How the Hell Are You

by Glyn Maxwell

  and as he shook it cried I seized the night!

  and so it passed.

  He took an ancient play and moved the pieces

  here and there until he’d made a play

  about a man who took an ancient play

  and moved the pieces.

  It was his year, it was to be the year

  it all took off, he had a brilliant spring

  and wrote all summer of the brilliant spring

  he had that year.

  A song was playing which would always now

  remind him of those days, when it came on

  tonight he said it used to, whack it on

  it doesn’t now.

  I love it though, he said when it was done.

  I always will and all the stars looked down

  as they’ll be doing when you set this down

  and that’s that done.

  Poem As Harbour

  Home to this after time away

  he was greeted like he never went,

  no matter the sights he says he saw,

  no matter the days he claims he spent.

  The whiteness smiles a smile as wide

  as all the seas he howls he sailed

  and holds his lone indignant cry

  where lone indignant cries are held.

  Milestone Song

  for Geraldine

  Make light of this number,

  reduce it to rumour,

  outlast it in summer,

  outgun it with humour.

  You do that whatever

  gets hurled in your general

  direction, you ever

  made shit so ephemeral,

  shabby and local,

  so easy to figure,

  so pitiful, fragile,

  framed as a picture

  or family portrait

  or gossip or x-ray,

  you sail on beyond it,

  your yay to the naysay,

  lighter than numbers,

  wise to your sorrow,

  kind to your yesterdays,

  up to tomorrow.

  The Ledge

  for Alfie

  Woken again by nothing, with this line

  already at my back, I thought of you

  at twenty, as you are – which passed somehow

  while I was staring – thought how yesterday

  you said you wanted to be young again,

  which left me with this nothing left to say

  that’s woken me. You are, you are – what else

  does father wail to child – though wailing it

  he’s woken with six-sevenths of the night

  to go – you are – look I will set to work

  this very moment slowing time myself,

  feet to the stone and shoulder to the dark

  to gain you ground – if just one ledge of light

  you flutter to, right now, rereading that.

  Daylight Saving

  for Jim Maxwell (1928–2016)

  Sib, they’re considering doing away

  with daylight saving. I wanted to tell you

  in one of the fora

  we wander together,

  neither one literally here. Anyway

  I don’t know the reason. The folks of the morning

  and folks of the evening met at a table

  and at the same moment

  rose in agreement,

  doing away with daylight saving

  and nor was I there to say hold your horses

  as you would have said and so would your father,

  we three in a line

  having doubts at the same time

  wasn’t to be, no one sat in our places.

  No one spoke up for the scent of the hedges,

  our marathon hide-and-seek going on

  when the sun should be set

  and we shouldn’t be out

  and the ribbon of light down the curtains for ages

  infinite really in that there’s no ending

  anyone’s showed me. No one spoke up

  for the thrill of the way

  the last shreds of a Sunday

  clung at the gate like their father was coming

  to ferry them home. All gone if you look

  but no one is looking. No, Sib, they are thinking

  of doing away

  with daylight saving,

  won’t miss the beetling advance of the dark

  on your boys standing up in our bikes heading home,

  they won’t miss the witches just missing the trees

  when it’s not even five,

  for whatever they save

  they will lose as they do, it’s not going to be Time,

  who knows why they hàd daylight saving at all?

  I’m just glad we had it. I’m sure you explained

  you’re explaining now

  and I’m listening how

  I have generally listened and largely will

  for the love in a sound. They are doing away

  with daylight saving and where shall we meet?

  now God I don’t think so

  is shutting those windows

  and locking the house like a yesterday . . .

  We shall meet where the light and the clock are askew

  and the language has scrambled to say what that’s like

  and it’s thinking it might

  let the space play the light

  and it might let the space play the other thing too

  the what-was-it-called, two hands in a ring

  and one pointed to there and one pointed to there,

  there-there was its point,

  who knows where it went?

  howls the language again and goes back to its darning

  and back to St Francis we go, you and I,

  where we voted that second last time you went out.

  Won’t say how that went,

  there’ll be time better spent

  and light better shed to go wandering by.

  The Light You Saw

  Short, and to a point I shan’t foresee.

  This poem ends, you can see if you dip your eye.

  Dip it and lift it again and be here with me,

  knowing it’s got to, pocketing goodbye.

  Think what form it takes, the light you saw.

  Will it darken with this print to an off-white?

  Will it rise and fall, be shifted like a shore?

  It is not a place I’ll be, it is not a plight.

  It is neither meant nor merited nor made.

  This can’t be seen from there. This makes no sound

  there. There things can neither end nor fade.

  This does. You can see it does if you look down.

  Look up, I’d say to my child and I say to you.

  See where I haven’t written but hope to.

  Blank Page Speaks

  May I say that when I meet you in the morning

  and you infer from silence that there’s nothing

  you can’t say,

  one thing I’m also saying is there’s nothing

  you can do.

  May I say that when I meet you in my brightness,

  you in a ragged gown to do your business,

  it’s not I

  who presses it from you – do I look restless –

  only you.

  Only you you drag from what you dream of

  to pen your variation on the theme of

  how you are

  this morning. May I say I had a dream of

  something too?

  Obviously not and off you go now.

  Left your little footprint let it snow now

  let it snow

  and you can dream I wonder where you go now,

  can’t you.

  Blank Page Gets To Work

  May I say that when you’re gone

  I get to work.

  I got to work

  just then. Back then,

  the second you
were done,

  were done with me,

  done using me,

  your page. Your page

  pressed on alone and when

  your back was turned

  on it it turned

  and look: you’re back,

  having some second crack

  at anything

  while nothing

  watches. Which is

  all it’s all about.

  And which is me.

  Watch me

  when you’re done. You’re done.

  The White

  When you first made a sound you made a sound

  on nothing. Not on peace,

  on nothing. Not on silence nor the grand

  absence of what was,

  on nothing. And it hadn’t got that name

  nor any name, it looked like what’s to come

  and has gone now, that swathe of white. And white

  was just a term for it.

  Not a thing to notice, that polite

  attendant at the gate,

  with nothing to examine but a list,

  clocking and ticking all who’ve simply passed

  by now without a word. What kind of fool

  can’t make his mark on white?

  When you first made a sound you could make all

  the sounds there are, could write

  the moment in the moment, at the pace

  it passes you when you don’t hear it pass,

  until you do – you saw that stanza break . . .

  And now it dawns on you

  you’re in a fight with something: what you make

  is making something too,

  and it’s something you don’t mean, the gaps, the blanks

  are everywhere, and vague oblivion blinks

  whatever room you enter. Shrug it off,

  there’s nothing there, it’s white,

  it doesn’t speak, is nothing to speak of,

  nothing compared to what

  you have to say, have come to say, have left

  to say. It seems you thought your gift a gift,

  but look what’s walking with it, each line-ending

  turns your head – it’s nothing,

  the wind perhaps, crack on with what you’re saying –

  but all you hear is breathing.

  You hide in other voices so the space

  will come for them and leave you be, but these

  it doesn’t want, your plays, your make-believe.

  They edge away, immune,

  to faraway and once-upon, said, safe –

  they are leaving you alone

  like beloved actors will. Now white is dark

  and audible from here. To do your work

  is to defer it, though you hurtle there

  on its cold fuel. To cry

  against it is to sound its orchestra

  and the opposite – to cry –

  will bring it in white gloves and epaulettes

  to say there-there and dab your eyes to bits.

  Nor can you shake it off. It’s now the cold,

  the soon, the gone, the neither,

  it strolls with you, your wrist is lightly held,

  your breath depends, forever

  streams beside you like the only river

  and what they make you gingerly step over

  you don’t recall. When you next make a sound

  you strike a match in darkness.

  See all that grows is growing all around

  and all you wrote was helpless

  as a witness. If the white did this to you,

  all this it made of you, or made you do –

  What is its name? Who was it? Who lives here? –

  To which that same benign

  attendant sweetly smiles at the screen door.

  And if you wish to sign

  her leather-bound great crimson book just do,

  for no one’s asking you, or stopping you.

  Blank Page’s Dream

  I was waiting where I’m waiting.

  You didn’t come, I peered out into

  where I feel you stem from.

  Then I rose in my white habit

  with every word you’ve levelled at me

  sliding off like filings,

  each little pin-sharp point

  you were moved to make and made on me

  you hadn’t made at all,

  I had gone from where you find me.

  The turned room was staring like

  this cannot be the case,

  you really don’t belong here,

  the books indignant all the chairs

  confirming this one’s taken,

  the table droned reserved,

  the pictures we’re not here for you

  the door no love we’re closed

  as I nonetheless step through,

  I nonetheless step through the door

  that said so. I say Love

  you are wide open, I

  go into light I recognize,

  serenity I know now

  as time I lost restored.

  In a cluttered corner there you seem

  absorbed in your own hands,

  sunbeams at your fingers

  are all the words you wish on me,

  the patterns of your dust

  with nowhere now to land,

  no page or port or platform, no

  whiteness to be seen by

  nor silence to be heard by,

  no form on earth to catch them

  as they fall, still they fall

  till my long dream is over,

  and you find me where you find me,

  staring at you blankly

  while you’re staring at me blankly,

  your hand still reaching out as if

  nothing’s changed between us.

  Pasolini’s Satan

  After The Gospel According To St Matthew

  Silence brought me here.

  That and meeting somebody for whom

  silence isn’t there.

  But it brought me here – white silence, the black view.

  I am the antibody

  striding to the wound christ not again

  I murmur to myself

  as I slip my dead-banana black shoes on

  at this hideous fahrenheit

  and make my dusty beeline down the slopes

  to see who thinks there’s no such

  thing as silence. Earth smokes at my steps

  because Earth thinks it’s cool

  to smoke. It’ll smoke a pack on its last day.

  Look how small I look.

  I’m the mote in my own eye, I am blameless, me,

  cast in this gospel, cast

  in the Only Truth – one of four Only Truths –

  by a maker whose only truth

  is this is the one he will make his movie with.

  The man in white down there

  on his knees? Hasn’t a clue he’s in a picture.

  He’ll make me forget it too,

  make me think we’re here and share a future.

  For now it’s one man kneeling,

  no, standing – He’s got up to look like Jesus.

  I look like who I am.

  Someone who thinks there’s such a thing as silence.

  I’m no one still, like every

  face you’ve seen. They cast us from round here.

  We looked real, we’re gone now,

  we are nobodies, we happened to be there

  when the maker came. If you look

  you can find our insignificant peasant names

  in the credits – all except

  mine, who was I? Nobody two times.

  Three times when He looks.

  He looks through me as if He saw me coming

  and going, saw me small,

  now faraway, a spot, a speck then nothing,

  as if He watched me turn

  in time, then set off home for long ago;<
br />
  as if He watched me do

  what in a while I, yes, am likely to:

  turn on my dead black rind

  of a heel and walk away from this. My eyes

  can’t do with being seen,

  so I look at the world and look it’s got my eyes.

  Silence brought me here

  but I am here. And those of us who are,

  who know there’s such a thing

  as silence know it’s something we can’t bear –

  we have to say, and I say

  because I’m starving Turn these stones to bread

  if there’s no such thing as silence.

  Make no one starving now there’s no one dead.

  I and the silence wait

  for His next trick and He vanquishes the silence

  (in His dreams which are your dreams)

  with some scripture about scripture till the silence

  backs away for now.

  Shall we walk? I finally say, and suddenly

  (in my dreams which are your dreams)

  we have spiralled down to the valley, spiralled high

  to some holy pinnacle.

  Life or death or small talk. I say Look:

  if there’s no such thing as silence,

  jump why don’t you, show me who the fuck

  you make the children pray to.

  And silence doesn’t come, the wind comes, breezes

  come and go as if some

  word is blooming (please) but what He says is

  this Jesus, what He says is,

  No one is ever allowed to ask me Show Me.

  You can see me thinking: squire,

  is that truly the best you can do, is that it, really?

  Is that really all you’ll say

  when they come for you? For they will come for you.

  Is that your secret weapon

  when they strike? I edged away, checked out the view.

  For to be straight with you

  I was dumbfounded, puzzled into wonder.

  Who would ever ask Him

  anything but Show Me in the future?

  Or – everyone who did,

  would their heads be spun, some dim parading army

  droning for all time:

  No one is ever allowed to ask him Show Me.

  Then somehow we’re back here

  in the dust, like we were never gone, His face

  v mine, the right v wrong,

  the only tools He left us in His tool-case,

  but I’ve learned the rule of three,

  so I know I’ve one shot left, and I blurt out

  Be like me, like us,

  won’t you join us in the silence? Just admit

  there’s silence! And in that

  infinite split-second He will take