Collected Poems Read online

  Collected Poems

  Roger McGough

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  COLLECTED POEMS

  Roger McGough is one of Britain’s best-known poetry voices. Following the success of the bestselling Penguin collection The Mersey Sound (with Brian Patten and the late Adrian Henri), he has been captivating children and adults alike with his unique blend of heart and wit for more than four decades. Much travelled and translated, he is now an international ambassador for poetry and was awarded an OBE for his work in 1997. In 2001 he was honoured with the Freedom of the City of Liverpool.

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

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  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London, WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  First published by Viking 2003

  Published in Penguin Books 2004

  11

  Copyright © Roger McGough, 2003

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  A. M. D. G.

  ISBN: 978-0-14-195911-5

  CONTENTS

  Preface

  Learning to Read

  My Little Eye

  Bye Bye Black Sheep

  Snipers

  Bucket

  Smart Railings

  Tramp Tramp Tramp

  Bars are Down

  Sad Aunt Madge

  Hearts and Flowers

  Casablanca

  What Happened to Henry

  What Happened to Dorothy

  The Fallen Birdman

  Alphabet Soup

  The Railings

  Squaring Up

  ‘What does your father do?’

  Having My Ears Boxed

  Another Brick in the Wall

  Sacrifices

  Wearing Thin

  How to Become a Sixer

  Maurice

  Hard Times

  Spitting Prohibited

  Ee Bah Gum

  A Fine Tooth Comb

  Vague Impressions

  George and the Dragonfly

  Snowing Down South

  An Apology

  humdinger

  Man the Barricades, the Enemy has let loose his Pyjamas!

  Shy

  Rainbow

  Poem on being in love with two girls at the same time

  Comeclose and Sleepnow

  A lot of Water has Flown under your Bridge

  Aren’t We All

  after the merrymaking, love?

  The Act of Love

  Dunenudes

  My little plastic mac

  Discretion

  Who was The Naughty Girl

  Contact lenses

  Near to You

  Sundeath/greentears

  If life’s a lousy picture, why not leave before the end

  You and Your Strange Ways

  The Fish

  May Ball

  The sun no longer loves me

  Vinegar

  On having no one to write a love poem about

  My cat and i

  Dreampoem

  Dreampoem 2

  What You Are

  A Square Dance

  On Picnics

  Why Patriots are a Bit Nuts in the Head

  M62

  Noah’s Arc

  Icarus Allsorts

  Three Rusty Nails

  Mother the Wardrobe is Full of Infantrymen

  At Lunchtime

  On Having a First Book of Poetry Published (The day the world ended.)

  Let me Die a Youngman’s Death

  SUMMER WITH MONIKA

  Summer with the Monarch

  happiness

  Buddies

  un

  Amateur traumatics

  bravado

  Vandal

  Bulletins

  Trenchwarfare

  McGough’s last stand

  Cake

  tigerdreams

  tightrope

  Hash Wednesday

  The Mongrel

  10 Ways to Make a Killing on the Stock Market

  All Over bar the Shouting

  The Perfect Crime

  Last Lullaby

  You and I

  40—Love

  No Message

  A golden life

  P.O.W.

  Three weeks ago we decided to go our separate ways

  The Rot

  Head Injury

  Mouth

  Holiday on Death Row

  Goodbat Nightman

  P.C. Plod at the Pillar Box

  P.C. Plod in Love

  The Sergeant gets a handsome deal

  P.C. Plod versus the Youth International Party

  On the Road

  Birmingham

  Wolverhampton

  Bradford

  Huddersfield

  Newcastle

  Leeds

  Sheffield

  Canterbury

  Cardiff 6 p.m.

  Cardiff 11 a.m.

  Cardiff

  Poem for National LSD Week

  Nottingham

  9 to 5 (or cosy biscuit)

  Conversation on a Train

  SPORTING RELATIONS:

  Grandma

  Uncle Malcolm

  Cousin Wystan

  Uncle Mork

  Uncle Pat

  Cousin Caroline

  Uncle Anthony

  Kung Fu Lee

  Albert Robinson

  Cousin Chas

  Aunty Dora

  Aunt Ermintrude

  Uncle Bram

  Billy Our Kid

  Wild Bill Sitting Bull

  Uncle Noah

  Granny

  Dear Lonely Hearts

  Cousin Reggie

  Angelina

  Uncle Sean

  Merve the Swerve

  Terry and Pancho

  Uncle Jack

  Uncle Trevor and Aunty Penny

  Cousin Horatio

  Alf

  Alfreda

  Cousin Fosbury

  Aunt Agatha

  Old Mac

  Eno

  Marvin

  Barry Bungee

  Uncle Jason

  Cousin Christ

  Cousin Fiona

  Big Arth

  Accrington Stan

  The Hon. Nicholas Frayn

  Aunty Ann

  Uncle Leo

  Uncle Len

  Elmer Hoover

  Uncle Jed

  Cousin Daisy

  Cousin Nell

  Footy Poem

  Is My Team Playing

  Poem for the opening of Christ the King Cathedral, Liverpool, 1967

  In Two Minds

  crusader

  Catchin
g up on Sleep

  vampire

  warlock poems

  Nocturne

  exsomnia

  ofa sunday

  Scintillate

  italic

  Unlikely

  Waving at Trains

  Flying

  Newsflash

  Postcard

  Dawnmare on 24th St

  Incident at a Presidential Garden Party

  There’s Something Sad

  What the Littlegirl Did

  The horse’s mouth

  Poor Old Dead Horses

  My Busconductor

  My Busseductress

  The Hippopotamusman

  The Icingbus

  Just another Autumn day

  The Last Strike

  Conservative Government Unemployment Figures

  Work-to-rule

  The Leader

  A Fair Day’s Fiddle

  out of sequence

  UNLUCKY FOR SOME

  The Lesson

  Water, Tree, Cave, Mother

  Pantomime poem

  Sleep Over

  Persimmons

  The Stranger

  snowscene

  The Wreck of the Hesperus

  Closet fascist

  There are fascists

  Vegetarians

  There Was a Knock on the Door. It Was the Meat.

  Cabbage

  Soil

  and the field screamed ‘TRACTOR’

  The Scarecrow

  The Birderman

  The One About the Duck

  Honey and Lemon

  Five Ways to Help You Pass Safely through a Dark Wood Late at Night

  a cat, a horse and the sun

  Trees Cannot Name the Seasons

  Sap

  Conservation Piece

  Green Piece

  Behemoth

  The Fly

  Crocodile in the City

  The Lake

  Curse

  Pure Jaguar

  Five-car Family

  Stop All the Cars

  Stinging in the Rain

  The City of London Tour

  Sheer

  On Dover Beach

  Global Warming

  Fatal Consequences

  Bad Day at the Ark (i)–(iv)

  St Francis and the Lion (i)–(ii)

  The Father, the Son

  Tsutsumu

  Spoil-sports

  Pen Pals

  Old-fashioned Values

  Light Sleeper

  Ex Patria

  Posh

  Shite

  The Jogger’s Song

  Fart

  End of Story

  No Surprises

  Six Shooters

  Greek Tragedy

  The Terrible Outside

  The End of Summer

  A Brown Paper Carrierbag

  The Identification

  A Cautionary Calendar

  Kyrie

  Train Crash

  Funny sort of bloke

  Uncle Harry

  Good Old William

  Tide and time

  In Transit

  War of the Roses

  What My Lady Did

  W.P.C. Marjorie Cox

  Poem for a Lady Wrestler

  Who Can Remember Emily Frying?

  The Host

  The Tallest Man in Britain

  Laughing, all the way to Bank

  Valentine

  As Every Bandage Dreams

  Romantic

  Your Favourite Hat

  Today is Not a Day for Adultery

  Fits and Starts

  The Map

  Whoops!

  Dialectically Opposed

  Bath – Avon

  The Examination

  The Poet Takes an Autumnal Stroll on Hampstead Heath

  Creative Writing

  Meeting the Poet at Victoria Station

  Blazing Fruit

  Take a Poem, Miss Smith

  An Ordinary Poetry Reading

  After the Reading

  Clone

  Muffin the Cat

  The Logic of Meteors

  His poems are nets

  A Critic Reviews the Curate’s Egg

  Two Riddles

  The Nearest Forty-two

  The Written Word

  Word Trap

  Planet Babel

  On the Point of Extinction

  The death of John Berryman in slow motion

  One Poet May Hide Another

  A Visit to the Poet and his Wife

  All for Laurie Lee

  Educating Rita

  This be Another Verse

  The Darling Buds of Maybe

  From ‘Les Pensées’ by Le Duc de Maxim

  Toffee

  Poetspotting

  Trust Me, I’m a Poet

  Wheelchairs

  For Want of a Better Title

  Memento Mori

  A Serious Poem

  Awful Acrobats

  It’s Only a P…

  It’s Only a P… Part Two

  Coach and Horses

  Poem for a dead poet

  The Filmmaker

  When I Am Dead

  Repelled by Metal

  The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse

  I Don’t Like the Poems

  Porno Poem

  This is One of Those

  The Battle of Bedford Square

  For the Sake of Argument

  The Newly Pressed Suit

  Framed

  the picture

  The Revenge of My Last Duchess

  How Patrick Hughes Got to be Taller

  The Boyhood of Raleigh

  Ex art student

  The Theatre

  Big Ifs

  Children’s Writer

  Joinedupwriting

  A Literary Riddle

  What prevents a poem from stretching into Infinity?

  Haiku

  Two Haiku

  THE SPOTTED UNICORN

  Rabbit in Mixer Survives

  Happy Ending

  A Joy to be Old

  In Good Spirits

  Nothing Ventured

  Days

  In Good Hands

  Bees Cannot Fly

  My Life in the Garden

  The Perfect Place

  Happy Birthday

  Here I Am

  Uncle Roger

  Punk doll

  Rocker-by

  Where It’s At

  The Lottery

  Crazy Bastard

  Fear of Flares

  Q

  Clutching at Cheese Straws

  Half-term

  Isolation

  Perfume

  5-star

  Melting into the Foreground

  Ode on a Danish Lager

  Missed

  Used to Drink

  The Blues

  Star Juice

  Drinking Song

  Another Mid-life Crisis

  Early-Morning Poems

  Shavings Account

  Prayer to Saint Grobianus

  Fired with Enthusiasm

  In Case of Fire

  Vague Assumptions

  It’s a Jungle Out There

  Flight Path

  Don’t Read All About It

  Survivor

  Everyday Eclipses

  The End

  The Bright Side

  Worry

  The Unknown Worrier

  New Brooms

  low jinks

  Passion

  Solarium

  Dressed for the Occasion

  Getting On

  Getting Off

  You may get the vote at eighteen, but you’re born with a price on your head

  My Shadow is but a Shadow of Its Former Self

  Science, where are you?

  Poem with a Limp

  Right as Rain

  Say ‘Ah!’

  Bits of Me

  The Wrong Be
ds

  The Health Forecast

  In Vain

  THE ELEMENTS:

  Oxygen

  Nitrogen

  Carbon

  Iron

  Mercury

  Sulphur

  Gold

  Fool’s Gold

  Element 109

  Bob Dylan and the Blue Angel

  Hey, Dude

  A Bolt from the Blue

  Thank U Very Much

  My Divine Juggler

  Love Cycle

  M.I.L.T.

  Echoes Sound Afar

  Balloon Fight

  The Man in the Moon

  Defying Gravity

  Sad Music

  The Trouble with Snowmen

  In at the Kill

  Bearhugs

  Four Sons (A Wish)

  Just Passing

  Who are These Men?

  Cinders

  Monstrance

  The Way Things Are

  Index of First Lines

  Index of Sources

  PREFACE

  The poems in this volume represent a span of over forty years, the earliest having been written in my twenties. I decided against a strict chronological order, preferring to bring together those related by theme or genre. Some poems that appeared in Watchwords (Cape, 1969) were occasional pieces commissioned for television performance, and in their best interests I have omitted them.

  A number of poems have been revised, but only where the language seemed unwieldy, even at the time of writing, and some puns have not improved with age. But I have tried to resist the temptation to revise my original thoughts and feelings, however naive and indiscreet they appear in grizzled retrospect.

  Sky in the Pie (Kestrel, 1989) was my first book of poems written for children, and to date there have been six more. The line that divides children’s poems from adults’ is a blurred one, and the few that have crossed over into this collection seem more at home. It is not a question of their having been upgraded. Seven previously unpublished poems are also included at no extra cost to the reader.

  My thanks to Tony Lacey at Penguin, Adrian Mealing at U.K.touring, and to Peters, Fraser & Dunlop, but especially to all the readers and listeners who have supported me over the years.

  Learning to Read

  Learning to read during the war

  wasn’t easy, as books were few

  and far between. But Mother

  made sure I didn’t go to sleep

  without a bedtime story.

  Because of the blackout

  the warm, comforting glow

  of a bedside lamp was not permitted.

  So Mum would pull back the curtains

  and open wide the window.

  And by the light of a blazing factory

  or a crashed Messerschmitt,

  cuddled up together, she would read

  saucebottles, jamjars, and, my

  all-time favourite, a tin of Ovaltine.

  So many years ago, but still

  I remember her gentle guidance

  as I read aloud my first sentence:

  ‘S-p-r-i-n-k-1-e t-w-o h-e-a-p-e-d

  t-e-a-s-p-o-o-n-s-f-u-l o-f…

  My Little Eye

  The cord of my new dressing-gown

  he helps me tie

  Then on to my father’s shoulder