Come on Everybody
Page 22
to flip up into the light again
past the black tip
of the nose of a small bear
his eyes as wide as all amazement
The Elephant
Elephant Elephant
Simmering gently
Carry me home
As smooth as a Bentley
Elephant Eternity
Elephants walking under juicy-leaf trees
Walking with their children under juicy-leaf trees
Elephants elephants walking like time
Elephants bathing in the foam-floody river
Fountaining their children in the mothery river
Elephants elephants bathing like happiness
Strong and gentle elephants
Standing on the earth
Strong and gentle elephants
Like peace
Time is walking under elephant trees
Happiness is bathing in the elephant river
Strong gentle peace is shining
All over the elephant earth
JOIN THE POETRY AND SEE THE WORLD
Blue Coffee
Blue coffee
The air was like
Blue coffee
Frothy cow’s parsley
Either side of the path
Across the Heath
Blue coffee
The whirling air was like
Blue coffee
Up jumped a poppy in scarlet
Her heart beating black as the blues
Blue coffee
The swirling, spiralling air
Blue coffee
Vauxhall Velvet
After-dark London crouches
Like a grisly grimy cat
The Funman slouches
Underneath the bridge in his fuck-you hat
As the pedestrians go skulking home,
Each skull a fragile stained-glass dome.
By the Waters of Liverpool
So many of her sons drowned in the slime of trenches
So many of her daughters torn apart by poverty
So many of her children died in the darkness
So many of her prisoners slowly crushed in slave-ships
Century after red century the Mersey flowed on by –
By the waters of Liverpool we sat down and wept
But slaves and the poor know better than anyone
How to have a real good time
If you’re strong enough to speak
You’re strong enough to sing
If you can stand up on your feet
You can stomp out a beat…
So we’d been planning how to celebrate
That great red river of Liverpool
As our team rose to a torrent
That would flood the green of Wembley
We’d been planning how to celebrate
The great red dream of Liverpool
For Dalglish held the Cup in his left fist
And the League in his right –
By the waters of Liverpool we sat down and wept
Our scarves are weeping on the gates of Anfield
And that great singing ground is a palace of whispers
For the joy of the game, the heart of the game,
Yes the great red heart of the great red game
Is broken and all the red flowers of Liverpool –
By the waters of Liverpool we sat down and wept.
April 1989, after Hillsborough
I Am Tourist
I am Tourist
I fly across the seas with a cold glass in my hand
Watching Burt Reynolds movies
I am Tourist
With my chocolate-coloured spectacles
And my blue travellers chequetacles
And my video camera purring at the Sights
I am Tourist
With my Tourist Wife
We live the full and beautiful
Tourist Life
We are taken to a hill tribe
They live on a hill
They sell us many boxes
Painted green and grey
They are ugly boxes but very inexpensive
Then they put on hairy masks
And scarlet knickerbockers
They bang their stomachs and circle round us
Is it a wedding? Is it a funeral?
Whatever it is we video it all
And it is picturesque but it is not inexpensive
On the way back to the hotel
I tell our Guide
No more painted boxes
No more picturesque ceremonies
No more hill tribes
I want a mattress
And a pool and a bar
Just like back home
I am Tourist
March in Vienna
March in Vienna
March in Vienna
Coffee Danke Schoen that’s one tenner
London in March
London in March
London in March
Where the wind whistles round your Marble Arch
The Postman’s Palace
Deep down in France is the village of Hauterives,
A village as quiet
As a heap of stones by the roadside…
To the brave heart, nothing is impossible.
A new postman came to Hauterives
And he was known as Le Facteur Cheval
Which means, in English, Postman Horse.
Time does not pass, but we do.
One night Postman Horse dreamed himself a dream
And in it he saw, at the bottom of his garden,
A wonderful palace of stairways and towers
Decorated with trees and fruit made of stone
And camels and giants and goddesses and elephants.
Out of art, out of a dream, out of energy.
Next day Postman Horse was on his rounds
When he tripped over an odd-shaped stone.
He took it home in his wooden wheelbarrow,
Set it on the ground in his garden, and smiled.
This is where the dream becomes reality.
Postman Horse began to build.
Every day on his rounds he found amazing stones.
Every day after work he collected them.
Carefully, each evening, he cemented the stones together.
Gradually the palace of his dreams began to rise.
To the brave heart, nothing is impossible.
After ten thousand days of work
In the freezer of winter, the oven of summer,
After thirty-three back-breaking years of work
The palace was finished.
Postman Horse wrote on panels of cement:
All that you see as you pass by
Is the work of a peasant,
The work of one man alone.
Time does not pass, but we do.
I have seen the palaces
Of the Kings of England, France and Russia.
They were magnificent and dead.
But deep down in France is the village of Hauterives
And from its earth there rises
A wonderful palace built out of dreams
Where Postman Horse inscribed these words:
To the brave heart, nothing is impossible.
Time does not pass, but we do.
Out of art, out of a dream, out of energy.
This is where the dream becomes reality.
Lerici, the Bay, Early on Saturday, May
orchards awash
with rippling green shadow
a buttercup schoolbus
blurts its trumpet at me
an Egyptian lion of an island
dozily gazes
at a warm breadroll of an island
by and by, says the lion,
I will eat you,
by and by
and now, like a slow-motion dancer
in a crimson dress
with a white neckline
a trawler lies in the m
iddle of the blue stage
waiting for the opening music
of the Shelley ballet
the words of Shelley’s spirit
dance like the flames round a gas ring
strong and painful and transparent
and hot enough to melt the heart of England
pass round that bottle of blue flames
let’s drink to Shelley
Peace Memories of Sarajevo
Sarajevo glowing white
as a translucent china cup
Sarajevo forty poets in suits on an official platform
Reciting eight lines each under a giant portrait of Tito
Sarajevo my daughter aged eight laughing
As she stands in the concrete rain-filled
Footsteps of the assassin
Sarajevo in the smoky little orchards on the hills
Families sitting under gentle-eyed blossoms
Enjoying their slow dinners
Sarajevo and my brave schoolmaster friend
Who did not blink when the bureaucrats spat in his eye
Sarajevo I wish you no bombs no shells no guns
I wish you smoky little orchards and glowing poets
And soldiers who refuse to kill
And children who refuse to kill
And Sarajevo
Glowing white
As a translucent china cup
For My Friends in Georgia
The good old moon drank a bottle of wine
And she began to sing
The fine old tree drank a bottle of wine
And he began to sing
The warm black sea drank a bottle of wine
And she began to sing
The strange old bridge drank a bottle of wine
And it began to sing
The tattered little book drank a bottle of wine
And it began to sing
The dog with one ear drank a bottle of wine
And he began to sing
And the child
With a broken doll in his arms
Drank a breastful of milk
And she began to sing
For the love of Georgia
For the love of Georgia
A land with a heart as big
As the good old wine drinking moon
When the Government
When the government whips
when the government whips
it’s a special kind of gangster
bashing out its brutal will
with a mouthful of morality
heartful of cruel thrill
When the government kills
when the government kills
it’s a special kind of murderer
strangling with a hypocrite’s sigh
mouthful of deterrence
heartful of hang shoot and fry
When the government tortures
when the government tortures
it’s a special kind of thug
who’s trained to be a terrorcop
mouthful of security
heart full of poison to the top
When the government bombs
when the government bombs
it’s a special mass murderer
crazy with its own success
mouthful of democracy
worldful of emptiness
The Boy Who Danced with a Tank
It was the same old story
Story of boy meets State
Yes the same old story
Story of boy meets State
The body is created by loving
But a tank’s made of fear and hate
Armoured cars and heads in helmets
Rank on rank on rank on rank
The hearts of the soldiors were trembling
But the eyes of the soldiers were blank
And then they saw him swaying –
The boy who danced with a tank
The tank moved left
The boy stepped right
Paused like he was having fun
The tank moved right
The boy stepped left
Smiled at his partner down the barrel of its gun
You remember how we watched him
Dancing like a strong young tree
And we knew that for that moment
He was freer than we’ll ever be
A boy danced with a tank in China
Like the flower of liberty
Sweet Point Five Per Cent
I saw my Iraqi sister
There was red stuff running from her eyes
She said My son is dying in a hospital
With no medical supplies.
I said Well you shouldn’t have started that war
Does he really need an oxygen tent?
But I was feeling generous so I took my week’s wages
And slipped her point five per cent.
I bumped into my African brother
The bones were pushing through his skin
He was carrying a skeleton baby
In a coffin hammered out of tin
Well both my kids are at public school
And I have to pay my mistress’s rent
Plus my motoryacht and an island I’ve got –
Still I chucked him point five per cent.
I met my Indian mother
She was staggering through iron rain
She said The Earth turned into a monster
Eating everything we had all that’s left is pain.
Now I believe that charity begins at home
And home in my case is Kent.
But before I drove away in my Jaguar
I threw my mother point five per cent.
I drove on and on playing Elton John
But I lost control on a curve
And I failed to see a stupid great tree
And I didn’t have time to swerve.
The next thing I saw was St Peter at the Gates
And I asked him where should I go?
You’ll spend point five per cent of your time in Heaven
Ninety-nine point five per cent down below.
Ten Holes for a Soldier
Two holes were the size of the holes in his ears.
They were rounded, and as they opened and shut
They seemed to make a sound like sighing.
Two holes were the size of his nostrils,
Close together and dark inside
And breathing out a smell of something – rotting.
Two holes were the size of his eyes
And they were trying to clench themselves
To hold back – the red tears.
One hole was the size of his mouth
And it cried out
With the voice of – an old child.
One hole was the size of the hole
In the end of his cock
And it was skewered by a white-hot, turning gimlet.
One hole was the size of the hole in his arse,
Small and wincing away from the light
And it went – very deep.
Petrol was poured into all his holes.
All of his holes were set on fire.
They covered his holes with a clean uniform.
They flew him home. There was a flag.
In the village he loved, they put him in a hole.
YOUNG AND OLD
My Father and Mother or Why I Began to Hate War
My father was small and quiet, with a brown face
And lines of laughter round his eyes
And wildly sprouting Scottish eyebrows.
Everybody called my father Jock.
In 1914 he joined the army.
He fought for four years in the mud of the trenches.
Nearly all his friends were killed in that war.
He told me about one friend of his
Who suddenly, in the lull between bombardments,
Fell on all fours, howled like an animal,
And was never cured.
M
y father was a small and quiet man.
My mother was called Kay.
She had blue eyes and a comical nose
And a doll called Beauty.
And she had two older brothers
Called Sydney and Stanley.
Sydney was dark and Stanley was fair
And they used to pull my mother’s long gold plaits –
And she loved them dearly.
In 1914 Sydney joined the army
And was killed within days.
Next year Stanley went to the war
To take revenge for his brother.
But Stanley was killed as well.
In 1918 my father came home
With a sword and a kilt and shrapnel in his arm
And Jock and Kay met and fell in love
At the Presbyterian Badminton Club.
And in good time they had two sons
And one of us was dark and one was fair.
And I think, in a way, my brother James and I
Came here to take the place of Sydney and Stanley
My mother’s two beloved brothers.
And when I think about war I remember
How when Remembrance Day came round each year,
My mother always wore two poppies.
Rainbow Woods
I was nearly seven when war broke out.
My brother James and I were evacuated
To Combe Down, a village of bright stone
on the hill above the city of Bath.