One Thousand Nights and Counting

by Glyn Maxwell

  They came again, and took the eating Dog,

  while the Other stopped and offered his food, and stared.

  They came again, and fooled the Elephant

  who wanted to be fooled; the Other didn’t.

  They took the Fox next, who seemed reluctant,

  and told the Other, “You stay here on watch.”

  They took the Jackdaw who was screaming, “I!”

  which left the Other, quiet, making a nest.

  No problem for the righteous Lion: he went,

  but the Other was troubled, needed time to think.

  When they next came, the Monkey had packed a case,

  but the Other, puzzled, had nothing to put in a case.

  25

  Then the Natterjack, told he’d meet a Princess,

  leapt in the air, but the Other fell about.

  The Owl put down his book, said, “I deserve”,

  and told the Other, “I find you don’t deserve.”

  The Pig – you should have seen him – he almost flew!

  But the Other couldn’t, so wouldn’t, but still hopes to.

  The Shark was next – and you know this trip was free?

  – he paid a million; the Other said, “Not me.”

  The Sheep were hard to separate, but one

  went with the ones who went, and the Other stayed

  with the ones who stayed. The Snake was next, accusing

  the Other so silently he never knew

  why he was left behind with the likes of me

  and the Other Unicorn, who stayed with me.’

  26

  And who then came in with towels, which reminded me:

  ‘Why one at a time? I saw double that.’

  Which made her laugh. ‘We saw you on the news,

  we know about your escapades! – but listen:

  are you just a drunken Man – or part of the business?

  Who were the ones who went?’ ‘Nobody went

  anywhere!’ I cried, ‘It was just raining!

  There’ll be a hell of a lot of mud in the morning!

  – but nobody died, did they? What are you saying?’

  ‘Oh,’ said a huge bird sadly,

  ‘has anyone been doing something odd

  recently, in your town? Like, building something?’

  ‘Only the man with the planks, this local git,

  building a sort of – big . . . oh holy shit.’

  27

  I suppose I overreacted. The lines were down

  anyway, and the lights were packing in.

  They put me to bed a while, which I shared with something

  not unlike a Woman, but comprehensible

  and with one face. I couldn’t sleep. The rain

  never let up, and I went downstairs again.

  Some of the furrier guests were thinking

  of turning in by then, but things like bats,

  otters, hedgehogs – brighter colours, though –

  began to reminisce, just wouldn’t go,

  and the mousy thing in the coat just stared and stared

  out of the window.

  I ended the night at chess with the bored Yeti.

  ‘Did your companion go?’ I asked. ‘Dunno.’

  28

  I must have got my second wind then,

  as the next thing I remember is a full

  harmonious hum of snoring, in the dark,

  ranging from the unhearable to the zurr

  of a bearish group in the library, and always

  the rain and as I left,

  as I stood on the WELCOME mat and said my quiet

  ‘So long’ to the left behind, and left them,

  and ventured out to the light and the first stone,

  I saw an extraordinary thing – I mean,

  even by these standards – how the whole

  garden and cottage, seething with the asleep,

  was a deep deep hole in the sea, and all around

  the walls of water poured against the ground!

  29

  Nobody was disturbed but I – I saw

  water, white with fury at this Law,

  fall and fountain again, against its will,

  leaving us dry and pocketed, a well

  of oxygen in what was the end of a world.

  The greenness here, the life of it, was so strong

  I thought, ‘Nobody’s wrong, nothing’s wrong,’

  and it felt like my first thought, and I felt how the grass

  stayed bone dry to the last.

  I thought of waking the Unicorns, and just as I

  thought to myself, ‘There are no such things

  as unicorns,’ the water spurted out

  and gripped my feet and whirled me up this spout

  up onto the flat sea and that was that.

  30

  Day, I guess. The sky was a sagging grey.

  Everywhere dead land and debris,

  and after swimming in turn to three of the four

  horizons of the dome,

  I twisted to look at the last, and it had to be home.

  Home, though it shouldn’t have been, was a high

  ridge with its back to the sea,

  and the rain would have to have filled the valley before

  the town would flood, although by then

  it would have done, and had.

  So what were left were the roofs, and the high arena

  where we did our plays, and also the Heroes Tower

  which from these miles seemed swollen at its steeple

  like a hornets’ nest on a stick. Clinging people.

  31

  I swam, and thought of the dead. I thought, ‘They’re dead.’

  (I was known as a thinker at school, I’ll have you know.)

  I thought of the things I’d seen, and thought, ‘I didn’t

  see those things.’ (I was known as a liar, too.)

  I swam over trees and everything I had once

  run through, and it all seemed much simpler

  and, feeling my confidence build, I stood on the water,

  which didn’t take my weight. I sank, I swam.

  It began to rain again, and had always rained.

  I imagined the Winners’ Bar an aquarium.

  Which made me think of the match, which led to the thought

  of the noise of the hammering father in his harbour,

  which led me to scan the horizon

  for his boat and zoo, but no, they were gone like him –

  32

  – to the Dry, the Saved, the Impossibly Full: a book.

  Good end for all that wood, I thought, blankly.

  Then I caught some floating door

  and lay on it, closed my eyes and trusted it:

  I would float upsea to the town.

  And we floated upsea to the town.

  What was left of it, well yes, we’ve all seen pictures,

  but it’s really only another view, only

  the dead are about and prices have fallen down,

  there’s no sport played for a while, and the Police

  are pally, or warn and fire. Charities come,

  and interviewers and the place becomes

  famous. But – hell, famous for whom?

  Well, okay. Nobody this time.

  33

  Washed in, I was reckoned dead. When I woke again

  I was on dry land on a roof with the whole Council.

  In fact I disturbed a debate on the recent crisis,

  and the Mayor, about to cast his casting vote,

  nulled and voided the meeting. All my fault.

  They adjourned to look at the view, and as I crawled

  and stumbled back to an upright position, an old

  stalwart took me aside and told me, ‘Oh

  what a great debate it was!

  Some insist we’re afloat on a floating detached

  roof, others that this is the one building

/>   left, i.e. we’ve been chosen above all

  not to, er, and so on.’ ‘How did you vote?’

  ‘Oh come on, secret ballot, sir, and all that.’

  34

  And then I saw all eyes were on me, the one

  neither dead, nor drowning, nor on the Council.

  So I said, ‘Here you are – where are the real people?’

  A hushed hiatus then, but the Mayor said, ‘There,

  there,’ and I told him to stuff his sympathy,

  but he pointed at where the Tower had been and where

  it now was, a rolling log that couldn’t

  help any of the hundreds trying to grip it

  and splashing to matey death, in each other’s way.

  The Mayor sat down with me,

  and they say I suddenly lost it and screamed at him

  to go to the house in the wood and help them in,

  and find the lot in the boat and scuttle them!

  The Mayor looked at his watch: ‘Gentlemen,

  35

  Time is immaterial. We have

  a roof, we have about two dozen men,

  we have the bust of the founder, which is round . . .

  I reckon that just about makes a troppling ground!’

  And so they played and I looked out to the sea,

  and the sea and the dead, the drowning, the dead and the sea,

  and then I joined in a while and managed a five-o

  before losing out to the Mace-Man’s cunning yellow.

  ‘Ha! Not looking, were you?’ The Mace-Man roared,

  as the rain from heaven pissed on our troppling board.

  ‘It’s slackening off,’ a fielder said. He seemed

  curiously blue for a town official,

  but hell he was right about that, and the Weatherman stared

  up at the sky, and said, ‘I want to bat.’

  36

  By the time we reached half-time the air was only

  dirty, a muzzy brown, like a sand but nothing.

  The rain was hardly rain, more like a reminder.

  The level remained level. The sea was headless.

  We were winning 16–9 with a red in the bucket.

  I was always, always going to say, ‘Oh, fuck it,’

  as I walked and dived and swam and looked back only

  to see a half-mile away

  the prizes passing from Mayor to Man, and the caps

  thrown in the air and to hear,

  small on the wind like the smell of men, ‘hooray!’

  and then a silence, then

  ‘hooray’, tinier than can be, and then

  ‘hooray’, and silence. Nothing. This is me.

  37

  I was born where I knew no man, nor that

  the rain would fall, nor end, nor that a boat

  would sail away and none that I knew would follow.

  All that I knew are gone, and all

  that I know I love and is here and knows it will not

  know me tomorrow.

  I was born, I know, in a town which never

  should have been built where it was, but was,

  and I live in this same one next to the sea

  where nothing changes but is.

  But is that one cloud ever going

  to move again, as I bat and believe

  it will, or is that the sentence passed?

  Time has gone, townspeople, townspeople, time is lost.

  38

  I’ve been working on this page,

  for an age, in the sun.

  I’ll move towards the open window,

  place my hands in the sun.

  I’ll stroll out to the match where we are

  winning it in the sun.

  We are two points clear in every league there is.

  Bar none.

  I’ll stroll back from the match where we are

  coasting home in the sun.

  I’ll see my Ex through the open window or

  someone, tanned in the sun.

  We’ll love and laugh and win at all we do.

  Or have done.

  39

  ‘Yes, well I’m an authority on history,’

  I tell the eight reserves when I meet them

  in the Winners’ Bar, taking the daily pictures

  of one of only how many survivors?

  They ask me, but I shake my head: ‘No questions!’

  They think I’m joking and they shake my hand.

  I give a boy an autograph. I gave him it

  yesterday. I’ll give him it tomorrow.

  I wonder what he thinks of me. The Weatherman

  goes past. He’s out of a job. I say I’m sorry.

  Two of the Council, Gingham and Sub-Gingham,

  always mention unicorns when they pass me.

  They think that’s funny. Gennit, the matchwinner,

  shuts them up with a look. And goes past me.

  40

  Guess what I saw. ‘Your Ex? And she was standing

  out on the pitch and waving, wearing a silk

  she cut with your own money? And she so wanted

  you to go up, so you did,

  and she spoke in a new way and her silk came down

  and all that was there was yours and you married in town!

  Am I right? Oh I’m sorry.

  What did you see?’ Forget it. Don’t worry.

  The game is starting now, anyway.

  Shall we go and see that game? If we win

  we’ll be two points clear. So I hope we win. If we win

  let’s go to the Winners’ Bar, I’ve a seat there. ‘Yeah?

  What’s your poison?’ Manzadinka.

  Manzadinka! ‘What?’ Manzadinka!

  41

  I can see you through this glass,

  all of you. Go on, guess, guess,

  guess what I saw. No, a weather forecast.

  I’m telling you the truth. It was illegal

  but they let it happen. ‘Oh.’ Is that what you say?

  Oh? Yes, I overheard it happen.

  ‘And.’ Is that what you say?

  And? Is that all? Well. And nothing.

  Still the same. Yes, you’re dead right I’m mad.

  I could see you through the glass, you had a horn

  and so did he, you were making fun of me.

  But tell them, Mr Councillor, who scored

  the Double-Green that day, when the Town were out

  for two pinks and a fifty – tell them that!

  42

  I wake in a hot morning, and I make

  a breakfast for a man who needs a breakfast!

  Nothing has changed. I warm the last night coffee

  and reread the local paper where it says

  we won and we are two points clear. The sun

  is high above my home. Nothing has moved.

  We’re favourites for the match today. But don’t think

  for a moment we won’t try.

  I hope my Ex will phone. I mow the lawn.

  I lecture. I once saw a unicorn.

  No, two. I turn my personal radio on.

  I Want It Now has gone to Number One.

  I finish this and put it on the shelf.

  I take it down and send it to myself.

  Helene and Heloise

  So swim in the embassy pool in a tinkling breeze

  The sisters, mes cousines, they are blonde-haired

  Helene and Heloise,

  One for the fifth time up to the diving board,

  The other, in her quiet shut-eye sidestroke

  Slowly away from me though I sip and look.

  From in the palace of shades, inscrutable, cool,

  I watch exactly what I want to watch

  From by this swimming pool,

  Helene’s shimmer and moss of a costume, each

  Soaking pony-tailing of the dark

  And light mane of the littler one as they walk;

  And the
splash that bottles my whole life to today,

  The spray fanning to dry on the porous sides,

  What these breathtakers say

  In their, which is my, language but their words:

  These are the shots the sun could fire and fires,

  Is paid and drapes across the stretching years.

  Now Heloise will dive, the delicate slimmer,

  Calling Helene to turn who turns to see

  One disappearing swimmer

  Only and nods, leans languorously away

  To prop on the sides before me and cup her wet

  Face before me near where I’d pictured it.

  I was about to say I barely know them. –

  I turn away because and hear of course

  Her push away. I see them

  In my rose grotto of thought, and it’s not a guess,

  How they are, out of the water, out

  In the International School they lie about,

  What they can buy in the town, or the only quarters

  Blondes can be seen alighting in, and only

  As guided shaded daughters

  Into an acre of lonely shop. ‘Lonely?’

  Who told me this had told me: ‘They have no lives.

  They will be children. Then they will be wives.’

  Helene shrieks and is sorry – I don’t think – my