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One Thousand Nights and Counting

Page 11

by Glyn Maxwell


  we sat and thought, It’s time. It is our house.

  We won’t, though, I know us. We like to see

  stuff strain at us from nothing, through the space

  alarm in kind or colour or degree,

  be there, not have been there and appear now –

  then yellow at the wall in the few days

  following, and fail not knowing how.

  Or be the bird long gone though its song weighs

  on in us, be dead, be oceanbound

  for all we know. We rest on all we know,

  our little bench, and watch the trees around

  in turn unsettle, like an hour ago.

  The Snow Village

  In the age of pen and paper,

  when the page was a snow village,

  when days the light was leafing through

  descended without message,

  the nib that struck from heaven

  was the sight of a cottage window

  lit by the only certain

  sign of a life, a candle,

  glimpsed by a stranger walking

  at a loss through the snow village.

  All that can flow can follow

  that sighting, though no image,

  no face appear – not even

  the hand that draws across it –

  though the curtains close the vision,

  though the stranger end his visit,

  though the snow erase all traces

  of his passing through the village,

  though his step become unknowable

  and the whiteness knowledge.

  From The Sugar Mile

  [The East End of London, September 1940]

  Granny May at the Scene

  I thought I’d lost you, Joey, who are these

  All over everywhere

  Don’t stand and stare

  At her she’s had a shock, look at her eyes.

  Thought you’d joined the navy like your dad

  I did just then I thought

  He’s off to war I ought

  To stop him he’s too young I said I prayed

  I weren’t too late, I asked the Lord a favour.

  Won’t say what I said

  I’d do for Him instead.

  Only I’ll have to do it now and I’d rather

  See your dad come home again. What’s done.

  That stretcher’s coming out

  That lady’s put a sheet

  Where someone ought to be and you’re too young

  To look at it. That house it’s disappeared.

  A thing like that can’t just

  Happen, Joey, the rest

  All spared. Look at his hand, he wasn’t spared.

  Cover it up, that’s right, they must have been

  Spies or something Joe.

  Must have been in the know.

  Hitler must have thought they knew his plan.

  You don’t know anything, do you, Joey? That’s good.

  Better safe than sorry.

  The King he’s in a fury,

  He’s hopping mad won’t stand for it I heard.

  Don’t know about madame. Don’t know for sure

  She knows it’s started, her.

  What’s that sound, m’dear,

  What’s a-rattling me diamond cup and saucer . . .

  Let’s get away now, Joey, leave ’em be,

  Poor dabs. They didn’t know.

  These days you never know

  Who’s moving in next door, next thing you see

  They’re carrying ’em out. Look at the sky.

  You say that’s what they are

  Them circles way up there

  I call them angel circles up so high.

  Harry in Red Sunshine

  It’s got about an inch,

  Until it drops behind

  That building. It’ll get cooler then

  And I shouldn’t mind

  If it didn’t mean they’re late.

  That’s what I mean: later.

  But it won’t be dark for several hours

  It doesn’t matter

  Whether there’s any sunshine.

  I mean there’s always sunshine

  If you think about it, somewhere

  In the Empire at some time.

  Did you see in the bog place,

  There are maps on every wall

  You can look at while you’re sitting there

  Lord of it all.

  But they’re all obsolete.

  They’re worth about the same

  As what you’re doing in the bucket

  While you look at them.

  Sally Tying Her Sister’s Shoe

  There’s Joey Stone.

  Joey we have to

  say goodbye.

  Because we’ve nothing,

  see that zero

  in the sky?

  No aeroplane

  did that it’s too

  good to be true.

  They’re sending us

  away somewhere

  we won’t have you

  delivering

  our paper no one

  will at all.

  Because it’s Nowhere-

  shire because it’s

  Nowhere Hall.

  Will you still bring

  a paper to

  the ruins, Joe?

  Say you will

  no need to

  but say so.

  Robby Stretching His Legs

  First thing I’m gonna do is swipe a car

  and get myself back here. Course I can drive.

  It’s easy, a girl could do it. An Italian

  girl could do it, couldn’t you, Joey? First thing.

  Second thing, hook up with the Upton gang.

  Do a little business, coin a phrase,

  waste not want not, dig for victory

  blah blah blah. Move up west. Next thing.

  Next thing, well. Meet an American starlet.

  They have them in their army, not starlets,

  females, and their army’s going to come,

  I heard a rumour, if we’re in a hole.

  This? This ain’t a hole. This school’s a hole

  but we were just unlucky. Took a hit.

  Like Mr Albie Rogers is pretending

  happened to his house. And you, Jew-seppy,

  what are you, vapour trail? We ain’t in a hole.

  Our boys’ll see off Adolf. If we don’t,

  the stars of the United States, I tell you,

  they’re trained and they fight dirty, they’re luscious.

  Sally Playing Patience

  It’s even got a cinema,

  the farmers like to go there,

  Joey, then they smoke cigars

  they have a film discussion

  in a room with velvet fittings.

  But what nobody tells them

  as nobody tells anyone

  is all the famous actors

  and all the leading ladies

  Robby you can think of

  have also been escorted

  to the villages selected.

  No one’s saying much about it,

  Joey, but these stars

  in costumes and disguises

  could pass us on the meadow

  or you could be hop-picking,

  Joey, did you ever

  and next to you right there there’s

  Merle Oberon, who knows,

  Harry, all the West Ham team

  are operating tractors,

  people with great talents

  are all to be protected

  Julie for the future

  so there’ll still be the pictures

  to go to when it’s over

  and cups to play for, Harry,

  and parties and by that time

  some of them will know us

  you’ll stand there with your wine glass

  you don’t have to be famous

  but they know you, you were there, Joey,
/>
  side by side at harvest

  when stars were nothing special.

  Julie, in the wheat barns

  at midnight when the work’s done

  anyone could stand there

  meaning what you hope’s

  their meaning. When it’s over

  everyone who went there

  will have this bond forever

  and we’ll bring our children out there

  in cars with silver streamlines

  for the grand reunion dancing.

  Home Guard Man Breathless

  Toffee Mile more like. I saw these lads

  with chisels coming back, it makes no sense

  the way they look, they’re coming back with spades

  and chisels coming back

  and their bloody hands

  are black from what on earth is that I go

  and Gibb from Beckton says the Sugar Mile

  is burning, boys and girls, the world’s aglow

  this Gibb from Beckton says

  with Tate and Lyle’s

  finest dark selection. I say right,

  has anyone told the police? But by the time

  the words are out they’re words to be laughed at

  Has anyone tewld the police

  habout this hawful crame!

  I let them pass right by, I keep my cool.

  There’s hundreds walking out of Silvertown

  and someone said they’re headed for a school.

  Hundreds walking out

  in shock from Silvertown

  today have you heard anything? You’ve not.

  I want some toffee too with my Jenny near me.

  Sun has the nerve to shine and with no hat.

  I want dark toffee too.

  No one can hear me.

  The Old Lad

  I close my eyes and see them waving cloths they found.

  Rags and things a thousand feet above the ground.

  Making calls they made and saying words they said.

  Here comes a girl in red to be the girl in red.

  There go the men in shirts. I will not focus in

  on any face again and, as I focus in,

  arms stretch out as if There goes the superstar!

  I go on trying for years to not know who they are.

  Looked for ways to cope with coping with this shit.

  Woke up at four, damned if I hadn’t hit on it.

  Smiled about it, thing my skull has always done.

  Got in step with the old lad, got in unison.

  Felt the soft foam falling from a rigid prow,

  gainsaying all there is: Now don’t you worry now.

  Couldn’t believe I’d cracked it, like the wide-eyed folk

  who think all strangers function as a spy-network

  making the stuff that makes the papers. Smiled a smile

  beyond belief in presidential-spokesman style.

  Ran back and forth a century from ape to ape

  to seek what’s not okay by so sincere a gape . . .

  Okay the neighbour’s starving and okay he’s here.

  Okay a billion times the bit we gave last year

  let’s funnel into rubbish-bags and tie the ties.

  Okay the trains are pulling out and full of eyes.

  Okay to sport a badge, okay to wave a cloth.

  Okay some went forever and some won’t sod off.

  Okay the ones like Cheney, whom you mustn’t name

  and spoil the poem, do the motherfucking same

  as ever, and okay the poles to north and south

  are vowels: meat and drink and sex to the one mouth

  of the only lad, no worries. It is not a smile

  that makes you ache. It won’t be over in a while

  like mine, but I keep trying. Here it comes again,

  and now I’m going to die one day and don’t care when,

  why, with whom, or who remembers what I did.

  The smile is wide and smaller only than the lid.

  Do it in turbulence as well, I’m a total mess,

  but beaming like a stewardess at the stewardess,

  who learned to do it years ago from her old bones,

  and can do it hissing info into hidden phones

  when the time comes. I fly the blue Atlantic sky

  in my last century and yours and by and by

  my eyes are holes, my heart is air, my knuckles shine.

  Only God controls the fasten-seatbelt sign.

  It’s all He does. I turn a frail page of grey

  and all the news that’s fit to print this Saturday

  is printed there this Saturday. The news that’s not,

  the old lad’s grinning over in a book he’s got.

  He’s pointing out what’s funny and it’s everything.

  We’re starting our descent and I am done with him.

  Forty Forty

  History covered its eyes and counted the way

  kids count: getting faster

  then slowing to halves, quarters, sixteenths

  but nonetheless faster,

  faster in words but slower and slower to reach

  like Zeno’s arrow,

  though finally all the way to some fat figure

  ending in zero.

  Then History turned and blinked: right there

  stood a boy by a hedgerow,

  holding his hands to his eyes and saying

  I’m coming to get you!

  And his confidence in a game he had

  quite misunderstood

  was awful to see and if History didn’t correct him

  others would,

  so History ventured slowly towards him

  and – I don’t know how –

  very gently took little hands in big hands and said

  hide now.

  A Play of the Word

  Something was done and she ran from a town

  and I’m glad it was done or she wouldn’t have come,

  but she wouldn’t have gone and she’s long gone now,

  so I’m wondering why and remembering how.

  Her hair was the various colours of leaves

  in the fall in a heap as we watched her asleep

  and we stood there like words with the ink still wet,

  as reminders of something she’d likely forget,

  or read in the morning and scrunch in a ball.

  Her eyes were so wide that they had a seaside

  and a faraway sail in one eye then the other

  till I envied my brother and I’ve not got a brother.

  Her mouth had this shape that it made and you can’t,

  we tried it all week and our lower lips ached

  as we pointed this out and she didn’t know how

  she was doing it. I’m sort of doing it now.

  Her hands were so delicate delicate things

  were careful with them and the length of her arm

  was an hour when I saw it at rest on a sill

  with a twig in its hand that’s in my hand still.

  Her body was everything nobody knew

  and discussed in the dark till it wasn’t that dark

  but her feet were so callused they made it clear

  We two will be getting her out of here.

  Something was done and she ran from a town

  and I’m glad it was done or she wouldn’t have come,

  but she wouldn’t have gone and she’s long gone now,

  so I’m wondering why and remembering how.

  You all have your tales and we too have a tale

  in the form of a play that we do in the day,

  it’s a play of the Lord, it’s a play of the Word:

  if it had to be written it has to be heard.

  And we opened the barn for the costumes and sets

  that have always been there and the dust on the air

  would set us all sneezing and telling old jokes

>   of old times and old shows in old years with old folks.

  And one was the Maker and one was the Man,

  and one was the Angel and one was the Stranger,

  and all the old lines were as fresh as cold beer

  in a morning in March in that field over there.

  But she was so puzzled her mouth did that thing

  and her eyes were a mist and her hand was a fist

  that she held to her chin till our play was complete.

  Then she started to laugh. She was right by that gate.

 

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