Selected Poems

by Harrison, Tony

  so the stillness isn’t tapped at by its ticks.

  The settee’s shapeless underneath its shroud.

  My mind moves upon silence and Aeneid VI.

  Me Tarzan

  Outside the whistled gang-call, Twelfth Street Rag,

  then a Tarzan yodel for the kid who’s bored,

  whose hand’s on his liana … no, back

  to Labienus and his flaming sword.

  Off laikin’, then to t’fish ’oil all the boys,

  off tartin’, off to t’flicks but on, on, on,

  the foldaway card table, the green baize,

  De Bello Gallico and lexicon.

  It’s only his jaw muscles that he’s tensed

  into an enraged shit that he can’t go;

  down with polysyllables, he’s against

  all pale-face Caesars, for Geronimo.

  He shoves the frosted attic skylight, shouts:

  Ah bloody can’t ah’ve gorra Latin prose.

  His bodiless head that’s poking out’s

  like patriarchal Cissy-bleeding-ro’s.

  Wordlists

  ‘There was only one more thing which had to be done, a last message to leave behind on the last day of all: and so he gathered up his strength in the midst of a long stretch of silence and framed his lips to say to me quite clearly the one word Dictionary.’

  (The Life of Joseph Wright, 1858–1930)

  I

  Good parrots got good marks. I even got

  a 100 in Divinity (posh schools’ RI),

  learned new long words and (wrongly stressed) harlót

  I asked the meaning of so studiously.

  I asked mi mam. She said she didn’t know.

  The Classics/RI master hummed and hawed.

  (If only he’d’ve said it was a pro!)

  New words: ‘venery’, ‘VD’ and ‘bawd’!

  Sometime … er … there’s summat in that drawer …

  photograph foetuses, a pinman with no prick,

  things I learned out laiking years before

  they serialized ‘Life’ in the Sunday Pic.

  Words and wordlessness. Between the two

  the gauge went almost ga-ga. No RI,

  no polysyllables could see me through,

  come glossolalia, dulciloquy.

  II

  The Funk & Wagnalls? Does that still survive?

  Uncle Harry most eloquent deaf-mute

  jabbed at its lexis till it leaped to life

  when there were Tory errors to confute.

  A bible paper bomb that dictionary.

  I learned to rifle through it at great speed.

  He’s dead. I’ve studied, got the OED

  and other tongues I’ve slaved to speak or read:

  L & S dead Latin, L & S dead Greek,

  one the now dead lexicographer gave me,

  Ivan Poldauf, his English-Czech slovník;

  Harrap’s French 2 vols, a Swahili,

  Cabrera’s Afro-Cuban Anagó,

  Hausa, Yoruba, both R.C. Abraham’s –

  but not the tongue that once I used to know

  but can’t bone up on now, and that’s mi mam’s.

  III

  The treasure found here on this freezing shore,

  with last war tanktraps, and oil-clagged birds,

  the morning shivery, the seawinds raw,

  is the memory of a man collecting words.

  Crushed scallops, washed up hard hats, shit, what fitter

  thesaurus trove of trashes could he wish,

  our lexicographer and Doctor Litter-

  arum netting a fine but unexpected fish?

  His heart beat faster when a living mouth

  (the jotting said a ‘fishwife’s’) used the old

  and, for him forgotten in his flit down South,

  border word yagach to describe the cold.

  Though society’s not like the OED

  and the future ’s just as yagach as the day,

  I celebrate beside the same bleak sea

  James Murray, and a scholar’s clarion call

  that set those sharp speech combers on their way:

  Fling our doors wide! all, all, not one, but all!

  Classics Society

  (Leeds Grammar School 1552–1952)

  The grace of Tullies eloquence doth excell

  any Englishmans tongue … my barbarous stile …

  The tongue our leaders use to cast their spell

  was once denounced as ‘rude’, ‘gross’, ‘base’ and ‘vile’.

  How fortunate we are who’ve come so far!

  We boys can take old Hansards and translate

  the British Empire into SPQR

  but nothing demotic or too up-to-date,

  and not the English that I speak at home,

  not Hansard standards, and if Antoninus

  spoke like delinquent Latin back in Rome

  he’d probably get gamma double minus.

  And so the lad who gets the alphas works

  the hardest in his class at his translation

  and finds good Ciceronian for Burke’s:

  a dreadful schism in the British nation.

  National Trust

  Bottomless pits. There’s one in Castleton,

  and stout upholders of our law and order

  one day thought its depth worth wagering on

  and borrowed a convict hush-hush from his warder

  and winched him down; and back, flayed, grey, mad, dumb.

  Not even a good flogging made him holler!

  O gentlemen, a better way to plumb

  the depths of Britain’s dangling a scholar,

  say, here at the booming shaft at Towanroath,

  now National Trust, a place where they got tin,

  those gentlemen who silenced the men’s oath

  and killed the language that they swore it in.

  The dumb go down in history and disappear

  and not one gentleman’s been brought to book:

  Mes den hep tavas a-gollas y dyr

  (Cornish) –

  ‘the tongueless man gets his land took.’

  Them & [uz]

  for Professors Richard Hoggart & Leon Cortez

  I

  ααĩ, ay, ay! … stutterer Demosthenes

  gob full of pebbles outshouting seas –

  4 words only of mi ’art aches and … ‘Mine’s broken,

  you barbarian, T.W.!’ He was nicely spoken.

  ‘Can’t have our glorious heritage done to death!’

  I played the Drunken Porter in Macbeth.

  ‘Poetry’s the speech of kings. You’re one of those

  Shakespeare gives the comic bits to: prose!

  All poetry (even Cockney Keats?) you see

  ’s been dubbed by [Λs] into RP,

  Received Pronunciation, please believe [Λs]

  your speech is in the hands of the Receivers.’

  ‘We say [Λs] not [uz], T.W.!’ That shut my trap.

  I doffed my flat a’s (as in ‘flat cap’)

  my mouth all stuffed with glottals, great

  lumps to hawk up and spit out … E-nun-ci-ate!

  II

  So right, yer buggers, then! We’ll occupy

  your lousy leasehold Poetry.

  I chewed up Littererchewer and spat the bones

  into the lap of dozing Daniel Jones,

  dropped the initials I’d been harried as

  and used my name and own voice: [uz] [uz] [uz],

  ended sentences with by, with, from,

  and spoke the language that I spoke at home.

  RIP RP, RIP T.W.

  I’m Tony Harrison no longer you!

  You can tell the Receivers where to go

  (and not aspirate it) once you know

  Wordsworth’s matter/water are full rhymes,

  [uz] can be loving as well as funny.

  My first mention in the Times

  automatically
made Tony Anthony!

  Working

  Among stooped getters, grimy, knacker-bare,

  head down thrusting a 3 cwt corf

  turned your crown bald, your golden hair

  chafed fluffy first and then scuffed off,

  chick’s back, then eggshell, that sunless white.

  You strike sparks and plenty but can’t see.

  You’ve been underneath too long to stand the light.

  You’re lost in this sonnet for the bourgeoisie.

  Patience Kershaw, bald hurryer, fourteen,

  this wordshift and inwit’s a load of crap

  for dumping on a slagheap, I mean

  th’art nobbut summat as wants raking up.

  I stare into the fire. Your skinned skull shines.

  I close my eyes. That makes a dark like mines.

  Wherever hardship held its tongue the job

  ’s breaking the silence of the worked-out-gob.

  Note. ‘Gob’: an old Northern coal-mining word for the space left after he coal has been extracted. Also, of course, the mouth, and speech.

  Cremation

  So when she hears him clearing his throat

  every few seconds she’s aware what he’s raking

  ’s death off his mind; the next attack. The threat

  of his dying has her own hands shaking.

  The mangle brought it on. Taking it to bits.

  She didn’t need it now he’d done with pits.

  A grip from behind that seems to mean don’t go

  tightens through bicep till the fingers touch.

  His, his dad’s and his dad’s lifetime down below

  crammed into one huge nightshift, and too much.

  He keeps back death the way he keeps back phlegm

  in company, curled on his tongue. Once left alone

  with the last coal fire in the smokeless zone,

  he hawks his cold gobful at the brightest flame,

  too practised, too contemptuous to miss.

  Behind the door she hears the hot coals hiss.

  Two

  Book Ends

  I

  Baked the day she suddenly dropped dead

  we chew it slowly that last apple pie.

  Shocked into sleeplessness you’re scared of bed.

  We never could talk much, and now don’t try.

  You’re like book ends, the pair of you, she’d say,

  Hog that grate, say nothing, sit, sleep, stare …

  The ‘scholar’ me, you, worn out on poor pay,

  only our silence made us seem a pair.

  Not as good for staring in, blue gas,

  too regular each bud, each yellow spike.

  A night you need my company to pass

  and she not here to tell us we’re alike!

  Your life’s all shattered into smithereens.

  Back in our silences and sullen looks,

  for all the Scotch we drink, what’s still between ’s

  not the thirty or so years, but books, books, books.

  II

  The stone’s too full. The wording must be terse.

  There’s scarcely room to carve the FLORENCE on it –

  Come on, it’s not as if we’re wanting verse.

  It’s not as if we’re wanting a whole sonnet!

  After tumblers of neat Johnny Walker

  (I think that both of us we’re on our third)

  you said you’d always been a clumsy talker

  and couldn’t find another, shorter word

  for ‘beloved’ or for ‘wife’ in the inscription,

  but not too clumsy that you can’t still cut:

  You’re supposed to be the bright boy at description

  and you can’t tell them what the fuck to put!

  I’ve got to find the right words on my own.

  I’ve got the envelope that he’d been scrawling,

  mis-spelt, mawkish, stylistically appalling

  but I can’t squeeze more love into their stone.

  Confessional Poetry

  for Jeffrey Wainwright

  When Milton sees his ‘late espoused saint’

  are we sure the ghost’s wife 1 or 2?

  Does knowing it’s himself beneath the paint

  make the Rembrandts truer or less true?

  But your father was a simple working man,

  they’ll say, and didn’t speak in those full rhymes.

  His words when they came would scarcely scan.

  Mi dad’s did scan, like yours do, many times!

  That quarrel then in Book Ends II between

  one you still go on addressing as ‘mi dad’

  and you, your father comes across as mean

  but weren’t the taunts you flung back just as bad?

  We had a bitter quarrel in our cups

  and there were words between us, yes,

  I’m guilty, and the way I make it up ’s

  in poetry, and that much I confess.

  Next Door

  I

  Ethel Jowett died still hoping not to miss

  next year’s Mikado by the D’Oyly Carte.

  For being her ‘male escort’ (9!) to this

  she gave my library its auspicious start:

  The Kipling Treasury. My name. The date:

  Tony Harrison 1946

  in dip-in-penmanship type copperplate

  with proper emphasis on thins and thicks.

  Mi mam was ‘that surprised’ how many came

  to see the cortège off and doff their hats –

  All the ‘old lot’ left gave her the same

  bussing back from ‘Homes’ and Old Folk’s Flats.

  Since mi mam dropped dead mi dad’s took fright.

  His dicky ticker beats its quick retreat:

  It won’t be long before Ah’m t’only white!

  Or t’Town Hall’s thick red line sweeps through t’whole street.

  II

  Their front garden (8 × 5) was one of those

  the lazier could write off as ‘la-di-dah’.

  Her brother pipesmoked greenfly off each rose

  in summer linen coat and Panama.

  Hard-faced traders tore her rooms apart.

  Litter and lavender in ransacked drawers,

  the yearly programmes for the D’Oyly Carte.

  ‘Three Little Maids’ she’d marked with ‘4 encores!’

  Encore! No more. A distant relative

  roared up on a loud bike and poked around.

  Mi mam cried when he’d gone, and spat out: Spiv!

  I got Tennyson and Milton leather-bound.

  The Sharpes came next. He beat her, blacked her eye.

  Through walls I heard each blow, each Cunt! Cunt! Cunt!

  The Jowetts’ dahlias were left to die.

  Now mi dad’s the only one keeps up his front.

  III

  Also the only one who shifts his snow

  and him long past his three score years and ten.

  You try to understand: Their sort don’t know.

  They’re from the sun. But wait till they’re old men.

  But if some from out that ‘old lot’ still survive

  and, shopping for essentials, shuffle past,

  they’ll know by your three clear flags that you’re alive

  and, though you’ll never speak, they’re not the last.

  Outside your clearing your goloshes slip.

  The danger starts the moment you’re next door –

  the fall, the dreaded ‘dislocated hip’,

  the body’s final freeze-up with no thaw.

  If you weren’t scared you’d never use the phone!

  The winter’s got all England in its vice.

  All night I hear a spade that scrapes on stone

  and see our street one skidding slide of ice.

  IV

  All turbans round here now, forget flat caps!

  They’ve taken over everything bar t’CO-OP.

>   Pork’s gone west, chitt’lins, trotters, dripping baps!

  And booze an’ all, if it’s a Moslem owns t’new shop.

  Ay, t’Off Licence, that’s gone Paki in t’same way!

  (You took your jug and bought your bitter draught)

  Ah can’t get over it, mi dad’ll say,

  smelling curry in a pop shop. Seems all daft.

  Next door but one this side ’s front room wi t’

  Singers hell for leather all day long ’s

  some sort o’ sweatshop bi the looks on it

  running up them dresses … them … sarongs!

  Last of the ‘old lot’ still left in your block.

  Those times, they’re gone. The ‘old lot’ can’t come back.

  Both doors I notice now you double lock –

  he’s already in your shoes, your next-door black.

  Long Distance

  I

  Your bed’s got two wrong sides. Your life’s all grouse.

  I let your phone-call take its dismal course:

  Ah can’t stand it no more, this empty house!

  Carrots choke us wi’out your mam’s white sauce!

  Them sweets you brought me, you can have ’em back.

  Ah’m diabetic now. Got all the facts.

  (The diabetes comes hard on the track

  of two coronaries and cataracts.)

  Ah’ve allus liked things sweet! But now ah push

  food down mi throat! Ah’d sooner do wi’out.

  And t’only reason now for beer ’s to flush

  (so t’dietician said) mi kidneys out.

  When I come round, they’ll be laid out, the sweets,

  Lifesavers, my father’s New World treats,

  still in the big brown bag, and only bought

  rushing through JFK as a last thought.

  II

  Though my mother was already two years dead

  Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas,

  put hot water bottles her side of the bed

  and still went to renew her transport pass.

  You couldn’t just drop in. You had to phone.

  He’d put you off an hour to give him time

  to clear away her things and look alone

  as though his still raw love were such a crime.

  He couldn’t risk my blight of disbelief

  though sure that very soon he’d hear her key

  scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief.

  He knew she’d just popped out to get the tea.