and we arrived
and they still hadn’t called me
and he was still
*
He was lying he was
with this
Mark
with this big plastic hole
sort of
a bandage over a hole
just like
asleep
*
The reindeer the wild reindeer
giving birth in the snow
with the rest of the herd scarpering
they have seen the eagle above them
but the mother stands still
what am I going to do what
a bit restless and everything
but starting to lick her baby
with the eagle watching
*
Quietened that is the best word
to describe it I felt quietened
seeing the hills below
as we came into Kabul
I was thinking
and here everything is purple
orange Turner colours I call them
in my nightmares he is never dead
bandaged lost never dead
with my love
circling
nowhere to go
I was thinking
thousands of lives
in an instant
and the molecules starting again
and the mountains never changing
how was I
quietened
how
but for a moment
I was
then losing height
with the brown earth rushing to meet me.
Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to the editors of the following, in which most of these poems have already appeared: Ambit, Best British Poetry 2014 (Salt), Echo Chamber (Radio 4), Granta, Guardian, London Review of Books, Mimic Octopus, Observer, Ploughshares (USA), Poem, Poetry and All That Jazz, 1914: Poetry Remembers, The Spectator and Times Literary Supplement.
In ‘The Death of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine’ I gratefully use material from Into the Silence by Wade Davis (Bodley Head, 2011), by permission of the author and the Random House Group Ltd.
‘Finis’ was commissioned by the Revd Dr James Hawley, precentor of Westminster Abbey, and read at a service there on 1 February 2015 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. I acknowledge the use of material from A Lucky Child by Thomas Buergenthal, Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl, If This is a Man by Primo Levi and Night by Elie Wiesel.
‘A Tile from Hiroshima’ was commissioned by the Imperial War Museum (North). I acknowledge the use of material from Hiroshima by John Hersey and Hiroshima Nagasaki by Paul Ham.
The poems in ‘In the Stacks’ were commissioned by Poet in the City and the London Archives, and were written in response to items in the British Library.
‘The Fence’ uses material from The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers, copyright © Kevin Powers 2012. Reproduced by permission of the author C/O Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd, 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN.
‘Peace Talks’ was broadcast in a slightly different form on Radio 4 on 11 November 2014, under the title ‘Coming Home’.
The poems in the second part of this book belong with my series of poems about twentieth- and twenty-first-century Western wars, Laurels and Donkeys, several of which were included in The Customs House. One day I hope they will join them in a single gathering.
The poems in ‘Peace Talks’ are based on conversations with soldiers and their relatives. I am very grateful to the following: Lance Bombardier Stephen North (‘War Debts’); Padre David Anderson and Sharon Anderson (‘Ficklety’); Adjutant Michael Altenhoven (‘Life So Far’); Lance Corporal Ben Johnson (‘The Programme’); Major Wendy Faux (‘Talking to the Moon’); Ranger Andrew Allen, Linda Allen, Chris Allen, Major Clare Dutton, Lt. Col. Steve Geoffrey, Senior Care Nurse Erica Perkins, and everyone associated with the 2009 BBC TV programme Wounded (‘Critical Care’); Sergeant Vicky Clarke (‘One Tourniquet’); Dr Margaret Evison (‘The Gardener’).
About the Author
Andrew Motion was Poet Laureate from 1999 to 2009 and is co-founder and co-director of the online Poetry Archive; in 2015 he was appointed a Homewood Professor in the Arts at Johns Hopkins University. He has received numerous awards for his poetry, including most recently the Ted Hughes Award (2015), and has published four celebrated biographies, a novella, The Invention of Dr Cake (2003), and a memoir, In the Blood (2006). Andrew Motion was knighted for his services to poetry in 2009. He lives in Baltimore.
Also by the Author
poetry
THE PLEASURE STEAMERS
INDEPENDENCE
SECRET NARRATIVES
DANGEROUS PLAY
NATURAL CAUSES
LOVE IN A LIFE
THE PRICE OF EVERYTHING
SALT WATER
SELECTED POEMS 1976–1997
PUBLIC PROPERTY
THE CINDER PATH
THE CUSTOMS HOUSE
biography
THE LAMBERTS
PHILIP LARKIN: A WRITER’S LIFE
KEATS
WAINEWRIGHT THE POISONER
prose
THE INVENTION OF DR CAKE
IN THE BLOOD: A MEMOIR OF MY CHILDHOOD
WAYS OF LIFE: ON PLACES, PAINTERS AND POETS
THE NEW WORLD
critical studies
THE POETRY OF EDWARD THOMAS
PHILIP LARKIN
editions
WILLIAM BARNES: SELECTED POEMS
THOMAS HARDY: SELECTED POEMS
JOHN KEATS: SELECTED POEMS
HERE TO ETERNITY
FIRST WORLD WAR POEMS
Copyright
First published in 2015
by Faber & Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
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London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2016
All rights reserved
© Andrew Motion, 2015
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ISBN 978–0–571–32549–8