For fifteen summers, before he grew too old
For French cricket, shrimping and rock pools.
Here is the place where he built his dam
Year after year. See, the stream still comes down
Just as it did, and spreads itself on the sand
Into a dozen channels. How he enlisted them:
Those splendid spades, those sun-bonneted girls
Furiously shoring up the ramparts.
Here they are on the beach, just as they were
Those fifteen summers. She has a rough towel
Ready for him. The boy was always last out of the water.
She would rub him down hard, chafe him like a foal
Up on its legs for an hour and trembling, all angles.
She would dry carefully between his toes.
Here they are on the beach, the two of them
Sitting on the same square of mackintosh,
The same tartan rug. Quality lasts.
There are children in the water, and mothers patrolling
The sea’s edge, calling them back
From the danger zone beyond the breakers.
How her heart would stab when he went too far out.
Once she flustered into the water, shouting
Until he swam back. He was ashamed of her then.
Wouldn’t speak, wouldn’t look at her even.
Her skirt was sopped. She had to wring out the hem.
She wonders if Father remembers.
Later, when they’ve had their sandwiches
She might speak of it. There are hours yet.
Thousands, by her reckoning.
At the Spit
If you lie down at the Spit on this warm
But sunless afternoon, here on the pebbles,
Smelling the wrack and sea-blown plastic,
If you squint at the clouds that sag on the horizon
Without bringing rain or allowing the sun,
If you lie down here in the hollow
And take your backpack for a pillow
And watch how the pebbles lose colour
And then, shutting your eyes, listen,
You’ll hear the tide swell and the wrack dry
To fool’s balloons, incurably saline
Crackling under the weight of your backpack
As you lie down,
If you lie down and as they say do nothing
You’ll hear the tongue of the tide licking
The Spit – O fine appetite! – You’ll hear the click
And tumble of pebbles, slumbrous
Geography shifting: this is the land mass
And this the plastic, the wrack, the mess
To pick over in search of a home. Go back,
It’s late and the unseen sun’s dropping
Hurts the clouds and turns them to rain.
Drowsy, at home, you lie and dream
Of longboats and long-shed blood
Of corner shops and running for sweets –
O sweet familiarity, geography
Melting into the known –
Terra Incognita
And now we come to the unknown land
With its blue coves and inlets where sweet water
Bubbles against the salt. Its sand
Is ready for footprints. Give me your hand
Onto the rock where the seaweed clings
And the red anemone throbs in its crevice
Through swash and backwash. These things
Various as the brain’s comb and the tide’s swing
Or the first touch of untouched terrain
On our footsoles, as the land explores us,
Have become our fortune. Let me explain
Which foods are good to eat, and which poison.
Four cormorants, one swan
The swans go up with slow wing-beats
That strike off from the surface of the water.
Even the most absorbed games-player
Deep in his mobile, looks up at the clatter
Of six swans’ wings.
After the swans have patrolled their harbour
They settle singly. One drifts with the current
To the house-boat window that always opens,
Another sails towards two cormorants
Hanging out their wings
And two coosing, or fishing
In the shallows beside the jetty.
Now the whole afternoon hangs
In the balance between four cormorants
And a single swan, approaching.
The first cormorant pratfalls from its perch
In an ungainly bundle of wings
Or so it seems. But no, it is flying
Arrowlike to a fish a hundred yards off.
A lover could not be more direct.
Girl in the Blue Pool
Years back and full of echoes.
Chlorine, urine, raucous
Cuff of voices on broken surface.
A boy on the edge rowdily teeters
And you, knees flexed, arms back
Are on the pulse of your stroke. Suppose
It is you, now, in the pink bikini, close
To making five hundred metres
As the ceiling splinters with echoes.
Suppose you touch the tiles on the turn
And vanish. The churn
Of bubbles streams at your heels
While you shake water out of your ears
To catch the voice of your instructor
Who paces you, outpaces you
On the blue-wet tiles. How her voice echoes.
You should not be wearing a bikini
And you were slow on the turn.
I am years back and full of echoes.
The silver stream where you swim
Has long ago been swallowed,
But at your temples the lovely hollows
Play in June light. Suppose
There is one length left in you, knees flexed
Arms back. Chlorine, urine, raucous
Voices on shattered surface. If that boy topples
You too will go down.
February 12th 1994
No one else remembers that room
With the blood pressure cuff and the plastic cot
And the bag on its stand dripping
Millilitre by millilitre
When the visitors had gone home
And the tyres six storeys down
Skidded, infrequent.
Snow on the window ticked
The glass, becoming sleet
And the sheets for all their stains were white.
No one else remembers that room
Where you cried each time the lights
Went off and the nurses were absent
For hours by morphia time,
I reached for you in pain
And lifted you in your hospital nightgown
To wedge you against me
For we were both falling
You with purple, dangling limbs
Ecstatic, all lips
And quick, hot breathing,
I watching a nurse who did not exist
Write her hieroglyphics
As the snow thickened.
I made a vow to you then
In our solitude
That you would never remember,
With two fingers I smoothed the ruck
Of the gown against your back.
What shall I do for my sister in the day she shall be spoken for?
I have a little sister, she has no breasts.
I buy her face covering at the shop
Where they have nearly run out.
So, we are lucky. Black cloth sucks
Into her nostrils. My sister screams.
When she’s finished saying she can’t breathe
When I’ve cleaned the snot from her face
And rearranged her so she’ll be safe
I say: It’s for your own good.
Do as I do and walk
close.
I have a little sister, she has no breasts.
She would like to be an ophthalmologist.
When she was three she had a cyst
Removed from under her left eyelid.
I say: Don’t cry, you can still see out.
I tell her to walk between me and the wall
And keep her eyes downward. We scuttle
Like crabs in a black wrapping.
We shall buy rice, we shall go home.
What shall I do for my sister
In the day when she shall be spoken for?
In Secret
And this is where they met in secret.
Follow my pointing finger. Now you see it
Quite empty. Those curtains that veiled it
Are rags, and the bed stripped bare.
Here she played for him, there
He placed his shoes in the corner.
Piano from an upstairs room,
Wanton extravagance of scales falling
As we imagine birdsong –
But only slow it down
And hear the gong-repeat of a rhythm
Like the treading of rubble over a woman.
All the breaths of your life
There is a gargoyle look when the mouth caves.
No more words can be hoped for, the lips
Are not for speaking, the tongue
Is all sag and distortion.
I might think that your kindness is effaced.
No more look can be hoped for, your eyes
Are not for seeing, the skin
Is a drawn curtain over them.
I hear your breath, now failing
As all the breaths of your life become
Petals endlessly opening
Inward, where the dark is.
Her children look for her
Life and death are in the hands of God she said
As a boat is in the hands of the dark water,
And now her children look for her
In the zizz of her sewing-machine each evening
And the smell of cardamom.
She said: life and death are in the hands of God.
As the sun beat on the roof of the van
She closed her eyes to dream,
And her children look as the Pole Star goes up
Close to the moon.
Little papoose
If I were the moon
With a star papoose
In the windy sky
I’d carry my one star home,
If I were the sea
With boats in my arms
On this cold morning
I’d carry them,
If I were sleeping
And my dream turned
I would carry you
Little papoose
Wherever you choose.
Cliffs of Fall
(to the memory of Gerard Manley Hopkins)
Spring of turf and thrift, tangle of fleece, sheep-shit,
Subtle flowers where honeybees knock
At the foxglove lip and the gorse trap
Then sheer on our left the drop. Spatter of bracken hooks
Misleading the lambs. In the bank, marsh violets
Wet, lovely, minute. We need not look for the fall, the chink
Of pebble that tumbles. All the grey scree stirs
Slip-rattles and stills itself. Here is the slope’s
Angle, implacable. Here’s where you look
Touch, unbalance, dislodge. Infinite drop
Where the bee burrs at the foxglove’s lip,
All quick-tongued, intimate.
Time to step back to the wide margin
Cleave to the path’s dapper attention
Unspring each poem,
Pitch each new note to the key of loss,
Lose nothing. Stay clear of the drop
Where the world bursts through its dirty glass.
Sun on your neck, a dazzle of violets
Infinitely slipsliding –
No quick wing-beat of flight, but a slope
Of gravel-rubble, its angle implacable
stripping you raw. From here your fall
Is a matter of form: a slow marvel.
Five Versions from Catullus
1 Through Babel of Nations
Through babel of nations and waste of water
I come my brother. What are these rites to us?
Your ashes are speechless
My words falter.
Blind fate has taken you, brother,
You and I are undone.
The wine I bring you is spoiled
With the salt of parting –
What else can I give?
Only a last greeting.
2 Undone
What you have done to me has undone me.
You have led me so far from myself
That my mind loses its bearings.
Even if you shape-shifted
To your best and dearest
I couldn’t care for it. Dark love drives me on.
3 Sirmio
Almost island and jewel of all islands
In lakes stiller than thought or in wild oceans
Sweet or salt as the sea-god makes them,
Sirmio,
I see you, all of you, I take you in
I see you, barely believing
I’ve left those featureless, endless Bithynian plains.
We travel over many waters
To reach home-coming,
Struggle and suffering over, the mind dissolved
Of all its troubles, burdens laid down –
The soft bed waits for our exhaustion.
I see you, all of you, I know your
Confusion of ripples against the lakeshore
Welcoming laughter
The sounds of home
Ringing like masts in harbour:
Sirmio.
4 Dedication
My slim volume, polished almost to nothing –
Shall I dedicate it to you, Cornelius?
You thought something of my songs
Even though you were the only man in Italy
Who could wrap up the world in three tomes
Of flawless erudition.
My God, your learning and labour
Lean heavily against my little volume,
So take my book, this fingernail’s width
For what it’s worth.
5 Sparrow
Sparrow, my girl’s delight
And plaything held to her breast,
Sparrow whom she teases with one finger
Daring your littleness to peck harder –
Sparrow, I burn for her
And crave the smallest crumb
As the pair of you play
Folded together in rapture
Under one wing.
I too long to comfort her
In grief or oppressive longing –
If only I could play with her as you do
Until she forgets her soul’s sadness.
Rim
Here is the bowl. Do I want it still
Chipped as it is and crazed,
Its lustrous cream no longer running
Over the body in fleet glaze,
I’m getting rid, getting shot, cleansing
Dark cupboards and fossil-deep
Drawers lined with historic newspaper.
I stop to read about the three-day-week.
Here are gewgaws with tarnished clasps
Here is the gravy-boat, the one item
Surviving from the wedding service.
Here’s Ted Heath’s improbable grin.
I flick the rim and it gives back a tang –
Yes, I remember that, the exact sound
Of early curiosity and boredom.
Bowl on my palm, I twist it round
And round again, unsure.
Do I hold or let it fall?
On looking through the handle of a cup
On looking through the handle of
a cup
I spied a nest of green: the spout
Minus the can, a bunch of leaves
Big as my hand: two trees
In the palm of the wind,
On looking through the hole made by a pin
In a plane leaf twirled
All ways to catch the world
I saw a drop of rain, swollen
On the petal of a rose,
On looking through the fault in my eyes
With their arrhythmias of vision
I saw what no one has seen:
My cup-handle of a world,
My pinhole morning.
Ten Books
Jacketless, buckled, pressed from the voyage,
Ten books that once were crated to America
And back again,
That have known the salt sea’s swing under them,
Oil stink, the deep throb of the engines
And quick hands putting them back on the shelves.
Spines torn, the paper wartime, the Faber
Font squarish and the dates in Roman:
The Waste Land and other poems,
Poems Newly Selected, Siegfried Sassoon –
How that name conjured with me
As a soldier kicked at a dead man.