THE ELEMENTARY TOWN

The road there is uphill
And, carrying our bag of hardy plants,
We pass on one side a new estate and supermarket
And, on the other, anachronistic, dying allotments.

We enter through the old quarter,
Where solemn municipal symmetry
Has slipped into a kind of natural sprawl,
Like a larger version of an old village churchyard.

Grey squirrels dart amidst shadows and weeds
And blurred gravestones that sink and tilt
Like rocks beneath the birdsung trees.
As we wander the sun-dappled avenues,
We glance at dedications with spaces left
For late arrivals on family masonry,
And glimpse ourselves momentarily reflected
In the sleek, flashing bodywork and glass
Of a black limousine that hums past,
Towards the Chapel, at the heart of the cemetery.

By the Garden and Book of Remembrance
With its pages turned to mark the passing of days;
By plots housing the gated mansions of the rich,
Statued with seraphs and Redeemers and Madonnas –
No less vulgar and no less sincere
Than the boxwood crosses of the poor –
We reach the claustrophobic terraces
Which mark the streets of the recently cremated.

Conscientious generations of mourners
Have made these narrow walks of marble resplendent,
And we place our little pots and bunches of brief colour
Where we should, then add our own few minutes
Of living silence to the endless quietus of loss.

The way back home is downhill
And the traffic always strikes so loud,
Deafening, or perhaps reminding us
Of the hard truth, that all roads will lead us
Back, in time, to this last home on the hill.


(2001)




I’ve always liked graveyards, be they large or small, urban or rural. These days, when I visit the section of the cemetery where my mum’s headstone stands, the memento mori aspect intensifies every time, because the ‘claustrophobic terraces’ of what amounted to a small town back in 1996 when Mum died, have now, of course, multiplied and resemble a veritable necropolis.

I borrowed the title, by the way, from one of Dylan Thomas’s birthday poems, ‘Twenty-Four Years’:-

‘In the final direction of the elementary town,
I advance for as long as forever is.’

The picture is a sketch I did from a very eloquent photograph of DT which, I think, must have been taken towards the end of his short life. The cemetery may well be the one at Laugharne in Wales, where he’s buried. The sketch is dated 1976. I visited Laugharne about fifteen years later and had a wander around the graves. It was a lovely sun-dappled afternoon and I took some atmospheric pictures of DT’s simple white wooden cross and the town and the estuary – at least, I thought I did. It turned out that the camera had developed a fault, the whole film was over-exposed, and – in those pre-digital days – that was that. Maybe I’ll get back there one day and try again…

EARLY SPRINGTIME IN THE CASTLE GARDENS

On a morning such as this,
A mint-fresh March morning
Of melted frost and clean, cold sunshine,
I walk out with my camera
To catch the crocuses in Castle Gardens.

Crossing the busy bridge
Where, half a millennium ago,
King Richard rode on to Bosworth Field,
I enter the little park by his statue that stands
Frozen in a last flourish of sword and crown.

And there on the green slope,
Brilliant in purple, yellow and white,
Bloom once more the brief crocuses
Beneath the site of the Siege of Leicester
And the spire of St. Martins in the clear blue sky.

I’m drawn by a palaver of gulls
On to the new bridge where someone
Is feeding a scrimmage of swans
In the shadow of the university
Apartments across the Grand Union Canal.

I turn round and notice upstream
An old woman and her white terrier
On the prow of a green barge where
She is tending window boxes whilst the dog,
With ears and tail up, stands sentry on hind legs.

Back on the park, I follow the path
Past the green pond and wooden benches
With brass plaques towards the other iron gate,
When two young men enter, talking in Adriatic accents
And suddenly, one of them breaks away twirling

Around, his arms raised in hosanna
And he exclaims, ‘What a beyoutiful garaden!
Oh Gard!’ he cries out, turning to the cathedral spire,
‘Thenk you, Gard. I larv you, Gard, so mach!’
Before reeling back to rejoin his friend.

Grown out of Wars of Roses and Civil strife,
Surrounded by business and traffic and bustle,
Near to a church, but not of it - though still, perhaps, holy,
This park is a place of peace for people to rest, read,
Eat their lunch, take pictures maybe, or make a short cut

On their way through time and space
In a blind rush - though many will always pause
And some even sing out their praises loud and clear;
And thus it is that, in joyful simplicity, the spirit lifts
On a morning such as this.

(2011)

A true little story of time, incident and place. I hope the way that I’ve represented the young man’s words in the seventh verse don’t come across as ridicule because that’s not my intention – I just wanted to capture exactly what he said and the way it sounded.

VALENTINE

See this blush symbol of Saint Valentine:
Trace the symmetry of two perfect halves
Fused flush into one, evoking Love’s shrine;
It beats out the rhythm of the romance dance
Where trees lean together and branches entwine
Over lovers entranced, taking a chance…

Winter looks over his shoulder, sees sunshine
Waiting to stream forth from the eye of Spring –
Who neither Time nor tide can undermine
As she sets the future growing with hopes
Of fresh new lives - maybe yours, love, and maybe mine,
Deep beneath the heartland, all across the skyline.


(1998)


I wrote this in the last Valentine card I sent to Lise before our wedding later that year.

This posting is a little late and should have gone on last week when the chocolate box from Thorntons was still full and the flowers from Aldi were still fresh.

MEMENTO MORI

Illuminated by the high, hot sun
Of the Algarve, she pauses
At the walled foot of the hill,
Framed by the arched gateway
To the old cathedral town of Faro,
From which she has come.
She holds my eye calmly whilst
Adjusting the cowl of her black robe
With her one good hand,
But not, I think, to hide the leprosy.
Perhaps she has become indifferent
To the appalled expressions
On ordinary faces
Which only distort temporarily.
Then she turns away the ghost
Of what was once, quite clearly,
A handsome, proud face and slowly,
But with a straight back and a clear eye,
She moves over the cobbles,
A ruined hand hanging at her side,
And crosses the busy road
Into the city beyond the old town,
As if from another age,
But looking life full in the face.


* * * *


We have climbed to the top
Of the medieval cathedral,
The sunlight casting abstract
Reflections from the stained glass
On its cold, silent stones,
And we have wandered the walls,
Taking in the estuary views
With our eyes and cameras.
Then, later, on a hill in the city,
We find a plaza with a church
At each end, amidst noisy streets,
Where we stand now in sepia light,
Inside an arched and vaulted room
Across a courtyard in the grander
Of the churches, the Igreja De Carmo.
This is the Bone Chapel,
Its altar, walls and ceiling made entirely –
Save for the mirror above the altar –
From the bones and skulls of ancient monks.
Its barred windows are reflected
Perfectly in brilliant shadows on the ground.
I gaze in the glass and around and around,
With death looking me full in the face.


(2010)

We were on a summer holiday in Albufeira in Portugal and had taken a train to Faro, the ancient capital of the Algarve. Having recently read Victoria Hislop’s novel, ‘The Island’ about the leper colony on the isle of Spinnalonga, just off the coast of Cyprus, I had assumed that terrible disease had been eradicated. The woman we saw in Faro suggested that was not the case.

Lise took the picture of me in the Bone Chapel at my insistence. She didn’t like the place and doesn’t like the picture but it had to be taken and is the obvious image to accompany this poem. So there.

OLD RAY

As a cold and frosty morning
Turns into a sunny afternoon,
Old Ray wanders round old London town
With, as usual, too much on his mind.
Murmuring songs from way back when
His voice was always on the radio,
He hunches his shoulders
And digs his hands deep down
The pockets of an old overcoat.
A bit barmy and battered,
But still a well respected man,
Old Ray rambles the old familiar way,
His forehead growing higher now
Under one of Max Miller’s old hats,
With one of Eric Morecambe’s old ties
Under an untidy scarf half-hiding
That gap-toothed grin on the sardonic face,
Which some passers-by fancy
They half-recognise from the telly long ago.

Young Ray bought a big house in the country
Once, but he soon came back to where he belonged.
He couldn’t get away because it was always
Calling him to come on home,
Back to the river and the big black Smoke.
It may all be cleaner now, but Old Ray
Hurries head down, muttering past
The shining new towers of the City of London,
New songs humming in his old head
With memories of family and friends
And the way love used to be
And the sacred days all scattered to the fields.
But though they’re gone
They’re still with him every single day
And he’s going home, so what does it matter?
Over the bridge and along the Camden canal,
By the old school and dance hall and pubs,
Through the Heath and villages and up the hills
Of Muswell, Parliament and Primrose,
In the blessed, chilly evening light
To sit on a bench and watch the sunset,
Way across the dirty old river.
Flowing into the night


(2011)

This is my first poem of 2011.

I wrote this after watching what struck me as a very eloquent TV documentary about Ray Davies last year (one of the ‘Imagine’ programmes on BBC 1). As I write, Ray is, I think, 66 years old, which in 21st century terms is no longer thought of as ‘old’, but back in the heyday of The Kinks during the last century, it really did seem ancient…

Fans of The Kinks will, of course, detect many bits and pieces from the band’s wonderful back catalogue woven into this poem.

The lovely picture of Ray was taken when he was 50 and, actually, he hasn’t really changed much at all since then. So – not so old.

THE YOOF OF TODAY

Between the ages of thirteen and sixteen,
They should – as every parent and teacher will tell you –
Never ever be heard, let alone be seen.
‘Kids! Who’d have ‘em? I rue the day they were born.’
They’re ignorant, arrogant and insolent,
Addicted to vulgarity, vice and vandalism;
Lazy, loitering litterbugs – that’s what they are –
Ill-mannered, leering, sub-literate liars
Who’d sell their grannies and little sisters for fivers.
They’re foul-mouthed, fickle and unfair;
Selfish, spiteful and obsessed with sex, sport and soap-opera;
And they grin and gossip gormlessly
As they barge and bully and brawl;
We say, ‘It’s just a phase they all go through.’
The phase their parents dread most of all.

Between the ages of dirty thirteen and sex-mad sixteen,
They live on crisps, cola, chocolate and chips
And when they’re not idiotically giggling, they’re venting their vicious spleen.
Moody, mardy malcontents all,
Who sulk and pout and flounce;
Cool fools, louche louts, fashion-fascists,
Snobs and yobs brave only in mobs.
Rebels without a cause, indeed,
Without ideas or ideals,
Prejudiced and unprincipled,
Knowing the price of everything
And the value of nothing;
Respecting neither the old nor the past.
‘Please God,’ their parents pray through
This phase they too all went through,
‘Please God, it won’t last!’


(1997)


Having worked as a teacher for longer than I care to remember, as well as being a parent, I do know of what I speak here. It was written during a timed assessment which took place in blessed silence with a class of 14 and 15 year-olds who had, over the course of the school year, made me a fervent believer in retrospective abortion…

I do hope, however, that no-one reading this poem – no matter what their age – will be left with the impression of it being merely an exercise in denunciation and wordplay.

VERSE NOIR (Here’s Looking At You, Kid)

Tell me, have I got this story right –
You know that serpentine story in black and white?
Is there a Big Wheel in moonlight turning
And black midnight oil burning, burning?
Is there a telephone always ringing
And a detective in a tilted hat singing?
Will there be a gunfight
And blood in the night?
I want you to tell me –
Am I right or am I right?

In Club Chicago, the band strike up that play-it-again song.
A girl there wears her gold hair short and her black dress long,
Her eyes sparkle through the smoke;
She rattles the ice in her vodka and coke
And watches a third man coming up behind an old has-been,
In the familiar shadowplay of that played-out scene.
(Well, she already dumped one sap for you, Jack,
Gonna leave you too, she’s a gal don’t look back
And this young dude collects blondes in bottles too.
Hey, your golden girl – she thinks he’s cute).
Outside in the rain, the private eye sees them leave,
His finger on the trigger at the end of his sleeve.
They melt into a cab as the lights go green –
Ain’t this that same old movie, same old scene?
Upstairs, later in a house on West Tenth and Vine
There’s two silhouettes in lamplight, closing the blind.
So, forgive me baby, if I don’t seem too bright
And excuse me while I stroke this ear on the right;
Won’t you tell me, sugar –
Am I right or am I right?

Now a saxophone plays in a monochrome haze
And neon nights dissolve into twilight days.
Over the street, a falcon circles the steeple
While he wonders if the problems of two little people
Amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world,
Where she says she’s still his girl,
Asks him if he’s OK and he says ‘Top of the world’.
He thinks of the shots in the envelope and the piece cold at his side
And he wants to leave with her but he stays frozen inside.
In Technicolor, she whispers, ‘I love you’, he says ‘Ditto’,
And begs her to stay when she says she’s gotta go.
She says she’ll be back but then it’s time for time to fly
And wish each other good luck and goodbye.
But this movie, lady, is shot in black and white
And the screenplay is vague but the timing is tight.
Now, tell me, sweetheart –
Am I right or am I right?

In the fog, the plane engines hum and choke
And he has to get out now or just go for broke.
Though time and distance will drag them apart,
He figures that falcon may yet have a nightingale heart.
She has a lotta class but he don’t know how far she’ll go;
He shrugs, lights a cigarette, guesses he’ll never know.
He catches her wrist and says, ‘You’ll forget where we were, won’tcha,
But you know how to whistle, baby, don’tcha?’
And he don’t think she will but he hopes she just might…
You tell me, kid –
Am I right or am I right?


(1997)


This is one of my personal favourites and needs to be heard in the reader’s head as if Humphrey Bogart is narrating it. I’ve always loved 1940s Film Noir and we’re both fans of Dennis Potter’s TV plays. It did occur to me to add a filmography to this note but I think it will be more fun for people to try and spot the references for themselves.