we sat and thought, It’s time. It is our house.
We won’t, though, I know us. We like to see
stuff strain at us from nothing, through the space
alarm in kind or colour or degree,
be there, not have been there and appear now –
then yellow at the wall in the few days
following, and fail not knowing how.
Or be the bird long gone though its song weighs
on in us, be dead, be oceanbound
for all we know. We rest on all we know,
our little bench, and watch the trees around
in turn unsettle, like an hour ago.
The Snow Village
In the age of pen and paper,
when the page was a snow village,
when days the light was leafing through
descended without message,
the nib that struck from heaven
was the sight of a cottage window
lit by the only certain
sign of a life, a candle,
glimpsed by a stranger walking
at a loss through the snow village.
All that can flow can follow
that sighting, though no image,
no face appear – not even
the hand that draws across it –
though the curtains close the vision,
though the stranger end his visit,
though the snow erase all traces
of his passing through the village,
though his step become unknowable
and the whiteness knowledge.
From The Sugar Mile
[The East End of London, September 1940]
Granny May at the Scene
I thought I’d lost you, Joey, who are these
All over everywhere
Don’t stand and stare
At her she’s had a shock, look at her eyes.
Thought you’d joined the navy like your dad
I did just then I thought
He’s off to war I ought
To stop him he’s too young I said I prayed
I weren’t too late, I asked the Lord a favour.
Won’t say what I said
I’d do for Him instead.
Only I’ll have to do it now and I’d rather
See your dad come home again. What’s done.
That stretcher’s coming out
That lady’s put a sheet
Where someone ought to be and you’re too young
To look at it. That house it’s disappeared.
A thing like that can’t just
Happen, Joey, the rest
All spared. Look at his hand, he wasn’t spared.
Cover it up, that’s right, they must have been
Spies or something Joe.
Must have been in the know.
Hitler must have thought they knew his plan.
You don’t know anything, do you, Joey? That’s good.
Better safe than sorry.
The King he’s in a fury,
He’s hopping mad won’t stand for it I heard.
Don’t know about madame. Don’t know for sure
She knows it’s started, her.
What’s that sound, m’dear,
What’s a-rattling me diamond cup and saucer . . .
Let’s get away now, Joey, leave ’em be,
Poor dabs. They didn’t know.
These days you never know
Who’s moving in next door, next thing you see
They’re carrying ’em out. Look at the sky.
You say that’s what they are
Them circles way up there
I call them angel circles up so high.
Harry in Red Sunshine
It’s got about an inch,
Until it drops behind
That building. It’ll get cooler then
And I shouldn’t mind
If it didn’t mean they’re late.
That’s what I mean: later.
But it won’t be dark for several hours
It doesn’t matter
Whether there’s any sunshine.
I mean there’s always sunshine
If you think about it, somewhere
In the Empire at some time.
Did you see in the bog place,
There are maps on every wall
You can look at while you’re sitting there
Lord of it all.
But they’re all obsolete.
They’re worth about the same
As what you’re doing in the bucket
While you look at them.
Sally Tying Her Sister’s Shoe
There’s Joey Stone.
Joey we have to
say goodbye.
Because we’ve nothing,
see that zero
in the sky?
No aeroplane
did that it’s too
good to be true.
They’re sending us
away somewhere
we won’t have you
delivering
our paper no one
will at all.
Because it’s Nowhere-
shire because it’s
Nowhere Hall.
Will you still bring
a paper to
the ruins, Joe?
Say you will
no need to
but say so.
Robby Stretching His Legs
First thing I’m gonna do is swipe a car
and get myself back here. Course I can drive.
It’s easy, a girl could do it. An Italian
girl could do it, couldn’t you, Joey? First thing.
Second thing, hook up with the Upton gang.
Do a little business, coin a phrase,
waste not want not, dig for victory
blah blah blah. Move up west. Next thing.
Next thing, well. Meet an American starlet.
They have them in their army, not starlets,
females, and their army’s going to come,
I heard a rumour, if we’re in a hole.
This? This ain’t a hole. This school’s a hole
but we were just unlucky. Took a hit.
Like Mr Albie Rogers is pretending
happened to his house. And you, Jew-seppy,
what are you, vapour trail? We ain’t in a hole.
Our boys’ll see off Adolf. If we don’t,
the stars of the United States, I tell you,
they’re trained and they fight dirty, they’re luscious.
Sally Playing Patience
It’s even got a cinema,
the farmers like to go there,
Joey, then they smoke cigars
they have a film discussion
in a room with velvet fittings.
But what nobody tells them
as nobody tells anyone
is all the famous actors
and all the leading ladies
Robby you can think of
have also been escorted
to the villages selected.
No one’s saying much about it,
Joey, but these stars
in costumes and disguises
could pass us on the meadow
or you could be hop-picking,
Joey, did you ever
and next to you right there there’s
Merle Oberon, who knows,
Harry, all the West Ham team
are operating tractors,
people with great talents
Julie for the future
so there’ll still be the pictures
to go to when it’s over
and cups to play for, Harry,
and parties and by that time
some of them will know us
you’ll stand there with your wine glass
you don’t have to be famous
but they know you, you were there, Joey,
side by side at harvest
when stars were nothing special.
Julie, in the wheat barns
at midnight when the work’s done
anyone could stand there
meaning what you hope’s
their meaning. When it’s over
everyone who went there
will have this bond forever
and we’ll bring our children out there
in cars with silver streamlines
for the grand reunion dancing.
Home Guard Man Breathless
Toffee Mile more like. I saw these lads
with chisels coming back, it makes no sense
the way they look, they’re coming back with spades
and chisels coming back
and their bloody hands
are black from what on earth is that I go
and Gibb from Beckton says the Sugar Mile
is burning, boys and girls, the world’s aglow
this Gibb from Beckton says
with Tate and Lyle’s
finest dark selection. I say right,
has anyone told the police? But by the time
the words are out they’re words to be laughed at
Has anyone tewld the police
habout this hawful crame!
I let them pass right by, I keep my cool.
There’s hundreds walking out of Silvertown
and someone said they’re headed for a school.
Hundreds walking out
in shock from Silvertown
today have you heard anything? You’ve not.
I want some toffee too with my Jenny near me.
Sun has the nerve to shine and with no hat.
I want dark toffee too.
No one can hear me.
The Old Lad
I close my eyes and see them waving cloths they found.
Rags and things a thousand feet above the ground.
Making calls they made and saying words they said.
Here comes a girl in red to be the girl in red.
There go the men in shirts. I will not focus in
on any face again and, as I focus in,
arms stretch out as if There goes the superstar!
I go on trying for years to not know who they are.
Looked for ways to cope with coping with this shit.
Woke up at four, damned if I hadn’t hit on it.
Smiled about it, thing my skull has always done.
Got in step with the old lad, got in unison.
Felt the soft foam falling from a rigid prow,
gainsaying all there is: Now don’t you worry now.
Couldn’t believe I’d cracked it, like the wide-eyed folk
who think all strangers function as a spy-network
making the stuff that makes the papers. Smiled a smile
beyond belief in presidential-spokesman style.
Ran back and forth a century from ape to ape
to seek what’s not okay by so sincere a gape . . .
Okay the neighbour’s starving and okay he’s here.
Okay a billion times the bit we gave last year
let’s funnel into rubbish-bags and tie the ties.
Okay the trains are pulling out and full of eyes.
Okay to sport a badge, okay to wave a cloth.
Okay some went forever and some won’t sod off.
Okay the ones like Cheney, whom you mustn’t name
and spoil the poem, do the motherfucking same
as ever, and okay the poles to north and south
are vowels: meat and drink and sex to the one mouth
of the only lad, no worries. It is not a smile
that makes you ache. It won’t be over in a while
like mine, but I keep trying. Here it comes again,
and now I’m going to die one day and don’t care when,
The smile is wide and smaller only than the lid.
Do it in turbulence as well, I’m a total mess,
but beaming like a stewardess at the stewardess,
who learned to do it years ago from her old bones,
and can do it hissing info into hidden phones
when the time comes. I fly the blue Atlantic sky
in my last century and yours and by and by
my eyes are holes, my heart is air, my knuckles shine.
Only God controls the fasten-seatbelt sign.
It’s all He does. I turn a frail page of grey
and all the news that’s fit to print this Saturday
is printed there this Saturday. The news that’s not,
the old lad’s grinning over in a book he’s got.
He’s pointing out what’s funny and it’s everything.
We’re starting our descent and I am done with him.
Forty Forty
History covered its eyes and counted the way
kids count: getting faster
then slowing to halves, quarters, sixteenths
but nonetheless faster,
faster in words but slower and slower to reach
like Zeno’s arrow,
though finally all the way to some fat figure
ending in zero.
Then History turned and blinked: right there
stood a boy by a hedgerow,
holding his hands to his eyes and saying
I’m coming to get you!
And his confidence in a game he had
quite misunderstood
was awful to see and if History didn’t correct him
others would,
so History ventured slowly towards him
and – I don’t know how –
very gently took little hands in big hands and said
hide now.
A Play of the Word
Something was done and she ran from a town
and I’m glad it was done or she wouldn’t have come,
but she wouldn’t have gone and she’s long gone now,
so I’m wondering why and remembering how.
Her hair was the various colours of leaves
in the fall in a heap as we watched her asleep
and we stood there like words with the ink still wet,
as reminders of something she’d likely forget,
or read in the morning and scrunch in a ball.
Her eyes were so wide that they had a seaside
and a faraway sail in one eye then the other
till I envied my brother and I’ve not got a brother.
Her mouth had this shape that it made and you can’t,
we tried it all week and our lower lips ached
as we pointed this out and she didn’t know how
she was doing it. I’m sort of doing it now.
Her hands were so delicate delicate things
were careful with them and the length of her arm
was an hour when I saw it at rest on a sill
with a twig in its hand that’s in my hand still.
Her body was everything nobody knew
and discussed in the dark till it wasn’t that dark
but her feet were so callused they made it clear
We two will be getting her out of here.
Something was done and she ran from a town
and I’m glad it was done or she wouldn’t have come,
but she wouldn’t have gone and she’s long gone now,
so I’m wondering why and remembering how.
You all have your tales and we too have a tale
in the form of a play that we do in the day,
it’s a play of the Lord, it’s a play of the Word:
if it had to be written it has to be heard.
And we opened the barn for the costumes and sets
that have always been there and the dust on the air
would set us all sneezing and telling old jokes
of old times and old shows in old years with old folks.
And one was the Maker and one was the Man,
and one was the Angel and one was the Stranger,
and all the old lines were as fresh as cold beer
in a morning in March in that field over there.
But she was so puzzled her mouth did that thing
and her eyes were a mist and her hand was a fist
that she held to her chin till our play was complete.
Then she started to laugh. She was right by that gate.