CHARM  AGAINST
INSOMNIA

 

Unbutton worry, drowse and tumble

Towards slumber, while the Sleepbird, with a string

of tiny enamel-bright pennants in its beak

swoops in tightening circles round the baskety

girth of your mind, brushed softest

wingtips against the wall, laying fresh clay

into interstices, fills crevices of loss,

smooths raw hurt and finally

alights in the fine grey

sand.  And now

Sleepbird has begun to build her nest

From all today’s detritus, odds and lengths

Of gracile silvered wood, the yarn

Of old conundrums, working from

The outside in – see how it grows

Like a hatching egg in a film run backwards, as

A final piece is triangled in place

To hide her single shining

Bead-black

Eye.

 

(This was Colin’s last poem, written shortly before he died in April 2000).

 

 

 

FAR AND NEAR

 

Beyond the path, beneath the trees

two people ping a shuttlecock

backwards and forth. It disappears

then flashes yellow in the mottling light.

 

On the campsite, grass-stalks wave

braided and blond. Two wasps inspect

a tent, then tiger off, become

gold blobs winking off

beneath the trees; huge, elephantine

sculptured foliage which nods

in the soft-surfing breeze.

 

A minute red insect stirs

filament-fine legs upon my skin.

I raise my writing hand

to blow it off, and on the road

my daughters amble, talking, into view.

FUGUE

 

(fugue f-ugue n. a form of composition in which the subject is given out by one part and immediately taken up by a second (in answer) during which the first part supplies an accompaniment or counter subject (music): a form of amnesia which is a flight from reality.) (The Chambers Dictionary 1993).

Insanity Rag

When you see the devil strapped down to a stretcher

and you know he’s going to eat you, soul and all

when you whisper to the nurse that you’re a lecher

then they tap the news in morse from wall to wall

when the rumble of a fan becomes a bomber from Japan

and you learn the facts on vampires from a Bratislavan hag

with your eardrums all a-flutter as the telly starts to stutter:

you’re a nutter shuffling to the madhouse rag.

 

When the Dobermanns are barking on the stairway

and your wardmate’s eyes start sliding as she smiles

and you’re walloped so completely off the fairway

that the rough’s a jungle reaching up for miles

when you mutter in your bunker like a well-fermented Junker

when Largactyl nightcaps take the place of booze

and you cannot masturbate for all those pills that constipate

then you’re an inmate jerking to the bughouse blues.

 

When you start each chance encounter with a handshake

and you want to know each patient’s family tree

when high terror has you screaming like a mandrake

and you’re rootless, fruitless, anchorless at sea,

when you’re feeling so confused that you would rather be abused

and hurt than be uncertain if they’ve noticed you or not

well, one preens beneath the curses of the patients and the nurses

and rehearses for the frozen turkey trot.

 

When they wake you up at seven to do the cleaning

and the ward is left more sordid than before

when each sentence has at least a triple-meaning

so that always never anything is sure

when you know they tap your phone and annotate your slightest moan

when your file has grown so quickly and incontinently big

and they don’t seem overjoyed that you’re a little paranoid

then you can’t avoid the solipsistic jig.

 

When you try to write about it two years later -

an explorer who dispensed with taking notes

as he journeys up the pole to the equator,

his safari dogged by bearers in white coats,

(and I think: Oh lucky me, I missed the realm of ECT) -

you may wonder why I undertook the quest

but though the ramblings of a nutcase aren’t an open and a shut case

are they odder than the rat-race of the rest?

The Knock

A dumbbell knocked into the forehead

wasn’t hard enough the hand

refusing to obey a brain

that sought oblivion an older brain

beneath it knew oblivion

meant nothingness not rest

 

the effect looked

good enough though and

Samaritans were called a voice

advice another call a call

to hospital a mini cab

uneaten sandwich in the hand

and casualty

 

watch this space

said a notice on the wall watching

and waiting watching a tall

man with much worse bruises

strut from the cubicle

next

 

no serious damage

the nurse smiled

down a corridor into a room

with warnings and windows

at long last a doctor

I’ll see him alone

a handsqueeze and tearful

 

smile do you know

what the date is no

and then a long list

of leading questions

yes yes yes yes

spilling out in all its ugliness

 

would you like

to stay here oh yes

no yes no I suppose so

 

a phonecall

to upstairs they’ve got

a free bed it’s quite

a nice quiet ward

 

to shuffle into weeping held

at the elbow watching

the black man with the mop the lionhaired young man

pacing the corridor around

 

a room

where the final interview

became an interrogation what

do you mean you couldn’t

sleep for the helicopter and the wind

I have

 

no choice

but to keep you in you can come

of your own accord or

there’s an easy way

and a hard way there’s

 

a spartan room

with armchair bed

prolonged goodbye please

take this pulling off

the wedding ring

 

not waving at the closing door

sitting bolt upright in the chair

listening

to jungle music pulsing

somewhere

waiting

for the knock.

Orchid

On my first morning there

she stood at the door

motionless

and stared through me for what seemed hours.

Iron-hard she looked; her braided hair

appeared full of knitting-needles, nails.

 

Later, when I’d learned her name

I greeted her by it in the corridor.

This time she smiled past me.

 

Much later I hear someone

telling someone else

that most  times

she was off her face on crack.

White male, 19

My name’s Professor Gilbert Swinburne Fortescue McKinlay Smythe

at least that’s what he told me on the day that I arrived

he stole my can of cola as I watched with fear-wide eyes

His name’s Professor Gilbert Swinburne Fortescue McKinlay Smythe

he’s six foot four if he’s a day and every day he strides

loose limbed along the corridor huge hands hung by his sides

His name’s Professor Gilbert Swinburne Fortescue McKinlay Smythe

he told me that I’m never going to leave this place alive.

I’m eating children

My raging paranoia needs material

to fuel it. The slightest scrap will do.

This morning some wag scribbled on the notice board

Your menu today is not Your nurse today…

then followed a list of nurses’/patients’ names

in bright red marker. So now I know

I’ll have to eat the lot of them, then

another lot etcetera. At lunch I saw

pale bits bobbing around in the stew and knew

at once that they were human. I took

a sandwich instead (smoked salmon) ran

into my room, cracked the plastic

capsule open, bit and masticated

for a split-second then spat out a mash

of pink white. It was my daughter’s flesh.

The younger one. I’m sure of it. They’ve got it wrapped

up nicely all right – must have a whole factory

churning out these nightmares. I never dreamed

it was so organised. I can’t eat

a whole hospital. I wonder what

tomorrow’s menu is.

King of the Ward

Short, perfectly proportioned,

twenty years of age

and deadly as a cat

intent upon its prey,

 

he never seems to sleep, and yet

is always barracuda sleek

in waistcoat, stainless jeans

and golden chain.

 

He said to me: I can do

whatever I like

to whoever I like

whenever I like.

Babel

Please save me gracious Lord from Fire Lake…

...I don’t need no damn Procyclidin…

...first time I tried heroin – Crissake,

it made me sicker than a pig… the bin

and all us nutters… watch the snide effects…

...then the fuckers shot him in the head…

...but all she ever thinks  abut is sex…

...you’re the sodding nurse you make my bed…

...hmm 10 o’clock – it’s tablet time...suppose

the loonies ran the hospital – what then? …

...that wanker’s only slept in all his clothes…

...just watch it lady – we are real men…

...in Wormwood Scrubs – to throw stones at the nonces…

...my mate Bill the Burglar on the roof…

...a paddling pool with ducks on for the ponces…

...one thing I can’t stand and that’s a pouf…

...in 20 years from now I’m going to have

an army of my own...let’s chin the cunt…

...she only flushed the foetus down the lav…

...the Iron Mask will swing...that little runt…

...a 10 mile tailback… what’s the sodding hitch…

...and now some words ...it’s Capital it’s Gold…

...some coke or acid clubbing...shaddup bitch!…

...you let my cup of tea go freezing cold…

...the M5 Motorway...it’s time again

for me to play another dedication…

...reminds me of a joke – this geezer went…

Temazepam?...I’ll stick to masturbation…

she’s a terror...watch that one – he’s bent…

I’m just reminding Shirl she’s got an arsehole…

...morning nurse...now where’s my toothpaste gone?…

...what fucking Jesus? ...life’s a goddam farce…old

man...and so we babble on

and on and on and on in Babylon.

TV Times

Little Tammy Tucker

face all a-pucker

 

quite off her rocker

exposing one knocker

 

sits in wet knickers

telly screen flickers

 

her only succour

poor little fucker.

Outside

This road that I step into

this brown linoleum path

outside the doorway of my room,

takes me to the toilet,

(where I cannot shit)

the dayroom filled with smoke and tv noise,

(where I cannot make friends)

the dining area

(where I can only eat

like a terrified pig).

Then it takes me back to my room,

where I shiver in boredom, isolation, fear

and to the road inside my head:

which starts each time with the same fresh

false start

an a thousand endings,

most of which,

I can’t begin to prophesy.

This Medication

     is indicated

in cases of insomnia

     paranoia

violent behaviour

     lifelessness.

 

Side effects include

     sleeplessness

persecution fantasies

     aggression

       death.

The Visitors

Always appear unexpectedly

as if sent by providence.

Smile, listen to my gibberish

and leave a gift.

 

I want them to stay,

I want them to go – I

do not believe they are real.

Narcissus

When they transplanted me

from my sole room on the ward

to a six-mad dormitory, I retained

this, my wife’s present.

 

At first it grew, in spite

of tropical central heating

echoes of paranoia

and the ramblings of the rootless,

as if watered

by my reservoir of self-pity -

 

in a huge spurt of growth

like a swan-necked stick

of bleached celery, and then

finding no light

except perhaps moonshine

it died

 

and I dumped it

along with its pot and arid grit

into a bin despite the

warning notice on the wall.

Patient in the Opposite Cubicle

His name was Ahmed I think.

Nobody asked him, he was short,

curly haired, and on the ward

he wore a neat grey anorak.

 

Almost insignificant, he was,

standing, smiling in the corner of the dayroom.

Nobody offered him a place to sit.

I saw him once perched

on the edge of a chair.

 

No one saw what he wore

behind the curtain in his cubicle.

But you heard his prayer of the faithful

frequently.

 

In the pecking order

I come
way below the self-styled

Crack Baron or the self-satisfied

adolescent Pole who likes to prance

naked, below the Prophet in  his swirling cloak

made from a turquoise curtain and his yoke

of holy medals, even just below

the earnest girl who scribbles in

her puzzle-book, and just above

Brendan, who recycles dog-ends

drinks the dregs of coffee-cups and prates

of universal love.

Voice from the next bed

 

hellohellohellohellohell

I’m going to come and kill you very soon

I used to be a werewolf but I’m well

nooowww hellohollowhowling at the moon.

 

Hellhellohellohellohello

have you got a cigarette at all

I raped six children yesterday but no

one noticed that I’m climbing up the wall

 

manohmanohmanohmanohman

would you believe that I was once like you

it’s ten years since these voices first began

I wish they’d tell me something nice to do.

Soliloquy of the Women’s Dorm

I don’t want to stay here with a load of incontinent old bags

now that the winter’s coming. I don’t dream

with this medication. She never stops talking all night

and my bed is full of snakes. I’m frightened Nicholas

and now I’ve gone and got the wimble-wambles.

Please help me Mister Black. I never got

my master’s degree or my mistresses’

and summer’s nearly over now. They put me on

that other ward last night it’s cold and someone snored.

Have you got a spare cigarette I can buy off you?

Just one. Thanks very much. I’ll pay you back

when I sort my money out. When I sort. Sort.

That Mr Ardibushko I don’t care for him

he stands with the toilet door open shows his all

he’s not my sugar daddy never was.

I hate that phrase. I really love the feel

of cutting myself I feel strong and it usually lasts

about an hour then dwindles. Better that

than our chemical communion. I used to go

all over the world till the snakes came. Nick I’m frit.

One Morning

I was sleeping,

when from round the next door curtain

a grinning African appeared and slid into my bed

“Your bed is most disorganised” he whispered with a certain

air of disapproval. Pushing feebly back, I said

“Please go away.” He didn’t, so I pressed the panic button

and instantly (or so it seemed) three male nurses came.

Two held him to the lino, while the third and biggest sat on

his head. I had a feeling that somehow I was to blame

an afterwards apologised. He smiled: “It doesn’t matter

my friend, but you should be more tidy, so the Prophets say.”

Then laughed for several minutes. He was madder than a hatter.

I wasn’t very sorry when he left within a day.

The Patient recalls a Scene from her Lost Youth

Always when small she had hidden her head

breathlessly beneath the blankets; the old

enemy had stopped short

of hauling them off her, but here

and now was worse...

 

She was fairly sure that all the people revealed

 

lumped beneath blankets by the hourly torch

 

like herself, were listening for the snore

of the one in the ward with the magnetic door

that snore to begin again and grow

up into a grinding of teeth, a Grendel snarl

of the Uvula that stopped

 

and left nothing in the dark but a scream

 

that became hers, calling a name beneath

the blankets, but when she woke and wound

them round her like a shawl, not one

of the other risen bodies could be bothered

with recalling what it was

Lost

First there was the chocolate
pudding which taste of decayed
Dunlopillo. The flavour stayed
in my mouth three days, till the day

I made a lone foray
to the basement by lift,
to the chapel that seemed like a crypt
where my chapped lips

made the sacrament taste sour.

When I tried

to go back the lift had died

and I walked miles

 

of staircase and corridor

just made to frustrate

all my crazed and intricate

attempts to navigate.

 

I knocked on frosted glass windows,

entered an empty office and rang

home – got the answerphone. A gang

of security men took me under their wing

 

nodding and shaking heads

at each other, smiling as if

it couldn’t happen to them. Did one say let’s duff

him up a bit first?  Now I can’t believe

 

that – though I heard it then all right.

Oh, but it was hard

to be led back under guard

back to the chaos of that safe environment, the ward.

Close Obs

You can always tell the new ones

on close observation

 

that look of perturbation out of it

on tranquillisers turning

 

in a tight circle yearning for what

they think they lost but maybe never

 

ever had anyway dogged

by an appointed

 

nurse a pointless quest

threading and threading

 

the dead-end of corridor

seeing unseeing an assortment

 

of notices all the deportment of

Frankenstein’s monster

 

the consternation

of a lost toddler in a department

 

store broken hearted

bruised plastered and bandaged

 

managing a mouthful

of food before spewing

 

a mewing sick kitten

dumped in a litter bin

 

skittering on the smooth

icy linoleum

 

rolling up in a ball

always accompanied

 

wholly alone.

Blackouts

I get them getting out of bed

a buzzing noise inside my head

 

my boy tingles swells I fall

or ricochet against the wall

 

unconscious for an instant find

myself upon the floor with kind

 

attendants bending over me

it lasts for all eternity

 

inside an instant filled with fear

 

they’ll never let me out of here.

 

 

 

Ward Round

 

Dr Suit, you don’t impress me

smug in your consultant’s chair.

In point of fact you quite depress me

(and I’m depressed enough) don’t stress me

out, or I might boot

you

Dr Suit.

 

Dr Stern, you couldn’t swallow

half the rubbish that I’ve taken

no more than Sikh could swallow beef

or Jew or Muslim bacon

and when I spit your tough love back

you look a little shaken.

No fun when it’s your turn

eh

Dr Stern?

 

Oh doctors all, the good, the rotten

the useless and the simply bad

the ones who never ever cotton

on, the kind, the misbegotten

I hope that your consultant’s not un-

sympathetic when you all go mad.

Every Day She…

Puts on red fleece and yellow

cycle-helmet, rides a mile

to the hospital to visit him.

 

Every visit she

smiles at his litany

of persecution, paranoia, buys

him cups of coffee, looks into his eyes.

 

Every night she sleeps

alone, and weeping sometimes thinks

of better days and prays that they

might come again.

 

Every time the same

and yet she never blames him, brings

fresh laundry, fags and things – one day

she knows that he’ll get sane.

 

And then of course

she’ll file for divorce.

Eve

Admitting no change of season or scene

the home enclosed him. Always after lunch

he dozed the summer through, swallowed

his dose like a babe unable to come to grips

with its pawing senses. The hum

from some fan, sun on his sleeve, a thick

taste coating his tongue, the television

flickering its ghosts and the sickly

reek of polish spun a web in which he stirred

with minimal resistance.

 

Then she sat in the next chair, paper bag

leaking purple in her hand. “How are you?”

she said presently. Who are you?”

he wanted to ask in return, but couldn’t manage

the shape of the words, so he stared

instead at the paper bag. “I brought

them for you; I thought that you might...” he shook

his head in amazement. She mistook

the gesture for a rebuff, gave a small cough

and left him to his present.

 

Reaching, he palped the sodden bulge of bag

tentatively – it gave, a single grape

detached in his hand. Brown paper

wrapping and all, he snaked it into his mouth.

A tart uprushing of juices

sluiced the heavy fungus from his tongue.

He returned into his senses, flexing

them effortlessly, like the fingers

of a glove, and spoke (for the first time in months)

the name of his visitor.

 

The dog days slunk to an end. Fall arrived

as the seasons resumed. The doctor shook

his head (like an actor) amazed

at the cure, signed the papers, shook him by the hand

and wished him good luck. He edgily

sat waiting on the bed. She arrived

punctually, her coat trailing blots of rain

(the temperature had suddenly dropped)

and steered him through the rain to a car which drove off

to another existence.

Discharged

The house was still – white sheets beyond the window

muffled sound

from the street outside. A glasslike chill

clarified his mind – the silence around

making him quiet and spacious

 

cool as a breeze.

 

He envisioned paper aeroplanes

dipping inside a perspex dome

from the intricate girders of which a trapeze

swung idly easy …

 

home

 

He crouched

mouthing the word in the hall

and pressed his ear to the door as if to hear

the falling snow fall.

 

NAMING

 

Sleepless in bed, I lapse to counting sheep.

Like buses long overdue, they creep

past me in threes, with fleeces black as crepe

that slowly spin to webs of practised shape:

 

grey windowpanes, through which the evening star

is visible. Paint-spattered steps. I steer,

on slipshod feet, as scrambled voices jeer

below. Above, the attic door, ajar.

 

A single naked lightbulb serves to burn

dark into shreds. The shape begins its turn

at leisure in the swivel chair; and torn

by various needs, I watch the large head, borne

 

with managerial calm, its blank stone gaze

unfaced as yet. The measured turning goes

on for an age. One finger writes a phrase

slowly in air, familiar letters froze

 

n into stone that slowly crumbles. Weak

with fascination, I regard that sleek

black, jackal head, jaws opening to slake

an endless thirst. It speaks my name. I wake.

 

 

SHADOW

 

Sodium streetlamps, caged in fretful leaves

cast huge diluted winking shadows

at my feet.

 

I kick a Coke-can at the kerb.

As it rebounds, a harried thin

girl rushes past me in the August wind.

 

At the all-night store, two men

putting up shutters. They nod

I duck the shaky portcullis, grab

a brace of strip-lit cider cans,

pay, nod thanks, duck out.

 

A passing car with blacked-out

windows pumps out rub-a-dub

music, makes my shadow wheel

elastic on the wall.

 

I cross the lights at red, the same car

throbs and waits.

 

The home stretch, past an uncurtained

booklined room. Part

of a parked car’s shadow detaches itself -

is cat.

 

Once home, I sit (coat on), my back

to the black-glassed night and gulp

from the cider-can as my heart slows slowly down.

 

 

 

TALKING THE SEA

Wistful effervescent seltzer rush

of surf churns seashells on the beach

insistent lacy sussurations brush

the foaming sands.

 

One grey gull bobs snug

in a seadip, an abandoned off-white

detergent bottle rotates in the waves

deflecting scintillas of light.

 

And the sea shifts from one

second to the next. See?

All sunlight, bright beachtowels, bodies glazed

and lazing...the next

instant cliffs hulk through the fog and wind

snaps doglike at damp flannel turnups.

 

Sea hides acres of weeds

weaving their secrets, voracious

bottom-feeders, hoovering away, crustacean

thuggery by night.

 

Sea smoothes away wrinkles, reveals

pale flotsam shapes

weathered and silvered that just might be

momentos of loved ones.

 

The sweep and smell of it all, the sweet

saltiness as it bursts

in the cave of my mouth, the sounds

of gulls black against the sun and crying

 

just what is beyond the horizon.

 

THE JOB

 

1. Briefing

It’s in the second drawer down

on the right hand side of the desk

in the front room on the third floor

of the abandoned house.

But watch for that box of letters, you don’t want

to go losing yourself in some old

yellowed range of responses, you’d be there for ages

until they came to fetch you in the car.

 

And the same goes for that cracked

wireless set – it’ll only get

alien stations that ceased transmission

in the Bakelite Age.

Leave it off, unless you’re intending to drown

in a surf of babble, gargled down

by the undertow of yesterday’s airwaves, besides:

you wouldn’t really understand the jokes.

 

Don’t imagine that you’re out

of the house yet. In spite of all

you think you recall, there are still things

you’ve forgotten that might

put you in the wrong corridor, keep an eye

out for sudden movements in the tall

looking-glass, remember to descend the stairs in threes,

and when you cross the landing, close your eyes.

 

A final word of advice:

nothing remains unchanged. The girl

you glimpsed through the hall, brushing her hair

on the last occasion,

will have moved on or be doing something

else with her hands now which you mightn’t like.

Best to ignore the unsure, for example the mail

that’s piled up in the meantime on the mat.

 

In fact, I suspect they’ve switched

the locks, and I’m not even sure

if the street-name’s still the same – suppose

I went on your behalf?

Who’d be the wiser? Besides, it’ll help keep

you safely home in the present. Now,

if you remember to stay in one place, and don’t fret,

I’ll bring you something nice when I get back.

 

II   Execution

A mistake, taking shortcuts. The better part

of afternoon spent, lurching from damp

clump to tussock on the verge

of this sprawling watercourse. Orbiting, thin

longwinged insects buzz and dip

beyond reprisal. Sunlight’s staled

to dazzling haze. Metallic tastes,

like the leavings of a catnap, foul your mouth.

 

You’d not cared for that tall

gunned silhouette on the stonewalled

hillcrest. No sense at all

bringing steel, tweeds, a hostile blue

stare into close-up. From the next field,

fattened on spoilheaps, two off-white birds

flapped sluggishly up. You backed and slunk

downhill to flank the wood.

 

The premature evening chill

of woodland infiltrates. TRESPASSERS WILL…

on a broken signboard. What will you,

ducking rusted wireknots, find

different this time? The house -

where your requests for water or ways

out of the wood are always rejected

politely – is never the same.

 

In this phase it is still

to be finished: Planks, wheelbarrows, bricks

clutter the site. Though as yet no clock

exists to strike five, the men have gone.

An old coat, hung slack on a keeled

chair’s back, draws you. The thrush

is beginning to sing. Quick, dip

into the pocket, snatch

 

and skedaddle, before any shotgun coughs

reagitate the settling rooks

in the treetops. One of these days

you’ll bungle, be snagged high up -

an example to some – on the very fence

that you’ve just scaled. Butt for now

there’s something in your pocket, hard road

beneath your feet, and the lights of town below.

 

III   Post-Mortem

One fence left. Good. The dogbarks are a lot

of bricklined lanes back yet. Time enough

to finger the goods you lifted, savour the hot

lustglut in thorax, the wellfed

feel of gloating over virgin loot.

 

Neat how you picked just the right

way across the maze, stepping

deft over traps at the same time

as you somehow amassed a most

respectable haul.

 

It all adds up and what

won’t sell should look good on the walls

of the villa to be got

for ready cash; the other stuff

should prove its uses. Time to move.

 

Who made these fences? Hadn’t a hint,

clearly, of what they’d be up

against; easy take your time

now, swivel, bend knees, relax fingers…

and rest.

 

So. You weren’t quite prepared for this slow,

rained-on open sewer; are those

flat figures on a far bank, or

is it your eyes? Time’s up, your route,

for all its length, ends here like all the rest.

 

No backtracking either; that map

dated as you made it. Time ploughed

up streets in your wake. Something

is remodelling the city – you’d not

recognise it now.

 

Ditch the lot, quick, it’s just junk:

your ring of infallibility, the duck

that quacks nesteggs, your handtinted specs,

the set of keys

there wasn’t time to use.

 

Everything must go, you too; there’s a thing

trampling the fence behind you. Yet,

in the space before it shoves you, or you dive,

you might note that I wrote this as you read it:

still alive.

 

IV   Resolution

The chalet swept of all but sand, you sit

on the one chair by a saltworn door

that leans in on its hinges. The bed’s stripped

to its iron frame; your suitcase stands

reay inside the porch. A summer storm’s

fringes rake the beach – goose-pimpling rain

spatters the pane in slashes, clicks it

like a loose tooth in its socket.

 

Through blue afternoon a rusting tanker marked

the skyline in hieroglyph

of iron, shape mutating as it swung

in ponderous compass. It dipped

from sight when the clouds came. Now you scan

an empty sea, unsure of what

the exact time is. The sand has stopped

your watch. The boat should soon be here.

 

One noon your train slid in

to a bare, shadowed platform. A cat’s tail

was slipping around an open door

marked out to lunch. No one to take

your ticket. Taxis sat

in untended line outside; a still-lit

dog-end smoked on the kerb. You hefted

your heavy case and started for the beach.

 

Now sand sifts through your toes as you trudge

back into the sandhills. The sun

has re-appeared – squeezed like a blood-orange

between cloud-bank and sea,

it gives up its juices. You turn

to the other view: a high, full moon,

pewtering range on range of dunes

that have covered the town.

 

Did you time things wrong? Somewhere at sea,

a horn lows out with the prolonged note

of departure. You slurry down

into the dusk; case rattling

oddly light. The hasps unsnapped,

you pause – pull out a wooden spade,

and, levering up a scoop of seadark sand,

squat down to work.

 

 

TRIPTYCH

 

The Nest

His route zigzagged along a stretch of beach between

shrunken jellyfish, buried anchors,

picnicking families, bellicose dads picking sides.

 

The boy kept an eye open for stray dogs, strange men,

sneers, sticks and brickbats from ugly boys

and sudden bright beachballs smacking up into his face.

 

By the seat of his pants he managed to slither,

scramble, scrape, fumble over boulders

squeeze his way up the narrowing crack to a cliff top

 

covered with floating mist, in which the only sound

was that of his sandshoes brushing turf.

It grew chilly, and a singing began in his ears.

 

He stopped, to let the mist disperse, the noises start:

chirruping, bubbling, whispering echoes

and the voice, tuning in as the stunted tree took shape.

 

Like bladder-wrack it crackled on the salty air

vibrated teeth and voicebox, then swooped low

to squeeze his guts like a fistful of clay. The witch

 

leaned out from her nest in the top of the thorn tree -

a great mare’s nest like a tilted wheel -

reeling him slowly towards her with one hooked talon.

 

He grasped the first thorn. Shiny, black it punctured plush

skin, slid into the ball of his thumb;

the witch waxed to plumpness, ballooning like the blood-bead,

 

hauled him aboard, cuddled him to her now full breast,

crooning over his poor, wounded thumb,

stroking it, stroking it, all the time working the thorn

 

deeper into the flesh. His body throbbed with pain,

warmth and repletion; though he knew

all this would shrink – and the beach still lay waiting below.

 

 

The Monolith

One dazzling summer afternoon when it was cool

and calm inside the house, the father came upstairs,

in overalls to the doorway of the boy’s room

and said: “The car’s mended now; it’s time we went out.”

The boy stood up, reluctantly put down his book,

followed his father outside into the sunlight.

 

They walked across concrete, oilstains and newspapers,

got into the hot, upholstery-smelling car,

drove away. The father cracked a couple of jokes.

The boy said nothing. They went by the new bypass

turned off at White’s garage, drove up a steep cart-track,

switched off. “This is where we get out,” the father said.

 

Cows turned their slow heads as the father pointed: “Look.”

Something showed patchily through the ragged pine trees

circling the hill. “You’ll see it better in a bit.”

As they huffed up the slope it emerged into view;

tower-like, windowless, a grey-white monolith.

They looked past each other. “Who made it?” said the boy.

 

“No one really knows...” the father paused “...but you’re it!”

and he began chasing his son round and around

the massive thing. The boy panted anticlockwise,

fingertips of his left hand grazed by the cold stone,

heart thudding. Suddenly the father stopped. “Enough,”

he gasped. “What now?” the boy enquired. The father shrugged,

 

sat on the grass with his back to his son, and looked

at the valley. The boy skirted the monolith,

wondering what to do with it. It gave no clue:

unyielding, blank, implacable. He kicked it twice,

hurting his toes, broke a penknife blade against it,

shivered, watched his father, wished they were going home.

 

 

The Weaver

Much later on, when the boy called himself a man,

he would knot the loose threads of his thoughts at night into

a grey cocoon of fear round his daughters and wife,

hear a tap dripping, close his eyes in the dark…

 

He shrank from the aftertaste of witch’s milk:

astringent driblets of thin stuff, drabber than gruel.

Tongue curling, he turned his head in disgust, bit

 

with a shock on the cold rim of a metal tap,

head cocked sideways, water rilling down his left cheek;

he drank and gulped and drank, never wanting to stop,

until his belly was fuller than the drum-shaped

sullen gasometer, hulking on the world’s curve

beyond dead-end streets at the farthest edge of town.

 

Somewhere on the outskirts, a small breeze muttered,

as yet the faintest of spells, the remotest whisper

like breathing on ashes. He chose not to listen

 

and grew to hero-size, when his stature was seen

heaving into view, stepping over the skyline,

as he swept aside trifles, stamped upon antics.

Overlapping bronze and iron plates encased him;

he braced the sword of his longfathers in both hands,

uplifted his head in its heavy helm to face

 

the breeze that had become a sour wind, screaming

around, against him, through every chink of his armour,

a demented cry that tore the roofs off homes.

 

The hero tilted, its joints skewed in the rubble;

bent plate hung like bits of mobile from scaffolding.

Inside, thick as dust thrown up by demolition;

bark, rustflakes, particles of bone and shrivelled seeds,

decelerating slowly, to accumulate

in a soft grey mound. A bright-eyed bird hopped inside…

 

A cry startled him. His. He woke into dark.

His sleeping wife pressed her warmth into his back, rubbing

a live, widespread hand round, around the belly.

 

Tears rilled down to his mouth, but they tasted sweet

for all their salt – he turned to her, began

the making of love. The bird began building its nest

with what it had, working slowly from inside.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Visitation

(i.m. Nancy Hindley1910-1991)

 

In the home of the old, some

nod, play at recall,

the world on the edge of their lips,

babbling tonguetwisters.

 

With a tenderness which should

tuck bedsheets, soothe brows,

a seated women strokes and strokes

two teddy bears.

 

My mother-in-law, unstroking, wordless, goes

in wobbling, uncertain orbit round

the table and again, following,

with a forefinger, the maze of golden grain.

 

Mazes, bitter riddles,

Once she’d unravel crosswords, acrostics – all

that’s scrabbled now,

she can’t waste precious breath

on: hated dissolution -

D blank blank blank blank.

 

Scraggy as a chicken carcass,

face a fretwork of grey, her thin

skin brittle as old newspaper, she mouths

inpenetrable yellow incantations…

 

Then sinks to a chair. I muse

on a propitious opening. She ate

the soap her daughter brought last time.

What to offer? Months’ old news

of her husband’s death?

Forget it. Chocolate?

 

A wintry, disinterested

smile for an instant.

She lets the chocolate be

on the sunlit grain of the table.

Regarding me, she hasn’t a clue:

unfocused – turn confused, confused, confused.