to tell me Go to hell –
let us think together in our dead-banana black
footwear what I am asking.
I am asking Him to take these wandering figures,
this dust, these lost black letters
into His white embrace, to let us makers
in, to let us sing,
to make our sounds and visions, have our say.
All of this can be His
with His capital H, if He’ll agree with me
beneath it all lies silence.
This is what I am asking – what I was asking.
It’s done now and He’s bleated
Go to hell and I went and the world is smoking
its roll-up to the end of time,
and I hear about His Book that’s my book too
actually and it’s great,
of its kind, but so is Dante but, you know,
I don’t take orders from it.
We’re done, I can see we’re done. I can see from here
the white expanse that waits
for this kicked-up dust to die on the desert air
and I don’t see any lone
figure in that dust or on that water
walking and I don’t
hear you, or me, or Him, or any other,
but I march my dear beloved
dead-banana black shoes to the shore
to speak into the silence
in case there’s no such thing as silence there.
Sonnet At A Loss
I too feel nothing. I was made one day
in private joy by one who can’t explain me,
reach me, or change me now. I made my way
the best I could through time and space sincerely –
but I don’t believe it’s over as I bound
by with my eyes burning, there’s a spring
to my decisions you can scarcely stand
to witness, given you’ve seen everything.
I’m looking at you anyway, as though
I sat across from you and were afraid
I’d lose you. I am not. Because I won’t.
So why be sad I went the way I go?
These are the ways I stay. When I was made
I tried to tell him and he told me don’t.
Song Of Until
Proud
Be proud.
Who may be proud?
None may be proud
until all are proud.
Safe
Be safe.
Who shall be safe?
None shall be safe
until all are safe.
Loved
Be loved.
Who can be loved?
None can be loved
until all are loved.
Home
Come home.
Who will come home?
None will come home
until all come home.
Page As Seating Plan At A Wedding
Awoken by a quickening of soles,
of polished shoes on polished tiles, I saw
the looming of the crowd, elated girls,
a gent amused, two feather-hatted ladies,
a lifted child and last the elderly,
the careworn cheek, the lips maroon, I heard
the first of the great exhalations – there!
here we are! Where? There, together! – saw
the plump and jewelled finger circle, waver,
curl away, a voice cry out and turn –
I heard recited names of the nine tables
as if they meant the world, or meant a thing,
and I sniffed the eau de this or that, the rain,
the mint and smoke, till the long hall was clear
but for a booming sound, life all a dream,
far sprinkle of applause that seemed to greet
a silence, many rooms away from here,
some time ago, and not a soul to meet
hereafter but the one whose cotton hands
come dancing through a door to take me down,
her eyes unreading and her mouth all pins.
Page Of First Old Book He Read
I don’t know who he is but by his skin
so freckly-pink
when mine’s so worn and fragile
he’s new to this, so new he brings me in
and meets me with his nostrils.
While those two are his eyes his eyes are wells
so brown and deep
a drop will drop forever
look, this is the dawn of somewhere else,
his little mouth is opening
an O of sunrise, as if every day
there is to come
might catch him knowing nothing.
Light will climb with him, time have its say
when the small voice is ready
and only then, now all the air is breath
until it’s quiet.
Soon his eyes, aligning,
bob along my furrows, tread the earth,
the ginger head in tow now,
the soft indignant brow becoming clear.
I’ve bided here
so long I’ve quite forgotten
what he encounters, what he’s learning there –
three memories stay with me:
his grin away and back again as if
he’d found somewhere
we both belonged – slow turning
I took for love – and, when time called enough,
light narrowing so gently.
Thirty Years
for Derek Walcott
I’m off the phone with Boston and it seems
I’m going there, I’ll tell them in a moment.
I’ll tell my folks about it, though your name’s
unknown to them and new to me. I open
the door to where they’re talking
in our living room in summer
in the nineteen-eighties. – Now it’s afternoon.
That Everyman of light is turning helpless
hour by hour, retiring to a den.
Now the call to you, sir, now it’s fruitless.
My speckled hand is falling
towards the blank account-book
to leaf through in the leavings of a Sunday.
Nothing written yet and the clock points.
My reading lamp reflects on the black window
itself alone: no lawn or neighbour’s fence,
no trees or distant bedroom
glow to tilt the mind.
My empty page is a suburban silence,
earnest, available, where nothing goes
at night, here too there are so many islands,
mon professeur, and silence I suppose
was pretty much the sound
I made in our one-to-ones.
Watching as you scanned some early effort.
Retracting it too late as clouds were looked to.
Clouds are looked to now, wish I’d been better,
a better friend, you breathing, me about to,
my heart accelerating
towards your breaking judgment.
Your empty page was ocean, is still ocean,
lapping the ribs of this. If it’s a blank page
anything like mine it sees no reason
to think you won’t be back, mistakes the hush
for inhalation, waits
ecstatically for more.
But it isn’t coming in, the light, the heat.
The handle’s not about to turn this scene
to us lot sitting where we used to sit,
our ballpoints circling what we think you mean,
our notebooks gaping wide
on a cold and frosty morning.
Perpetually they wait between the waves,
clear pages yet to come: each one assumes
the turn is coming soon, each one believes
itself the first, like me in that bright room
in Boston, seen cle
an through,
man alone with mentor,
turned, what days are for. But nothing turns
now, and nothing breaks. Your own blank page
was ocean, is still ocean going on,
and mine is nothing dining on the edge
of everything. You’re there,
the fixed important jaw,
at the end of a long table, you who were,
pestered by some spectral fans too shy
to say they’ve heard your joke – I haven’t, sir,
let’s hear it. Look there’s nothing of the kind
there at all, but all
I do in verse these days
is scry the empty page for signs enough.
Love and delight rear up in cliffs and caverns,
forms from Hubble light my heart and home-life,
but on the page? The pure white scrolling heavens,
sod-all else for story
hereabouts. So help me,
for I knew you for a spell and now you’re not,
and my worn hand’s still guided like it was
when I was slick. There is a breath in earshot
which isn’t always mine, the wince is yours
when the line-break’s wrong, the groan
when I reckon something’s finished.
I reckon something’s finished, that’s my only
reckoning as evening yawns and stretches.
If Everyman was here he wasn’t lonely,
for a visitor came by and she stayed ages,
and when they went a book went,
songs in all its spaces,
a time accounted for. – It’s Sunday evening
in a rose-lit living-room, the open arms
of two old chairs, grey cushions, a clock ticking.
I’m off the phone with Boston and it seems
I’m going there, I told them,
I’m flying in late August,
and there I’ll learn my light from dark, my right
delighted scribbling hand from my poor left
there listening one, and how they meet
between the lines, before the weeping crest,
beyond the raging fall –
or words to that effect –
then I’ll come home a fool with a filled book.
Thirty years. The living and the gone
may meet here too, they’re here now if you look,
sir, in their shy accord, their one-to-one
that sounds the sound of heartbeats
pattering through silence.
Small Talk With Time
You ask me what I do
and I say I’ve no time for you,
you make small talk with me,
you make it with eternity.
You ask me am I rude
to everyone and I say Dude
you got that straight. You say
you met your perfect match today
you’d like to be together
today, tomorrow, and forever . . .
Then you seem to see
how strange it is you’re telling me,
you ask me what I do
and I say I’ve no time for you,
you make small talk with me,
you make it with eternity.
The Heyday
Where is there time for this in a second?
Maybe a spell for a bead of sweat
to be sweat, was it yours is it mine has it happened
yet? Not yet?
Where is there time for this in a minute?
Nobody’s fooled by a minute-hand. Look –
it moves if you look away from it, then it
moves if you look.
Where’s there a window for this in an hour?
There’s barely a window for windows, except
to let the sun see where we slept, though we barely
slept where we slept.
Dig me a hole for this in a day-time,
spend Double-Chemistry penning a song –
what is the sun but the bell for playtime
banging on?
Where in the world is the week that’s better
than hanging with you? It’s not in my iPhone,
not in the Cloud or that Dear John letter
you sent dear John.
A month? They can rake the moon from a stream
if they think I have time for an Ode to Love
when it’s time for love – we don’t even have time
for the time we have.
How could I write about this in a year?
the winter will mutter it wasn’t like that,
the spring will demur and the summer won’t care
and the autumn lie back
and ponder what time will there be for it all
in a life? And of course being autumn he’ll sigh
and he’ll write what he writes, as he must, as he will,
while you and I
are gone like the word, who were more than the word,
whom the word couldn’t hold and the word can’t see.
The answer to most of my questions is Nowhere,
the rest Search me.
The Shudder
With you at work and gone for hours I lay
thinking of you. And in that shade of peace
because I wouldn’t dream of it there rose
to mind some monstrous day
of leaving you, just moving on, grim suitcase
packed, the kitchen thrown a final look,
keys posted through, street gone from, all the work
of time and trace of us
discarded to one numb rewritten note
you’d notice on a shelf. – I couldn’t stand
to have imagined this and wished my mind
our brimful cat’s, all bright
eternally with now. And what was now
got better by the hour – this hideous sight
had somehow softened death, relit its light,
its circus act, its bow,
compared to what had crossed my mind. I’d seen
a man there never was, could never be –
while death was local, of this parish, he
and I grew closer then.
Seven Things Wrong With The Love Sonnet
for Anna
Accept this old container from this old
container: Seven Things Wrong With The Love Sonnet.
It’s planned – we weren’t. It’s structured to unfold
in a set time – we haven’t and we shouldn’t.
It boasts it will outlast us – let it try it.
And say it does – we’ll not be here to hear it.
And say it doesn’t – in our dozing quiet
we shan’t miss anything so we shan’t miss it.
It’s pondering how to end – profoundly sod it.
Sod poetry for its nodding little visit.
For the time it’s costing you to have to read it,
for the time it took from me. It’s had its say.
Let it stand guard here, say they went thataway.
Waking
When you’re
not here
and leaving blank the page
would say so better than this groan of waking,
before I
know my
self as stuff at all,
when nothing has transpired, or could, or will
then I’m some
Adam
fumbling in a wood
made for god-knows-what beyond the word
I have
for Eve –
the word I have for Eve
is rising to its place – the word I have
is going
without saying –
now more than sunlight dawns
and more than everywhere and more than finds
the path
in breath,
wh
atever comes of it –
should the word it mean breath, word, path, or sunlight,
should it
mean what
makes canvas of the dark,
and, of the desolation, handiwork.
Plainsong Of The Undiscovered
You who go in search
with a lantern and a staff
in the dark that you consider
to be dark that wishes only
to be scattered by your lantern
may we ask you to remember you are
visible for miles
have been visible to us
from the dark that you consider
to be dark we are observing
the decisions of your lantern
but what’s scribbled by a sparkler wasn’t
scribbled there for long
like it wasn’t true for long
in the dark that you consider
to be dark we’re all around you
so why don’t you shade your lantern
let your aching eyes accustom to the
peace before the thought
in this peace we congregate
from the dark that you consider
to be dark we wish to tell you
you have no need of a lantern
if you come for us the way we say to
come for us like you
come for us like all of you
for we suffer and we wonder
where we meet we suffer wonder
we have always been the same
and by that we mean the same as always
changing with the light
and we will not come to light
if you come with black-or-whiteness
do not come with black-or-whiteness
come with everything between
come with everything there might have been and
bring some who won’t come
also some who are long gone
bring the jesting and the yawning
and the reckless and uncaring
you have been what they have been
come with everyone you never think of
then we’ll come to light
or what you consider light
come with every kind of colour
colours you don’t think are colours
colours none of you has seen
we shall be where we have always been and
come for us with love
we say come for us with love
if you do not understànd love
it is dark where you are looking
we say good luck with your lantern
in a cell that’s got no doors or windows
we are leaving now
we may never catch your eye
but we bide and we are hopeful