for Feyyaz Fergar
At the moment day enters night
as suddenly as the train
whistles into the tunnel,
I see you, in your long room of rugs,
stooped over a coke-veined hearth
stoking words for the fire.
This is my fix, my rivet.
Your volcano of white hair
thick as smoke from the funnel.
Then, the sparks on my lips
a fist of lush steam
to keep the train to the time
to keep me going.
These greedy tubers and I
are from the same soil.
I hug their fat yellow hearts
and our joined brown blood shudders.
But when blight bites,
or a frost in the night
I feel it gnaw my ribs.
This crop gone the way of the last.
'Superb show!
Plot a little slow.'
Words wobble
into the dazzle
of the Strand.
You jar -
at a line off script:
'Can you spare
some change please?'
His back straight
as a tree.
One red
reaching hand
trembles
only a little.
I saw it in a window
and wanted it.
Stubby pink tongues of paint
licked its sea-salt spray
from my cheek.
So I saved.
Each day, nicotine craved,
a ravine gnawing my belly,
I stopped at the window
to woo a picture
that grew bigger and bigger.
Now, on my wall
it's the wildest gem
I ever had,
even though
it gets a little smaller
every day.
Once, I peeked at the wall
behind.
A looming, dark,
ugly stain, winked.
Oh, I yearn.
I yearn to take my picture
down
to see this new patch swell;
the prowling thrill
of discovery.
An unfamiliar chair and place
I want to get off.
Turning. Landscapes ulcerated with
chipped words, half faces, skidding lights
traffic into my stomach.
I want to get off.
But my cage bucks over the ridge
and a claw reaches
from the black galloping music.
The waltzer top spins white.
In the undergrowth fox worries stoat,
while her eyes, green as Ireland,
worry out the score.
All those rehearsals. The notes clip
in a knot of prayer
behind her brow.
On stage, her crinoline gown creaks.
Watch the conductor's wrist -
Go!
Suddenly, all her notes clatter down the sheet
quavers dangle from the edge by their nails
and her feet, the chair, the cello
are all sand.
Legs akimbo, she is forgotten.
The music moves on
unforgiving.
Under blue bracken the stoat is lost
trembling eyeball to eyeball
with fox.
And everywhere the torrid stink
of shame.
there are more of us you see.
here on the page we work
the substance, the volume but never
a heading or over-statement.
we end but we never begin.
we live in back to back houses
and city flats, being small and so fit
better in boxes. we plant vegetables
preserve, cook, clean, weed, mind drains
and deliver milk on sundays.
it is an offence, but so simple
to skip over us. after all we were
made for that, and never for the plaques
outside our monumental buildings, oh
and if you want more of us you just
turn the page. see us caught in
the wrestling match of the great titles,
we press the bell. never posterity,
our soil the sole donor of life
invisible while we polish Capitals.
and coming to the end of our lives
quickly close the catalogue
and watch as we grow quiet.
a final moment, of maybe worthy words
on a bold plate cast in the ground.
there are more of us you see.
here on earth we work
the substance, the volume but never
a general or over-statesman.
we never begin
but we end.
Soft, don't shout war.
This is a house of cards,
tree-top flimsy.
They reel as we roar,
topple slowly.
Red diamonds
litter the floor.
The marrow is all sucked out.
On tired bones muscles hang
soft as string fenders.
I sweat, then sweat and sweat.
The bed is a river
my spine a sharp keeled raft
my head bobs towards the weir.
A harsh cough twenty times -
lock gates wrench and turn -
my stomach retches and burns.
This tiny virus sinks me.
It's four am. Tracking
to Heathrow planes stack
over the house, change gear.
Performers at the Large Grey Circus (after Chagall)
He can't paint. Who ever saw a horse
with a blue mouth, green face
and red freckled down his neck
like blood from the rider's wrist?
Hay and water and trot about
when madam's put on at least a stone -
thump, thump, thump, right
in the nook of my back.
My spangled plumes steal the show,
so why did he paint me without ears?
How would I hear the applause?
I haven't seen oats for years.
It's that last cream cake -
any minute I'll be sick.
But mother grinding pink paste
into my cheeks, growling at cracks -
a girl's got to cope somehow.
Grease from horse is black under my nails.
I smell it each night when I dream
of my counter in Woolworths; truffles,
Black Magic caramels, hazelnut whirl.
God! My make-up has cracked.
Please let it be time for applause.
I am black. For the sun in eclipse.
For the sins you confess.
Those sins you never confess.
For the raven wings of sea
as the tide sucks out.
You glance a pebble on its water.
Bounce each of your worries.
Don't you wish you could swoop
and crow like me? Bob on currents
of red air, far above?
My job is sawdust. Inside the hoopla
in the hub of the ring, I tumble,
hop, skip, twist, turn, hang stiff
and never stop smiling.
Oh shit - I left the gas on!
I know five hundred versions of cartwheel
can kick clouds in your eyes
walk on wire, make dying look easy
the van isn't insured,
what if it explodes?
and never stop smiling.
I haven't seen oats for years
let it be time for applause,
those sins you confess
and never stop smiling.
You, my friend, have been standing firm
at your solitary post for fifty years -
weathering seasons at the chilly end of breakwater
like a white pawn pushed forward
on a chessboard of bishops and queens.
Insignificant beside any regal lighthouse -
to their four beams you have one,
to their one hundred feet you have fifteen
to their three hundred steps you have thirty.
But this checkered cove and its smoky boats
need you. Sheltered behind your frail
lantern, its pale blush over the waves,
you, squat pawn, are sent to the storm.
We expect you to survive.
As if the house has no roof, sunlight spills
across the table and a breeze burns
your memory across my shoulders.
In the blue and white cobbled sky I count
the roads I would have to cross to reach you.
My ink dries - a faded footpath on an ancient map.
Shall I tell you about the boy at 29 who
practises his piano fugue? Or the two
blowflies that swirl under my cold lamp?
Your lilacs droop almost dead, their water green,
perfume spent. My page curls. And my lungs
are weighted by this distance
and the prospect of distance tomorrow.
My neighbour Joan
cultivates a baroque garden
from a bed of stones.
On her new emerald lawn
she erects fountains
white railings
and a cardboard tree.
This Saturday she will tour
her visitors
confound them with latin names
and sparrows you only hear.
Over the fence
my garden is still stones.
Orange and brown
they smell of rain.
And whether I hold
a gilt-edged trowel
or strike them with my spade
the stones stare back
and whisper no.
When there is nothing but the smell
of dust; a cracked vase on a table
that reflects a cracked face, a rose
withered to death, wine that tastes of clay.
When there is nothing but a wind
wheezing at the window, oily puddles
reflect dim lamps and hedgerows
stooped like a drunk unable to get home.
When there is nothing but the dark
a midnight shadow slinks
over the bare pavement. A fox comes.
Stinking of curry-houses and heath-wet
she upturns bins, bites black sacks -
the salt of running stains her red mouth.
An odd shoe, a belt I lost,
old love letters in a Tesco bag
and inside my fingers scrape
on chains of moth pupae
sleeping till their season comes.
Safe. They scorn the strings
of moth balls I littered on the floor.
Their superior breed adapted
where we, or song thrush or albatross,
could not. Living on bad air.
Forgive me moths. Please take
my favourite prints, these books,
for your daughters.
How long before the deluge?
Do you know? Ready in your ark
of cellulose and dust.
From Lament Diary (for Feyyaz Fergar)
I will take the white straws of your hair
and shake till your liver falls out.
Pinch your arms, kick your shins
shovel my breath into your lungs
pummel your heart.
They tell me you are now free to wander
without taxis or drizzly underground stations
your pockets full of drink vouchers
for many many tavernas,
and how you plot to visit them all.
How dare you.
Your papers are jumbled
and I have been asked to comb them
like combing your dead locks.
Both are scattered as if
you were hurrying
in a north wind.
I am to shuffle sense out of disorder.
My hands smooth over the soft white
and smell your lonely ink;
my bliss. I must not be too tidy,
you would not want
to be filed too neatly.
Your number lives on
in the automatic dial of these fingers
an inscription in a book
letters stuffed in a box
a rug, some blurred drunks
in a photo,
poems scratched on napkins
the back of shopping lists
Reader's Digest requests.
There - in the way you glare
at the street.
A grey-wash winter day
when birds balance on bare branches
testing their throats for spring.
Rain puddles across moss on roofs.
The fingers will thicken.
The books, photos
and letters fade, the rug wear.
But what of the eel
that plays down my spine
the stones in the chest
the needles behind each eye
your hand in my hand?
Each spring blossom
is a snow-fall
I walk to the woodland
to seek shapes
in moss stained on trees.
But there is no tapestry.
Only bark that is hard
a trail of straw footsteps
in the weave of dead leaves
and sunlight
a path that disappears.
I walk to the canal
to catch words in water
before they splash over lock
and drill stone.
But even if I take a stick
and trouble the glaze with my name
ripples remain unintelligible.
A coot swims crooked circles
under a pulsing bridge.
Is it that this language is indistinct?
Or am I blind
unable to tell line
from shadow, green from grey?
Or both?
Uneasy travellers
destined to read different alphabets
draw arrow as sail-boat
twenty types of twilight
discerned as one.
And I walk to the sea
to look for messages in dunes
and sea-grass
but find a tangle of red flowers I cannot identify.
The sea shuffles
illegible scatters of sand.
When the clock grows quiet
and I have changed into evening
you come into the room soft
as moonrays that light
the back of my arms.
"How have you been?"
you ask, as the cat springs
from your favourite chair
so we can break bread over
midnight conversation.
Some would consider this a lazy
way to paint. No need to offer wine,
coffee, even water. No cost of a model
No rearrangements. No unexpected
complaints. And I am not tired.
A face, left and right swapped.
Scars newly seen.
Self-portrait. Or mask.
Not like Gauguin, he drew me
"dead tired and emotionally terrible"
taking so long in painting
that the sunflowers died.
Or you Russell, making me out
the grand master, in a brown suit
holding a pencil. The serious artist
scrutinising his work. No, I am
a clutch of greedy brushes
a wild pallet of colour
sculpting my hungry ghost.
Life assurance
payable on death
providing it is swift and from
a new unexpected illness.
Mortgage protection plan
payable for one of twenty ailments
providing that it is incurable,
uncomplicated, unrelated to profession,
psychology, diet, drink or lifestyle,
or injury, infection, infarct or inflammation,
is not inherent, dormant, or inborn
being absent in your siblings, parents,
grandparents, aunts, cousins, children,
and is claimed before sixty.
Nursing home protection cover
payable for a place in
one of our deluxe nursing homes -
providing that there are
no relatives to care for you,
no local authority homes,
you are incapacitated and incompetent,
(but not incontinent)
your entry is involuntary
and does not occur before eighty-five.
Premium waiver indemnity
payable if your premiums are late
except in cases of insolvency.
A benefit may be deducted
from a previous benefit.
Persons excluded: fire-eaters,
ski-instructors, explorers,
builders, window-cleaners,
divers, astronauts,
publicans, poisoners,
pilots,
painters,
poets.
Thursday afternoon. You sit
in a blue anorak among
twenty-five scarecrow allotments
puddled by weeds. Dogs and blackbirds
shower soil on winter paths.
Six mallards string across the sky
the colour of slugs.
Yesterday it was production.
You scrutinised the prospectus
written for weary soil, struggled
to grow tomatoes bigger than raisins
matchstick beans, unripe
raspberries smelling of weak tea.
Today they arrive in shiny wellingtons
tramp the walkways over twine and hedge-rose
ankled in brown generous mud.
Such poor soil, no surprise -
couldn't call these harvests.
Spend an hour tutting to their pens
by the mangy broccoli.
Adventurous to try broccoli here
in a north wind so near Preston.
You imagine their houses.
Habitat sofa, soft-tone lamps
a microwave in every kitchen.
Today it is management consultants.
Yesterday it was production.
Tomorrow it will be downsizing.
Then the hail begins.
Magpies get the best of it.
On the stream bank, at the edge
of the allotments, they hop
and peck at tuna paste sandwiches.
In the North wind
a white tablecloth flaps.