God is nowhere. Now read again.
(There is no supreme being. You might as well settle for a good book.)
Metaphysical Villanelle
‘We may or may not cease to exist’ – conclusion of a long, late-night discussion about religion on an Arvon course at Lumb Bank
We have argued for hours and this is the gist.
After much confrontation, at last we agree:
We may or may not cease to exist.
First you scoffed at my view, then in turn I dismissed
Your opinion, but now we’ve discovered the key.
We have argued for hours and this is the gist:
There is either a god or we’re all slightly pissed.
Shall we compromise, since it’s now twenty to three?
We may or may not cease to exist.
If I weren’t so exhausted I might well insist
That I’m right as a right-thinking person can be
But we’ve argued for hours and this is the gist:
We can all go to bed without fearing we’ve missed
Some great spiritual truth. Melvyn’s got it, you see –
We may or may not cease to exist.
There isn’t a sub-text. There isn’t a twist
And who cares? Who would like a Ryvita with Brie?
We have argued for hours and this is the gist:
We may or may not cease to exist.
Squirrel’s the Word
They’re rats with bushy tails, you claim.
They bite and spread disease.
Despite the reassuring name
Of squirrel, they are wild, not tame,
And they belong in trees.
But there’s a squirrel that I know
Who calls each day at nine,
Catches the croissant that I throw
And chomps it on the patio.
I think of him as mine.
He is both patient and polite
While I prepare his meal.
Squirrel’s the word and it’s the right
Word in his case, in fact he’s quite
The squirrelish ideal,
So deconstruct him all you please
To bushy tail and rat.
Squirrel is still the name for these
Creatures with squirrels’ qualities
And he is just like that.
First of the Last Chances
I stand back as the Skipton train advances,
having to choose too fast
between the scorn and sympathetic glances
of my supporting cast
all of whom think boarding this train enhances
my odds. I wave it past.
If I don’t take the first of the last chances
I will not fear the last.
A Woman’s Life and Loves
The next eight poems have been set to music by the composer Gabriel Jackson, and form a song cycle that was originally conceived as a contemporary response to the Schumann song cycle Frauenliebe und Leben.
View
I am not lonely. I pretend
that I am here alone.
I do not see your shuttered face
or hear your monotone
but stare instead at roads and fields
and bridges and the sky
and feel the sun’s rays on my face.
However hard you try
to substitute your view for mine,
I see the things I see
and am no longer here with you
though you are here with me.
Equals
Each of my false apologies
I retrospectively withdraw.
Yes, there have been discrepancies
Between my conduct and the law.
I have done worse, I have done less
Than promises would have me do,
And as I cheat, as I transgress
I do not give a thought to you.
I sensed that you deserved it then
But took the blame and looked contrite
Before I did the same again,
Thinking the wrong was mine by right
And I enjoyed the risks I took,
The tricks I played, the daily scam.
I have done nothing by the book.
When I professed to give a damn
My smiles, my tears, my words were fake.
Cut me in half; the core was bad
And when you made your big mistake
I can’t deny that I was glad
To see, so newly justified
By your descent from fair and true,
The times I lied and lied and lied,
As if I knew. As if I knew.
Postcard
The chances are that by the time you get
This postcard, I’ll be home. I will have phoned,
Arranged to meet you and we will have met.
(That day, the day with nothing ruined yet,
No hasty lust or lingering regret,
Decisions and admissions all postponed,
Will be the best we have.) I will have toned
Down what I feel to pleasantries and owned
Up to no thoughts of you beyond the set
Formula: I admire your work. I bet
You will have done the same.
Grateful for this
Chance to stay friends and keep our present lives,
We will arrange another date and miss
Another chance before this card arrives.
Match
Love has not made us good.
We still do all the cynics said we would –
Struggle like heroes searching for a war,
Still want too much, and more.
Love has not made us nice.
Elders and betters with their best advice
Can’t stir us from our loungers by the pool.
We dodge all work like school,
Leave urgent debts upaid,
Cancel the solemn promises we’ve made
If loyalties or circumstances change.
Our thoughts are no less strange,
But love has made us last.
We do together all that in the past
We did alone; err not as one but two
And this is how I knew.
Bridesmaid
A smile or kiss is all you have to spare;
Never a bed, a key, an inch of floor.
All that I am, all that I have, I share,
Yet I possess not half as much but more –
Double, I swear,
Though you remain unsure –
Twice what I owned or hoped to own before.
There is no metal weighing down your hand.
You are not subject to the whims of kings
And claim that you will never understand
The pleasure or the point of two gold rings.
For you no grand
Passion waits in the wings
Just your own space. A woman needs such things.
Not me, I say. Of all the things to need,
I choose another mind, another face,
Someone of whom, if I were ever freed
I would be tattered remnants or a trace.
What awkward breed
Would crave, would even chase
What age and death will bring in any case?
Test
Not easy to relate
This plastic stick, blue line,
To an October date,
A child who might be mine.
Is the blue weak or strong?
How loud the seconds tick
With all that could go wrong.
This blue line, plastic stick
The packet says to use
And then at once discard,
Forgetting that to lose
All that you have is hard
And for a month or so
This plastic stick, blue line
Is all I’ll have to show
For what it claims is mine.
Charge
My skin grows taut. What once was soft turns hard
Like silk stretched thinly over sponge or shell.
I count as many bullies in the yard
As any school child desperate for the bell.
Watching my body sprout its suit of arms
Makes me aware of what I must protect,
My charge, who nature won’t allow my charms
Alone to guard, much less my intellect.
I fear the notion that I need a shield
But if I run, I’ll only rock the cage.
As enemies advance across the field
Cover is no safe substitute for rage.
I am the bearer of a small élite.
I wrap my arms around it in the night
But can’t defend a king with my retreat
Whose country is the stomach for a fight.
Favourite
Anyone who prefers the light
Has not explored the dark.
All those who miss the owl in flight
Will lean towards the lark.
She must have heard that Noah halved
The pairs inside the ark
And on its wooden side was carved
The favourite child remark.
I read the message, heard the cheers
And saw the bright award.
I sensed that down the miles and years
A man was overboard,
A man who had been left to drown
And yet remained afloat.
I rinsed the shell dust from my crown.
He swam towards my boat.
The sea is full of souvenirs:
The splinters of the ark,
Bent bottletops and leaking beers,
Noah just one more shark.
I chose the course that I preferred
And will not disembark
I set my compass when I heard
The favourite child remark
So see me now as cabin-hand,
Captain or mutineer,
The scourge or saviour of the land.
I must be both to steer
Free of this sea where, full of ploys,
Old moons resent new suns.
All of my children, girls and boys,
Will be the favourite ones.
About the Author
SOPHIE HANNAH was born in Manchester in 1971. A former Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge and Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, she now lives in Bingley, West Yorkshire and teaches in the Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University. Sophie Hannah is the author of three bestselling collections of poetry, as well as three novels and several books for children.
Also by Sophie Hannah
Fiction
Gripless
Cordial and Corrosive
The Superpower of Love
Poetry
The Hero and the Girl Next Door
Hotels Like Houses
Leaving and Leaving You
The Box Room
Translation
The Book about Moomin, Mymble and Little My
Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2003
by Carcanet Press Ltd, Alliance House, 30 Cross Street, Manchester M2 7AQ
This ebook edition first published in 2011
All rights reserved
© Sophie Hannah, 2003
The right of Sophie Hannah to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
Epub ISBN 978–1–84777–873–4
Mobi ISBN 978–1–84777–874–1
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