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?

THE MASQUERADERS

Brilliant ghosts make stately progress
Over the bridges of Venice
In the chill, coppersmoke sunset
That settles on the waterfront
And inches up the Piazza San Marco.

But who are these butterfly visions
Gliding silently through wintry crowds?
Are they old or ugly, perhaps?
Famous or just plain nondescript
Beneath their anachronistic outfits?

Part of the architecture,
They gaze imperious
Through the frozen glamour
Of their chosen faces,
At a world, which –
If only for now –
Has them as its focus;
And it is we –
With our digital cameras –
Who seem out of place.

When they leave
The milling Carnevale of the square,
They pause along the way
To pose statuesque
On crests of bridges
With plumed and hooded heads
Inclined regally to one last lens.

Back in tired hotel rooms
Will they avoid mirrors
As their false faces
And flowing hired finery
Fall to the floor,
Showing listless moths
In dusty drapery
Who they really are?


(2002)



The Carnevale in Venice takes place every February as it has done for centuries. The masqueraders provide a surreal spectacle around the tourist hotspots and are even more dramatic if you encounter them sweeping around a corner in the back-streets away from the crowds.

Even in winter, Venice, although cold, is very bright and the quality of the light is like nowhere else. At night, it is very quiet and I was forever experiencing flashbacks to one of my favourite films, ‘Don’t Look Now’ (the only film to ever give me nightmares as an adult – thankfully we didn’t see any serial-killer dwarves in red hooded coats during our visits).

The light wasn't too great however, when I took this picture of a couple of those masqueraders on a bridge in Venice during our visit in 2002. It is kind of darkly atmospheric though...

FUERTEVENTURA

Afterwards,
As the wind rushes through the palms,
We sleep in each other’s warm arms
With your cooling breath on my face,
Far from home, in this island place;
And away
We slip into night’s strange fictions,
Beyond the hot, blue day’s actions,
Yielding to the Moon’s shifting sands,
Before tomorrow’s high commands
Are issued long before the noon;
So soon above wave, sky and dune.


(2011)


Fuerteventura – literally, the island of ‘strong winds’ – has wonderful white, sweeping beaches and bright blue sea much beloved by surfers. With its roiling riptides, it can however, be a perilous place and I nearly drowned there a few years ago. Nevertheless, we’ve just returned from another visit.

Those winds move the weather around quite dramatically and I took the picture on Corralejo beach after a sweltering day had changed in a trice to a dark, cloud-wracked evening.

DUSTY AND THE DOVER CASTLE CATS

‘I just can’t think what to do with my time.’

But, a cat for curiosity,
I measure the light in darkness
And look for the darkness in light,
As I prowl round Friday night bars
And reach a place known well
To its theatrical clientele.

As in every pub, heads turn
To clock the new arrival,
But in here, the heads stay turned
And you can almost feel the eyes
Point like hands to the new number.

Dusty Springfield on the jukebox…
Mascara winks and takes Me back
Down the years to ‘Ready Steady Go’
Promising ‘The Weekend Starts Here’

‘I just don’t know what to do with myself.’

The place is just swarming with cats,
Though, cornered in their queenly midst,
Are a few cropped, dumpy bitches
Hunched over flat pints of lager,
Sealing roll-ups on thin, pale lips.

‘Going to a movie only makes me sad,
Parties make me feel as bad.’

I feel like some gauche wildebeest
Stranded on the Serengeti
As drooling hyenas cackle
And lions enlivened close in.

‘I’m so used to doing everything with you.’

Oh, man, look up, down, anywhere!
Beware those fluffy Chinchillas
Fluttering long black eyelashes
And the fat, epicene Burmese
Who’ve seen everything before;
Angular, urbane Siamese
Swirling neat whiskey on the rocks;
A few mangy old alley cats,
Lean and cynical at the bar
And the sad domestic tabbies
Hungry, furtive and fugitive
From marriages heading for the rocks.

‘When I’m not with you, I just don’t know what to do.’

Glassy cats’ eyes torch through smoke
With their challenge of fire and ice
To the dark kennel of the skull
Where lies buried a hard bone of vice.


(1979)


There’s a double sense of dislocation going on here. I wasn’t feeling comfortable at home around this time so I would drift around places where I knew I’d feel OK – namely, pubs. This one however, didn’t work for me.

P.S. Isn't Dusty Springfield the greatest female singer of all time?

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.