Collected Poems

by Peter Redgrove

  To pass by a pondbrink

  Trodden by horses

  Where among the green horsetails

  Even the hoofprints

  Shiver with tadpoles

  Comma’ed with offspring

  And moist buds flick awake

  On breeze-floundering sallows.

  II EPHEMERID

  The fly is yellowed by the sun,

  Her plating heaves, her wings hum,

  Her eyes are cobbled like a road,

  Her job is done, her eggs are stowed

  No matter in what. The sun

  Yellows the hemlock she sits upon;

  Her death is near, her job is done,

  Paddling in pollen and the sun,

  She swings upon the white-flowered weed,

  As a last duty, yellow with seed,

  She falters round the flower-rim,

  Falters around the flower-rim.

  I STROLL

  My grey-barked trees wave me in

  In my stout double-breasted with the buttons winking,

  Shirt blue as the thistle-heads, grey-barked stick

  To swing great circles on the morning

  And eyes glistening green as the pool.

  The dog leaves thundering as I glance at him;

  I beam back at the sun, my hair is grey as gossamer;

  The bird-shadows hunt like rats through the grass.

  A cobweb plashes my face

  And plucks a frown from my nature, but that will pass.

  My trees, grey-barked, waft me in …

  But the holly, stiff as carving, lashes my hand –

  Lèse-majesté – I flick the blood-drop at its roots and listen to it wither

  Like tissue-paper from my path.

  My trees draw back and bristle as I enter the open space,

  Dog growls because the couples do not rise,

  But I motion silence, and walk among them considering offspring,

  And the sun hides his face:

  They shall have a boy, and those a statesman,

  That one will miscarry, and that die in infancy,

  A whore for the blond ones, and a centenarian under the hedge,

  And no issue for the one that lies on his side and sneers at his partner;

  I finish, and the sun ducks out of hiding …

  As I stroll among my human creation

  In my park along my walks, disguised,

  Waggling my fat caterpillar-eyebrows,

  Evening mist-tides hissing past my brogues.

  DISGUISE

  Coat over arm I step off the moss-silenced stairs

  On to thick turf that drains noise

  And makes the heaviest walk like shadows; I

  Have fat that hangs over me like heavy clothes

  In wet sobbing creases, and I dash the sweat away like flies.

  What do the people around see besides?

  A young head, small and bony, smooth and rosy,

  Nipple-pated to the shirt-bright paunch,

  As I’m well aware, and people are upset by characters;

  I have a body thirty years my senior.

  House with grounds …

  Very well then, I will join the scene,

  Join in by subterfuge; the lake’s attractive

  With the lilies massed like flock beds near

  The strutted wooden bridge, an ornament,

  That skips to the birdhouse on the marooned island.

  I thumb the ground past faster. I will join the scene,

  But not before I’ve bent with kilting paunch

  To pry this midge out of the water-drop,

  And held it out on pencil-point, clung like a wet feather,

  Into the breeze to dry,

  Struggling to its lashes, frail diagram.

  The lazy bench-beams wheeze to me as I shake off my tie,

  Unleash my neck, breath hissing hard, buried heart pounding,

  Lean back and watch the shadows sliding through the lake,

  And think of it iced, cool sheets and plates,

  And see the flame has gripped the chestnuts,

  Hear the wind hiss through them, and close my eyes,

  Spread a clean handkerchief slowly over my face …

  And look the part, an old gentleman relaxing

  On his accustomed bench in unswept leaves,

  Relaxing to the leaf-hiss, braces swooping

  Round calm stoutness in the dottle of the year,

  Only the margin of the white cloth fluttering –

  A gentle snoozing laid beneath a cloth –

  Only quick coolnesses from people passing close.

  CORPOSANT

  A ghost of a mouldy larder is one thing: whiskery bread,

  Green threads, jet dots,

  Milk scabbed, the bottles choked with wool,

  Shrouded cheese, ebony eggs, soft tomatoes

  Cascading through their splits,

  Whitewashed all around, a chalky smell,

  And these parts steam their breath. The other thing

  Is that to it comes the woman walking backwards

  With her empty lamp playing through the empty house,

  Her light sliding through her steaming breath in prayer.

  Why exorcise the harmless mouldy ghost

  With embodied clergymen and scalding texts?

  Because she rises shrieking from the bone-dry bath

  With bubbling wrists, a lamp and steaming breath,

  Stretching shadows in her rooms till daybreak

  The rancid larder glimmering from her corpse

  Tall and wreathed like moulds or mists,

  Spoiling the market value of the house.

  MORE LEAVES FROM MY BESTIARY

  I SPIDER

  Now, the spires of a privet fork from the hedge

  And stretch a web between them;

  The spider-nub eases his grip a trifle, twists a thread safe,

  And the afternoon is quiet again.

  Damp clouds drift above him; a burst of rain

  Runs him back along a vane

  To a leaf-shed, while it beads his web

  And raises weed-smells from below

  Of vetch, fumitory, and small mallow.

  Hanging there are a dozen or so

  Brown shells which tremble.

  The curtain is ripped from the sun, and grass again

  Leaps into its fumble:

  Ants totter with their medicine balls and cabers, stone walls

  Pop with their crickets;

  A bluefly, furry as a dog, squares up

  To the web and takes it with a jump like a hoop

  And spider springs round like a man darting

  To the fringes of a dogfight;

  Tugging like a frantic sailor, buzzing like a jerky sawyer,

  Fly finishes in swaddling

  Tight as a knot

  From the spinnerets’ glistening.

  And though spider

  Hangs a little lower than the sun

  Over all their heads, all

  Seem ignorant of that passing;

  The afternoon, the ebullience increases

  Among the low boughs of the weeds

  And spider steady, like a lichened glove

  Only a little lower than the sun; none

  Takes account of that to and fro passing,

  Or of the manner of that death in swaddling.

  II BASILISK

  Rising above the fringe of silvering leaves

  A finger, tanned and scaly, gorgeous, decayed,

  Points to the shivering clouds, then turns down

  Most slowly, towards you. The light catches, cold and hard

  Pulls round the polished bone of fingernail

  Arrests attention, the prey falls dead.

  Bone mirrors have the quickest way to die

  The sunlight loses strength and sap drained

  Out and lost, distils a beam of purest mortality

  Set in the velvet sockets of a fabled bird
.

  A mandarin of birds, exalted, alone

  Sweeping its cold avenue of dying trees

  Its restlessness oppressed for new fuel, warm

  And busy not to lift its eyes, unrealised sin

  Committed out of favour, and it dies.

  But when it dies the silks collapse and draw aside.

  The idle naturalist to draw this legend to its wisest close,

  Pries. The walking-stick at first disturbs a swarm

  But no danger from the tawny ground, it lies

  As still as where it dropped. Newspaper and a spade

  A tin tray in the quietest room; probes,

  Licks like an eagle with his sharpest knives.

  Fat, flesh, yes, and normal bones

  Sincerely documented, the head from behind now

  The brain, enlarged, hard and crisp as ice

  No poison, the smell of preservatives, the face

  At last, nostrils and beak, a wrinkled neck,

  The eyelids closed. He pulls these aside,

  They rustle, a smell like pungent spice

  He catches. How curious, the eyes as dead

  And white as buttons, hard, adamantine, he tries

  To scratch them with his knife, with no effect,

  Revolves the problem in his clouding head.

  Then the light catches, and he dies.

  MALAGUEÑO

  Warming his buttocks on the hot stone at his master’s threshold

  He flaps his eyelids against the light; from his shoulder

  Brushes the dust; the poor in this country are rarely cold.

  His trousers stiffen in the heat, as starched, and moulder,

  His sweat ferments. He is a simple labourer with a daily wage

  Sawing up sewer pipes in the direct sun, or dragging them

  Along trenches muddy with man-sweat. There is no cage

  He bruises his hands against. His offspring teem

  Under a thatch of rushes near the sea-front.

  He can mount

  Under the guidance of the church until his eyes glow like a saint’s;

  He can have another child; for sixpence he can get drunk

  And be a torero, the government, or a saint; he has no taints

  On his soul that the church refuses, he is not sunk

  Even by adultery, just as in the streets, hot to his rope-soled feet,

  Tobacco-juice or dung whitens with light like warm milk from the pitch-dark teat.

  VARIATION ON LORCA8

  Neither the house nor the rooms

  Nor the ants under the stones, nor the horses,

  Nor our child nor the misty evenings

  Knows you. You are dead.

  The headstones, the white satin

  Into which you crumble,

  My memory of you, know nothing

  Of where you are. You are dead.

  Autumn will come with its snails creeping,

  Apples blushing,

  Boughs pushing through the rent bushes but

  None of us wants to be with you now;

  We are ignorant and frightened;

  No one would wish to look into your eyes. You are dead.

  You are dead, piled with the rest of earth’s dead,

  The smoked ends of earth’s dead;

  Nobody knows you from them, or wants to know

  The condition into which your body has fallen,

  But I sing,

  Standing for your posterity, of your restlessness,

  Your profile, the purity of your understanding,

  Your appetite for hazard and the taste of death,

  Of the sorrow in recollection of your gaiety.

  I doubt whether we shall soon see another,

  So evident a man, so rich in adventure;

  I sing in words that moan and raise

  A sad breeze among all that knew you.

  That last full-stop dries like a bright eye closing.

  THE SECRETARY

  At work his arms wave like a windmill

  Slapping designs on crisp pads with a thick soft pencil,

  A girded grin next morning at his desk, but

  No cross words once the pencil gets slapping,

  Sliving out our luxury. No cross words.

  Silk dressing-gowns and wine-dark coverlets,

  Grey hair bushing on my shantung lap,

  Remorse, and sheep-eyes spinning water,

  Remorse, the cord smiles deeply in his girth.

  A glass of water then; quick comfortable speech;

  We step from silks; the cords hang loose and heavy;

  I catch his breath. His teeth stained tawny with tobacco

  It is rank and vicious, like menstrual blood.

  Buffing his nose with a forefinger,

  Sipping tonic-water at breakfast,

  Relaxed and special out of the bath,

  He twinkles, and I twinkle back,

  Pantless, under a slim formal skirt,

  Ready for work. He holds my stocking

  Like a hoop in two fists as my foot flies in

  And lays his palms flat along my thighs

  And kisses me. My skirt is creased

  And beard-rash twinkles on my thighs

  But I sit up and catch the notes

  He flings to me grinning,

  Fly for files and mend my shoulder-strap.

  They send him north occasionally

  My beaked fingers pecking meanly at the keys,

  And he sends me letters; I’m drawn naked

  On wine-dark coverlets on crisp pad-paper

  The letter scribbled down my whiteness

  With XX at customary halts. Could I cook a meal perhaps?

  Or change the coverlets to creamy candlewick –

  Anger booms among the giggling dressing-gowns

  And I sit beside the bed holding water

  Until grey hair bushes on my lap

  And a hand collects itself to sweep my buttocks;

  He feels really close to me if I forgive him

  Constantly; I watch for the rewinding of his spring

  And arms begin to whirl like windmills.

  Wine, restaurants, dancing, creased skirts, beard-rash,

  Pleasure just this side of painful fun, and a look,

  A finger laid along his rummaging nose,

  That makes me laugh down into my note-book,

  Keep us young; a money-spinner

  Twenty years my senior with a body

  Just the age of mine, for the moment.

  The maid dies first, then the young woman,

  But the secretary keeps growing all the while

  Into perfection and exemplary service,

  Sharp-pencilled, clean-typer, indispensably informed,

  The memoranda ticking down the page,

  Footage filed away, and yellowing miles

  Accumulating in the dust-proof cabinets

  Signposted in her careful lettering;

  I shall have to tout myself elsewhere, trim personnel.

  What is sincerity anyway, flat on one’s back?

  It foams everywhere, and floats out one’s best:

  Best lover, secretary, and perfect staff.

  EXPECTANT FATHER

  Final things walk home with me through Chiswick Park,

  Too much death, disaster; this year

  All the children play at cripples

  And cough along with one foot in the gutter.

  But now my staircase is a way to bed

  And not the weary gulf she sprinted down for doorbells

  So far gone on with the child a-thump inside;

  A buffet through the air from the kitchen door that sticks

  Awakes a thumb-size fly. Butting the rebutting window-pane

  It shouts its buzz, so I fling the glass up, let it fly

  Remembering as it skims to trees, too late to swat,

  That flies are polio-whiskered to the brows

  With breeding-muck, and home

/>   On one per cent of everybody’s children.

  So it is the week when Matron curfews, with her cuffs,

  And I draw back. My wife, round as a bell in bed, is white and happy.

  Left to myself I undress for the night

  By the fine bright wires of lamps: hot tips

  To burrowing cables, the bloodscheme of the house,

  Where flame sleeps. That,

  With a shallow on the mattress from last night,

  Is enough to set me thinking on fired bones

  And body-prints in the charcoal of a house, how

  Darkness stands for death, and how afraid of sleep I am;

  And fearing thus, thus I fall fast asleep.

  But at six o’clock, the phone rings in – success!

  The Sister tells me our son came up with the sun:

  It’s a joke she’s pleased to make, and so am I.

  I see out of the window it’s about a quarter high,

  And promises another glorious day.

  BEING BEAUTEOUS9

  A spiderweb stretched between the trunks of the last two forest trees. The trees were loaded with snow, and the web loaded with the spider, which was smooth khaki, big as a football, with a black hourglass shaped across its heavy back, quivering a very little on the taut, almost invisible strands.

  The web must have been spun since the last fall, for it was clean of snow, and glistening with adhesive as if it had just been extruded. Neither were there any husks in it, and had I not paused to recover my breath and admire the sparkling of the sun on the snow-plain beyond, I should never have seen the gigantic wheel-and-hub shadow thrust into the wood almost to my feet by the cold sun. I should have hung there like a cloudy stocking with a full cap of bushy black hair, before my cries had shaken off their last snow from the far reaches of the forest.

  The spider clutched the very centre of its trap. As I stared, a claw reached from beneath the speckled haunch and seized as with tortoiseshell pliers the next coil of the spiral.

  With a sudden revulsion, and not wishing to see its face, or have it bounding across the snow at me on terrier legs, I plucked my revolver from my pocket and fired. The spider exploded with a soft thud, and like a firework showered its gold and vermilion contents all over the wheel.

  The sun broke on the shambles of wrinkling tissues; golden juice lashed away from it. Gobbets of amber gum, rags of crimson flesh, black plates thickly set with spines and thin brown sheets like mica cascaded past, frosting and shattering in the cold. Ginger, strawberry and apricot: it was as though pots of various sorts of jam had been flung across a whitewashed wall. The bony forehead-piece studded with its eight eyes in sets of two, the size of walnuts and clear and unwinking as diamonds, glided over a hump of ruby tissue and sank into the snow. The whole mess started to steam and through the rolling clouds I glimpsed a portion of the copper-coloured jaws still munching.