EASTERN PROMISE (BETJEMANESQUE)

Oh, Miss Mistry, charming new head of school P.E.,
You do, I confess, have an alarming effect on me!
Skilled at hockey, swimming, rounders and netball, too,
In the staffroom, I can’t keep my eyes off be-shorted you.
Praise be, Lord Krishna, for bringing you here to Kent
From darkest Bradford, just north-west of mystic orient.
Oh, your sweaty brown forearms shine like buttered toast
And oh, those sturdy thighs, juicy no doubt, as Sunday roast –
But these are English images – I’d much rather
Dream of you as a tastier dish: my chick masala!
Let me promise to spoil you so very nicely –
Even if you turn out to be only half as spicey.
Oh, dark and dusky, pretty Miss Preeti Mistry,
Would you, could you, fall for a middle-aged Head of History?


(1994)


Another homage. Betjeman and Larkin are two of my favourite English poets and I learnt much from them both – particularly the value of being concise and using everyday language when occasion calls for it (as it often does).

Like Larkin, Betjeman can also be very funny and there are quite a few of his poems that inspired the one above, but perhaps most notably, ‘A Subaltern’s Love-Song’.

BORED YESTERDAY (LARKINESQUE)

So – one day nearer the grave, then?
Poor unnecessary little sod;
I have to say I find it odd
How we keep having kids when
Most that you’ll do in this first year
Is simply kip and crap and cry
As you’ll do again, as you near
That day when you get old and die.

In between: boredom, betrayal.
Most things you’ll try, you’re bound to fail.

Hospital, birth, school, work, hospital, death,
(And don’t talk to me of love and marriage –
They go together like gun and cartridge)
It’s barely worth drawing another breath.

Life fucks you up, then fucks you down –
Why wave, just bloody well drown!

(1994)


In an uncharacteristically joyful and life-affirming moment, Philip Larkin once wrote a poem called ‘Born Yesterday’ to celebrate the birth of a child born to his friend Kingsley Amis. Then he got back to being The Master of Misery. However, like other arch-miserabilists such as Leonard Cohen and Morrissey, Larkin’s work is often very funny – and that’s what I’ve tried to capture in this little tribute.

Apologies for the effing and blinding but, if you consult PL’s poem ‘This Be The Verse’, you’ll see why. Apologies also to Stevie Smith for kidnapping her most famous title for my punchline.

The picture is one of the last taken of Larkin and possibly the only one of him laughing. He was librarian at Leicester university back in the 1940s when there were only about 200 students, you know...

THE BLACK WATCH

Battery-powered, hour on hour,
Time tocks digitally, silently,
Slowly on my workaday wrist.
Clear of face and sober,
My Monday to Friday watch
Is a faithful old timekeeper
Who buses me to work
With morning Metro
For wake-up coffee,
As the great, grey grind
Begins again and again.

Then, on Monday to Thursday
Evenings which never become nights,
I watch tired TV on the somnolent sofa
And retire early to bed, early to rise,
Too weary to wipe sleep from bleary eyes.

Meanwhile, waiting all week long,
The strong black watch has been brooding
In the gewgaw and jewellery drawer,
Impatiently counting down the flight
To freedom and the heyday of Friday night.

Identical quartz disports
Time, ticks quickly, gallops
Apace on my latenight wrist.
Dark and mysterious,
My holiday-weekend watch
Converts must-do into want-to
And jets us to pleasure
With midnight vodka
Until Sunday’s Rose` glow
Glisters, gleams, grins
And beams golden again.

But bar, garden and conservatory
Drift blithely towards industry,
As Friday turns into Monday,
As candlelight turns to electricity
And music and talk turn to work and TV.

Willing old workwatch, up every weekday,
Heaves the leaden hours all the way
Down through the tunnel to the light of payday;
But dark in the drawer, soon to make hay,
Our thrilling, deadly nightwatch waits to play.


(2007)


The hedonism hinted at in the previous poem is also the subject here but considered in a more Yin and Yang context.

I have two watches, both of them presents from Lise, both the same model, but one of them clear of face with a brown strap for weekdays and the other black of face and strap for the weekends. They provide a neat little object lesson in the relativity of time.