by Glyn Maxwell
they skated on the ice at the ice-rink,
Elizabeth and a black-trilby’d boy
who kept his hat on. I’d have hated that
had I seen it. I hate hatted people who
make such alert decisions to impress.
I’d have him on his arse. Oh good, he is.
Elizabeth, white-skirted (no more clues)
swooped to sweep the Mayor’s son off the ice
and pterodactyl-like he shook himself.
Hat elsewhere, kicked on by a small bully
and ruined by that friend of his. Once
that would have shelled and reddened my idea,
to see such fun. But nowadays I just
cram it in with all the other eggs
for omelette. Skate, skate, you’re crap at it,
whatever your name is, you mayor’s son.
The Mayor’s son and Elizabeth, oh my!
The middles of my afternoons in England.
Three simultaneous occurrences:
a hump, a testimonial, a bomb.
Back to the ice-rink, just in time, we –
– There they are! Their two bicycles propped
for vandals who’ll show up in half an hour,
and off they go towards the library.
Conveniences everywhere, a town
complete with detail, and the gardens so, so
green and tucked away! This is a poem
of love, whose hero had to urinate
and did so, while Elizabeth began
to make a Christmas list, and left him out.
The air began to gather, pointilliste,
and the early lamp went to a sorry pink
that wouldn’t last, was a phenomenon.
They crossed roads, Beauty Gloved and the Mayor’s son,
they made split-second choices that saved lives.
The library was all a welcome cube.
The library was full of walruses.
Or people who resembled walruses.
Or – no. The library was full of people
I’ll never know. A man I’m calling Smith
had borrowed Dante’s Purgatorio
but not the other two. I had them both.
A man called Dorman had a book on trees,
and it was lost and it had burned regardless
and it was ages overdue. A girl
who’d stripped the library of sailing books
had drowned in any case and was so slow
to answer warnings that they’d phoned her up
to ask politely for their sailing books.
A dictionary had gone missing too
but the Mayor’s son had other things in mind!
How do we know? We don’t, but he had options,
and watched Elizabeth selecting books
on Archaeology, and choosing one
to look at and put back. The Mayor’s boy
nodded his head of ordinary hair
and felt love making soup with the utensils
he generally called his heart and soul.
The sky was mauve, no other colour, mauve –
and I was splitting up with Alison.
I think it was that day, about half-six.
The bully, meanwhile, read about a bike
and mentioned it to his belaboured dad
as a potential Christmas present. I –
sometimes I hope he gets it, sometimes I
devoutly hope it kills him. Anyway
‘the library is closing now’. The Mayor
expected his son home. Elizabeth
expected that as well, didn’t expect
what happened next as they waited for the cars
to lose their nerve and stop. He put his hand
behind the head of this Elizabeth
and bruised her with a kiss, a mad one! He
receded and she reappeared, a girl
with somebody to marry, and not him,
her mouth politicised indignity,
her eyes becoming tyrants, après-coup:
‘How dare you?’ What a question. How dare you?
Because we don’t know what – because we do –
Irrelevant! Elizabeth was off.
The traffic-lights were either green or red –
I don’t remember amber. The Mayor’s son,
no girl, no hat, beneath the sodium-
lamps of home. Oh hatchbacks of the time,
oh buses, oh pantechnicons! Next year
the Mayor – who now eats fillets with his wife
and son, and fills a second glass with Soave
and tells a joke that no one gets – the Mayor
will be deposed next year: his son will choose
a university, it will say no
to him but take Elizabeth, for Maths
not Archaeology, and Alison
will suddenly, one day, in a Maths class,
befriend Elizabeth, and find their friends
are mutual, like me and the Mayor’s son,
who I’d never meet, and in a stand-up bar
all evening they’ll be there. Meanwhile the books
will pile up in my world, and someone’s hat
will find its way to me and I will wear it.
We Billion Cheered
We billion cheered.
Some threat sank in the news and disappeared.
It did because
Currencies danced and we forgot what it was.
It rose again.
It rose and slid towards our shore and when
It got to it,
It lined it like a telegram. We lit
Regular fires,
But missed it oozing along irregular wires
Towards the Smoke.
We missed it elbowing into the harmless joke
Or dreams of our
Loves asleep in the cots where the dolls are.
We missed it how
You miss an o’clock passing and miss now.
We missed it where
You miss my writing of this and I miss you there.
We missed it through
Our eyes, lenses, screen and angle of view.
We missed it though
It specified where it was going to go,
And, when it does,
The missing ones are ten-to-one to be us.
We walk the shore,
Speak of the waving dead of a waving war.
And clap a man
For an unveiled familiar new plan.
Don’t forget.
Nothing will start that hasn’t started yet.
Don’t forget
It, its friend, its foe, and its opposite.
The Eater
Top of the morning, Dogfood Family!
How’s the chicken? How’s the chicken?
Haven’t you grown? Or have you grown,
here in the average kitchen at noontime
down in the home, at all?
Bang outside, the bank officials
are conga-dancing in their pinstripe,
this is the life! But is it your life
out in the swarming city at crushhour
dodging humans, is it?
Vacant city – where did they find that?
Blossom of litter as the only car
for a man goes by. When the man goes by
his girl will sullenly catch your eye:
will you catch hers?
Snow-white shop – how do they do that?
Lamb-white medical knowing and gentle
sir, advise her, assure and ask her:
do you desire the best for your children
and theirs? Well do you?
Take that journey, delight in chocolate,
you won’t find anyone else in the world,
lady, only the man, the sweet man
opening doors and suggesting later
something – what thing?
Short time no see, Dogfood Family!
How’s the chicken? H
ow’s the chicken?
How have you done it? Have you done it
with love, regardless of time and income
and me? Who am I?
I am the eater and I am the eater.
These are my seconds and these are my seconds.
Do you understand that? Do you get that,
you out there where the good things grow
and rot? Or not?
Sport Story of a Winner
for Alun
He was a great ambassador for the game.
He had a simple name.
His name was known in households other than ours.
But we knew other stars.
He could recall as many finalists
as many panellists.
But when they said this was his Waterloo,
we said it was ours too.
His native village claimed him as its own,
as did his native town,
adopted city and preferred retreat.
So did our own street.
When his brave back was up against the wall,
our televisions all
got us shouting, and that did the trick.
Pretty damn quick.
His colours were his secret, and his warm-up
rain-dance, and his time up
Flagfell in the Hook District, and his diet
of herbal ice, and his quiet
day-to-day existence, and his training,
and never once explaining
his secret was his secret too, and his book,
and what on earth he took
that meant-to-be-magic night in mid-November.
You must remember.
His game crumbled, he saw something somewhere.
He pointed over there.
The referees soothed him, had to hold things up.
The ribbons on the Cup
were all his colour, but the Romanoff
sadly tugged them off.
We saw it coming, didn’t we. We knew
something he didn’t know.
It wasn’t the first time a lad was shown
basically bone.
Another one will come, and he’ll do better.
I see him now – he’ll set a
never-to-be-beaten time that’ll last forever!
Won’t he. Trevor?
Plaint of the Elder Princes
for David
We are the first and second sons of kings.
We do the most incredibly stupid things.
When we meet Elves
We piss ourselves,
When we see adults walking around with wings
We crack up laughing and we take the mick.
We wind up in a cloud or we get sick,
Or turned to stone
Or wedding a crone
Or running widdershins and damned quick,
Or otherwise engaged, up to our eyes.
We brag, we stir, we mock and we tell lies.
Upon our Quest
Eight Kingdoms west
We find no peace: nobody evil dies.
No, seven Witches have a Ball and go to it.
Our sweethearts meet a toad and say hello to it.
We bet it’s our
Brother De-ar:
It is, we ask a favour, he says no to it.
We are the first and second sons of queens.
We have our chances and our crucial scenes,
But it comes up Tails
While Our Kid scales
The castle walls with some wild strain of beans
To make his dream come out. What about ours?
We’ve wished on every one of the lucky stars:
Got on with Wizards
And off with Lizards,
Sung the gobbledegook to Arabian jars,
But no: we serve to do the right thing wrong,
Or do the bad thing first, or stagger along
Until it’s time
For the grand old Rhyme
To drop and make our suffering its song.
The Fool implied that we were ‘necessary’
In his last lay. This made us angry, very.
Perhaps we are,
But his guitar
Has found a lodging quite unsanitàry.
‘Typical Them!’ we hear them say at court:
‘Brutal, selfish, arrogant, ill-taught!’
They thought we would
Turn out no good
And lo! We turned out just as they all thought,
We first and second Princes of the Blood.
Dreaming of a woman in a wood.
Scaring the birds,
Lost for words,
Weeds proliferating where we stood,
But hell, we have each other, and the beer.
Our good-for-nothing pals still gather here
To booze and trample,
A bad example
From which the Golden Boy can step or steer.
We’re up, and it’s a fine day in the land.
Apparently some Princess needs a hand.
It’s us she wants?
Okay. This once.
Show us the map. This time we’ll understand.
Rumpelstiltskin
‘Your name is Rumpelstiltskin!’ cried
The Queen. ‘It’s not,’ he lied. ‘I lied
The time you heard me say it was.’
‘I never heard you. It’s a guess,’
She lied. He lied: ‘My name is Zed.’
She told the truth: ‘You’re turning red,
Zed.’ He said: ‘That’s not my name!’
‘You’re turning red though, all the same.’
‘Liar!’ he cried: ‘I’m turning blue.’
And this was absolutely true.
And then he tore himself in two,
As liars tend to have to do.
Out of the Rain
1
The animals went in two by two, but I,
alive elsewhere, had been in the loudest town,
pleading. How do I start to explain to you
what was lost, and how, and even before
the rain that came and came?
Yes, it was fun in town. We’ve never denied
the length of the silver dresses, the babble and haze
of Friday nights and hell, even Sunday nights,
yes. I’d go into detail but I myself
was bright with it all and tended to misting over
if you see what I mean. My Ex was still around
then, but she wouldn’t vouch for this, even if
she’d made it into the line herself, and she hadn’t.
I hadn’t either, and this – this is that story.
2
I do remember the last of the hottest days,
because Brack and I were picked to play for the Jungle.
He scored six and I was awarded the red.
Some of those lofty brothers played for the Town,
while their daddy hammered his embarrassing huge boat
on a day like that! The crowd would watch our match
then turn and laugh at the noise from the harbour. Ha!
Some of their people were out like that, in fact,
couldn’t concentrate, and finally
conceded they couldn’t win. Gallid walked
tensely to the platform for his shot,
and split the green to a three’er, and in a suit!
We linked our bats and danced to the Winners’ Bar,
anxious for tall foaming Manzadinkas!
3
I know what you think: that meanwhile He held a trial
of thunderclouds and picked one blacker than black,
and patted its hair and said ‘Go On, boy, Go Back
and Bring ’Em Hell!’ but no, it was just our luck.
