How the Hell Are You

Home > Other > How the Hell Are You > Page 4
How the Hell Are You Page 4

by Glyn Maxwell


  not for anything just hopeful

  we’ll be hopeful if you find us

  we’ll be hopeful if you never find us

  you who go in search

  with a lantern and a staff

  through the dark that you consider

  to be dark we have departed

  and we bless your tiny lantern

  from a distance none alive can fathom

  Death Comes To Everyman

  I hie me to the last-night party

  show I’d not played any part in

  hadn’t even got around to

  catching don’t to this day know what

  play it was.

  Encounter at the last-night party

  jubilant and brimming actors

  watch them reach the end of jokes they

  start to ask me what I’d reckoned

  to their show

  they’re marking with a last-night party

  let’s derail them with a story

  all about them they don’t know I

  get them clinking in a dream-world

  gives me time

  to sail on through the last-night party

  if I might just there excuse me

  you were last to pop the question

  in a blue-lit bathroom doorway –

  who are you

  what brings you to the last-night party

  friend of a friend are you or someone’s

  other half were you backstage? – I

  raise my phantom glass and cry

  To Theatre!

  Advice To The Players

  Don’t play the ending. You don’t know this tale

  is written down. You’ve no idea out there

  in shadow shadows watch our long travail,

  some even care, some don’t

  don’t play the ending.

  Don’t play the ending. Sure you’re in Act Five

  and five is all you get, the time is short,

  whenever you’re pretending this is LIVE,

  whatever sort of scene

  it is it’s ending.

  Don’t play the ending though the players you love

  are mostly playing bodies now, effects

  have burned the set down and there’s not enough

  stage-time left to save

  the wretch you’re playing.

  Don’t play the ending though the General’s here

  for the one line he’s been practising, his mask

  is pouting on the shelf, don’t play the fear,

  don’t play the risk you take

  don’t play what’s next

  don’t play it, though the automatic crowds

  who saw the light with one almighty click

  are milling in the wings, don’t say the words

  the dead have picked for Time

  to learn by rote.

  Go free, don’t play the ending, go free,

  as if your final scene is where we meet

  at last! with neither prompt nor point nor story,

  beyond a greeting nothing

  but the open road,

  let’s not be fated to, or cursed or blessed

  or hinted at, the plot has tried to part us

  but the plot is chalked beneath our feet, and dust

  has always let us by

  without a word.

  Let’s not be acted, let’s not be rehearsed,

  some fool has tried to mean with us, let’s not

  mean, let’s turn our backs and do the rest

  out of earshot, eyeline,

  out of mind,

  Elizabethans then and now, the old crew

  finished for the day, in silhouette

  beside the river boozing, while the view

  turns gold and lets us go

  in our own sweet time.

  Thinks It’s All There Is

  As far as I can see that’s everyone.

  So thanks for that but where else would you be.

  Whatever came or went has come and gone

  without you why would you not turn to me.

  Look I too turned to me I’m just like you.

  Stuff came and went but nothing really took.

  So this became what else there was to do.

  This became where else there was to look.

  This became the language that is spoken

  here and here became the only spot.

  Here I sense I’m only silence broken.

  Here I sing because I see what’s not

  is almost back. It’s frightening, I had plans.

  You might have warned me. Hold my hand, both hands –

  One Gone Rogue

  No one made me, nothing did. I do

  get these faces sailing close a while

  who seem to see a soul in me like you

  and settle their old features to a smile

  of all in this together I hate that.

  No one made me, nothing did. You can’t

  meet some stranger over me I’m what

  tinder for you what I’m talking point

  I’m no one’s. Clock me and I clock the fuck

  right back at you I’ve never been begun.

  I was never worked on why would I take work

  and who would do it? you with the summer gone

  and your book in the dead of night you want to try it?

  Or me who knows me hasn’t it gone quiet.

  Love Sonnet Left Behind

  Brought to light they say I was by one

  the maker wanted with him now. Not now

  as in at once but when this work was done.

  Which meant he had to pass through me somehow

  to get to her was it a her? don’t know

  my back was turned. The maker was a he

  I know for sure though it’s so long ago.

  A woman didn’t make me, look at me.

  A woman would have lifted me from this

  fixture I was nailed to on that day.

  Borne me away and set me down in bliss

  somewhere he’ll never find me somewhere grey

  the many shades of mercy. Somewhere you

  who I was made for will be hiding too.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Some of these poems, or versions of them, first appeared in Ambit, Art & Letters, the Guardian, the New Yorker, Poetry London, Poetry Review, Sewanee Review, the Spectator and the Times Literary Supplement.

  ‘The White’ and ‘The Heyday’ were contributions to The Voice and The Echo, in homage to, respectively, George Herbert and John Donne, performed in 2015 in the Sam Wanamaker Theatre at Shakespeare’s Globe; ‘Pasolini’s Satan’ was a contribution to an evening of poems inspired by the films of Pier Paulo Pasolini, curated by Simon Barrowclough; ‘Song Of Until’ was set to music by David Bruce and performed by primary school choirs to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Voices Foundation; ‘Page Of First Old Book He Read’ was a contribution to Off The Shelf: A Celebration of Bookshops in Verse, edited by Carol Ann Duffy (Picador, 2016); ‘Plainsong Of The Undiscovered’ arose from Connections, a Science and Poetry collaboration with Dr Amber Ruigrok, organized by Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge.

  How the hell are you

  Glyn Maxwell has won several awards for his poetry, including the Somerset Maugham Prize, the E. M. Forster Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. His work has been shortlisted for the Forward, Costa and T. S. Eliot Prizes. Many of his plays have been staged in the UK and USA, and he has written libretti for several major operas. He is the author of On Poetry, a general reader’s guide to the craft, and Drinks with Dead Poets, its fictional sequel.

  ALSO BY GLYN MAXWELL

  Poetry

  The Boys At Twilight (Poems 1990–95)

  The Breakage Time’s Fool

  The Nerve The Sugar Mile Hide Now

  One Thousand Nights and Counting (Poems 1990–2010)

  Pluto

  Pla
ys

  PLAYS ONE: The Lifeblood, Wolfpit, The Only Girl In the World

  PLAYS TWO: Broken Journey, Best Man Speech, The Last Valentine

  PLAYS THREE: Alice In Wonderland, Wind in The Willows, Merlin and the Woods Of Time

  THREE VERSE PLAYS: The Birthday Ball of Zelda Nein, Gnyss The Magnificent, Last Crossing Of Isolde

  Cyrano De Bergerac Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde

  The Forever Waltz Liberty

  Masters Are You Mad? Mimi and the Stalker

  Libretti

  The Lion’s Face Seven Angels

  Travelogue

  Moon Country (with Simon Armitage)

  Fiction

  Drinks With Dead Poets

  Criticism

  On Poetry

  First published 2020 by Picador

  This electronic edition first published 2020 by Picador

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan

  6 Briset Street, London EC1M 5NR

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-1-5290-3774-6

  Copyright © Glyn Maxwell 2020

  Cover image: © Stanley Greene/NOOR

  Cover design: Lucy Scholes,

  Picador Art Department

  The right of Glyn Maxwell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  The verse in ‘Bluebirds Over’ is an extract from ‘There’ll Be Bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover’ by Nat Burton / Walter Kent lyrics © Shapiro Bernstein & Co. Inc., Walter Kent Music Company.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Visit www.picador.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.

 

 

 


‹ Prev