Most people remember Two Gentlemen of Verona
For Crab the dog and Launce his owner.
My history of England rolls on and on
With one of my least popular plays – King John.
But I quickly recover with my biggest hit yet –
Ever-loving Romeo and Juliet.
Time for more Histories, my Director reckoned
So I nippily scribbles down Richard the Second
But tops it with Henry Four Parts One and Two
Which introduces Falstaff and his Krazy Krew.
Then lovers and fairies form the magical theme
Of my favourite A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
A flashback tale, The Merry Wives of Windsor,
Brings good old Falstaff back agin, sir.
Then the uncomfortable Merchant of Venice
With Christian justice versus Jewish menace.
War make it feel great to be alive
Is my main message in Henry the Five.
Next comical sex-war sets the groundlings buzzing –
Beatrix and Benedick – Much Ado About Nuzzing.
Each new play is staged – they wouldn’t dare spike it
After my hit comedy – As You Like It.
And I makes another romantic kill
With Twelfth Night or What You Will.
Then I tackle that famous geezer
London’s favourite Roman Julius Caesar.
For good luck I wear a magical amulet
While I’m writing my masterpiece Hamulet.
Love will find a way, in a nutshell,
That’s your All’s Well That Ends Well.
Most of my lovers have ended up blesseder
Than the ill-fated Troilus and Cressida.
There’s ethical mayhem and illegal pleasure
In the moral maze of my Measure for Measure.
A human fiend, Iago, torments a fellow
Of simple nobility named Othello.
But the greatest of my lines you’ll hear
In the heart-shaking Tragedy of King Lear.
While insane ambition and sudden death
Rule the bleak Scotland of Macbeth.
Honest Timon of Athens comes to the belief
That every man is a born thief.
Mad, passionate love etcetera
Are practised by Antony and Cleopetera.
The People are two-faced as the god Janus –
But they are denounced by Coriolanus.
Less easy to understand than these
Is the rambling fairy tale of Pericles
And I’d just been given a vat of good wine
Before starting work on Cymbeline.
True love may suffer, but cannot fail
Is the mixed moral of The Winter’s Tale.
My last play of all can’t be called great
A mixed-up pageant – Henry Eight.
But I’ll end by naming one of my best –
Magical-lyrical – The Tempest.
And if anyone asks who composed this ritual
it was done, without shame, by Adrian Mitual
who loves William Shakespeare
best poet in Britain
and these are the plays
what he has written.
ENJOY THE LIGHT
Love, friendship and sheep
Enjoy the Light
In my dream, all the wisest people in the world had come together at an observatory on a hill to decide if the stars were trying to communicate with us, or whether they were meaningless. After some years of trying to decode celestial movements, they were about to give up when some excited children pulled them outside and pointed up to the night sky, where the stars were spelling out, in enormous shining star-letters, the words:
ENJOY THE LIGHT.
I woke up with those words branded on my memory. It seemed like very good advice and I have tried to follow it.
Death Is Smaller Than I Thought
My Mother and Father died some years ago
I loved them very much.
When they died my love for them
Did not vanish or fade away.
It stayed just about the same,
Only a sadder colour.
And I can feel their love for me,
Same as it ever was.
Nowadays, in good times or bad,
I sometimes ask my Mother and Father
To walk beside me or to sit with me
So we can talk together
Or be silent.
They always come to me.
I talk to them and listen to them
And think I hear them talk to me.
It’s very simple –
Nothing to do with spiritualism
Or religion or mumbo jumbo.
It is imaginary.
It is real.
It is love.
Our Mother
blue eyes, silver hair…
so close, all we see is a
lovely blur of her
her eyes were
April the 24th blue
as she weeded the borders
she knelt on the moss
Our Father
his face was gracefully
carved from oak
you heard Scotland
when he spoke
his silence was
deep as a well
he had served four years
in the trenches of Hell
Early Daze
I was born on the Moon
On a sunlit night
it was Saint Diablo’s Day
My Egg cracked apart
with a happy heart
I dived into the Milky Way
I was found in that bath
by my Father and Mother
A Unicorn and a Dove
They took me to their home
In an ice-cream Dome
And all they ever taught me was to do with Love
And everything they taught me was to do with Love
Beattie as Smike
(at Gospel Oak School on 14 July 1978,
her last performance in her last term)
small determined
she pushes an invisible heavy trunk
all the way across the floor
has to bend her backbone right down
to get her shoulders square behind the trunk
and gather her body for the long heave
she pushes two more invisible heavy trunks
all the way across the floor
those trunks are in the wrong place stupid
push them all back
down on all fours she concentrates
her weight and her muscles
into her hands
then she gathers her body for the long shove
one by one pushes all three
heavy invisible trunks back into place.
there’s a lazy character annoying her
she pushes an invisible trunk in his way
he trips heavily over it
Beattie/Smike walks to the front of the stage
the long curtains close behind her
she takes her stand
she holds her right forearm
with her left hand
which is not a random gesture
but shows how cold she feels
she focuses on the clock at the back of the hall
behind the Noah’s Ark audience
and begins to sing
her low notes are rocks
her high notes are jewels
her low notes are the eyes of goats
her high notes are the eyes of humming-birds
strongly she stands there
and strongly her voice walks among us
blessing us
she stands so strong in love
parents, teachers, her sister and friends
giving her strength
and suddenly singing behind her singing,
the choir state most clearly
so strong
so strong in love
so strong
(and when everybody cheers
she breaks out of character
and smiles)
Edward Lear’s Imagination
Oh you shove your sadness down the Funnel
Push your terror through the Grinder
Take all those years of ugly tears
And fling them in the Binder
There’ll be thrashing and smashing
Crashing and bashing
And ferocious jets of steam
But then the great Engine
Will stop its avenging
And melt into a melodious dream
As out steps the Pobble who has no Toes.
The courageous Jumblie Crew
And the Dong, the Dong with the Luminous Nose
And the Owl and the Pussycat too
Bless you Mr Lear
And the Owl and the Pussycat too –
A Visit to Ivor
The seventh floor of the Royal Free.
In the television room
the screen was blank and silent.
Ivor sat facing two of his favourite friends –
Maggie and Joyce –
both of them sweet and strong
with the sort of smiles
make a man feel like living.
Ivor’s eyes seemed empty
as he turned his face to me.
But the more I talked
the more I knew he remembered me.
I saw that sparkle.
He flipped over the bright pages
of the Jack B. Yeats catalogue I’d brought him
and smiled at the little illuminated Blake book.
Ivor said: What are you doing?
I said: Writing for children mostly.
do you remember when we did a TV show
and you brought some kids with you, Ivor?
You marched them round the studio
shouting their poems
and told them:
Speak up or I’ll bite your heads off.
Ivor said: I don’t remember biting their heads off.
I said I was sorry
I never took up his offer
of teaching me how to play blues piano.
Ivor said: It’s not too late,
you can play.
He raised his left hand and brought it down on his left knee
gently over and over.
Then he introduced his right hand
playing his right thigh in another rhythm,
and all the time, over the two silent beats,
Ivor was talking about playing the piano,
how the two hands walk together but differently.
Then, with a strong gesture of his right hand,
he marked a line down the middle of his brow
all the way down to his thighs, saying:
And this is where the humanity enters the music.
It was a beautiful speech,
softly and soulfully spoken
and we leaned forward to catch his words
but often they were interrupted
by shouting or a wild cry from a nearby ward.
Each time, Ivor, who was in love with silence,
flinched from the sharp noises
scratching his brain,
then recovered and regained his lovely speech
about the beauty of piano playing.
Joyce and Maggie said that on another visit
they danced with Ivor,
and would he like to dance?
Would you like me to dance for you? he asked.
We all said Yes like children.
Ivor stood up, walked to the far corner of the room.
Waited.
He was making an entrance.
He backed against the corner, then stepped forth.
He stood, head bowed,
being nothing but a Beckett puppet.
One hand was lifted halfway, then dropped.
The other lifted halfway, dropped.
He took two ancient steps,
but then, at the moment when I felt like sobbing, somehow,
a bounce entered his feet –
at the moment when I felt like sobbing –
and his hands were on his hips –
he was flouncing along, swaying along,
throwing wicked glances over his shoulder,
eyes sparkling like glitterballs.
The bleak Television Room
became a Galactic Music Hall
for Ivor the Entertainer.
He bowed his head to our
love and laughter and applause.
He asked us to stand up. We did so.
He moved towards the door.
On the way he paused to pat his two new books –
‘Blake’ he said, and ‘Yeats’
as if he were patting two favourite dogs.
We said: Goodbye, Ivor.
Goodbye, Ivor.
We do love you.
July 2006
With Love for Mike Westbrook
on his 70th birthday
Performing my poems in a breezeblock arts centre Cape Town shanty town
I was shouting on the offbeat of the drummers next door and the red sun was diving down
Well an old guy sat on a wooden school desk and he had this killer guffaw
So I aimed my poems straight at him and he puffed and shouted for more
So I let him have a tonguetwister lyric with an old Chuck Berry beat
And he opened his mouth to show me three good teeth and he stomped with his blue suede feet
It was right at the height of the poem and I was pushing it I suppose
But my top set of false teeth popped out of my mouth and nearly bopped him on the nose
But I caught them just before they hit and I stuck them back in my gob
And I got a grip on the poem again and went on to finish the job
And of all the poetry gigs I’ve done that one is the brightest pearl
And Mike I dedicate it to you – for you are the Duke of Earl.
2 April 2006
Sheepishly
(written in the week after the deaths of three of my friends –
Tilly Laycock, John La Rose and Ivor Cutler)
between the fields of waking
and the fields of dreaming
so many of those old
limestone walls
have crumbled down
gaps in the walls
waking walking
in the wake of the waves of my dreams
waking walking
in the dawn as it dawns upon me
I am no Tyger
I am no Lamb
At seventy-three
I am a senior sheep
high up on the dales by day
down flat in the swamps at night
daydreaming moondreaming
shadowdancing
in a Samuel Palmer countryside
but don’t imagine
I’m not working bloody hard
for the New Jerusalem
I’m growing visionary sweater-wool
to keep the children warm
as I stand here
gaping at the gaps
visionary wool
which will be woven
into tapestries and coverlets
and scarves and mittens
of that great country-city of peace
my wool is often wild
multi-coloured and exciting
but sometimes softer
creamy and comforting
much of my work is done
by mountain waterfalls
head low munching heather
ears brushing the bracken
and a sniff of ice in the highland air
and some of my work is done
on the rich green banks
of casual muddy southern rivers
it’s not all the same to me
but I’m all the same to them
these meadows I survive in
frosty or fiery
celandine or olive tree
I’m happy to meander
from one to the other
tasting so many different weathers
growing so many different dreams of wool
gaping at the gaps
This evening I’m watching that famous field
Anfield on the television
hoping that Liverpool will score
and Arsenal despair
from the Kop I trundle out
with my good dog to our dark garden
where I help her with my chanting
to squat and piddle
out of the garden
up the rocky stairs
towards the stone stars
and into bed
where a few wings of a book
fly me on to
a meadow of dreams
where any animal may enter
now the old limestone walls
have crumbled away
nowadays nowadays I meander
from dreamfield to wakefield
from amazement to grumpiness
from vision to radio
from stupidity to genius
but I keep on keeping on
I keep on keeping on
growing my wool
growing my wool of many colours
thank you
A WALK ON THE WEIRD SIDE
or Better Out Than In
This Morning’s Dream
Come on Everybody Page 34