In The Poetry

Still Falls the Rain
(The Raids, 1940, Night and Dawn)

Still falls the Rain -
Dark as the world of man, black as our loss -
Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails
Upon the Cross

Still falls the Rain
With a sound like the pulse of the heart that is changed to the hammer-beat
In the Potter’s Field, and the sound of the impious feet

On the Tomb:
Still falls the rain
In the Field of Blood where the small hopes breed and the human brain
Nurtures its greed, that worm with the brow of Cain.

Still falls the Rain
At the feet of the Starved Man hung upon the Cross.
Christ that each day, each night, nails there
have mercy on us -
On Dives and on Lazarus:
Under the Rain the sore and the gold are as one.

Still falls the Rain-
Still falls the Blood from the Starved Man’s wounded Side:
He bears in His Heart all wounds – those of the light that died
The last faint spark
In the self-murdered heart, the wounds of the sad, uncomprehending dark,
The wounds of the baited bear -
The blind and weeping bear whom the keepers beat
On his helpless flesh… the tears of the hunted hare.

Still falls the Rain -
Then – O Ile leape up to my God: who pulles me doune -
See, see where Christ’s blood streames in the firmament:
It flows from the Brow we nailed upon the tree
Deep to the dying, to the thirsting heart
That holds the fires of the world – dark-smirched with pain
As Caesar’s laurel crown.

Then sounds the voice of One who like the heart of man
Was once a child who among beasts has lain -
‘Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my Blood for thee’.

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 moonlight
underneath the guangu tree
and a spider web of magic
all round we.

Granny say,
‘Only de best fe de gran’children,
it don’ matter what de price,
don’t want no one pointin’ finger.’

Granny nice.

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 that I might do something with it. And then I wrote a poem which took a different direction entirely.

Hotel Emergencies

The fire alarm sound: is given as a howling sound. Do not use the lifts. The optimism sound: is given as the sound of a man brushing his teeth. Do not go to bed. The respectability sound: is given as a familiar honking sound. Do not run, do not sing. The dearly-departed sound: is given as a rumble in the bones. Do not enter the coffin. The afterlife sound: is given as the music of the spheres. It will not reconstruct. The bordello sound: is given as a small child screaming. Do not turn on the light. The accident sound: is given as an ambulance sound. You can hear it coming closer, do not crowd the footpaths. The execution sound: is given as the sound of prayer. Oh be caution, do not stand too near

or you will surely hear: the machinegun sound, the weeping mother sound, the agony sound, the dying child sound: whose voice is already drowned by the approaching helicopter sound: which is given as the dead flower sound, the warlord sound, the hunting and fleeing and clattering sound, the amputation sound, the bloodbath sound, the sound of the President quietly addressing his dinner; now he places his knife and fork together (a polite and tidy sound) before addressing the nation

and making a just and necessary war sound: which is given as a freedom sound (do not cherish memory): which is given as a security sound: which is given as a prisoner sound: which is given again as a war sound: which is a torture sound and a watchtower sound and a firing sound: which is given as a Timor sound: which is given as a decapitation sound (do not think you will not gasp tomorrow): which is given as a Darfur sound: which is given as a Dachau sound: which is given as a dry river-bed sound, as a wind in the poplars sound: which is given again as an angry god sound:

which is here as a Muslim sound: which is here as a Christian sound: which is here as a Jewish sound: which is here as a merciful god sound: which is here as a praying sound: which is here as a kneeling sound: which is here as a scripture sound: which is here as a black-wing sound: as a dark-cloud sound: as a black-ash sound: which is given as a howling sound: which is given as a fire alarm sound:

which is given late at night, calling you from your bed (do not use the lifts): which is given as a burning sound, no, as a human sound, as a heartbeat sound: which is given as a sound beyond sound: which is given as the sound of many weeping: which is given as an entirely familiar sound, a sound like no other, up there high in the smoke above the stars.

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…

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 bank,
and yet I think of him, on nights like these,
waking alone in my own house, my other neighbours
quiet in their beds, like drowsing flies.

He watches what I watch, tastes what I taste:
on winter nights, the snow; in summer, sky.
He listens for the bird lines in the clouds
and, like that ghost companion in the old
explorers’ tales, that phantom in the sleet,
fifth in a party of four, he’s not quite there,
but not quite inexistent, nonetheless;

and when he lays his book down, checks the hour
and fills a kettle, something hooded stops
as cell by cell, a heartbeat at a time,
my one good neighbour sets himself aside,
and alters into someone I have known:
a passing stranger on the road to grief,
husband and father; rich man; poor man; thief.

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 of my britches,

My feet crackling splinters of glass and dried putty,
The half-grown chrysanthemums staring up like accusers,

Up through the streaked glass, flashing with sunlight,

A few white clouds all rushing eastward,

A line of elms plunging and tossing like horses,

And everyone, everyone pointing up and shouting!

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 I kept in a bowl
passed away with old age.
Mum wrapped him in a newspaper
and we buried him next to a rose bush.
I didn’t cry,
but felt sad inside.

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

My cat lay stiff in a shoebox
after being hit by a car.
Dad dug a hole and we buried her
under the apple tree.
I didn’t cry,
but felt very sad inside.

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

And when she died
I went to the funeral
with relations dressed in black.
They cried, and so did I.
Salty tears ran down my face.
Oh, how I cried.

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

She was buried in a graveyard
and even the sky wept that day.
Rain fell and fell and fell
and thunder sobbed far away across the town.
I cried
and I cried.

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

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 in our sleep, or
are they washed away in pieces, cheek by brow by chin,
in the steady abrasions of the solar shower?
Draw first breath, and time turns on its taps.
No wonder the newborn’s tiny face crinkles and cries:
chill, then a sharp collision with light,
the mouth’s desperation for the foreign nipple,
all the uses of eyes, ears, hands still to be learned
before the self pulls away in its skin-tight sphere
to endure on its own the tectonic geology of childhood.

Imagine in space-time irretrievable mothers viewing
the pensioners their babies have become.
“Well, that’s life, nothing we can do about it now.”
They don’t love us as much as they did, and
why should they? We have replaced them. Just as we’re
being replaced by big sassy kids in school blazers.
Meanwhile, Federal Express has delivered my sixth face -
grandmother’s, scraps of me grafted to her bones.
I don’t believe it. Who made this mess,
this developer’s sprawl of roads that can’t be retaken,
high tension wires that run dangerously under the skin?
What is it the sceptical eyes are saying to the twisted lips:
ambition is a clich

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 smelling of vomit,
infested, emaciated, their skins grey
with travel; as they step on shore

the old countries recede, become
perfect, thumbnail castles preserved
like gallstones in a glass bottle, the
towns dwindle upon the hillsides
in a light paperweight-clear.

They carry their carpetbags and trunks
with clothes, dishes, the family pictures;
they think they will make an order
like the old one, sow miniature orchards,
carve children and flocks out of wood

but always they are too poor, the sky
is flat, the green fruit shrivels
in the prairie sun, wood is for burning;
and if they go back, the towns

in time have crumbled, their tongues
stumble among awkward teeth, their ears
are filled with the sound of breaking glass.
I wish I could forget them
and so forget myself:

my mind is a wide pink map
across which move year after year
arrows and dotted lines, further and further,
people in railway cars

their heads stuck out of the windows
at stations, drinking milk or singing,
their features hidden with beards or shawls
day and night riding across an ocean of unknown
land to an unknown land.