(from New Pregnancy and Birth Book by Dr Miriam Stoppard)
Ideally your floors should not be carpeted but tiled.
A brightly coloured nursery will stimulate your child.
Do not eat soft-boiled eggs, smoke crack, fellate infected men
But tell your partner how you feel (see diagram, page ten).
You’re bored and restless? Now is not the time to fly to China
Or to let friends with litter trays blow air up your vagina.
Make sure your fitness trainer is aware of your condition.
Remember, you must check your teeth and call that electrician
And every time you raise a glass or lift a fork, please think
Is this the very best thing for your child to eat or drink?
Once-a-month treats – a slice of cake – will not do any harm
But don’t lick lambing ewes or stick syringes in your arm.
Quite often pregnancies go wrong, and when they do, that’s sad.
It sometimes happens if you’re stressed or pregnant by your dad
But eat your folic acid and next time a thin blue line
Appears, relax. Think positive. Most likely you’ll be fine.
Try not to feel too daunted by this barrage of advice.
It really doesn’t matter if you slip up once or twice –
Eat the wrong cheese, go on the game. It’s not all doom and gloom:
Never again will baby be as safe as in your womb.
Now and Then
‘Now that I’m fifty-seven,’
My mother used to say,
‘Why should I waste a minute?
Why should I waste a day
Doing the things I ought to
Simply because I should?
Now that I’m fifty-seven
I’m done with that for good.’
But now and then I’d catch her
Trapped in some thankless chore
Just as she might have been at
Fifty-three or fifty-four
And I would want to say to her
(And have to bite my tongue)
That if you mean to learn a skill
It’s well worth starting young
And so, to make sure I’m in time
For fifty, I’ve begun
To do exactly as I please
Now that I’m thirty-one.
Healing Powers
My foot is blue and bloated.
The swelling won’t go down.
My limp is duly noted
As I hobble through the town.
I pass a Reiki master.
Of course! I should have put
The two together faster:
Healing powers, my foot.
I take my sore size seven
And place it in his hands.
It’s ten now. By eleven
I’ll be sprinting to the sands.
I ponder such remission.
My tears, like magic, dry.
Pure chance or superstition?
Healing powers, my eye.
My walking looks much better –
I jump, I jog, I hike,
Reluctant to upset a
Reiki master whom I like
But the pain is most dismaying
And I must confess, I put
New conviction in the saying:
Healing powers, my foot.
Homeopathy
She told me negativity was bad.
I said it wasn’t, not the kind I had.
She told me that the people I resent
will have their own accounts of each event.
She said it wasn’t up to me to judge
and that I should examine every grudge
and ask myself if those I cannot stand
are those who hold a mirror in each hand
reflecting back to me the awful fact
of who I am, unwelcome and exact.
She said there was no need to feel a threat.
I said suspicion was my safety net.
I’d allow harmless men misunderstood
if she’d allow the opposite of good.
Of course, she said, malevolence exists.
whereas apply benevolence like balm
and often you can soothe the rash of harm.
I did not feel my interests would be served
by spreading peace where it was not deserved.
What about standards, justice, right and wrong?
She said our meeting had gone on too long
and that the remedy that she’d prescribed
right from the start, if properly imbibed,
erodes those thoughts that play a harmful role
leaving what’s beneficial to the whole
person (in this case, me). If this is true
then since I did just what she told me to –
taking my medicine, the right amount
at the right time – surely she can’t discount
the feelings that remain. She should concede
that these must be exactly what I need
and that my grudge, impassive and immense,
is good for me, in a holistic sense.
I proved my point like a triumphant kid.
She laughed a lot. I gave her sixty quid.
Your Turn Next
You don’t know where he’s been.
You only saw him in a magazine,
don’t know what kind of life he’s had,
whether he’s manic, violent, a fad.
You don’t know where he went
after the club, the sort of things he spent
his pocket money on, the bit
of trouble he was in. You don’t know shit.
He is a scrap of text
to you. He is the words it’s your turn next,
deal of the week, the longed-for link
between you and the thoughts you failed to think.
You don’t know what he means –
philanthropy or company or genes.
Can he play tennis? How’s his serve?
Are you what he will grow up to deserve?
Seventeen years from now,
after too many lagers and a row,
I’ll turn up. Yes in your backyard.
It’s your turn next, so take it. Take it hard.
You misconstrue his tone.
You cannot seem to reach him on the phone.
He swore those plants were watercress.
He is a stranger and you want him less,
a psycho boy. A lout.
You don’t remember, as you throw me out,
that, give or take a wait and see,
I’m only saying what you said to me.
To a Certain Person
If one day I should find myself in pain,
In a predicament or in distress,
There’s something you can do for me: refrain
From digging out my number and address.
Don’t send your sympathy or kind regards.
Don’t send your cash (as if you ever would),
Nor are your presents, telegrams and cards
Evidence that you wish me all things good.
You will profess to want to help. Then do –
A burst of honesty might make me smile.
Tell me that you believe I’m overdue
This, if not even more severe a trial.
Indulge yourself: applaud, rejoice, enthuse
And maybe soon I’ll have some more bad news.
0208
Instead of telephoning every place
that is connected in your mind to me
and then concluding I am hard to trace
when Jill at my recruitment agency,
despite your cloth shoes and your honest face
and all the charm with which you plead your case,
explains the rule (quite proper, you agree)
of client confidentiality,
why not pursue some of those little scraps
of paper where my number’s scrawled in pen?
They can’t have travelled far, unless perhaps
you’ve been to the North Pole and back again.
Look in the pockets of your shirts, the gaps
between your piles of books, shake out the maps
stuffed in your glove compartment. Businessmen
ask for a card; you’ve taken nine or ten.
In many botched attempts to be discreet,
you hide my number where it can’t be found
even by you, which strikes me more as sweet
than irritating. On the underground,
at King’s Cross, Ealing Broadway, Warren Street,
commuters shake it daily from their feet.
The way you must have scattered it around
defeats your object. One day it is bound
to fall unbidden from a jacket sleeve
not at a moment you or I would choose.
Lies will be called for, harder to believe
when the same number tumbles from your shoes.
This doesn’t worry you. You’re so naïve,
but all I know is, each time you retrieve
the number you perpetually lose
it is a minor triumph, front page news.
You tell me I’m elusive, and your tone
Is that of hunter after catching prey,
sort of Aha, I’ve got you on the phone,
I’ve tracked you down, you’ll never get away.
Thank you for the initiative you’ve shown.
Long may your absent-mindedness postpone
and your continued scattiness delay
the wind that carries novelties away.
Leave
Look at the street lights in the square
That should project an orange sky,
Then note the darkness everywhere.
They do not work, and nor do I.
This television, lost at sea,
Emits an endless, wordless roar.
It needs to be replaced. Like me,
It is not working any more.
The sunken car beside the road
Whose hazards blink that extra mile
Wants nothing more than to be towed.
It won’t be working for a while.
Neither will I. You mustn’t mind
Or take offence if I suggest
You learn the art of being kind
To everything that needs a rest.
Notice the fifteen forty-nine
Never quite makes it out of sight.
There is a problem with the line
So it returns. I also might.
Ante-Natal
My husband doesn’t want to hold the plastic pelvis model.
He tells the other husbands that it’s bound to be a doddle.
He thinks the role of classes is to teach, not mollycoddle.
He’ll go so far, but not an inch beyond.
My husband is afraid of meeting women called Magenta,
Of sharing wholesome snacks outside the Early Learning Centre,
Of any exercise that’s an incontinence preventor.
He’s friendly but determined not to bond.
My husband listens to my fear, tells me to overcome it,
Changes the subject to the Davos Economic Summit,
Decides that if there’s pain he’ll simply ask the nurse to numb it.
He says he doesn’t think it sounds that bad.
My husband mocks the books with their advice about nutrition,
He shocks the other couples in the coffee intermission
By saying Ziggy Marley seems in pretty good condition
Despite the smoking habits of his dad.
My husband doesn’t care if I’m a leaner or a squatter,
Says pregnancy is no excuse for reading Harry Potter.
He isn’t keen on Stephanie or Amos or Carlotta.
Leave it to him; he named our latest car.
On Father’s Day my husband gets a card he’s not expecting.
I say it’s from the baby, with a little redirecting.
He doesn’t blame my hormones or insist that I’m projecting.
He tells me he’s the father of a star.
On Westminster Bridge
I don’t believe the building of a bridge
Should be an image that belongs to peace.
Raised eyebrow or the river’s hardened ridge,
It wouldn’t want hostilities to cease.
Aloof, on tiptoes, it deserts each side
For the high ground and, though it has to touch
Land that real lives have made undignified,
I don’t believe it likes that very much.
It knows that every time we try to cross
To a new place, old grudges bind our feet.
It holds out little hope and feels no loss,
Indifferent more than neutral, when we meet
Halfway to transfer ownership of blame,
Then both of us go back the way we came.
Ballade of the Rift
Two enemies at once I lost.
It was a heavy price to pay.
I thought that I could bear the cost
Of an impromptu mercy day.
Now I’m invited out to play
And find I feel distinctly miffed
With no fracas, no feud, no fray;
I yearn to instigate a rift.
Wildly and wantonly I tossed
My horde of grievances away.
Above my inner ice and frost
I forged the sun’s most radiant ray,
Now, with its heaps of UVA,
Summer’s a burden, not a gift.
I miss the grime, the grot, the grey.
I yearn to instigate a rift.
I rue the day I blithely glossed
Over my foes’ misdeeds, while they
Try not to boss where once they bossed,
Promise to honour and obey.
To look for peers among one’s prey
Requires too great a mental shift,
And as they wheedle, cringe and bray
I yearn to instigate a rift.
Preachers and shrinks and healers say
Forgiveness gives the heart a lift –
Good on them. Be that as it may
I yearn to instigate a rift.
Wedding Poem
for Rachel and Ian
Marriage’s rather grand accommodation
Can make a budding love succeed or fail.
We stumble in and ask for information
Regarding all the properties for sale
And marriage is the price-on-application
Castle with grounds, moat, lake and nature trail.
Some kid themselves and think they can afford it
And when their love runs out it’s repossessed
While others, who do better in love’s audit
And whose allegiances deserve the best
Because they are the best, those ones can lord it
Over the squabbling and half-hearted rest.
Today the castle has its rightful buyer,
Its asking price, and it will not be trumped
Because the bidding can’t go any higher;
This is a love that will not be gazumped
By any other applicant, hard-trier
Or any living heart that ever thumped.
Marriage is love’s new house. Love has invested
Its savings wisely, bought the place outright.
It has had several flats, and it has rested
Its head in many a hotel and campsite.
This is the best of all the homes it’s tested.
This is where it will sleep now, every night.
Royal Wedding Poem
This poem was commissioned by the Daily Mail, to commemorate the marriage of Prince Edward and Sophie Rees-Jones. It was never printed.
I have attended weddings in the past
Where I’m the only person in the room
To harbour an intransigent and vast
Landmass of spite towards the bride and groom.
I have attended weddings with my coat
Buttoned against the hot, ecstatic horde
Throughout the service, wearing a remote
Glaze to appear above it all and bored.
At last, a marriage I can celebrate:
No choruses of ‘Oh, you have to come!’,
No one I liked once but have grown to hate
But must make small-talk with to please my mum.
Weddings involving nobody one knows –
What a good plan. I’ll vote for more of those.
GODISNOWHERE (Now Read Again)
Sign outside a Bradford church
Go, Di. Snow here.
(as read by a woman called Diane who is contemplating booking a holiday somewhere hot)
Go dis now her E.
(as read by a concerned father who is hoping to persuade his teenage daughter to stop taking drugs by appealing to her in a more contemporary dialect)
God is now? Here? Now? Read again.
(as read by a philosopher who, on finding himself unable to settle the question of whether the concept of an almighty is a temporal or a spatial one, decides he needs to do more research)