No thanks, I’ve given up. Feel better for it.
Part of Susan’s two-year plan for a new and fitter man.
She’s even got me jogging. I adore it.
Yes she loves teaching. Can’t wait to get back.
And to be honest, neither can I.
Need the money since I got the sack.
Mind you, things couldn’t have worked out neater
Means I can spend all my time with the baby
Bringing up and educating Rita. Why Rita?
Just our little secret. A name that binds us.
And here they come now. The two I love the most.
Aren’t I a lucky man? Ladies and Gentlemen – A toast!
This be Another Verse
They don’t fuck you up, your mum and dad
(Despite what Larkin says)
It’s other grown-ups, other kids
Who, in their various ways
Die. And their dying casts a shadow
Numbering all our days
And we try to keep from going mad
In multifarious ways.
And most of us succeed, thank God,
So if, to coin a phrase
You’re fucked up, don’t blame your mum and dad
(Despite what Larkin says).
The Darling Buds of Maybe
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
‘Perfick,’ said Old Larkin
The last kid put to bed
He took the Missus in his arms
Gave her a kiss and said:
‘I’ll pop out for a quick one
If that’s all right with you?
I’ll not be long, I promise
‘Cos I’ve got work to do.’
‘You mean the roof,’ said Ma,
‘You’re going to mend that leak?’
Philip stopped.
‘No, “This Be The Verse”,
That final stanza’s too bleak.’
From ‘Les Pensées’ by Le Duc de Maxim
Beside the willowèd river bank
Repose I, still and thinking,
When into the water fall a man
Who fast begin the sinking.
Chance at last to test
A maxim, so unblinking,
I toss to him the straw
Through which I drinking.
Sure enough, he clutch the straw
And scream, alas in vain.
He grasp until he gasp his last
And all is peace again.
Homewardly I pensive trek
Impatient now to note
How the fingers of the sun
Did linger on his throat.
And how he sank, and how
The straw continuèd to float,
‘How wise the age-old axioms,
And yet how sad,’ I wrote.
Toffee
It gives me no pleasure to say this
But he won’t be missed.
Resentful when sober, aggressive when pissed.
Though not proven, it is rumoured
That he pays to be spanked.
And worse, he can’t write for toffee.
Small magazine stuff over the years.
The same poem thinly disguised.
Recycled, retitled, endlessly revised.
I would like to say that book launches
Will never be the same
Without his snide comments.
That literary gatherings will seem tame
Without his drunken outbursts.
But I can’t.
It does me no credit to say this
But in his sad case,
Posthumous the better.
Poetspotting
On the train to Bangor from Crewe
Jo Shapcott and I, as tutors tend to do
gossip, and get to wonder
which of the passengers are headed
for Ty Newydd. That orange-haired
punk in tight leather? Unlikely.
More likely the old lady wearing purple
(see Jenny Joseph), daring people
to come close, if any do, they’re kissed.
Or, pissed in the corner, surrounded
by throttled cans of Guinness,
the man who shakes a mottled first
at a muse unseen, and screams:
‘Orange, orange, there must be
a rhyme for feckin’ orange!’
Trust Me, I’m a Poet
Your husband upped and left you
After years of playing the field?
My heart goes out, I know the type
Of course, my lips are sealed.
Let me be your confidant
I’m generous, let me show it
Champagne, I think is called for
Trust me, I’m a poet.
***
Put my wallet on the counter
When I turned round it had gone
And I’ve got to meet my agent
In town, for lunch at one
To sign a five-book contract
I’ll be back before you know it
Can you lend me fifty quid?
Trust me, I’m a poet.
Wheelchairs
After a poetry reading at a geriatric hospital in Birmingham, December 1983
I go home by train
with a cig and a Carly.
Back at the gig
the punters, in bed early
dither between sleep and pain:
‘Who were those people?
What were they talking?’
The staff,
thankful for the break,
the cultural intrusion,
wheel out the sherry
and pies. Look forward
to a merry Christmas
and another year of caring
without scrutiny.
Mutiny!
In a corner,
the wheelchairs,
vacated now, are cooling.
In the privacy of darkness
and drying piss,
sullen-backed,
alone at last,
they hiss.
For Want of a Better Title
The Countess
when the Count passed away
During a Bach
cello recital
Married an Archduke
the following day
For want of a better title.
Memento Mori
I still have the blue beret that JFK
was wearing the day he was assassinated.
If you take the nipple between finger and thumb,
hold it up to the light and twirl it round
you can see the bullet holes (or, to be precise,
the two holes made by a single bullet).
For many years I kept in store, the fox-fur stole
that Virginia Woolf wore in March 1941
when she walked into the River Ouse at Rodmell.
But those sharp, little eyes had seen too much.
They disturbed me so I disposed of it.
This leather jacket, however, I would not sell
for a million pounds. Her Royal Highness
was wearing it on that dreadful night in Paris
when her Harley-Davidson skidded on black ice.
This may interest you. John Berryman’s silver
fob watch, still showing 9.24. The exact time
he hit the frozen river. Minneapolis, 1972.
A Serious Poem
This is a serious poem
It wears a serious face
It will not fritter away the words
It knows its place.
Perfectly balanced
Neither too long nor too short
It gazes solemnly heavenwards
Like a real poem ought.
Familiar with the classics
It drops names with ease.
Here comes Plato with Lycidas
And look, there’s Demosthenes!
A serio
us poem will often end
With two lines that rhyme.
But not always.
Poets make awful acrobats.
Good at barely moving
Idle musing has impaired
Their sense of balance.
Once the horizon tilts
Everything begins to slide:
Cups and saucers, trees,
Buildings, spirit-levels.
Out of touch with the ground
They are out of touch with themselves.
Struggling to make sense of air
They become entangled with it.
The roll of drums:
A few floppy cartwheels
A crumpled somersault
Then up on to the high wire…
After the first falter, the fall.
It is faultless. The safety-net
Holds out its arms. The poet
misses.
(Gravity hangs its head in shame.)
***
Poets have a way with language
A certain jauntiness with hats
They can make a decent curry
And are very fond of cats
Though some are closet fascists
In the main they’re democrats
But all things being considered
Poets make awful acrobats.
It’s Only a P…
Feeling a trifle smug after breaking off an untidy,
Drawn-out affair with somebody I no longer fancied
I was strolling through Kensington Gardens
When who should I bump into but Gavin.
Gavin, I should point out, is the husband.
‘I’m worried about Lucy,’ he said, straight out.
‘I don’t blame you,’ I thought, but said nothing.
‘Suspect she’s having an affair. Any ideas?’
‘Divorce,’ I suggested. ‘You might even get custody.’
‘No, I mean Lucy,’ he persisted. ‘Who with?’
We walked on in silence, until casually, I asked:
‘An affair, you say, what makes you so convinced?’
He stopped and produced from an inside pocket
A sheet of paper which I recognized at once.
It was this poem. Handwritten, an early draft.
Then I saw the gun. ‘For God’s sake, Gavin,
It’s only a p…
It’s Only a P… Part Two
A shot rang out. The bullet was not intended for me.
It embedded itself harmlessly into a tall sycamore.
(Harmlessly, that is, except for the tall sycamore.)
Gavin pocketed the gun. I was shaking like a leaf.
I seized his arm. ‘It’s over now,’ I stammered
‘There was nothing in it really. A moment of madness.’
I was lying and wondered if he could tell.
He gave no sign, so relaxing my grip we walked on.
‘You’d better have this,’ he said, and held out the poem.
‘But I’d rather you didn’t publish. Spare my blushes.’
I took it. ‘If not for me for Lucy’s sake.’
‘Trust me,’ I said and crumpled it into a ball.
Behind us, the sycamore rose swaying from the bushes,
Staggered across the ornamental lake
And collapsed against a wall.
Coach and Horses
One of those poems you write in a pub
on a wet Friday. On your own and nothing to read.
Surrounded by people hugging each other with language.
But you are not without a friend in the world.
You are not here simply for the Alc. 5.5% Vol.
To prove it, you appear to have had a sudden thought.
Writing, like skinning beermats, is displacement activity.
You word-doodle with crazed concentration,
feigning oblivion to the conversations that mill around.
The seductive, the leery, arm in arm with the slurred
and the weary. For some reason, possibly alcoholic,
the doodles coalesce into a train of thought.
Actively displaced, you race along the platform
as it gathers speed. But before you can jump aboard
Time is called, and it comes off the rails.
But this is your secret. Unacknowledged legislator,
you drink up and leave, with a poem so full of holes
you could drive a coach and horses through it.
Poem for a dead poet
He was a poet he was.
A proper poet.
He said things
that made you think
and said them nicely.
He saw things
that you or I
and saw them clearly.
He had a way
with language.
Images flocked around
him like birds,
St Francis, he was,
of the words. Words?
Why he could almost make ’em talk.
The Filmmaker
(with subtitles)
He was a filmmaker with a capital F.
Iconoclastic. He said ‘Non’ to Hollywood, 1
‘Pourquoi? Ici je suis Le Chef.’ 2
A director’s director. Difficult but good.
But when Mademoiselle La Grande C. 3
Crept into his bed in Montparnasse
And kissed him on the rectum, he
Had a rectumectomy. But in vain. Hélas. 4
And how they mourned, the aficionados.
(Even stars he’d not met were seen to grieve,
The Christies, Fondas, Streeps and Bardots.)
And for them all, he’d one last trick up his sleeve.
‘Cimetière Vérité’ he called it (a final pun). 5
In a fashionable graveyard in Paris 3ième.
He was buried, and at the going down of the sun
Premiered his masterpiece, La Mort, C’est Moi-même. 6
The coffin, an oblong, lead-lined studio with space
For the body, a camera and enough light
To film in close-up that once sanguine face
Which fills the monumental screen each night.
The show is ‘Un grand succès’. People never tire 7
Of filing past. And in reverential tone
They discuss the symbolism, and admire
Its honesty. La Vérité pared down to the bone.8
FIN 9
When I Am Dead
I could never begin a poem: ‘When I am dead’
As several poets still alive have done.
The jokey Last Will, and litanies
Of things we are to do when they have gone.
Courageous stuff. Written I shouldn’t wonder
The Morning After, in the throes
Of grim despair. Head still ringing from the noise
Of nights keeling over like glass dominoes.
The chill fear that perhaps the writer
Might outlive the verse, provides the spur
To nail the spectre down in print,
To risk a sort of atheistic prayer.
God, of course, does not appear in rhyme,
Poets of our time being more inclined
To dwell upon the price of manuscripts
And how they want the coffin lined.
Or ashes scattered, cats fed, ex-wives
Gunned down. Meanwhile, in a drawer
Neat and tidy, the bona fide Will,
Drawn-up and witnessed by an old family lawyer.
And though poets I admire have published poems
Whose imperfections reflect our own decay,
I could never begin a poem: ‘When I am dead’
In case it tempted Fate, and Fate gave way.
Repelled by Metal
I don’t drive, I’m afraid.
Never had the inclination or the need.
Being antimagn
etic, I am repelled by metal
And unimpressed by speed.
Nor am I being ‘holier than thou’.
Thou art a godsend to be candid
You with the car and the welcoming smile
Without your lift I’d be stranded.
And it’s not that I dislike cars
Though noisy and dangerous I dare say
Money-eaters and poison-excreters, okay
But I don’t dislike cars, per se.
It’s just that I know my limitations.
I’d be all thumbs behind a wheel.
Don’t laugh. Could you park a poem
In a space this small? Well, that’s how I feel.
The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse
(Reviewed by Georges Perec)
This havy volum is a must for popl who lik potry.
Pom aftr pom, in a glorious fast of litratur.
Mmorabl simils and mtaphors ar vrywhr
whil fin rhyms and imags lap out from vry pag.
Grat poms ar faturd from th liks of Louis MacNic,
John Btjman, Hilair Blloc, T. S. Liot and Td Hughs.
Not forgtting Larkin’s favorit pot, Hardy, who has
twnty svn poms comprd to only nin by W. B. Yats.
This anthology, though havily criticzd by thos pots
who ar not includd, is likly to rmain a standard