starched and stiffened to withstand a fall.
Ladies in the bedroom not permitted!
insists Mrs P through pert and proper grin.
A nearly bald geranium in pitted
pot nods with dry dissent from sin.
O first-year hopefuls who unlock
cloudy-mirrored wardrobe doors, prize
open shallow mock-teak drawers, unpack
your dreams! Will this lumpy chair capsize
as you crouch to savour metered gas?
Can you feel the rug’s biscuit patchwork
prick through thin socks after lonely traipse
back to pristine texts and dim-lit hack-work?
Don’t miss High Tea at six
seasoned with Mrs P’s prying talk:
egg on toast, shiny ham, lurid cakes.
Then how to bow out cheerily, stalk
away from deadlines on Damoclean strings,
and out towards hallowed lamp-lit recess
where Flavia the Fair in gown and kinky stockings
might come flowing from her bow-front fortress.
NOTE Damocles praised Dionysius of Syracuse for his power and riches. During a feast the tyrant suspended a sword from a thread over his guest’s head to suggest the instability of wealth and status and the imminence of disaster.
MR BUSY AND MRS: AN IDYLL
Mr Busy, oh so busy, up and down your drive,
past spruces well-spaced, tightly lopped and layered,
serene spires in glistening gravel...
off and back you drive, just for a little something...
(Busy are you, Mr Busy?
Lawn wants a trim, garage door’s peeling,
leaves are going to clog the drain...)
Mr Busy’s a mechanical man.
His paintbrush makes me dizzy.
So particular, so fussy:
Mr Busy’s a busy mover.
‘ `morning Mr B_____! Nice day. Almost summery...’
{{Look! The morn in russet mantle clad...
How bloodily the sun begins to peer...}}
‘Keeping busy then? Just the day for jobs.
Sorting the compost heap, I see. Plenty of tealeaves?
Off again now!’
(Smoothly does it in your shiny Roverette!)
{{... charioted by Bacchus and his pards...}}
‘Prescriptions. It’s the wife, you see.’
‘Oh dear! Well...if there’s anything we can do...’
Mr Busy and his bungalow!
{{...one of the low on whom assurance sits
as a screw-top on a can of turpentine. }}
Busy bee keeping busy, making sure
the honeycomb’s rich and snug
about his central-heated queen.
And there she is! Pink butterfly specs.
(Nice and comfy, are you?)
Looks through conservatory triple glaze
on to shorn lawn, past Eight by Ten tool-shed,
over rolling fields ripe for sileage...and smiles.
‘Mr Busy’s mower’s his life-support machine!’
(Well that’s funny, Mrs Busy.
Better check what Prudence brought
through the puss-flap.)
Mr Busy’s snapdragons are well and truly visited by bees:
crimson, lemon, crimson, lemon, crimson, lem...
Everybody’s busy these days,
minding their own business...
THAT YOU GEORGE?
Too much it was,
George,
what with rippled footprints,
crushed lilies,
buckled larger cans,
and those glittery fragments
catching dawn under the east window.
Then the shattered stone,
shale... slivers of shale,
George,
bits of Beloveds, Sons, Nieces,
tips of seraph wings,
vases full of shiny wrappers,
starlings raking through,
sparrows having a damn good chuckle.
As for the lytch gate,
George,
blooded all over with spray paint
and paving sledged apart...
Look on the bright side,
Eh George!
Friday night ringers at it again.
Hear that tun-up kid
taking a shortcut to hell,
thrush on his steeple tree
singing as if all were well.
And all that stone lying there,
like the stony dead:
think of that, George!
CLOISTER AND PROMENADE
Under sun canopy among
emptying tables, he reads and reads,
hunched over heavy A4 paperback,
cup, saucer and plate long forgotten.
Close-cropped, skeletal, hirsute,
all animation distilled into
his flickering, light-reactor
rimless spectacles. Enviably detached
from afternoon-long lunch party
in the teak-diner sanctum behind him,
aviary of jabbered opinions ignored
or gestured aside with ever-louder guffaws.
If he looked up would he notice
two little girls with no words in common,
sit side by side, strangership dissolved
in a shared pack of chip potatoes?
Or wonder if they might be sisters,
whose same brown, beady riveting eyes
and sticky fingers scour every inch and corner
where they happen to be this hot, sea-struck day?
Would he spot that silver-quiffed old gent left
by his burnished 50-something daughter
with a pick-me-up glass of white,
watch him cajole those heedless little darlings
with smiling, half-articulated warnings
that sound like final priestly blessings?
HALLOWED GROUND
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels but have not love
I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal (I Corinthians, 13, 1)
1. ON YOUR HIGH HORSE
Chapel’s celebrating four hundred years
of scripture translated. Committee so much
wants you to take part. Well-known piece,
please, and any version you like.
Delighted ! How could you refuse?
Parted tongues of fire light your way
to Pentecost. ACTS, Chapter Two.
Might even fill them with Holy Spirit,
to find there’s no foreign speech,
all words God’s from time immemorial.
Must be the King James mustn’t it?
Took unnumbered scholars eleven years,
rhetoric that rings with spoken sinew,
a voice for ever crying in the wilderness
to make straight the way of the Lord.
You’ll stroll from pew to brass Eagle wings
where rests heavy tome sanctified
by years of blackening thumbs and fingers.
Find the place with reverence while noses blow
throats clear and shuffling feet fall still.
2. DAY OF RECKONING
Airy shibboleths must give way
to what to wear and whether to tuck
that tight-packed quarto in coat pocket
or clutch and swing it to announce
the Lord’s Day and where you’re duly bound.
Unspectacular you scatter gravel
beside chequered, boldly-buttoned coats
and very practical handbags, filing in
by the narrow way, eye of the needle
into the fold of sheep the shepherd knows.
Not prepared for no-nonsense white-wash?
No hymnal, nothing to bow to, no pulpit
to declaim the Word interpreted.
A monitor displays the first hymn.
You’ll sound like
an over-piped organ.
All about you, sedate on creaking chairs
a genial crowd whose tucked-in postures
and hairdos bristle against airs and graces.
A modest book-rest on chrome pillar
awaits you with your fancy notions,
you with God’s word and rows of patient faces
whose muscles would scarcely twitch if
Cretans and Arabians spoke in their own
day-to-day tongue the Lord’s mighty works.
Be thankful for your words. Mouth them well.
One of the crowd at last you sing
a hymn with gusto till a shirt-sleeved preacher
preludes with glosses, then performs
from a Cockney New Testament
the miracle at the feast in Cana of Galilee.
OUR MAN IN THE OBERLAND
Kein weltlich Getümmel
hört man nicht in Himmel!... (Des Knaben Wunderhorn)
Soon to move on to another resort
he calls Greendelvowelled, he’s solo
at a patio table picking at a punnit
of raspberries. “Hard to deal with
heavy meals here. So good
to sit with alpine panoramas. I get
strains from Mahler’s 4th. You know the one
with that last song about Heaven?...”
We like his easy-care, sober dinner suit,
robust yet understated hiking kit,
his cool demand for consultation,
launching into schemes of ‘heading out’
with such troubled doubt and rigour,
we’re in the unknown and he’s a pioneer.
Bleary-eyed at breakfast we’re presented
with his 3D model relief map.
“Take it to plan your high-level trek
above that tuna-whatsit lake.” (That’s
the ice-blue expanse of Thünersee)
“Appreciated your filling me in
on ways down from that viewpoint
and how to take that quaint funicular
from the rail station by the river.
Noticed it’s upgraded year by year!
So what do you guys do back home?”
Retired! We can’t be serious! Active couple
like us must be mid-40s at most!
Farewell circumstantial buddy,
our own Quiet American!
There’s no side to you. How come
you make us feel everything we say
opens up a whole new dimension?
NOTE Epigraph taken from the song mentioned in line 8:
you hear no worldly hubbub in heaven...
DINING
A threesome hogs sash windows that overlook
glabrous lawns, Friesans grazing their shadows,
distant cars glinting like trinkets in low sun.
Club-Blazer-and-Tie breathes heavily over
his chins, seldom exceeds a phrase in rich, slow voice,
defers to his melon with a gentle forking,
lets wife and female crony make the pace.
Queen Pin scintillates through blue-tinted specs,
emits chill fire at what she wants to see or hear.
Dressed down tight as disapproving lips
she wields a burnished hairdo set against dissent,
while flabby Number Three rumbles in agreement.
One tale ends with masticating nods, and
You’d think her parents would have had more sense,
then with melodious quite right, quite right!
perspiring Drop-Jaw fuels the next assault
with another round of Côte du Rhone.
Can the main course douse incessant talk
of who’s who and others’ mess and muddle?
Chewing adds relish to the moral. Every forkful
perfects the verbal stab and makes conviction
piquant till it hardens like the arteries.
Copper beeches blacken, mist creeps up,
haloes distant processions of lights,
while an agitating choice of suites is followed
by Remy-Martin, Grand Marnier, and Crème de Menthe.
Chatter shuffles to the hall, solid slams resound,
and gravel crunches under heavy wheels.
SPENT
White, uniforms converge bright-eyed
to coax, change and adjust him.
Young, eager to show no holds are barred,
they manipulate his bulk like navvies,
find purpose in sores, faeces, tubes,
maintain this flaccid mechanism,
once cock of the walk who reckoned to tread
every hen that fluttered across his path.
Now he sucks on each rationed cigarette
like a salving last request, wastes
his stock of words on what’s served up
as food and who can’t be arsed to visit,
swivels pale eyes up and down
these ayahs who rearrange his fragments.
EGO
You’re Alright Jack passing moochers
who surely put on age like protective gear.
Wait till all those aches and niggles
entertained as passing blips, take root
and shoot
with mechanical precision.
Then try to get smartarse Jack
off your back.
Feel him tug when you hobble to
the coach after yet another toilet stop,
trying to spot your partner’s hairdo.
If you’re lucky and she’s still there,
helping you trudge unlikely extra miles
on brittle bones and muscles drained of blood.
TOGETHER
Couples should fill us with hope,
walking with that assured clasp,
children again, wandering anywhere,
whimsical in their surprising leisure.
Such meanders, such pleasure in each other,
such florid dreams that cannot wilt or wither.
Forget those routine stairs their feet
will tread, rooms that seem replete
with cluttered memories and trinkets,
assumed like the bond of debt and habits.
IN THE CAFÉ OF YOUR CHOICE
She’s half listening but I broach my fear
that options keep displacing one another.
“I’m doing X, and beyond return, knowing it
could have been Y, had I considered
as I now need to, α and β. Or even Z,
given the advantages I begin to suspect
of accounting for X,Y, α and β, not to
mention θ which has just occurred to me.”
(Wait, though. The ageing gent over there
stares painfully at a cocksure trendy.
Why do I think he might object to fairisle
tanktops, slicked-down hair or a partner
having to listen to one or two notions
repeated in a hundred and one guises
over several capuccinos ?) “Perhaps,” I resume,
“this shows my days are numbered and I’ll lose
my appetite for taking algebraic stock.”
“You’ll get over it. It’s tension,”
she says. “And too much isolation.”
Now let me consider this very carefully,
I think I say, or am I mumbling ? “Next time,
and not just at one of these plastic tables,
I’ll begin as I mean to go on:
setting out to find a solution.”
Clearly though she’s not impressed.
GOLD & SILVER
I.
She censures our unruly world
with every step, and bourgeois gold
kindles her hair tossed here and there
to say Try me! As if you’d dare!
II.
Marigold open to noon-day sun,
this is your now. You need not<
br />
be seed, shoot, bud or rot.
Unlike ours your cycle’s just begun.
III.
When her hair’s thinned and silver
she’ll look back and think proudly:
I found my own man and lover
and not a murmur disturbed me.
IV.
Known mainly for tepid social grace,
she breaks out in sudden praise
for the lovely sound of silver and bell,
her tongue tingling with their spell.
POET BROADCASTS
1. ME
I’m all about myth re-explored.
You can’t exhaust myths: everything itself
yet something else. Who needs empiricism!
I’ll match A with B and see what arises:
lab.-work without a book of formulae.
I’m after anti-drama, coolly playing down
the awaited in a world that’s mezzo-forte,
mezzo-relievo, mezzo-just-about-the-lot!
2. IT
Take this geranium stewing in its pot:
it brews aromas of damp nightfall
on the edge of woods over which a disappointing moon
hesitates in butterfly clouds that once
soared over the skies of your brittle childhood,
or maybe it was after you stepped from the car
in which Orpheus drove away from his terrible loss,
stung by the memory of a serpent in long grass
and of a swaying light, once a promising train
that resounded with half-forgotten melodies
before he’d lost his metro ticket...
Meeting a shadow of what she was
he’d noticed a slight twist to her mouth,
lobe-less ears, a high, glacial forehead,
how her left forefinger itched the air.
Was it worth encountering those monstrous guards
and officials with references and excuses in triplicate,
agreeing to ridiculous conditions for her release?
Even to this day he can’t recall what she wore:
probably something pleated that bellied out
in the first blasts of upper air as he turned round
to warn her about snags in the cave floor...
And then the automatic doors closed
and he watched her looking for a seat,
shaking dust and damp wind out of her hair...
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