South Kensington ladies, Brummies and Scousers
Sisterhood of bottoms large or petite
Blessed are the children and happy the spouses
What a smooth and beautiful skin the cows is
Especially when softened and buffed up a treat
By Mothers In Leather Trousers
What man hasn’t turned and tripped over his feet?
Polished anthracite with the promise of heat
Blessed are the children and happy the spouses
Who live with Mothers In Leather Trousers.
Echoes Sound Afar
Halfway up the mountain it stops. Slips back.
Judders. Slips again. ‘Scheisse!’ screams a Fräulein,
‘Scheisse!’ Word for word, you think exactly
the same in English. Two little maids in white dresses,
toting Prada bags, think the same in Japanese.
The wind rocks the cradle, but not gently.
No driver. No door handles on the inside.
Reassuringly there is a hammer for smashing
windows in case of emergency. But is this
an emergency, or just the run up to one?
Unsure of the etiquette, better wait until the carriage
bursts into flames or fills up with water.
‘Scheisse!’ It slides back down the track.
Stops. Slides again. Stops and sways dizzily.
The German girl is on the floor sobbing,
her husband unable to comfort her.
A Texan, the life and soul, makes a joke
about the Big Dipper, but nobody laughs.
A voice crackles over the tannoy. Pardon?
If it were writing it would be illegible.
Why are there no Italians on board? Obviously
they’ve heard the rumours. So what did it say?
‘Help is on its way’, or, ‘Emergency, you fools!
The hammer, use the bloody hammer!’
A power failure. Your lives hang on a thread
(albeit a rusty metal one circa 1888). A winch
turns and the long haul up begins. You hold
your breath. Twenty metres. Stop. Shudder,
and a sickening fall for ten. A tooth being
slowly drawn out and then pushed back in.
Should the cable break the descent will not be
death defying. The view below is breathtaking
but you have no wish to be part of it. Like the
muzzle of a mincing machine, the station waits
to chew you up and spit out the gristly bits
into the silver kidney bowl that is Lake Como.
An hour and a half later the tug-of-war ends
and the passengers alight heavily. The Brits to seek
an explanation. The Americans to seek compensation.
The Germans to seek first aid, and the Japanese,
seemingly unfazed, to seek a little shop that sells
snow-globes and model funicular railway sets.
Balloon Fight
‘This morning, the American, Steve Fossett, ended his Round-the-World balloon fight… I’m sorry, balloon “flight”… in northern India.’
– The Today Programme, Radio 4, 20 January 1997
It ended in Uttar Pradesh.
It had to.
You can’t go around the world
attacking people with balloons
and expect to get away with it.
What may be mildly amusing
at children’s parties
in Upper Manhattan
will not seem so funny ha ha
on the Falls Road.
How Fossett fought his way
across the former Yugoslavia
I’ll never know.
Some folk never grow up.
Hang on to their childhood.
Believing in the Tooth Fairy,
watched over by the Man in the Moon.
Thank you, Mr Newsreader,
for bringing him down to earth.
For bursting his balloon.
The Man in the Moon
On the edge of the jumping-off place I stood
Below me, the lake
Beyond that, the dark wood
And above, a night-sky that roared.
I picked a space between two stars
Held out my arms, and soared.
***
The journey lasted not half a minute
There is a moon reflected in the lake
You will find me in it.
Gravity is one of the oldest tricks in the book.
Let go of the book and it abseils to the ground
As if, at the centre of the earth, spins a giant yo-yo
To which everything is attached by an invisible string.
Tear out a page of the book and make an aeroplane.
Launch it. For an instant it seems that you have fashioned
A shape that can outwit air, that has slipped the knot.
But no. The earth turns, the winch tightens, it is wound in.
One of my closest friends is, at the time of writing,
Attempting to defy gravity, and will surely succeed.
Eighteen months ago he was playing rugby,
Now, seven stones lighter, his wife carries him aw-
Kwardly from room to room. Arranges him gently
Upon the sofa for the visitors. ‘How are things?’
Asks one, not wanting to know. Pause. ‘Not too bad.’
(Open brackets. Condition inoperable. Close brackets.)
Soon now, the man that I love (not the armful of bones)
Will defy gravity. Freeing himself from the tackle
He will sidestep the opposition and streak down the wing
Towards a dimension as yet unimagined.
Back where the strings are attached there will be a service
And homage paid to the giant yo-yo. A box of left-overs
Will be lowered into a space on loan from the clay.
Then, weighted down, the living will walk wearily away.
Sad Music
We fall to the earth like leaves
Lives as brief as footprints in snow
No words express the grief we feel
I feel I cannot let her go.
For she is everywhere.
Walking on the windswept beach
Talking in the sunlit square.
Next to me in the car
I see her sitting there.
At night she dreams me
and in the morning the sun does not rise.
My life is as thin as the wind
And I am done with counting stars.
She is gone she is gone.
I am her sad music, and I play on, and on, and on.
The Trouble with Snowmen
‘The trouble with snowmen,’
Said my father one year
‘They are no sooner made
Than they just disappear.
I’ll build you a snowman
And I’ll build it to last
Add sand and cement
And then have it cast.
And so every winter,’
He went on to explain
‘You shall have a snowman
Be it sunshine or rain.’
***
And that snowman still stands
Though my father is gone
Out there in the garden
Like an unmarked gravestone.
Staring up at the house
Gross and misshapen
As if waiting for something
Bad to happen.
For as the years pass
And I grow older
When summers seem short
And winters colder.
The snowmen I envy
As I watch children play
Are the ones that are made
And then fade away.
In at the Kill
The contraction
s are coming faster now.
Every ten minutes or so
A crush of pain made bearable
Only by the certainty of its passing.
Midwives come and go.
At nine forty-five, a show.
It must go on. The floodgates open,
A universe implodes.
There is no going back now
(As if there ever was). Shall I slip away
And start a new life?
Instead, I do as I am told:
‘Push, push. Stop, stop. Now push.
Come on, more. The head’s coming.
Push harder. Harder. Push, push.’
Then out it comes – whoosh.
Uncoiled, I am thrown back.
For some reason I twirl.
Doubledizzy, I steady myself
On the bedrail. ‘It’s a girl.’
***
And so it is. My first.
Having witnessed three sons bawl into view
With the familiar appendage of their gender,
I am unprepared for… (what’s the word,
Begins with p and ends with enda?)
Amazed, not by any lack or absence
But by the prominence of the lack,
The perfect shape of the absence.
Flashbulbs interrupt my musing,
The theatre fills with flowers.
My wife leads the applause,
I bow. ‘Thank you… Thank you…’
Bearhugs
Whenever my sons call round we hug each other.
Bearhugs. Both bigger than me and stronger
They lift me off my feet, crushing the life out of me.
They smell of oil paint and aftershave, of beer
Sometimes and tobacco, and of women
Whose memory they seem reluctant to wash away.
They haven’t lived with me for years,
Since they were tiny, and so each visit
Is an assessment, a reassurance of love unspoken.
I look for some resemblance to my family.
Seize on an expression, a lifted eyebrow,
A tilt of the head, but cannot see myself.
Though like each other, they are not like me.
But I can see in them something of my father.
Uncles, home on leave during the war.
At three or four, I loved those straightbacked men
Towering above me, smiling and confident.
The whole world before them. Or so it seemed.
I look at my boys, slouched in armchairs
They have outgrown. Imagine Tom in army uniform
And Finn in air force blue. Time is up.
Bearhugs. They lift me off my feet
And fifty years fall away. One son
After another, crushing the life into me.
Four Sons
(A Wish)
One son at each corner
of the bed
on which I lie
Four sons, the bearers
of the coffin
when I die
Just Passing
Just passing, I spot you through the railings.
You don’t see me. Why should you?
Outside the gates, I am out of your orbit.
Break-time for Infants and first-year Juniors
and the playground is a microcosmos:
planets, asteroids, molecules, chromosomes.
Constellations swirling, a genetic whirlpool
Worlds within worlds. A Russian doll
of universes bursting at each seam.
Here and there, some semblance of order
as those who would benefit from rules
are already seeking to impose them.
Not yet having to make sense of it all
you are in tune with chaos, at its centre.
Third son lucky, at play, oblivious of railings.
I try and catch your eye. To no avail.
Wave goodbye anyway, and pocketing
my notebook, move on. Someday we must talk.
Who are These Men?
Who are these men who would do you harm?
Not the mad-eyed who grumble at pavements
Banged up in a cell with childhood ghosts
Who shout suddenly and frighten you. Not they.
The men who would do you harm have gentle voices
Have practised their smiles in front of mirrors.
Disturbed as children, they are disturbed by them.
Obsessed. They wear kindness like a carapace
Day-dreaming up ways of cajoling you into the car.
Unattended, they are devices impatient
To explode. Ignore the helping hand
It will clench. Beware the lap, it is a trapdoor.
They are the spies in our midst. In the park,
Outside the playground, they watch and wait.
Given half a chance, love, they would take you
Undo you. Break you into a million pieces.
Perhaps, in time, I would learn forgiveness.
Perhaps, in time, I would kill one.
Cinders
After the pantomime, carrying you back to the car
On the coldest night of the year
My coat, black leather, cracking in the wind.
Through the darkness we are guided by a star
It is the one the Good Fairy gave you
You clutch it tightly, your magic wand.
And I clutch you tightly for fear you blow away
For fear you grow up too soon and – suddenly,
I almost slip, so take it steady down the hill.
Hunched against the wind and hobbling
I could be mistaken for your grandfather
And sensing this, I hold you tighter still.
Knowing that I will never see you dressed for the Ball
Be on hand to warn you against Prince Charmings
And the happy ever afters of pantomime.
On reaching the car I put you into the baby seat
And fumble with straps I have yet to master
Thinking, if only there were more time. More time.
You are crying now. Where is your wand?
Oh no. I can’t face going back for it
Let some kid find it in tomorrow’s snow.
Waiting in the wings, the witching hour.
Already the car is changing. Smells sweet
Of ripening seed. We must go. We must go.
Monstrance
He is neither big nor strong
But his four year old thinks he is
She runs towards him, arms outstretched
And is lifted up into the sky
Five times a week in Little Suburbia
He blazes like a tree
The Way Things Are
No, the candle is not crying, it cannot feel pain.
Even telescopes, like the rest of us, grow bored.
Bubblegum will not make the hair soft and shiny.
The duller the imagination, the faster the car,
I am your father and this is the way things are.
When the sky is looking the other way,
do not enter the forest. No, the wind
is not caused by the rushing of clouds.
An excuse is as good a reason as any.
A lighthouse, launched, will not go far,
I am your father and this is the way things are.
No, old people do not walk slowly
because they have plenty of time.
Gardening books when buried will not flower.
Though lightly worn, a crown may leave a scar,
I am your father and this is the way things are.
No, the red woolly hat has not been
put on the railing to keep it warm.
When one glove is missing, both are lost.
Today’s craft fair is tomorrow’s car boot sale.
The guitarist gently weeps, not the guitar,
I am your father and this is the w
ay things are.
Pebbles work best without batteries.
The deckchair will fail as a unit of currency.
Even though your shadow is shortening
it does not mean you are growing smaller.
Moonbeams sadly, will not survive in a jar,
I am your father and this is the way things are.
For centuries the bullet remained quietly confident
that the gun would be invented.
A drowning surrealist will not appreciate
the concrete lifebelt.
No guarantee my last goodbye is au revoir,
I am your father and this is the way things are.
Do not become a prison-officer unless you know
what you’re letting someone else in for.
The thrill of being a shower curtain will soon pall.
No trusting hand awaits the falling star,
I am your father, and I am sorry,
but this is the way things are.
INDEX OF FIRST LINES
1 a.m. 119
1 Get out of bed early and frequently. 92
1. Whistle a tune your father whistled 211
3 a.m. Feeling like death 350
a cat mistrusts the sun 212
A day off for you to recover from jetlag 274
A genetic scientist 279
A grandpiano of a woman is Aunty Dora. 133
A littlebit of heaven fell 54