shining down upon a maze
of whitewashed alleys
leading up towards
bright domes and shining towers
and beyond all these
the dark hills of enchantment
we have come home
to the island which we’ve been creating
for so many years
with our buckets and spades
and here we all stand
with salt spray in our eyes
makers of dreamcakes and mudpies
from
TELL ME LIES
POEMS 2005-2008
RIVERS RUN THROUGH IT
or Waterworking
West End Blues
(a river trip)
West End Blues was recorded by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five in 1928. Louis played cornet, Fred Robinson was on trombone, Johnny Dodds played clarinet and Earl Hines was the pianist. These verses follow, more or less, their improvisations that day. But their subject is not the responsibility of Louis and the Hot Five. It was inspired by a holiday at Tom and Sally Vernon’s house in the Cévennes in 2007, when my wife Celia and I spent several happy weeks in the river Hérault at the bottom of their garden with our Golden Retriever, Daisy the Dog of Peace.
CORNET
Louis Armstrong
picked up the sun
and blew it
with all of the gold
in his wonderful thunderful heart
then he blew a little tighter
till the sun was double brighter
playing a song together
said we belong together
shine
saying that soon you’ll be mine
Come along
come along to the river
let’s go on down
The rivers a real wonderway
birds and fishes
let’s go on down
and sit together there
on the sweet riverbed
let’s go on down
to that sweet riverbed
we’ll lie till dawn
in the cool clear water
and name all the stars in the sky
TROMBONE
Long way
to walk
I’m tired
maybe I won’t find my way to
that old river
But I want to go down
Yes I want to go meet you
I’ll be coming
someday I’ll join you
at the water way down there
PIANO
pebbles rolling underneath our toes
eddies running round in spirals
down where the boulders form a dam
come and take my hand
come and walk along the dam
and we’ll dive
in the swimming hole
while all the dogs stand staring
at you and me
down on the riverbank
they wag their tails at us
laughing in the swimming hole
CORNET
Here we are…
now we’re river walking
down the river
river walking
through the country
splashing down the river
to a little boat
a small green boat
Let’s climb aboard
and sail away
right out to sea
PIANO
on board
set sail
and out
to sea
yes
CORNET
Now we’ll have our dinner
and then go to bed.
Five Walks
I was asked to write a poem to the beautiful music of Chet Baker’s Sad Walk by the magazine Sirena. First I wrote a poem called Sad Walk, about a morning when I walked my dog a few hours after hearing the news of the death of my adopted daughter and the world seemed cold and grey.
I wrote it so that the words fit some of Chet Baker’s solos, but not exactly. But then I thought that the music of Sad Walk isn’t simply sad. It has a beauty to fit any mood. So I wrote a cheerful poem on a similar pattern and called it Glad Walk. Then a child’s bad dream poem called Bad Walk. Then, remembering my father at the seaside – Dad Walk. And finally, since nonsense makes sense to me, Mad Walk.
Sad Walk
down a dark purple
tarmac path
under a sky
full of ashes and smoke
broken-down trees
pale yellow moon
near the edge of the world
on the edge
now the heart is grey
even grass is grey
and the city traffic
keeps screaming and screaming
where have you gone?
down a dark purple
tarmac path…
Glad Walk
walk up the silver
tower stairs
into a sky
of a zillion stars
zebras may graze
friendly giraffes
take their ease in the light
of the moon
as my eyes delight
in the singing grass
and the flying foxes
are diving and soaring
I take your hand
walk up the silver
tower stairs…
Bad Walk
over the high wall’s
razor wire
plunge to a moat
where the crocodiles lurk
stumble through thorns
into the swamp
till you feel yourself sink
into dark
as you gasp your last
you are grasped and raised
back into the air by
the hand of an ogre
who laughs and throws you
over the high wall’s
razor wire…
Dad Walk
lie by a rockpool
watch the green
hair of seaweed
and the flickering fish
climb up a rock
big as a house
you can almost see France
from the top
we will dam the stream
running down the beach
till we’ve formed a salt lake
so deep we’ll swim and then
flood mum’s deckchair
lie by a rockpool
watch the green…
Mad Walk
roundabout backwards
songs of cheese
chanted through teeth
of potatohead spooks
accelerate
past logic bog
pay the beggars of time
with an owl
safari me out
for the glue’s in flower
and the nightmare police
are all kens and barbies
marching in flames
roundabout backwards
songs of cheese…
CITY SONGS
or Don’t Mutter in the Gutter
The Baby on the Pavement
People keep telling me about Human Nature
and how vile it is.
I have made up this story for them:
There is a naked baby
lying on the pavement.
No, the naked baby
is lying on a blanket
on the pavement.
(I find I can’t leave it there
without a blanket,
even in a story.)
Watch the first human being
who comes walking down the pavement.
Does he step over the baby and walk on?
Does he kick the baby and walk on?
He picks up the baby,
wraps it in the blanket
and tries to find somebody
to help him look after the baby.
Isn’t that your Human Nature?
More Frie
nds of Mine
One friend refused a title
One took a bad black pill
One friend wept her heart out
Another one forged his will
I send my wildest wishes
To each and every friend
I’ll keep washing up the dishes
As my train rolls round the bend
I could have been with you much more
But work stole all my time
And I hurt many I am sure
By neglect, that shoddy crime.
I drank a bottle of Dylan
A powerful Celtic blend
It brought out my hero and villain
And it rolled me round the bend
Some friends they say Take Care to me
I answer Take a Chance
They say Revolutions always fail
I ask What happened to France?
Buy yourself a seat in the House of Pretence
Find the number in the Yellow Pages
Rent Arthur’s Round Table for your Conference
Welcome to the Middle Ages
We’re going to have another Old Etonian
As her majesty’s PM
While New Labour melts into a pool
Of ineffectual intellectual phlegm
The Dirty Smokers
Beyond the golden portals of the Otis lifts
Beyond the atrium’s marbleised floors
Beyond stolid Security
Beyond languid Reception
You stand in huddles, out of doors
You are the Dirty Smokers, free again,
The designated smoke-break has begun.
You guard your cigarettes against the rain
And puff blue clouds that half-obscure the sun.
You must stand fifteen feet away
From your home base’s portico,
Your fingers blue, your faces grey,
You concentrate on that tip’s cheery glow.
Oh silent outlaws from high offices
Filled with a plastic disinfectant smell
I tell you, once upon a tumour
I struggled up and out of Dirty Smoker Hell.
So here I stand, the re-born, pristine one
Who misses all the Dirty Smoker fun.
Live It Like Your Last Day
Dig what can be dug
In the tunnel from Kennedy
the ceiling of metal or plastic
or plasticised metal or metalled plastic
reflects the red tail lights
of a hundred moving automobiles
like a river of red light
I told my Albanian cabdriver
who never noticed it before
I said that’s my job
noticing stuff like that –
I’m a poet
An upside down
river of red light,
he said laughing.
Now you’re doing it,
I said.
THE REALLY GOOD OLD DAYS
or The Underbelly of History
About the Child Murderer Marie Farrar
by BERTOLT BRECHT
1
Marie Farrar, aged sixteen, born in April.
No birthmarks, bent by rickets, orphaned.
Apparently of good behaviour till
She killed a baby – this is how it happened.
She claims that, in the second month of pregnancy,
She went to a woman in a basement room
Who gave her two injections to abort it.
Which, she says, hurt – but the child stayed in the womb.
But you, please don’t be angry or upset.
We all need all the help that we can get.
2
Well, anyway, she says, she paid.
She laced her corset very tight,
Drank schnapps with pepper, but that only made
Her vomit half the night.
Her belly was now visibly swollen.
When she washed up, she was in agony.
She was, she says, a young girl and still growing.
She prayed to Mary, very hopefully.
And you, please don’t be angry or upset.
We all need all the help that we can get.
3
Her prayers turned out to be, it seems, useless.
It was a lot to ask. She put on weight.
At early mass her head was full of dizziness.
She knelt at the altar covered in cold sweat.
But still she kept her condition secret
Till, later on, birth took her by surprise.
She was so unattractive that
Nobody thought temptation could arise.
And you, please don’t be angry or upset.
We all need all the help that we can get.
4
On the day itself, she says, just about dawn
She was scrubbing the stairs, when suddenly
Great nails clawed at her guts. She is torn.
But still, she keeps the secret of her pregnancy.
All day long, as she’s hanging out the washing,
She thinks and thinks – then all at once she knows
She should be delivered. Her heart is heavy.
She finishes work late. Then up the stairs she goes.
But you, please don’t be angry or upset.
We all need all the help that we can get.
5
As she lay down, they called her downstairs. Right away.
She must sweep up the newly-fallen snow.
That took until eleven. It was a long day.
She had no time to give birth till night. And so
She brought forth, so she says, a son.
This son was like all others that are born.
But she was not like other mothers – though
I find that I can’t think of her with scorn.
And you, please don’t be angry or upset.
We all need all the help that we can get.
6
So now I’d like to go on telling
The story of what happened to this son,
(She wants, she says, not to hide anything),
So what I am and what you are is clear to everyone.
She’d just climbed into bed, when she felt sick.
She was all alone. She wanted to shout.
She didn’t know what was going to happen
But managed to stop herself crying out.
And you, please don’t be angry or upset.
We all need all the help that we can get.
7
Her room was cold as ice, so she,
With her last strength, crawled to the lavatory
And there, she doesn’t know when exactly,
Gave birth to a son without ceremony
Just before morning. She was, she says,
All muddled up, she did not know
If her freezing hands could hold on to the child
Because the servants’ toilet was adrift with snow.
And you, please don’t feel angry or upset.
We all need all the help that we can get.
8
Between her room and the lavatory.
(Nothing happened till this point, she insists),
The child started crying unbearably, so she
Beat it, blindly, without stopping, with both fists,
And went on beating it till it was quiet, she says.
And then she took it into bed
And kept it with her all through the night
And hid it, the next morning, in a shed.
But you, please don’t be angry or upset.
We all need all the help that we can get.
9
Marie Farrar, aged sixteen, born in April,
Died in the Meissen jail.
This guilty single mother will
Show that all creatures of the earth are frail.
You who give birth in clean and comfortable beds
And call your pregna
ncy a blessed state,
Do not condemn the wretched and the weak –
Their sins are heavy, but their suffering is great.
And so, please don’t be angry or upset.
We all need all the help that we can get.
version by Adrian Mitchell
literal translation by Karen Leeder
The Plays What I Wrote by Shakespeare
My name’s William Shakespeare
best poet in Britain
these are the plays
what I have written
I’ve mainly tried to use this system –
In the order I wrote them down to list ’em
With rhymes to help you learn their monickers –
One of the first was Titus Andronicus.
(That was full of wild and gory terrors).
I nicks The Comedy of the Errors
From a Plautus play about mixed-up twins;
The audience likes it so I begins
A piece about lovers double-crossed
Pessimistically named Love’s Labours Lost.
A historical chronicle next I picksth
The First, Second and Third parts of Henry the Sixth.
I use all the wickedest tales I’ve heard
To celebrate villainous Richard the Third.
Then I have a hit with The Taming of the Shrew
About men and women and the nonsense they do.
Come on Everybody Page 33