Selected Poems

by Harrison, Tony

The prospects for the present aren’t too grand

  when a swastika with NF (National Front) ’s

  sprayed on a grave, to which another hand

  has added, in a reddish colour, CUNTS.

  Which is, I grant, the word that springs to mind,

  when going to clear the weeds and rubbish thrown

  on the family plot by football fans, I find

  UNITED graffitied on my parents’ stone.

  How many British graveyards now this May

  are strewn with rubbish and choked up with weeds

  since families and friends have gone away

  for work or fuller lives, like me from Leeds?

  When I first came here 40 years ago

  with my dad to ‘see my grandma’ I was 7.

  I helped dad with the flowers. He let me know

  she’d gone to join my grandad up in Heaven.

  My dad who came each week to bring fresh flowers

  came home with clay stains on his trouser knees.

  Since my parents’ deaths I’ve spent 2 hours

  made up of odd 10 minutes such as these.

  Flying visits once or twice a year,

  and though I’m horrified just who’s to blame

  that I find instead of flowers cans of beer

  and more than one grave sprayed with some skin’s name?

  Where there were flower urns and troughs of water

  and mesh receptacles for withered flowers

  are the HARP tins of some skinhead Leeds supporter.

  It isn’t all his fault though. Much is ours.

  5 kids, with one in goal, play 2-a-side.

  When the ball bangs on the hawthorn that’s one post

  and petals fall they hum Here Comes the Bride

  though not so loud they’d want to rouse a ghost.

  They boot the ball on purpose at the trunk

  and make the tree shed showers of shrivelled may.

  I look at this word graffitied by some drunk

  and I’m in half a mind to let it stay.

  (Though honesty demands that I say if

  I’d wanted to take the necessary pains

  to scrub the skin’s inscription off

  I only had an hour between trains.

  So the feelings that I had as I stood gazing

  and the significance I saw could be a sham,

  mere excuses for not patiently erasing

  the word sprayed on the grave of dad and mam.)

  This pen’s all I have of magic wand.

  I know this world’s so torn but want no other

  except for dad who’d hoped from ‘the beyond’

  a better life than this one, with my mother.

  Though I don’t believe in afterlife at all

  and know it’s cheating it’s hard not to make

  a sort of furtive prayer from this skin’s scrawl,

  his UNITED mean ‘in Heaven’ for their sake,

  an accident of meaning to redeem

  an act intended as mere desecration

  and make the thoughtless spraying of his team

  apply to higher things, and to the nation.

  Some, where kids use aerosols, use giant signs

  to let the people know who’s forged their fetters

  like PRI CEO WALES above West Yorkshire mines

  (no prizes for who nicked the missing letters!)

  The big blue star for booze, tobacco ads,

  the magnet’s monogram, the royal crest,

  insignia in neon dwarf the lads

  who spray a few odd FUCKS when they’re depressed.

  Letters of transparent tubes and gas

  in Düsseldorf are blue and flash out KRUPP.

  Arms are hoisted for the British ruling class

  and clandestine, genteel aggro keeps them up.

  And there’s HARRISON on some Leeds building sites

  I’ve taken in fun as blazoning my name,

  which I’ve also seen on books, in Broadway lights,

  so why can’t skins with spraycans do the same?

  But why inscribe these graves with CUNT and SHIT?

  Why choose neglected tombstones to disfigure?

  This pitman’s of last century daubed PAKI GIT,

  this grocer Broadbent’s aerosolled with NIGGER?

  They’re there to shock the living not arouse

  the dead from their deep peace to lend support

  for the causes skinhead spraycans could espouse.

  The dead would want their desecrators caught!

  Jobless though they are how can these kids,

  even though their team’s lost one more game,

  believe that the ‘Pakis’, ‘Niggers’, even ‘Yids’

  sprayed on the tombstones here should bear the blame?

  What is it that these crude words are revealing?

  What is it that this aggro act implies?

  Giving the dead their xenophobic feeling

  or just a cri-de-coeur because man dies?

  So what’s a cri-de-coeur, cunt? Can’t you speak

  the language that yer mam spoke. Think of ’er!

  Can yer only get yer tongue round fucking Greek?

  Go and fuck yerself with cri-de-coeur!

  ‘She didn’t talk like you do for a start!’

  I shouted, turning where I thought the voice had been.

  She didn’t understand yer fucking ‘art’!

  She thought yer fucking poetry obscene!

  I wish on this skin’s word deep aspirations,

  first the prayer for my parents I can’t make

  then a call to Britain and to all the nations

  made in the name of love for peace’s sake.

  Aspirations, cunt! Folk on t’fucking dole

  ’ave got about as much scope to aspire

  above the shit they’re dumped in, cunt, as coal

  aspires to be chucked on t’fucking fire.

  OK, forget the aspirations. Look, I know

  United’s losing gets you fans incensed

  and how far the HARP inside you makes you go

  but all these Vs: against! against! against!

  Ah’ll tell yer then what really riles a bloke.

  It’s reading on their graves the jobs they did –

  butcher, publican and baker. Me, I’ll croak

  doing t’same nowt ah do now as a kid.

  ’ard birth ah wor, mi mam says, almost killed ’er.

  Death after life on t’dole won’t seem as ’ard!

  Look at this cunt, Wordsworth, organ builder,

  this fucking ’aberdasher Appleyard!

  If mi mam’s up there, don’t want to meet ’er

  listening to me list mi dirty deeds,

  and ’ave to pipe up to St fucking Peter

  ah’ve been on t’dole all mi life in fucking Leeds!

  Then t’ Alleluias stick in t’ angels’ gobs.

  When dole-wallahs fuck off to the void

  what’ll t’mason carve up for their jobs?

  The cunts who lieth ’ere wor unemployed?

  This lot worked at one job all life through.

  Byron, ‘Tanner’, ‘Lieth ’ere interred’

  They’ll chisel fucking poet when they do you

  and that, yer cunt, ’s a crude four-letter word.

  ‘Listen, cunt!’ I said, ‘before you start your jeering

  the reason why I want this in a book

  ’s to give ungrateful cunts like you a hearing!’

  A book, yer stupid cunt, ’s not worth a fuck!

  ‘The only reason why I write this poem at all

  on yobs like you who do the dirt on death

  ’s to give some higher meaning to your scrawl.’

  Don’t fucking bother, cunt! Don’t waste your breath!

  ‘You piss-artist skinhead cunt, you wouldn’t know

  and it doesn’t fucking matter if you do,

  the skin and poet united fucking
Rimbaud

  but the autre that je est is fucking you.’

  Ah’ve told yer, no more Greek … That’s yer last warning!

  Ah’ll boot yer fucking balls to Kingdom Come.

  They’ll find yer cold on t’grave tomorrer morning.

  So don’t speak Greek. Don’t treat me like I’m dumb.

  ‘I’ve done my bits of mindless aggro too

  not half a mile from where we’re standing now.’

  Yeah, ah bet yer wrote a poem, yer wanker you!

  ‘No, shut yer gob a while. Ah’ll tell yer ’ow …

  ‘Herman Darewski’s band played operetta

  with a wobbly soprano warbling. Just why

  I made my mind up that I’d got to get her

  with the fire hose I can’t say, but I’ll try.

  It wasn’t just the singing angered me.

  At the same time half a crowd was jeering

  as the smooth Hugh Gaitskell, our MP,

  made promises the other half were cheering.

  What I hated in those high soprano ranges

  was uplift beyond all reason and control

  and in a world where you say nothing changes

  it seemed a sort of prick-tease of the soul.

  I tell you when I heard high notes that rose

  above Hugh Gaitskell’s cool electioneering

  straight from the warbling throat right up my nose

  I had all your aggro in my jeering.

  And I hit the fire extinguisher ON knob

  and covered orchestra and audience with spray.

  I could run as fast as you then. A good job!

  They yelled “damned vandal” after me that day … ’

  And then yer saw the light and gave up ’eavy!

  And knew a man’s not how much he can sup …

  Yer reward for growing up’s this super-bevvy,

  a meths and champagne punch in t’ FA Cup.

  Ah’ve ’eard all that from old farts past their prime.

  ’ow now yer live wi’ all yer once detested …

  Old farts with not much left ’ll give me time.

  Fuckers like that get folks like me arrested.

  Covet not thy neighbour’s wife, thy neighbour’s riches.

  Vicar and cop who say, to save our souls,

  Get thee behind me, Satan, drop their breeches

  and get the Devil’s dick right up their ’oles!

  It was more a working marriage that I’d meant,

  a blend of masculine and feminine.

  Ignoring me, he started looking, bent

  on some more aerosolling, for his tin.

  ‘It was more a working marriage that I mean!’

  Fuck, and save mi soul, eh? That suits me.

  Then as if I’d egged him on to be obscene

  he added a middle slit to one daubed V.

  Don’t talk to me of fucking representing

  the class yer were born into any more.

  Yer going to get ’urt and start resenting

  it’s not poetry we need in this class war.

  Yer’ve given yerself toffee, cunt. Who needs

  yer fucking poufy words. Ah write mi own.

  Ah’ve got mi work on show all over Leeds

  like this UNITED ’ere on some sod’s stone.

  ‘OK!’ (thinking I had him trapped) ‘OK!’

  ‘If you’re so proud of it then sign your name

  when next you’re full of HARP and armed with spray,

  next time you take this short cut from the game.’

  He took the can, contemptuous, unhurried

  and cleared the nozzle and prepared to sign

  the UNITED sprayed where mam and dad were buried.

  He aerosolled his name. And it was mine.

  The boy footballers bawl Here Comes the Bride

  and drifting blossoms fall onto my head.

  One half of me ’s alive but one half died

  when the skin half sprayed my name among the dead.

  Half versus half, the enemies within

  the heart that can’t be whole till they unite.

  As I stoop to grab the crushed HARP lager tin

  the day’s already dusk, half dark, half light.

  That UNITED that I’d wished onto the nation

  or as reunion for dead parents soon recedes.

  The word’s once more a mindless desecration

  by some HAR Poholic yob supporting Leeds.

  Almost the time for ghosts I’d better scram.

  Though not given much to fears of spooky scaring

  I don’t fancy an encounter with my mam

  playing Hamlet with me for this swearing.

  Though I’ve a train to catch my step is slow.

  I walk on the grass and graves with wary tread

  over these subsidences, these shifts below

  the life of Leeds supported by the dead.

  Further underneath’s that cavernous hollow

  that makes the gravestones lean towards the town.

  A matter of mere time and it will swallow

  this place of rest and ail the resters down.

  I tell myself I’ve got, say, 30 years.

  At 75 this place will suit me fine.

  I’ve never feared the grave but what I fear’s

  that great worked-out black hollow under mine.

  Not train departure time, and not Town Hall

  with the great white clock face I can see,

  coal, that began, with no man here at all,

  as 300 million-year-old plant debris.

  5 kids still play at making blossoms fall

  and humming as they do Here Comes the Bride.

  They never seem to tire of their ball

  though I hear a woman’s voice call one inside.

  2 larking boys play bawdy bride and groom.

  3 boys in Leeds strip la-la Lohengrin.

  I hear them as I go through growing gloom

  still years away from being skald or skin.

  The ground’s carpeted with petals as I throw

  the aerosol, the HARP can, the cleared weeds

  on top of dad’s dead daffodils, then go,

  with not one glance behind, away from Leeds.

  The bus to the station’s still the no. I

  but goes by routes that I don’t recognize.

  I look out for known landmarks as the sun

  reddens the swabs of cloud in darkening skies.

  Home, home, home, to my woman as the red

  darkens from a fresh blood to a dried.

  Home, home to my woman, home to bed

  where opposites seem sometimes unified.

  A pensioner in turban taps his stick

  along the pavement past the corner shop,

  that sells samosas now not beer on tick,

  to the Kashmir Muslim Club that was the Co-op.

  House after house FOR SALE where we’d played cricket

  with white roses cut from flour-sacks on our caps,

  with stumps chalked on the coal-grate for our wicket,

  and every one bought now by ‘coloured chaps’,

  dad’s most liberal label as he felt

  squeezed by the unfamiliar, and fear

  of foreign food and faces, when he smelt

  curry in the shop where he’d bought beer.

  And growing frailer, ‘wobbly on his pins’

  the shops he felt familiar with withdrew

  which meant much longer tiring treks for tins

  that had a label on them that he knew.

  And as the shops that stocked his favourites receded

  whereas he’d fancied beans and popped next door,

  he found that four long treks a week were needed

  till he wondered what he bothered eating for.

  The supermarket made him feel embarrassed.

  Where people bought whole lambs for family freezers

  he bought baked beans from check-out gi
rls too harassed

  to smile or swap a joke with sad old geezers.

  But when he bought his cigs he’d have a chat,

  his week’s one conversation, truth to tell,

  but time also came and put a stop to that

  when old Wattsy got bought out by M. Patel.

  And there, ‘Time like an ever rolling stream’ ’s

  what I once trilled behind that boarded front.

  A 1,000 ages made coal-bearing seams

  and even more the hand that sprayed this CUNT

  on both Methodist and C of E billboards

  once divided in their fight for local souls.

  Whichever house more truly was the Lord’s

  both’s pews are filled with cut-price toilet rolls.

  Home, home to my woman, never to return

  till sexton or survivor has to cram

  the bits of clinker scooped out of my urn

  down through the rose-roots to my dad and mam.

  Home, home to my woman, where the fire’s lit

  these still chilly mid-May evenings, home to you,

  and perished vegetation from the pit

  escaping insubstantial up the flue.

  Listening to Lulu, in our hearth we burn,

  as we hear the high Cs rise in stereo,

  what was lush swamp club-moss and tree-fern

  at least 300 million years ago.

  Shilbottle cobbles, Alban Berg high D

  lifted from a source that bears your name,

  the one we hear decay, the one we see,

  the fern from the foetid forest, as brief flame.

  This world, with far too many people in,

  starts on the TV logo as a taw,

  then ping-pong, tennis, football; then one spin

  to show us all, then shots of the Gulf War.

  As the coal with reddish dust cools in the grate

  on the late-night national news we see

  police v. pickets at a coke-plant gate,

  old violence and old disunity.

  The map that’s colour-coded Ulster/Eire’s

  flashed on again as almost every night.

  Behind a tiny coffin with two bearers

  men in masks with arms show off their might.

  The day’s last images recede to first a glow

  and then a ball that shrinks back to blank screen.

  Turning to love, and sleep’s oblivion, I know

  what the UNITED that the skin sprayed has to mean.

  Hanging my clothes up, from my parka hood

  may and apple petals, browned and creased,

  fall onto the carpet and bring back the flood

  of feelings their first falling had released.

  I hear like ghosts from all Leeds matches humming

  with one concerted voice the bride, the bride

  I feel united to, my bride is coming

  into the bedroom, naked, to my side.