How the Hell Are You

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How the Hell Are You Page 3

by Glyn Maxwell


  to tell me Go to hell –

  let us think together in our dead-banana black

  footwear what I am asking.

  I am asking Him to take these wandering figures,

  this dust, these lost black letters

  into His white embrace, to let us makers

  in, to let us sing,

  to make our sounds and visions, have our say.

  All of this can be His

  with His capital H, if He’ll agree with me

  beneath it all lies silence.

  This is what I am asking – what I was asking.

  It’s done now and He’s bleated

  Go to hell and I went and the world is smoking

  its roll-up to the end of time,

  and I hear about His Book that’s my book too

  actually and it’s great,

  of its kind, but so is Dante but, you know,

  I don’t take orders from it.

  We’re done, I can see we’re done. I can see from here

  the white expanse that waits

  for this kicked-up dust to die on the desert air

  and I don’t see any lone

  figure in that dust or on that water

  walking and I don’t

  hear you, or me, or Him, or any other,

  but I march my dear beloved

  dead-banana black shoes to the shore

  to speak into the silence

  in case there’s no such thing as silence there.

  Sonnet At A Loss

  I too feel nothing. I was made one day

  in private joy by one who can’t explain me,

  reach me, or change me now. I made my way

  the best I could through time and space sincerely –

  but I don’t believe it’s over as I bound

  by with my eyes burning, there’s a spring

  to my decisions you can scarcely stand

  to witness, given you’ve seen everything.

  I’m looking at you anyway, as though

  I sat across from you and were afraid

  I’d lose you. I am not. Because I won’t.

  So why be sad I went the way I go?

  These are the ways I stay. When I was made

  I tried to tell him and he told me don’t.

  Song Of Until

  Proud

  Be proud.

  Who may be proud?

  None may be proud

  until all are proud.

  Safe

  Be safe.

  Who shall be safe?

  None shall be safe

  until all are safe.

  Loved

  Be loved.

  Who can be loved?

  None can be loved

  until all are loved.

  Home

  Come home.

  Who will come home?

  None will come home

  until all come home.

  Page As Seating Plan At A Wedding

  Awoken by a quickening of soles,

  of polished shoes on polished tiles, I saw

  the looming of the crowd, elated girls,

  a gent amused, two feather-hatted ladies,

  a lifted child and last the elderly,

  the careworn cheek, the lips maroon, I heard

  the first of the great exhalations – there!

  here we are! Where? There, together! – saw

  the plump and jewelled finger circle, waver,

  curl away, a voice cry out and turn –

  I heard recited names of the nine tables

  as if they meant the world, or meant a thing,

  and I sniffed the eau de this or that, the rain,

  the mint and smoke, till the long hall was clear

  but for a booming sound, life all a dream,

  far sprinkle of applause that seemed to greet

  a silence, many rooms away from here,

  some time ago, and not a soul to meet

  hereafter but the one whose cotton hands

  come dancing through a door to take me down,

  her eyes unreading and her mouth all pins.

  Page Of First Old Book He Read

  I don’t know who he is but by his skin

  so freckly-pink

  when mine’s so worn and fragile

  he’s new to this, so new he brings me in

  and meets me with his nostrils.

  While those two are his eyes his eyes are wells

  so brown and deep

  a drop will drop forever

  look, this is the dawn of somewhere else,

  his little mouth is opening

  an O of sunrise, as if every day

  there is to come

  might catch him knowing nothing.

  Light will climb with him, time have its say

  when the small voice is ready

  and only then, now all the air is breath

  until it’s quiet.

  Soon his eyes, aligning,

  bob along my furrows, tread the earth,

  the ginger head in tow now,

  the soft indignant brow becoming clear.

  I’ve bided here

  so long I’ve quite forgotten

  what he encounters, what he’s learning there –

  three memories stay with me:

  his grin away and back again as if

  he’d found somewhere

  we both belonged – slow turning

  I took for love – and, when time called enough,

  light narrowing so gently.

  Thirty Years

  for Derek Walcott

  I’m off the phone with Boston and it seems

  I’m going there, I’ll tell them in a moment.

  I’ll tell my folks about it, though your name’s

  unknown to them and new to me. I open

  the door to where they’re talking

  in our living room in summer

  in the nineteen-eighties. – Now it’s afternoon.

  That Everyman of light is turning helpless

  hour by hour, retiring to a den.

  Now the call to you, sir, now it’s fruitless.

  My speckled hand is falling

  towards the blank account-book

  to leaf through in the leavings of a Sunday.

  Nothing written yet and the clock points.

  My reading lamp reflects on the black window

  itself alone: no lawn or neighbour’s fence,

  no trees or distant bedroom

  glow to tilt the mind.

  My empty page is a suburban silence,

  earnest, available, where nothing goes

  at night, here too there are so many islands,

  mon professeur, and silence I suppose

  was pretty much the sound

  I made in our one-to-ones.

  Watching as you scanned some early effort.

  Retracting it too late as clouds were looked to.

  Clouds are looked to now, wish I’d been better,

  a better friend, you breathing, me about to,

  my heart accelerating

  towards your breaking judgment.

  Your empty page was ocean, is still ocean,

  lapping the ribs of this. If it’s a blank page

  anything like mine it sees no reason

  to think you won’t be back, mistakes the hush

  for inhalation, waits

  ecstatically for more.

  But it isn’t coming in, the light, the heat.

  The handle’s not about to turn this scene

  to us lot sitting where we used to sit,

  our ballpoints circling what we think you mean,

  our notebooks gaping wide

  on a cold and frosty morning.

  Perpetually they wait between the waves,

  clear pages yet to come: each one assumes

  the turn is coming soon, each one believes

  itself the first, like me in that bright room

  in Boston, seen cle
an through,

  man alone with mentor,

  turned, what days are for. But nothing turns

  now, and nothing breaks. Your own blank page

  was ocean, is still ocean going on,

  and mine is nothing dining on the edge

  of everything. You’re there,

  the fixed important jaw,

  at the end of a long table, you who were,

  pestered by some spectral fans too shy

  to say they’ve heard your joke – I haven’t, sir,

  let’s hear it. Look there’s nothing of the kind

  there at all, but all

  I do in verse these days

  is scry the empty page for signs enough.

  Love and delight rear up in cliffs and caverns,

  forms from Hubble light my heart and home-life,

  but on the page? The pure white scrolling heavens,

  sod-all else for story

  hereabouts. So help me,

  for I knew you for a spell and now you’re not,

  and my worn hand’s still guided like it was

  when I was slick. There is a breath in earshot

  which isn’t always mine, the wince is yours

  when the line-break’s wrong, the groan

  when I reckon something’s finished.

  I reckon something’s finished, that’s my only

  reckoning as evening yawns and stretches.

  If Everyman was here he wasn’t lonely,

  for a visitor came by and she stayed ages,

  and when they went a book went,

  songs in all its spaces,

  a time accounted for. – It’s Sunday evening

  in a rose-lit living-room, the open arms

  of two old chairs, grey cushions, a clock ticking.

  I’m off the phone with Boston and it seems

  I’m going there, I told them,

  I’m flying in late August,

  and there I’ll learn my light from dark, my right

  delighted scribbling hand from my poor left

  there listening one, and how they meet

  between the lines, before the weeping crest,

  beyond the raging fall –

  or words to that effect –

  then I’ll come home a fool with a filled book.

  Thirty years. The living and the gone

  may meet here too, they’re here now if you look,

  sir, in their shy accord, their one-to-one

  that sounds the sound of heartbeats

  pattering through silence.

  Small Talk With Time

  You ask me what I do

  and I say I’ve no time for you,

  you make small talk with me,

  you make it with eternity.

  You ask me am I rude

  to everyone and I say Dude

  you got that straight. You say

  you met your perfect match today

  you’d like to be together

  today, tomorrow, and forever . . .

  Then you seem to see

  how strange it is you’re telling me,

  you ask me what I do

  and I say I’ve no time for you,

  you make small talk with me,

  you make it with eternity.

  The Heyday

  Where is there time for this in a second?

  Maybe a spell for a bead of sweat

  to be sweat, was it yours is it mine has it happened

  yet? Not yet?

  Where is there time for this in a minute?

  Nobody’s fooled by a minute-hand. Look –

  it moves if you look away from it, then it

  moves if you look.

  Where’s there a window for this in an hour?

  There’s barely a window for windows, except

  to let the sun see where we slept, though we barely

  slept where we slept.

  Dig me a hole for this in a day-time,

  spend Double-Chemistry penning a song –

  what is the sun but the bell for playtime

  banging on?

  Where in the world is the week that’s better

  than hanging with you? It’s not in my iPhone,

  not in the Cloud or that Dear John letter

  you sent dear John.

  A month? They can rake the moon from a stream

  if they think I have time for an Ode to Love

  when it’s time for love – we don’t even have time

  for the time we have.

  How could I write about this in a year?

  the winter will mutter it wasn’t like that,

  the spring will demur and the summer won’t care

  and the autumn lie back

  and ponder what time will there be for it all

  in a life? And of course being autumn he’ll sigh

  and he’ll write what he writes, as he must, as he will,

  while you and I

  are gone like the word, who were more than the word,

  whom the word couldn’t hold and the word can’t see.

  The answer to most of my questions is Nowhere,

  the rest Search me.

  The Shudder

  With you at work and gone for hours I lay

  thinking of you. And in that shade of peace

  because I wouldn’t dream of it there rose

  to mind some monstrous day

  of leaving you, just moving on, grim suitcase

  packed, the kitchen thrown a final look,

  keys posted through, street gone from, all the work

  of time and trace of us

  discarded to one numb rewritten note

  you’d notice on a shelf. – I couldn’t stand

  to have imagined this and wished my mind

  our brimful cat’s, all bright

  eternally with now. And what was now

  got better by the hour – this hideous sight

  had somehow softened death, relit its light,

  its circus act, its bow,

  compared to what had crossed my mind. I’d seen

  a man there never was, could never be –

  while death was local, of this parish, he

  and I grew closer then.

  Seven Things Wrong With The Love Sonnet

  for Anna

  Accept this old container from this old

  container: Seven Things Wrong With The Love Sonnet.

  It’s planned – we weren’t. It’s structured to unfold

  in a set time – we haven’t and we shouldn’t.

  It lets no silence in – we do and share it.

  It boasts it will outlast us – let it try it.

  And say it does – we’ll not be here to hear it.

  And say it doesn’t – in our dozing quiet

  we shan’t miss anything so we shan’t miss it.

  It’s pondering how to end – profoundly sod it.

  Sod poetry for its nodding little visit.

  For the time it’s costing you to have to read it,

  for the time it took from me. It’s had its say.

  Let it stand guard here, say they went thataway.

  Waking

  When you’re

  not here

  and leaving blank the page

  would say so better than this groan of waking,

  before I

  know my

  self as stuff at all,

  when nothing has transpired, or could, or will

  then I’m some

  Adam

  fumbling in a wood

  made for god-knows-what beyond the word

  I have

  for Eve –

  the word I have for Eve

  is rising to its place – the word I have

  is going

  without saying –

  now more than sunlight dawns

  and more than everywhere and more than finds

  the path

  in breath,

  wh
atever comes of it –

  should the word it mean breath, word, path, or sunlight,

  should it

  mean what

  makes canvas of the dark,

  and, of the desolation, handiwork.

  Plainsong Of The Undiscovered

  You who go in search

  with a lantern and a staff

  in the dark that you consider

  to be dark that wishes only

  to be scattered by your lantern

  may we ask you to remember you are

  visible for miles

  have been visible to us

  from the dark that you consider

  to be dark we are observing

  the decisions of your lantern

  but what’s scribbled by a sparkler wasn’t

  scribbled there for long

  like it wasn’t true for long

  in the dark that you consider

  to be dark we’re all around you

  so why don’t you shade your lantern

  let your aching eyes accustom to the

  peace before the thought

  in this peace we congregate

  from the dark that you consider

  to be dark we wish to tell you

  you have no need of a lantern

  if you come for us the way we say to

  come for us like you

  come for us like all of you

  for we suffer and we wonder

  where we meet we suffer wonder

  we have always been the same

  and by that we mean the same as always

  changing with the light

  and we will not come to light

  if you come with black-or-whiteness

  do not come with black-or-whiteness

  come with everything between

  come with everything there might have been and

  bring some who won’t come

  also some who are long gone

  bring the jesting and the yawning

  and the reckless and uncaring

  you have been what they have been

  come with everyone you never think of

  then we’ll come to light

  or what you consider light

  come with every kind of colour

  colours you don’t think are colours

  colours none of you has seen

  we shall be where we have always been and

  come for us with love

  we say come for us with love

  if you do not understànd love

  it is dark where you are looking

  we say good luck with your lantern

  in a cell that’s got no doors or windows

  we are leaving now

  we may never catch your eye

  but we bide and we are hopeful

 

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