by Glyn Maxwell
But did not finish – some way back –
I could not fix the Year –
Nor where it went –
nor why it came –
The second time to me –
Nor definitely, what it was –
Have I the Art to say –
But somewhere – in my Soul – I know –
I’ve met the Thing before –
It just reminded me – ’twas all –
And came my way no more –
Oh it’s all a dream again, I knew as I deflated, standing there, and how did I know? Because I taught Keats on a Thursday, and I don’t have to teach till next Thursday, so this can be only Friday, and never in my entire life have I prepared a class six whole days early, as I clearly have in this case. QED. Quod Emily D.
Until it’s a dream, or not a dream, I gaze out through the nearest window, over the rooftops of the cold quiet place out to the strip of lake in the distance, the only bloke on earth as usual, I am at my address.
And so: my – Address – What are you telling me? What did I do wrong where I was? What did I need telling?
You are telling me something. I’ve seen things like this, I end up a better person. Do I? How? Will the same things keep happening and I understand them more? Or different things keep happening and I somehow learn to love it? What work are we engaged on here?
Then I feel a lightness, as if the beloved of my life are reachable, close, as if they know I’m off somewhere, at my work in some strange way, know I’ll be back from where I’m gone.
So this day’s like every other. It feels like I can call them all -but my bird-yellow phone is dead now, and I didn’t bring a charger, it slipped my mind to be omniscient.
I have to work, but I can’t. I never do my work when I feel I can. Work starts helplessly, I find myself At It, the body leads me there. Not this time.
The books are open, I open the windows, the wind will turn their pages. I need to eat instead. Having mastered the physics and acknowledged the biology I shall go out alone and explore – and it’s this preposterous Faustian hubris that makes some terrible person start battering on the door downstairs.
Maybe it’s not battering, maybe they’re not terrible, maybe it just strikes me like battering because I do not feel like talking. I tiptoe to the window and peer down.
I see the path, a needless zigzag through the tiny garden, am relieved there’s no one on it, wait too long thinking that, which lets a lady back right into view, stare up and clock me before I can hide. Shit shit shit runs my little birdsong.
I hear nothing, I stay gone. I sidle through the long little room, leaning inches to see till I do see – who, Caroline of the tinted hair walking away off my domain. I didn’t want to be wanted for anything. I will see off invaders. I will run away, to show I can, there’s money in my pocket somehow, there always is these days -comes of saying yes and working fast and saying right what’s next? - there is money, I’ll be back in time to eat a triumphal breakfast.
*
‘Teacherman! Señor!’
That went well.
The big man in overalls is calling up the lane. I was heading north away from the Cross, to where the great field stretches from the fence where I met Keats but I didn’t get that far, there was Barry Wilby, drinking milk beside a milk float.
Hey there. Barry.
‘Taking a walk eh, were we.’
We, no, I was yes, wondering where that leads. . .
‘Oh it’s a super quality stroll, that one.’
Yeah pretty much why I was taking it (but, you know, standing by a milk float’s good too) what are you up to on this grey day Barry.
‘Doing my rounds.’
You’re a milkman.
‘No,’ as a sleeved hand waves from the driver’s window and Barry nods his big head, ‘she’s the milkman, I’m her pal. I’ll be seeing you later.’
You will?
‘Professor!’
Pincer movement, my pursuer Caroline, emerging from Student Services with a wave and a puzzled look as she marches on my world.
Catch you later Barry. . . Caroline is it Caroline?
‘We had a ten, did we not have a ten?’
Did we not what did we what (oh I vant to be alone) ‘One-to-one at ten! You didn’t come so I went to your place! Kerri Beds told me where you are! I saw you in the window.’
Was that me.
‘Eh?’
Yes that was me, I was, sorry, difficult phone-call.
‘You have a signal? No one has a signal on a Thursday. How do you have a signal?’
I – it’s gone. (Note to self: can’t fib in a village)
‘Kerri Beds said she had no clue about your plans.’
I look over at Student Services and there’s Kerri in her office, talking to a young man in an anorak.
Caroline says ‘Schedules are posted in her office.’
Sorry did you just say it was Thursday?
‘The Academy tutors do that – what’s that? Yes you teach at three. I know it’s three because on Tuesday at three I have Material Poetics with Gough Slurman he’s tremendous.’
(I really hate this coma now, what Academy)
‘Eh?’
What happened to the damn week.
‘Oh, I see, well yes, good damn question.’
*
We walk west along the verge of the oval village green. So I stood her up – but she’s not real, I don’t have to teach her. But evidently she thinks she’s real, so I really did stand her up, so I really do have to teach her. But it won’t affect the world in the end so it’s not worth my time. But it will affect how I feel right now so in fact it damn well is. It’s no contest. My philosophical default has always been not to offend, which is maybe why you don’t know who I am or haven’t noticed I’ve vanished.
‘This is my first time, you know, so be kind! But don’t go pulling any punches please, I want to know what you think, but how about you go easy on a rookie.’
(I haven’t read her poems, I haven’t got her poems, I’m not here)
‘I’ve made duplicates, in case you mislaid them, I can see you’re a typical chaotic poet. But before we do sit down, what do you reckon to ’em?’
They’re – you know what Caroline they’re forceful poems. They’re full of. . . force.
‘Are they.’
But they also have a – a sweetness.
‘You think? And there’s me thinking they were brutal.’
Oh don’t worry they’re brutal, but somehow the sweetness -offsets that.
‘Offsets it, I should be writing this down, shall we wait till the caff it’s right here. . . ’
(Caff? Caff won’t cut it, do you know who I am? I see the heavenly sign of an Inn, my sign, about fifty yards further, it is called The Saddlers Inn, I shall join the Union of the Saddlers, I shall fight in their ranks) You know what, Caroline, I’m going to Buy You Brunch! (makes up for this morning, I can speed-read her poems while I down some dry white anything) and I won’t take no for an answer!
*
SOUTH HADLEY SEMINARY
Nov 2nd, 1847
Bill of Fare
Roast Veal
Potatoes
Squash
Gravy
Wheat and Brown Bread
Butter
Pepper and Salt
Dessert
Apple Dumpling Sauce
Water
Isn’t that a dinner fit to set before a king?
*
‘Are you all right?’
Yes. Miles away. Something I read. Back here and now (I read six sheets of poems in the time it takes to say so) I’m remembering these yes yes there’s clearly an anger.
‘Yes there’s a bloody anger mind my German.’
(Forlornly I await my eggs florentine) It’s like the speaker can’t see beyond this You figure who betrayed her.
‘You mean me and my ex-husband. The betrayer is called Ronald. The speaker is
me. I’m the speaker.’
There’s a language we have to use (I shuffle her six pages) we never assume identities ha! sounds like a spy movie.
‘Of course, I know the game.’
If anger doesn’t sing it’s just anger.
‘And what if I don’t feel like singing?’
Then no one will hear her – I mean you. Least of all this man called You – I mean him.
‘Ronald.’
Ronald.
‘Why would I want him to hear it?’
No reason.
‘He doesn’t deserve to.’
No. Ronald doesn’t deserve to. Here comes your croque monsieur. . .
Like most poets of the day and age when we set about teaching, I am haplessly cast as counsellor, shrink, trainer, mate, provocateur, Fool in the Lear sense and fool in the fool sense, and I see Caroline, having paid her money and taken her choice, might deploy me in any combination at will. I find that if I keep my eye on her line-breaks (for the play of nerves) her vowels (for the swell of emotions) and the scope of her vocabulary (keep it small and tight if you’re pacing round your garden) I can help her find the sound she wants. In this game I’ve been calmly, hopefully passed first-hand accounts of rape, war, grief, schizophrenia, child abuse and terminal illness, I can handle a rough divorce. The duty is to the poem, I have to address it almost independent of the poet, gently bypass the suffering human and talk straight to the creature, like a dog-lover might do in the park. Now I’m telling it: Help her. You and I can help her
Caroline sees some young students go by outside the window.
‘Kids and their shiny faces. They’ll learn.’
And I remember that in this life, as in life, I have no idea how old I look. I don’t think they’re kids at all, or if they are I’m one too. Maybe Caroline wants me for her generation. She has a point but I will stand my ground. My soul is thirty-seven, I’ll be a-sitting on that gate when I’m the aged, aged man.
The Inn door opens with a jingle and it’s Kerri Bedward. Great, a coma with recurring cast, everyone cheer. A side of the bar is also the Reception, she’s heading there when she sees me.
‘Just the man. Can you meet her at the station?’
What? Yes. The station (and let us state it while we may) you mean can I meet the nineteenth-century poet Emily Dickinson of Amherst Massachusetts at the railway station?
Kerri pauses by our banquette waiting to see if there’s anything funny or wrong about that, but according to her clipboard there isn’t: ‘Ms – Dickinson, yes, she’s on the 18.30.’
1830, of course she is. Where’s she coming from, Kerri?
Kerri looks at me. My habitual cluelessness was funny the first four times.
‘The agent didn’t say. She’s staying the night though.’
(Caroline’s scribbling on her poems: offset the brutality???)
Are you coming to hear her read her work? (but they both hope I’m addressing the other one and Kerri’s moved on to Reception. I face Caroline) You could write like our visitor.
‘Eh what now?’
Find a single form forever. Write no other way.
‘Would that not be monotonous?’
You are a single form forever, Caroline, arms legs head heart hands feet etc. So write in a single form forever. Full-throated like a bird.
‘Yes. Well. Glyn. Dealing with what I’m dealing with? Sheer malice of Ronald. Mother who thinks I’m her mother. Son who doesn’t give a damn who I am. Right now I’m too – full of what I need to say.’
Yes. Of course you are. You need a thousand forms, that’s just what the monotonous blackbird tweeted me this morning, he needs horns and scales and udders and a mane and a tail and a sting and to really improve his English.
*
This is later, of course, I mutter that alone, when I’m walking back to the Cross, when my posh brunch has been paid for, and I’ve been told I can get it next time, as if there was a next time ha!
To stop in the Cross Keys is obviously foolhardy, as my usual practice for one-to-ones is to set them up in threes, so I’m banking on a double ambush, and I don’t even reach the bar before they catch me, first of course Orlando.
‘Overdid it last night, did we?’ he goes, beaming like it was all his Plan.
Don’t really know, mate (which is nice to say, being true)
‘It’s actually Lillian Bronzo next, not me, so...’
We reschedule. I offer several days on which I don’t expect this realm to exist or at least I won’t be corporeally present, but he means twenty minutes from now, we can squash it in before class!’
Oh yes. Class.
‘What you got for us today?’
We’re. We’re going to play a game called Hots For God.
‘Ha! Like it!’
I don’t mean game I mean exercise.
‘Totally. Bring it.’
Up comes Lily of the scarlet pixie hair. ‘Oi, listen you: I heard a fly buzz when I died, right. The stillness in the room was – hang on, I know it – ’
‘In the air?’ prompts Ollie,
‘Shut it – like the stillness in the air before the heaves of storm. Yesss. Learned it. You said to.’
I did? I did. All of it? Or just – just the one stanza.
‘Jesus, slave-driver or wot.’
Ollie says: ‘Superb stuff, but it’s between not before.’ He sags with regret and continues: ‘The eyes around had wrung them dry – ’
I feel such tenderness towards Lily, Lillian, as if she’s the first person ever to have memorized lines of Emily – she may believe she is – that I thoroughly tell a lie:
Depends on the edition, Orlando. There’s a version with before. ‘Oh there is? Fair enough. It’s a folio thing.’
Totally, man, it’s a folio thing, it’s a folio thing, Lily.
*
Lily’s thing is she’s homesick. You’d never catch her using the word, but it’s there in her scratchy voice. We’re sat down at a corner table and she has to top the lunchtime hubbub.
‘In Camden I’m like on the scene, right,’ she coughs, ‘I got mates, the shit we write is about each other, it reacts, it’s like it’s, mess with me I’ll mess with you, or sometimes you’re the bomb no you’re the bomb, I dunno, what the crap do I write about here?’
Don’t write about here.
‘It’s the space here, man, it’s too far between shit.’
Don’t write about here. Write about where you come from. Map it in your mind. Don’t write down anything. Map the evening you want, how you get there, where it is, who’s there, what happens, map how drunk you get, map it by the second, bus by night bus, map it so strongly it can’t be forgotten. Rhyme and rhythm and shit and don’t write down anything.
‘Cool. Seriously?’
If it sticks in your memory it gets in the club. If it doesn’t too bad. Your ears are doormen – door-persons.’
‘No they’re doormen. They’re called Saul and Gregor actually, they’re evil.’
*
Ollie wants to know if I think he should write poems to his girlfriend:
Depends who’s your girlfriend. No, probably.
‘You know. Mimi, from the ol’ class.’
Mimi. You’re in a thing with Mimi (I knew that)
‘I know! Part of me thinks – result! It’s full on, though. Or also not at all sometimes. She’s such a. We got together at that wedding.’ That’s what people get at a wedding. So why isn’t Mimi in this class now?
‘She’s on the acting module.’
The Academy.
‘Yeah.’
So she’s not doing any poetry class?
‘Not doing any writing class. I am, I’m doing Textualities of Now with Suzi Judas, she rocks, but no the problem is – my work’s got kind of, a bit more, y’know, now-ish, like I don’t so much do that moonlight and roses thing any more like I used to?’
Chocolate boxes.
‘Totally! I’ve gone more, like, like post
modern? Arguably postpost.’ No more heroes, all gold, black magic, so you want to tell her sweet things but you don’t do sweet things any more.
‘I totally don’t in a way.’
You don’t know how to say You’re lovely like a rose, Mimi.
‘Finger down throat or what!’
Let me think about it, squire.
‘Or more like a black rose? She might go for that do you think? I’m struggling here. Thing is, I already sent one, it’s gone.’
You already sent her a poem?
‘I wanted to ask you first, I couldn’t find you, I didn’t think of a black rose, I went with a starlight/ocean vibe.’
Nice. Yes I think you should send her love-poems, Orlando.
‘You do?’
Obviously don’t say you asked me. Then you’d look like a -‘God no! What happens in the Cross Keys stays in the Cross Keys!’
Drink your drink, man. Let’s play Hots For God.
*
I died for Beauty – but was scarce
Adjusted in the Tomb
When One who died for Truth, was lain
In an adjoining Room –
He questioned softly ‘Why I failed’?
‘For Beauty’, I replied –
And I – for Truth – Themself are One –
We Brethren, are’, He said –
And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night –
We talked between the Rooms –
Until the Moss had reached our lips –
And covered up – our names –
*
Heath Samira
Lily Ollie
Barry Caroline
Niall Iona
moi
Why can’t you all sit in the same damn places every week?
‘I can’t all do anything,’ Lily points out like some stroppy punk Alice.
Okay let’s not use cards, let’s use dice. Write down the numbers 1 to 6. Five of the faces are people in this room, you can include me if you want to, also yourself. And the 6 is God. You include Him whatever. What? Yes. Or Her. Or Them. Or It. Look the sixth face is something beyond these walls, you name it yourself. Fate, time, the stars, the weather.
So let’s go round the room. Say 1 is me, 2 is Niall, 3 is Barry, 4 is Lily, 5 is Heath, 6 is whatever God is to You, okay?
Thats my version, do your own.
Now write another 1 to 6.
1 is Love For. 2 is Hatred Of. 3 is Pity For. 4 is Envy Of. 5 is Fear Of. 6 is Hots For. Are you getting the picture?
