Counting Backwards
Page 13
and she took Peace in her arms tenderly.
Mercy and Truth have met together
Justice and Peace have kissed one another.
They sang together in my dream until the day dawned
when the church-bells rang for the Resurrection,
and with that sound I awoke
and called Kit my wife and Colette my daughter,
‘Get up, and honour God’s resurrection,
creep to the cross, venerate it, kiss it
like the most precious jewel there is,
most worthy relic, richest on earth.
It bore our Lord’s body to do us good,
and in the shadow of the cross
no ghosts can gather, no evil can live.’
Smoke
Old warriors and women
cough their glots of winter-thick phlegm
while a dog hackles for the bone
that the boy on the floor has stolen.
Whining, mithering children
in swaddles of urine-damp wool, prickling
with lice, impetigo and scabies, again
the toothache, the earache, the scabies, the glands
battling. Hush by the fire again
sing him a song, rock him again,
again, till he sleeps, still whining and wizening.
On the earth floor rocks his squat cradle
on the squat earth he has come to,
while one of the obsolete warriors
wheezes away at an instrument
made of sheep’s innards.
He is a man of skills
learned painfully, not much of a singer
wheezing for the second time that evening
of the boar he killed with a dagger
of the bear with razor claws
that scooped out the face of his brother
then fell to his spear.
In song he remakes his brother
and their small play on the earth floor.
The baby cries. Smoke fills the hall,
the eyes of warriors and old women,
and nobody listens.
There’s the skin of the bear on the floor
and a hearth gaping with flame
red-mouthed, then smoke hides it again.
By thirty everyone’s teeth are broken –
look at that kid worrying his bone.
Bristol Docks
Ships on brown water
wings unruffling
masts steep and clean,
There goes the dredger,
there the steam crane
downcast, never used.
Tide goes wherever
tide goes,
forty foot rise
forty foot fall,
ship waiting
to clear Hotwells.
Time rises
time falls.
Two hundred years
shrink to nothing,
huge tides
shrunk to a drop
caught in a cup
where the men sip
tea, coffee
laced with rum,
talk venturing
westward, moneyward.
This is the slaver
money funded,
good money
from tradesmen’s pockets,
guinea by guinea
fed into it.
Double it, treble it,
build on it.
Don’t stare –
you’ll cross them:
William Miller,
Isaac Elton,
Merchant Trader,
Merchant Venturer,
powerful men.
Edward Colston’s
almshouses
(slaver panelled)
still standing.
Sugar houses
(easy burning)
all gone,
brown water
brown rum.
Custom House
African House
bonded warehouse
almshouse
sugar house.
Mud slack
licking its chops,
bright water
fighting to rise.
Look in their eyes.
They’ll stare you down
for it takes guts
to get returns.
Investor,
speculator,
accumulator,
benefactor.
See their white wings
fledge on the Avon.
They speak of cargo,
profit-margins,
schools they’ve founded,
almshouses.
If you stare
at the brown water
you will see nothing,
every reflection
sucked and gone.
Slaver’s gone
on savage wings,
beak preying.
Tradesmen’s guineas
got their return:
coffee, cotton,
cocoa, indigo,
sugar, rum,
church windows,
fine houses,
fine tombstone
for Edward Colston,
the cry of gulls
goes after them
always lamenting,
always fresh
beaks stabbing
at their soul-flesh
The spill
Those words like oil, loose in the world,
spilling from fingertip to fingertip
besmirching lip after lip,
the burn; the spillage of harm.
Those words like ash, mouth-warm.
Without remission
Because she told a lie, he says,
because she lied
about the hands not washed before shopping,
she had to learn,
because he wanted her to learn
the law that what he said, went,
and that was the end,
and because she was slow
she had to learn
over and over.
He was an old-fashioned teacher,
he taught her hair to lie straight,
he taught her back to bend,
he taught silence
but for the chink of coathangers
stirring in the wardrobe.
He kicked the voice out of her.
There were no words left to go
with the seven-year-old girl
soiled and bleeding,
marched along the corridor
by this man, rampant
with all he had learned.
Later, locked up once more
she called through the door to her mother
‘It’s all right, Mum, I’m fine.’
But she was lying.
The rain’s coming in
Say we’re in a compartment at night
with a yellow label on the window
and a wine bottle between your knees,
jolting as fast as the sparks
torn from night by the wheels.
Inside, the sleeping-berth is a hammock
and there I swing like a gymnast
in a cradle of jute diamonds.
Outside, the malicious hills,
where to stop is to be borne away
in the arms of a different destiny,
unprotesting. Too sleepy to do anything
but let it be. So, that oak, lightning-cracked,
shakes where the flame slashes
and kills its heart. Swooshing up air
in armfuls its branches unload
toppling beyond the rails’
hard-working parallels. Say you join me,
say your eyes are drowsy,
say you murmur, The rain’s coming in,
pull up the strap on the window,
the rain’s coming in.
As good as it gets
She comes close to perfection,
taking the man on her thigh,
sweeping him
home
in a caress of glitter, that way and this,
that, this, each muscle stripped
to bulge and give. See how her hair
streams in the firmament,
see how the tent
jutting with spotlights
puts one over her, then another,
another, a spurt of white
that slicks to her thighs
while the crowd claps time,
faster and faster, wishing she’ll fall
wishing she’ll plunge for ever
licked all over with glitter
love-juices, spittle.
Back she comes on herself,
her bird costume flaring.
As she lets him down
you see the detail: the rosin,
the sweat that follows her spine,
the sly, deliberate spin
with which he steps onto land.
But the crowd won’t stop clapping.
They want her again,
they’ve been translated, they’re Greek,
shouting Die now! This is as good as it gets!
If only
If only I’d stayed up till four in the morning
and run through the dawn to watch the balloons
at the Festival ground,
and seen you as your balloon rose high
on a huff of flame, and you’d waved,
and a paper aeroplane had swooped to the ground
with your mobile number scrawled on the wings.
If only I’d known that you were crying
when you stood with your back to me
saying that it didn’t matter
you’d be fine on your own.
If only I’d trusted your voice
instead of believing your words.
If only I hadn’t been too late, too early,
too quick, too slow, too jealous and angry,
too eager to win
when it wasn’t a game.
If only we could go back to then
and I could pick up your paper aeroplane
and call you for the very first time.
Mr Lear’s Ring
Mr Lear has left a ring in his room.
Is it of value, is it an heirloom?
Should we pack it with brown paper and string
And post it after him?
He hasn’t the air of a marrying man
He hasn’t a husbandly air.
No, his gait is startled and sudden,
And is he quite all there?
Poor Mr Lear has left a ring in his room
And it’s not of value, it’s never an heirloom,
But we’ll pack it with brown paper and string
And we’ll send it wherever he’s gone.
Fortune-teller on Church Road
Two of us on the tired pavement
with the present pushing past
into the pungent smoke of the coffee-shop,
carrier bags stuffed with cargo
from Wal-mart and Tesco.
A tree of heaven, bright yellow
spreads its leaves above the peardrop
solvent scent of ASNU VALETING SERVICES.
She looks where I’m looking
this woman who asks questions
and tells me everything I’ve ever done.
For twenty pounds she’ll give me a golden future
for ten pounds she’ll give me a silver future
for a fiver a slam of bronze.
I believe in the glow of the leaves
in the shine of car-wax, in Wal-mart
and in the whiteness of her false teeth.
She would like to lie, but whatever possesses her
won’t let her. Here it comes again
clearing the coffee-smoke, thinning the cargo
of carrier bags pushing past us,
until the Saturday men and women
lose their foothold in time.
Now they are the dead walking
at the pace of long-ago film.
Sleeveless
There he stands, blind on slivovitz,
eyes closed, face beatific,
propped against the side of the coach
while two girls rub him with snow.
He goes sleeveless in the snow
as if he belongs elsewhere
in a land where blood alone
is enough to warm him.
But this isn’t spring. A hyacinth’s
white whip of root in a jar in November
won’t stop winter. The sun will go down,
the wolves will sample the woods
and snuff his footprints. But the engine’s running.
Its vibration scrubs him awake
and those girls are laughing.
In ten long easy minutes
he will have left the summit.
The point of not returning
is to go back, but never quite back.
Through all those trees I am unable
to glimpse the house. Where the new road swings,
the dark lane made for footsteps remains hidden.
Where lilac-striped convolvulus
wound its scent in the dust, new road signs
describe the route in numeral and symbol.
There is the hill, but not the right hill.
There is a blood-red rhododendron
by a breeze-block wall – but not the right wall,
and those children in a sunburned straggle
who face the oncoming traffic (thicker now),
have bought the wrong sweets at the wrong prices.
They have too much cash: they are not the right children.
The form
Clearing the mirror to see your face
I’m sure you are there.
You came into the room behind me
but when I looked you disappeared.
Look. I am breathing out mist
like a horse in winter.
The glass I almost kissed
has gone cold. Now, is it you here
sitting in your usual chair
under the light, with your Guinness poured
and the best bit of the newspaper?
Let’s have a tenner on Papillon, I’m sure
he’ll do it this time. You show me the form.
I put out my hand for the winnings
and take the notes which are warm
from your touch. But the mirror is cold, sparkling.
The sentence
How hushed the sentence is this morning
like snowfall: words change the landscape
by hiding what they touch.
‘How is he –? Has he –?’
Bridget takes off her glasses
and rubs the red pulp of her eyelids.
The world is a treasure-house of frost
and sparkling roof-tops. A few doors down
the sentence works itself out.
A roller-blader slashes the street like an angel
with heaven-red cheeks. A fag-end smokes
in the gutter where a dog noses. Such elation!
The labour of goodbyes
goes on quietly behind windows.
With short, harsh breaths
With short, harsh breaths
and lips hitched to each syllable
you read, but not aloud.
You rise and go to the stairwell
as if to call someone. Look up
at the whitish skylight, the peace
of another rain-pocked eleven o’clock.
You are here and you want her
but she’ll come no more.
You keep her letters in a box
and deal them out like patience
to lie on your breakfast table
stamps obsolete, envelope eagerly torn
by the man who once lived in your skin.
You read the postmark again.
It’s September, four years after the war.
Listen. S
he’s speaking.
The footfall
It was you I heard, your tiger pad on the stairs,
your animal eyes blazing. Now you have my face
between your paws, tiger. It’s time
for the first breath. Your playful embrace.
Suddenly you take away my texture,
the sheen I’ve had since I was born.
My hair. You comb it out with your claws
until the gloss and colour are gone.
My skin puckers slowly. Your whiskers quiver
as I keep still between your fore-feet
while you drink my juices, and for the first time
rake the lightest glissade down my cheeks.
Time for you, tiger, to do as you want.
I heard your footfall and waited in the dark,
expecting you. When will you come?
The coffin-makers
I can’t say why so many coffin-makers
have come together here. Company, maybe.
More likely jealousy bites their lips
when they see another’s golden coffin
where the corpse will fit like a nut.
No doubt they swap the lids about
at dead of night, scratch the silken cheeks of the wood
so when the mourners come to watch the hammer