BLACKBIRD ROAD

Blackbird sings as the sun shines low,
Atop the pine tree planted long ago.

I think I remember you from last year,
All winter long you have echoed in my ear.

Yes, I recall you, I’m sure, especially when
You drop into our garden with your hen.

Your eye and beak bright, your dark wing strong;
Are you come again to honour us with your song?

On and off, you sing from dawn to dusk, then rest
In the darkness of our shrubs, hidden in your nest.

But one day we find one of your young, forlorn -
Crippled and dying in the middle of the lawn.

The next day, another has taken its exact place,
Far from nest and branch either side: an unsolved case.

Gone for a month now, you briefly return alone
And we wonder where your brown hen has gone.

Feathers now flecked grey and head almost bald,
Blackbird, are you sad, are you sick, are you old?

Is it for fallen fledglings that you come to grieve?
After pecking hopelessly at grass, you finally leave.

It warmed my heart to hear you sing from on high,
But have you gone now to wherever birds go to die.

Blackbird, come back next year and sing again,
Here to our garden, on this road that bears your name.


(2010)


A true story: The Blackbird of Blackbird Road. That’s him in the picture.

You have to be careful with rhyming couplets – that way doggerel may lie. Hopefully I’ve avoided that trap here – along with the other pitfall of bathos…

I read somewhere that an astonishing 75% of wild birds die before they reach six months old - but WHERE do all those billions of birds go to die? Apart from the odd fledgling fallen from the nest and the occasional casualty of cats, how often do you see a dead bird?

THE RAIN HITS THE CITY

Way up
High,
Spiralling,
It is waiting
And watching;
The Rain is gathering its forces,
Wild and whirling and whiling time
In its swarming, darkling orbit;
But wheeling
Without warning,
Down
It comes.

The Rain
Hits
The City
Hard,
Its hailish teeth mechanical as sharks’,
Hammer and rivet sky to street in a swooping lock,
Fast and cold,
And then the rain rains upwards,
Bouncing ravenously back at itself,
Insatiable,
Invincible,
The Rain roves
And threatens the fat banks stuffed with money,
Dins above the throb of the night-shift machinery
And the pulse of traffic is drowned by its drumming,
Making of its desperate wipers, a locust mockery.

With no abatement
The rain keeps on;
Dives off ledges and bridges:
Never dies
As it pocks the costive canal,
The Rain defies;
Stabbing the dark and lonely parks,
It batters blossom out of aching trees
And floods all routes of the shallow pipes and gutters.

Dust is thus turned into streaming scum
And holy gargoyles choke;
Drains spume,
Spate:
The Rain is swilling out the City’s mouth
East and west,
North and south,
Whilst behind blurring windows
Men cannot rest
As they shiver through these early hours,
Until suddenly the Rain
Stops.

The City is thrown into sodden black relief,
Left like some colossal Ark,
Awaiting some undeserved deliverance.
Daybreak
Over the towers and spires,
And a dark bird now flies out,
Bearing litter in its beak.
There is no rainbow.


(1983)


Even with 'free verse', almost always, some kind of form emerges as I write, though not necessarily or even usually, a traditional form. Most of the shaping of metre and rhyme in my work is of my own device. Even in a poem like this one, where the lines begin and end is vitally important, although there is no overall regularity beyond the typographical trick of making the print resemble a storm-cloud structure.

I had in mind here the financial district of London (‘The City’) with the rain as an elemental nemesis which periodically purges the obesity of the banking system. All these years later, it now seems very topical in the worst recession since The Great Depression.

A few years ago we went on The London Eye and, as we approached the top, a tremendous storm broke out – as you can see in the photograph that Lisa took of me. Below us, the city darkened and there was a real feeling of apocalypse in the air.

THE DILEMMAS OF TIME AND CHANCE

When it’s nearly midnight and at last you’re asked to dance,
Will you step into the arms of a prince or a dunce?
Do you seize the moment, will it only come once?
These are the dilemmas of Time and Chance.

Call it Kismet, call it Karma, call it Destiny or Fate,
Just be careful when you go out waltzing on a date -
That man of your dreams may be a nightmare full of hate -
So don’t turn up too early, but oh, don’t arrive too late.

So is it to be carpe diem or que sera sera?
Were you born under a lucky or an unlucky star?
Will you amount to nothing or will you go far?
If you miss the last boat, will you thumb down a car?

They say Time’s a healer, it will lead you by the hand
To follow the footprints leading away in the sand.
They say grief will pass when you reach that other land
Where life goes on and you must finally make a stand.

Now those vows you made for better or for worse,
Will they deliver the blessing or do they bring the curse?
But Chance is the dealer and you may win or you may lose -
Are the aces played low or high - which of them will you choose?

And it is said that what goes around will come around
And for everything lost something else will be found,
But listen to that sound, that awful, grinding sound -
Can that be the Wheel of Fortune breaking down?

Now you see you’re caught between a hard place and a rock
And the hands are a blur on the face of the clock.
Is there still enough time to reflect and take stock?
You find the key, but no guarantee and there may not be a lock.

Back at the ball, see the mysterious masquerader advance;
That swirling of his magical cloak is meant to entrance.
Will this be your very last appointment with romance?
These are the dilemmas of Time and Chance.


(2011)

Started a while back but only licked into shape now. It’s really just an exercise in compressed rhyme and having a little spooky fun with the basic idea of coincidence.

OBJET TROUVE

On this fine April day with great clouds
Rolling overhead, coolness vying with warmth,
I am photographing daffodils in the park,
Pointing the camera at bright splashes of gold
On the grassy slopes and in small clumps
Around the dusty roots of waking trees,
When something seems to flash silver
In a surge of sunshine streaming fresh
Through the emergent leaves high above.

Squinting at the shrubbery, I find I am
About to photograph a photograph:
An eight by ten, black and white shot
Of two Asian girls in traditional finery -
Indonesian perhaps - sat cross-legged,
Their sequins and pearls glamourizing
What looks to be a mundane, functional hall,
Where this sliver of sun has now found a window
And caught the silver of their head-dresses.

I’m struck that it may be a wedding celebration,
And the girls are singing some hymn of praise,
With their faces immaculately painted and hair
Swept back, they are a picture of elegance.
Behind them a vague, banal jumble of wires,
Speakers and amplifier, but inside the moment
The girls are transcendent, the more beautiful
Of the two enraptured, with her eyes closed,
Fingers outstretched to capture some sublime note.

I pick up the picture, place it carefully in my bag
And wander back along the dappled, breezy path
Wondering, along the way, about the bride and groom
And wishing them well on this auspicious Spring day.


(2011)

That’s the actual picture, which I found on Abbey Park near where we live in Leicester.

‘Objet trouve’ - with an accent on the ‘e’ - is French for ‘found object’ and the idea – from the French – is that ordinary everyday things can be found to have inspirational qualities and be used for artistic purposes. I was going to call the poem ‘Found Object’, but it’s not the most elegant phrase, is it?

Pretentious? Moi?

GHOST STORY

Returning from the grove of grass and stone,
Grievers gone away, I am left alone
To wander these cold rooms broken-hearted,
Searching for the soul newly departed.
Your scent is everywhere, like morning dew;
As fresh as ever, unmistakeably you.

The house is empty now – less like a home –
With all life gone, waiting more like a tomb.

And how will I bear so heavy a cross?
How to rise above such deep, aching loss?

But in the garden, I think I see you
Standing by the trees, still as a statue.
Then you turn, pale, tearful; begin to walk
Towards me; but now when I try to talk,
You shake your head and pass through me blindly,
And wander into the house behind me.

The day is done, the summer sun has shone.
Dusk fades down. Now even your scent is gone.


(2006)


As the title suggests, this poem is a fiction. It did, however, arise from an actual funeral from which I had returned: that of my ex-wife’s grandmother. I had been very fond of Granny Dolly who was buried in the small churchyard of the village where she had lived.

But this poem is not about Granny Dolly. I had stood in our garden thinking over the funeral that evening and listening to the rustling of the leaves, when an uncanny impulse made me wonder whether I was there at all.

I wrote a very vague outline of the poem shortly after but didn’t finish it for several years. That shake of the head towards the end came, I’m sure, floating up through my subconscious, from the red-hooded dwarf that murders the character played by Donald Sutherland at the climax of the film ‘Don’t Look Now’. He’s so sure the figure in red that he’s been pursuing through the dark, foggy backstreets of Venice is the ghost of his recently drowned daughter, but when the dwarf turns to finally reveal herself, she shakes her head before delivering a terrible coup de grace...

The photograph of Lisa is much more recent than the actual poem but it only occurred to me the other day that it might be the right image to go with the poem.

THE LILY OF MY LIFE

Grandad lied about his age in World War One;
Got gassed; came back to years on the dole;
Worked out his life at the cemetery;
Dead and gone by the time I was three.

Grandma never once used a telephone;
Was even nervous about radio
And switching on appliances and the TV;
But oh, she was always there for me.

In a storm, she turned the mirror to the wall;
Put away the cutlery then hid in the hall;
Yes, she was afraid of all electricity;
But she was always brave for me.

Lived a cold, hard life in a grey city slum;
Raised her children - two uncles and my Mum -
In a sunless street by a high factory wall
And she was always there for them all.

Then cleared by the council to a new house
On a crescent by a green roundabout
With lawns, a shed and a lilac tree,
Where I would play happy and free,

When I escaped from the Hell House
To her cosy, cold-water, corner terrace;
Time and again the regular refugee,
In the house that was a second home to me.

Torn from her head the silky white hair,
One dark night when Mum and I sheltered there
From him who attacked her most brutally,
Whilst she was busy protecting me.

And Grandma would take me to the Co-Op
And hand in hand, we’d go from shop to shop
Trawling up and down that little community
Of Narborough Road, my Grandma and me.

And, later on, I would lean in to steady her
Arthritic body and take her to the butcher,
The baker and grocer - the places she had taken me,
Safely away from my warped and broken family.

I lived with her during her last crippled years
And although that mixed up kid cried the tears
And somehow knew that his childhood was done,
He didn’t really know what he’d had ‘til it was gone.

Born before the twentieth century,
Lily Weldon came into this life a nobody
And seventy-nine years later, she left it still a nobody,
But afterwards and always, she was a somebody to me.


(2011)

My Grandma was a lovely old lady who lived a long life for that time - and considering the physical frailty that increasing blighted most of her life. My Grandad died in 1955, having worked as a verger at Gilroes Cemetery for most of his life. Perhaps it’s from him that I get my fascination with graveyards. Grandma died in 1970 when I was eighteen and I really don’t know what I would have done without her from about 1957 onwards, following Mum’s divorce from my father.

Being a fairly typical selfish teenager with more than my fair share of angst, I didn’t always treat her as well as I might have done towards the end and I often wish I could turn back time and take with me some of the compassion and patience that I often lacked back then.

‘Always there for me’ is a threadbare phrase these days, but it was literally true in this case. I’m not sure exactly where or when the photograph was taken: maybe Bournemouth or the East Coast somewhere c. 1956. It’s one of my favourites but I can’t help but notice that the angles are weirdly askew, as if things are starting to tilt…

JOE GORILLA

There – behind the reinforced window
In a chamber of tiles and televisions –
Which is a cage all the more
For the absence of bars,
Smoulders silverbacked Joe,
In an attitude of unyielding dignity
That is a continent beyond
What I suppose to be his sadness and my pity.

Doors open and close on the holiday sun
As harassed humans filter through,
Pulled by children in search of ice-creams
And rides and all the other fairground fun
So thoughtfully provided by the leisure-park zoo.
A glance at Joe, a glance at the flickering screens
And they pass him by –
This being so wholly himself –
Like a something on a supermarket shelf.

And what kind of life is this, Joe?
The question is more than merely rhetorical -
Dare to look deep in the eyes of the oracle –
Joe Gorilla knows.


(1982)


Lise and I visited Chester Zoo recently – the first time we’d been to a zoo together. We both have ambivalent feelings about the places but were generally impressed with the size and layout of the enclosures at Chester. I had a less favourable impression of the zoo featured in this poem (Whipsnade, I think).

The gorilla became something of an animal celebrity and lived to a ripe old age so maybe he wasn’t quite as fed up as he looked. Alison and I had taken Ramona, who was about four at the time, on the trip. I remember we stood with a gaggle of other visitors at the glass window of the tiger’s enclosure, a long run which it was cantering up and down. Suddenly it stopped on the other side of the glass and pissed voluminously all over it and, metaphorically, all over us too, I suppose, as far as he was concerned. An eloquent moment. Never quite managed to put that one in a poem, though…

Ted Hughes wrote great poems about animals that were in captivity and in the wild and I’m aware that his work casts a long shadow. This poem wasn’t an imitation of him but I guess there may be some similarities. Never mind, eh?