeing a woman walking in loose floral frock.
Seeing a village workman with bag and machete
under a tree, resting, sweat-washed.
Seeing a tangled land-piece of banana trees
with goats in shades cud-chewing.
Seeing a coil of plaited tobacco
like rope, sold, going in bits.
Seeing children playing in schoolyard
between palm and almond trees.
Seeing children toy-making in a yard
while slants of evening sunlight slowly disappear.
Seeing an evening’s dusky hour lit up
by dotted lamplight.
Seeing fishing nets repaired between canoes.

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 well Miss Waterson

Remembers it: “Please come and look at this,
Mr Devine;” the clock on the mantelpiece
Rehearsing for the hour of seven. She pointed

Down. There, a moving picture on the lawn,
His father, like a patient whose long months
Of immobility meant learning afresh

The art of walking, climbing the light’s green slope
Towards the summer house, looking intently
As though for a cuff link or a signature.

That evening he still thinks of, lying now,
No longer needing lessons for his legs,
How he cast back his glance and saw the windows

Blazing like cats’ eyes on his uselessness,
And in that golden mirror, two gold figures
Recording him, two shadows of dark gold-

Miss Waterson (was it?) and another one-
And then took out his watch on which the hands
Were so meticulously assembling seven.

Young Emily, appointed just the week
Before, came rushing to the stairs-she’d seen
Him stumble-to advise Mr Devine

About his father’s fall. And so, almost
Immobilized herself in that clinging syrup,
She observed the hall clock’s quaint rendition of

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

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

Her voice, companionable but astonished,
Floated across the bedroom’s drowning cube
As he descended. How well Miss Waterson

Remembers it: “Please come and look at this;”
And Emily, who had just been taken on
That week, came rushing to the window. She pointed

Down, smartly on the stroke of seven. There,
A moving picture on the lawn, was old
Mr Devine, like a patient whose long months

Of immobility meant learning afresh
The art of walking, climbing the light’s green slope
Abstractedly towards the rose garden.

That evening he still thinks of, lying now,
No longer needing lessons for his legs,
How he cast back his glance and saw the windows

Glaring like cats’ eyes on his helplessness,
And in that golden mirror, two gold figures
Gesticulating, two shadows of dark gold-

The new girl (was it?) and another one-
And then took out his watch on which the hands
Were so laboriously assembling seven.

Miss Waterson, with Emily behind her
In a panic, dashed to the stairs to find
Mr Devine, anxious to let him know

About his father’s fall. And there they saw him,
Almost immobile in that clinging syrup,
And heard the hall clock’s muffled tolling of

Seven, the time set firmly in his mind…

‘The Meaning of Life’ is about Yorkshire dialect poetry and the fact that it’s not meant to be able to carry very big meanings, and it’s also complete nonsense. Unless you read it very carefully.

The Meaning of Life

(A Yorkshire Dialect Rhapsody)

From under’t canal like a watter-filled cellar
coming up like a pitman from a double’un, twice,
I said “Hey, you’re looking poorly”
He said “Them nights are drawing in”

Down’t stairs like a gob-machine, sucking toffees,
up a ladder like a ferret up a ladder in a fog,
I said “Hey, you’re looking poorly”
He said “Half-a-dozen eggs”

Over’t top in’t double-decker groaning like a whippet
like a lamplighter’s daughter in a barrel full of milk,
I said “Hey, you’re looking poorly”
He said “Night’s a dozen eggs”

Down’t canal like a barrow full of Gillis’s parsnips,
coming up like a cage of men in lit-up shiny hats,
I said “Hey, you’re looking poorly”
He said “Half a dozen nights”

Under’t canal on a pushbike glowing like an eggshell
up a ladder wi’ a pigeon and a brokken neck,
I said “Hey, you’re looking poorly”
He said “I feel like half-a-dozen eggs”

Over’t night on a shiny bike wi’ a lit-up hat,
perfect for’t poorly wi’ heads like eggs,
I said “Hey, you died last week”
He said “Aye, did you miss me?”

Each Happiness Ringed By Lions

Sometimes when
I take you into my body
I can almost see them – patient, circling.
Almost glimpse the moving shadow of the tail,
almost hear the hushed pad of retracted claws.
It is the moment – of this I am certain -
when they themselves are least sure.
It is the moment they could almost let us go free.

‘There are two literary quartets alluded to is this poem. There’s a quotation from the Alexanndra Quartet, and a quotation from T.S. Eliot’

Attitudes of Prayer

After Beethoven, Quartet in C sharp minor, Op 131

One hundred and thirty-one approaches
to the problem of God.
Imagine it:
over and over
rehearsing what you don’t know,
soundlessly.

Letting yourself transcribe
what no-one’s said before -
in your greatcoat,
in the freezing study
where you take bitter tobacco and coffee.

Occasionally, through the pall of tinnitus, hearing -
what?

I feel as if heaven lay close upon the earth
and I between them both,
breathing through the eye of a needle.

Early December.
Grey on grey, grey annealing grey,

except light, catching the high
notes of a fiddle
(quick quick said the bird):
Your breath
like smoke on the window.

*

Light glints on a door-handle,
draws parallels on the carpet.

When you were a child
those voices in another room seemed far off.

Under the covers, in darkness
you drew your knees up to your chin.

Lamplight on skin, on a polished table:
laughter lit up your mother’s voice.

It made you think of honey;
slipped away
like the muntjac you see sometimes
browsing beyond the Service Station –

half-dog, half-deer,
caught on pause
before neutral pathways catch
and it flickers off
like something you can almost taste

but are afraid to;
let slip
into shadows and trees.

*

Light against dark. The way you remember Nazereth -
the cave house
in the basement of its hanger-church

and the meal at a long table,
where the light from arched windows
was white
and absolute

each dish – a basket of pitta, long-leaved lettuce,
pastel swirls of hummus and tahini -
clear as a still life.

‘Incident on a Holiday’ features the words forming the title of my 2001 book, The Cat Without E-Mail – the point made here is that human beings might be controllable by technology but animals like the cat and natural phenomena like fire are more elusive.

Incident on a Holiday

The cat between the tables is not worth attention,
But the most of us is closed in plastic now,
Magnetic so we stick to their powerful fingers.
I have to swipe to be a citizen.
I have to stand still while they target me.

Though one night on a coast of this vast and
Increasing inattention, a disco selling
Illusions to themselves for a sizable profit
Goes up in flames in the small hours
- A blaze of interest on the coast opposite.

In this hinterland, however, no one explains it,
Not even the backstreet barber, the big
Conspiracy theorist, who avoids my eyes
In his pocked mirror; or the extrovert licensee
Working faster but very quietly, mopping his bar;

Not even the check-out girl taking one by one
The grapefruit rolled down in a ritual
To break the boredom of her dreadful day
And start her chatting – she doesn’t as much as smile
When I ask her, ‘Who would trash a lovely disco?’

- And claim the insurance on all the pretty dreams?
What sort of destructive decency? There was
No cc-tv watching, no bar code beeped
When some unpoliced fingers scratched the match into flame.
And now there is a gap in the esplanade…

Though otherwise things go on pretty much the same:
The barber thanks me and tells me to Take Care,
The licensee puts my drink down – ‘There you go!’ -
The waters eject our pollution onto our shores,
And the cat, without e-mail, susses the customers

In the Sea Caf

A poem can’t take the place of a plum or an apple, but just as a painting can re-create by illusion the dimension it loses by being confined to canvas, so a poem, by its own system of illusions, can set up a rich and apparently living world within its particular limits. Most of the poems I’m going to introduce in the next minutes attempt to re-create, in their own way, definite situations and landscapes. They are, quite emphatically, about the things of this world. When I say ‘this world’, I include, of course, such feelings as fear and despair and barrenness, as well as domestic love and delight in nature. These darker emotions may put on the masks of quite unworldly things such as ghosts or trolls or antique gods.

I imagine the landscape of Parliament Hill Fields in London seen by a person overwhelmed by an emotion so powerful as to colour and distort the scenery. The speaker here is caught between the old and the new year, between the grief caused by the loss of a child and the joy aroused by the knowledge of an only child safe at home. Gradually the first images of blankness and absence give way to images of convalescence and healing as the woman turns, a bit stiffly and with difficulty, from her sense of bereavement to the vital and demanding part of her world which still survives.

Parliament Hill Fields

On this bald hill the new year hones its edge.

Faceless and pale as china

The round sky goes on minding its business.

Your absence is inconspicuous;

Nobody can tell what I lack.

Gulls have threaded the river’s mud bed back

To this crest of grass. Inland, they argue,

Settling and stirring like blown paper
Or the hands of an invalid. The wan
Sun manages to strike such tin glints

From the linked ponds that my eyes wince

And brim; the city melts like sugar.

A crocodile of small girls
Knotting and stopping, ill-assorted, in blue uniforms,

Opens to swallow me. I’m a stone, a stick,

One child drops a barrette of pink plastic;

None of them seem to notice.

Their shrill, gravelly gossip’s funneled off.

Now silence after silence offers itself.

The wind stops my breath like a bandage.

Southward, over Kentish Town, an ashen smudge

Swaddles roof and tree.

It could be a snowfield or a cloudbank.

I suppose it’s pointless to think of you at all.

Already your doll grip lets go.

The tumulus, even at noon, guards its black shadow:

You know me less constant,

Ghost of a leaf, ghost of a bird.

I circle the writhen trees. I am too happy.

These faithful dark-boughed cypresses

Brood, rooted in their heaped losses.

Your cry fades like the cry of a gnat.

I lose sight of you on your blind journey,

While the heath grass glitters and the spindling rivulets

Unspool and spend themselves. My mind runs with them,

Pooling in heel-prints, fumbling pebble and stem.

The day empties its images
Like a cup or a room. The moon’s crook whitens,

Thin as the skin seaming a scar.

Now, on the nursery wall,

The blue night plants, the little pale blue hill

In your sister’s birthday picture start to glow.

The orange pompons, the Egyptian papyrus

Light up. Each rabbit-eared
Blue shrub behind the glass

Exhales an indigo nimbus,

A sort of cellophane balloon.

The old dregs, the old difficulties take me to wife.

Gulls stiffen to their chill vigil in the drafty half-light;

I enter the lit house.

This is called ‘Door in the Mountain.’ It’s a dream poem.

Door in the Mountain

Never ran this hard through the valley
never ate so many stars

I was carrying a dead deer
tied on to my neck and shoulders

deer legs hanging in front of me
heavy on my chest

People are not wanting
to let me in

Door in the mountain
let me in