Collected Poems

by Peter Redgrove

  The web sagged, and then ripped upwards to the highest strands, which broke with a click. The robes swung aside, wrapping themselves round and round the trunks of the two trees, which shuddered and relinquished great slabs and wedges of snow. I picked a way between pits and craters where matter still steamed, but before I had gone half-a-dozen yards disgust shook me, and I flung myself down on the clean snow, throwing my own matter before my face.

  When I had finished, I cleaned my face with handfuls of the snow, and as I looked up I felt new air-borne flakes whisping against my open eyes. I knew all would be made good, white and even once more.

  But the mind cannot cope properly with disgust, and mine shrank from the horror and thought only of the weaving: madame launching herself from the bare twigs, flinging her bottom from side to side and throwing out threads which hardened and on to which she danced, twisting loose ends together, springing and returning on the long straight rays and even spiral, light, live, and smaller, much smaller.

  MR WATERMAN10

  ‘Now, we’re quite private in here. You can tell me your troubles. The pond, I think you said …’

  ‘We never really liked that pond in the garden. At times it was choked with a sort of weed, which, if you pulled one thread, gleefully unravelled until you had an empty basin before you and the whole of the pond in a soaking heap at your side. Then at other times it was as clear as gin, and lay in the grass staring upwards. If you came anywhere near, the gaze shifted sideways, and it was you that was being stared at, not the empty sky. If you were so bold as to come right up to the edge, swaggering and talking loudly to show you were not afraid, it presented you with so perfect a reflection that you stayed there spellbound and nearly missed dinner getting to know yourself. It had hypnotic powers.’

  ‘Very well. Then what happened?’

  ‘Near the pond was a small bell hung on a bracket, which the milkman used to ring as he went out to tell us upstairs in the bedroom that we could go down and make the early-morning tea. This bell was near a little avenue of rose-trees. One morning, very early indeed, it tinged loudly and when I looked out I saw that the empty bottles we had put out the night before were full of bright green pondwater. I had to go down and empty them before the milkman arrived. This was only the beginning. One evening I was astounded to find a brace of starfish coupling on the ornamental stone step of the pool, and, looking up, my cry to my wife to come and look was stifled by the sight of a light peppering of barnacles on the stems of the rose-trees. The vermin had evidently crept there, taking advantage of the thin film of moisture on the ground after the recent very wet weather. I dipped a finger into the pond and tasted it: it was brackish.’

  ‘But it got worse.’

  ‘It got worse: one night of howling wind and tempestuous rain I heard muffled voices outside shouting in rural tones: ‘Belay there, you lubbers!’ ‘Box the foresail capstan!’ ‘A line! A line! Give me a line there, for Davy Jones’ sake!’ and a great creaking of timbers. In the morning, there was the garden-seat, which was too big to float, dragged tilting into the pond, half in and half out.’

  ‘But you could put up with all this. How did the change come about?’

  ‘It was getting playful, obviously, and inventive, if ill-informed, and might have got dangerous. I decided to treat it with the consideration and dignity which it would probably later have insisted on, and I invited it in as a lodger, bedding it up in the old bathroom. At first I thought I would have to run canvas troughs up the stairs so it could get to its room without soaking the carpet, and I removed the flap from the letter-box so it would be free to come and go, but it soon learnt to keep its form quite well, and get about in macintosh and goloshes, opening doors with gloved fingers.’

  ‘Until a week ago …’

  ‘A week ago it started sitting with us in the lounge (and the electric fire had to be turned off, as the windows kept on steaming up). It had accidentally included a goldfish in its body, and when the goggling dolt swam up the neck into the crystal-clear head, it dipped its hand in and fumbled about with many ripples and grimaces, plucked it out, and offered the fish to my wife, with a polite nod. She was just about to go into the kitchen and cook the supper, but I explained quickly that goldfish were bitter to eat, and he put it back. However, I was going to give him a big plate of ice-cubes, which he would have popped into his head and enjoyed sucking, although his real tipple is distilled water, while we watched television, but he didn’t seem to want anything. I suppose he thinks he’s big enough already.’

  ‘Free board and lodging, eh?’

  ‘I don’t know what rent to charge him. I thought I might ask him to join the river for a spell and bring us back some of the money that abounds there: purses lost overboard from pleasure-steamers, rotting away in the mud, and so forth. But he has grown very intolerant of dirt, and might find it difficult to get clean again. Even worse, he might not be able to free himself from his rough dirty cousins, and come roaring back as an impossible green seething giant, tall as the river upended, buckling into the sky, and swamp us and the whole village as well. I shudder to think what would happen if he got as far as the sea, his spiritual home: the country would be in danger. I am at my wits’ end, for he is idle, and lounges about all day.’

  ‘Well, that’s harmless enough …’

  ‘If he’s not lounging, he toys with his shape, restlessly. Stripping off his waterproof, he is a charming dolls’-house of glass, with doors and windows opening and shutting; a tree that thrusts up and fills the room; a terrifying shark-shape that darts about between the legs of the furniture, or lurks in the shadows of the room, gleaming in the light of the television-tube; a fountain that blooms without spilling a drop; or, and this image constantly recurs, a very small man with a very large head and streaming eyes, who gazes mournfully up at my wife (she takes no notice), and collapses suddenly into his tears with a sob and a gulp. Domestic, pastoral-phallic, maritime-ghastly, stately-gracious or grotesque-pathetic: he rings the changes on a gamut of moods, showing off, while I have to sit aside slumped in my armchair unable to compete, reflecting what feats he may be able to accomplish in due course with his body, what titillating shapes impose, what exaggerated parts deploy, under his macintosh. I dread the time (for it will come) when I shall arrive home unexpectedly early, and hear a sudden scuffle-away in the waste-pipes, and find my wife (‘just out of the shower, dear’) with that moist look in her eyes, drying her hair: and then to hear him swaggering in from the garden drains, talking loudly about his day’s excursion, as if nothing at all had been going on. For he learns greater charm each day, this Mr Waterman, and can be as stubborn as winter and gentle as the warm rains of spring.’

  ‘I should say that you have a real problem there, but it’s too early for a solution yet, until I know you better. Go away, take a week off from the office, spend your time with your wife, relax, eat plenty of nourishing meals, plenty of sex and sleep. Then come and see me again. Good afternoon.

  ‘The next patient, nurse. Ah, Mr Waterman. Sit down, please. Does the gas fire trouble you? No? I can turn it off if you wish. Well now, we’re quite private in here. You can tell me your troubles. A married, air-breathing woman, I think you said …’

  IV

  AT THE WHITE MONUMENT

  (1963)

  A SILENT MAN

  I love the cold; it agrees with me,

  I am minded like its petrifaction,

  Or do I mean perfection? My heart

  Is cold and loves to stroll through cold,

  And seems to see a better speech

  Rolling in fat clouds of breath.

  I keep talk for my walks, silent clouds

  That flow in ample, mouthing white

  Along the paths. At home

  Where I’ve closeted my wife

  And instituted children in the warm

  I keep my silence, lest

  Those I love, regard, catch cold from me

  As though I strolled through mould, a
nd breathing,

  Puffed white clouds to spore more fur.

  I never take them on my long cold walks alone,

  I save them for a warmer time, some kind of spring;

  Saved up in me like frozen seeds among

  Crisp-flaring turf, stiff marsh, gagged stream,

  Paths the skidding ferrule will not prick;

  Where floes creak and yearn at floes

  To fuse and bind the Thames for walking on.

  This narrowing path punctuated with my stick,

  This fuming field where in galoshes

  I can watch winter tinkle in the stream

  And clap its ice across the water-voice

  Where it buttocks through the marsh,

  And throttle birds, or shoo them south,

  Crazing its flat glum sky with trees …

  And leaves waggled till they snap and drop,

  The robin crouching on his back

  Fur-legged amid the bristling white,

  Horned twig, fence fanged, whetted blades …

  Fur them of its own even colour

  To cling and blur and sheet,

  These are my walks;

  Where winter acts and silences,

  Where all is firming underfoot,

  Where I can watch the cold flat water

  Fizz into my prints

  Till I can shatter crusts; my walks.

  FANTASIA

  My parents went down to the river to drink.

  And why go there when they had taps

  Full of great crystal staves to drive in their mouths

  When the river is slow and green and thick as soup

  And motes dance in it that meet and breed?

  One might have been a murderer

  And the other the natural murder-ee

  Persuaded to drink from a cold natural syrup

  Was manly and good for the bowels.

  Then as her body sank

  The other might be persuaded to think

  That what he wiped from his brows was blood.

  No, I cannot say

  That two went down and one came back

  For I saw them return conversing quietly,

  (One of a series to lull suspicion?)

  And I cannot ask them twelve years ago

  If they went down to the river to drink

  For hatred of cisterns and constant questioners;

  Or apologize for mishearing them speaking so low,

  Going down to the river to talk and think.

  A SCARECROW

  A scarecrow, enlaced in bridals,

  Staring across blank meadows with cold pebbles;

  Mice crouch in his head, in the warm straw centre;

  A scamper dies across snow, slower, slower;

  Then the sun breaks out and drowns the world,

  Fry skip in the ponds, birds

  Fill the steady pressing wind miles-high,

  And in the wood, sliding like wet felt to the foot,

  In the shadows, eyes cry lookout for the teeth;

  And after the summer with the flowers and the sun

  Glaring at each other and after the winged ants

  Have mounted and broken like pottery,

  Slathering the heel with oils and membranes

  On the hot pavement;

  The birds beat south in a steady blanket

  Whisking their shadows over dusty hard-fruiting grasses,

  Baffled by winter in a land of brown marshes,

  And the sky shivers and lets the night in;

  And the land swells with snow over the sticks and membranes,

  While another spring calls close, appallingly different,

  Mothered out of nature, the enemy of persons.

  IN COMPANY TIME11

  He’s been somewhere far away for ten minutes,

  Not in this office at the sharp steel desk

  Barking his lap. The phrase holds:

  ‘An ecology of anger’. He’s been at home

  With new young so-and-so, in reverie,

  Six weeks old in a reach-me-down suit of fat.

  It was the rose awoke him, since it’s pouring,

  Flashing at the corner of his eye,

  A white rose like a teacup on the bush, he thinks,

  Beside the tennis-courts, that brims and bends and dips,

  Dashing its contents in a roughed-up puddle, rip!

  It’s kept him looking all this rainy weather,

  Thrashing with pauses; it has a something,

  What, he can’t tell. In company time

  Now he’s going to write his father what’s

  Been happening this last six or seven weeks.

  First that blister-belly, thumping day and night

  With a rabbit-warren life, broke water; she,

  Before they sent him off, still bell-round in bed,

  Soothed white and sleepy. There’s plenty left in her, she says,

  If it’s another little grapefruit-head with blond crew-cut,

  Blinking on his back, trying out his eyelids. Flash!

  Another roseful, pealing it off like a churchbell.

  They’ve been changed, they think.

  Since the hurt, she looks inwards more.

  His brother’s death at Christmas sobered both lives:

  Just grown up; blond as the new one is.

  Father’s reduced, and likes his new job,

  Takes up his pen, ‘an ecology …’ and notes:

  ‘It has been said that if the whole world save only the bacteria of it was suddenly brought to judgment and dissolved utterly, its misty outlines would endure by reason of their presence, right down to the last egg-stain on each ghostly waistcoat-button, and the lash on each phantasmal eye. The antibiotics are a clear triumph over the randomness of decay and decomposition: raising by a power one factor in the reversible equilibrium between high organization and simple death, and pushing it back in our favour and our children’s.’

  Too flowery for a drug-firm’s pamphlet,

  But he’s triumphing over randomness himself

  With hybrids, and increase, while obese household paper,

  Squashy piles of disorderly abundance not answered

  Is under auspices of lists of what to do;

  Tossing out his wastestuff he consumes disorder

  But flash! the rose does it in far better style,

  It brims and bends and dips,

  It jerks its skinny wrist, small castaway bailing

  All the rustling, wastepaper-coloured waterlands with a teacup:

  It’s gained a slice of blue above

  And the pavement’s running with wild combings now.

  They’ve never had the cash before; this firm pays well;

  Is nice besides, has roses for the staff, and tennis-courts;

  And breeding seems to suit them splendidly,

  So different from that death, the dirty death which now they both know,

  That detestable undertaker’s headfrill round the wound

  He never saw and can’t forget;

  The party-tidied hair and purple marks;

  And, forever, four days off twenty, to oblige a friend.

  ‘I’d say two sons are not enough, if one

  Can smash a strong voice like it did your own.’

  The rain falls down; its freshness fills the room.

  It started with the bursting of the dews

  That this father learnt to gossip, bustling speech;

  The rag-man, first unwilling partner, fidgeting in the rain,

  Bewildered, by his rusty cluttered cart,

  And the milkman, parted with their views on circumcision,

  As he talked on and her sobbing filled his ears

  And baby sparred his way out, crumpled up,

  Pink and sticky like a bud before its time

  At this same office – where a rose sets out to save them drowning.

  ‘But she doesn’t chat so much; milk leaps sharp-white in beams

&nbs
p; As Rubens painted bountiful Venus; our baby’s mouth approaches

  And claps tight. Knobbly from my slimming,

  Like an opera-cane poked round the door at six-fifteen,

  I catch him lopside on the knee, practising hiccups,

  Finger-grabbing, and such useful skills.

  Baby laps up what he knows of life; Mother

  Is thick and cream, motion wafts him back

  To sprawl on fat as on a sofa, negligent;

  Curds droop heavy from his lips.’

  The rose hesitates, and gives out once more.

  Of course she’s closed to him for two weeks still;

  Her blister-scarf is soft as anything he loved; his

  Boneless skull is pulsating to her teat, but father’s

  Grown-up kisses soaked her nightdress-front with milk.

  ‘They meet each other’s eyes and gaze right through

  From one straight neck, one greengrained and wobbly …’

  Something is there suddenly with its silence.

  It’s his rose has broken on its stalk –

  The crumpled firmament proves too much for it, as anyone.

  Heavy and many-folded, drenching out, filling again,

  Flopping sideways on its strings at last. A petal skitters.

  It looks like clearing up – and so must he;

  It’s nearly five. On this machine

  He has gushing fingers, torrential fatherhood, and ends:

  ‘Sorry to go on so. But, Dad,

  We must have grandsons,

  Death is such a risk. When you lift them up,

  Be sure to guard the head with your outstretched fingers;

  And take care of Mother, in your preoccupations.’

  V

  THE FORCE12

  (1966)

  THE FORCE