Collected Poems Read online

  A wicket-keeper, I’d whip off your bails

  If I were a wok I’d stir-fry you

  A Guardian Angel, be there by you

  If I were a glass-blower I’d blow you a kiss

  If I were a poem, I’d end up like this.

  As Every Bandage Dreams

  As every bandage dreams

  of being the Shroud of Turin

  So do I dream

  of enfolding you

  As every aria longs

  for Pavarotti’s velvet tongue

  So my body yearns

  to interpret you

  As every avalanche schemes

  the ascent of Everest

  So I aspire

  to the view from your summit

  As every oilslick licks its lips

  at the thought of the Galapagos

  So I long to stick around

  and pound your beaches

  As everything that is without feeling

  Comes to life when put next to you

  So do I.

  Romantic

  I’m a romantic.

  I often want to bring you flowers

  Leave notes under the pillow.

  Billets doux. Fivers.

  I’m a romantic.

  Many’s the time I’ve nearly bought

  the unexpected gift.

  Chocolates. Diamonds.

  I’m a romantic.

  How often do I think

  of surprising you at the sink.

  Pulling the wool over your eyes.

  I’m a romantic.

  Love on the lino: soapy chocolates,

  Diamonds, crushed flowers, fivers,

  Billets doux. Wool.

  (Little packet, two-thirds full.)

  Your Favourite Hat

  Believe me when I tell you that

  I long to be your favourite hat

  The velvet one. Purply-black

  With ribbons trailing at the back

  The one you wear to parties, plays,

  Assignations on red-letter days

  Like a bat in your unlit hall

  I’d hang until there came the call

  To freedom. To hug your crown

  As you set off through Camden Town

  To run my fingers through your hair

  Unbeknown in Chalcot Square

  To let them linger, let them trace

  My shadow cast upon your face

  Until, on reaching the appointed place

  (The pulse at your temple, feel it race!)

  Breathless, you whisper: ‘At last, at last.’

  And once inside, aside I’m cast

  There to remain as tick ticks by

  Nap rising at each moan and sigh

  Ecstatic, curling at the brim

  To watch you naked, there with him

  Until, too soon, the afternoon gone

  You retrieve me, push me on

  Then take your leave (as ever, in haste)

  Me eager to devour the taste

  Of your hair. Your temples now on fire

  My tongue, the hatband as you perspire

  To savour the dampness of your skin

  As you window-gaze. Looking in

  But not seeing. Over Primrose Hill

  You dawdle, relaxed now, until

  Home Sweet Home, where, safely back

  Sighing, you impale me on the rack

  Is it in spite or because of that

  I long to be your favourite hat?

  Today is Not a Day for Adultery

  Today is not a day for adultery.

  The sky is a wet blanket

  Being shaken in anger. Thunder

  Rumbles through the streets

  Like malicious gossip.

  Take my advice: braving

  The storm will not impress your lover

  When you turn up at the house

  In an anorak. Wellingtons,

  Even coloured, seldom arouse.

  Your umbrella will leave a tell-tale

  Puddle in the hall. Another stain

  To be explained away. Stay in,

  Keep your mucus to yourself.

  Today is not a day for sin.

  Best pick up the phone and cancel.

  Postpone until the weather clears.

  No point in getting soaked through.

  At your age, a fuck’s not worth

  The chance of catching ’flu.

  Fits and Starts

  His love life is one of fits and starts

  Claims he works as ‘something in the City’

  (partly true, he works at Marks & Sparks)

  Engaged once to a student nurse at Bart’s

  Who broke it off (‘He’s sad, a sort of Walter Mitty’)

  His love life is one of fits and starts

  Twice a week he goes with dodgy tarts

  Half his wages on the nitty-gritty

  (though not, it must be said, at Marks & Sparks)

  Life can be the pits, and it’s a pity

  To distil one little life into a ditty.

  On your marks: his love life is one of

  Fits and starts – If it fits, it starts.

  The Map

  Wandering lost and lonely in Bologna

  I found a street-map on the piazza.

  Unfortunately, it was of Verona.

  As I was refolding it into a limp concertina,

  A voice: ‘Ah, you’ve found it! I’m Fiona,

  Let me buy you a spritzer, over there on the terrazza.’

  Two spritzers later we ordered some pasta

  (Bolognese, of course, then zabaglione).

  I felt no remorse, merely amore.

  Proposing a toast to love at first sight

  We laughed and talked over a carafe of chianti

  When out of the night, like a ghost, walked my aunty.

  ‘Look who’s here,’ she cried. ‘If it isn’t our Tony,

  Fancy bumping into you in Italy,

  With a lady friend too,’ then added, bitterly:

  ‘How are Lynda and the kids? I’m sure they’re OK.

  While the mice are at home the tomcat will play.’

  A nod to Fiona, ‘Nice to meet you. Ciao!’

  I snapped my grissini. ‘Stupid old cow!’

  Then turned to Fiona. She was no longer there.

  Our romance in tatters, like the map on her chair.

  Whoops!

  You are strangely excited

  as we enter the crowded bar

  and find a small table in the corner.

  You insist on fetching the drinks

  and before disappearing

  squeeze a note into my hand.

  It reads: ‘Why go home tonight?

  I have a room. I have a bed.

  I have a spare toothbrush.’

  I recognize my own handwriting.

  Dialectically Opposed

  In Bristol, to escape the drizzle

  One November afternoon, I ventured

  Into a large book shop, George’s,

  Opposite the university where I was

  To read that same evening.

  It was my custom in those days

  To sniff out my slim volumes

  And give them due prominence.

  Covers outfacing, three or four titles

  Would see off most of the opposition.

  But on this occasion, try as I might

  (and I might have tried harder),

  I could find no poetry whatsoever.

  Then I spotted the Information Desk

  Behind which was a girl with large bristols.

  (I mention this, not to be sexist

  But to remind you of that fair city.)

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘Do you have

  a Poetry Section?’ Rose-Marie replied:

  ‘I think you’ll find it under Livestock.’

  I stood, quandried to the spot.

  ‘Livestock? Poetry? Books of Verse?’

  The penny dropped.
I watched its descent

  Into the perfumed gorge of Avon.

  ‘Poeltry,’ she laughed. ‘I thought you said Poultry!’

  Bath – Avon

  I have a problem with Bath.

  I use the short a, rhyming it with math,

  Whereas southerners put in the r. Barth.

  So my living there would be a kind of hell

  (Although a lovely place by all accounts).

  Never have an operation you cannot spell

  Or live in a town you mispronounce.

  The Examination

  ‘Well doctor, what do you think?’

  He took the poem and examined it.

  ‘Mmmm…’

  The clock ticked nervously.

  ‘This will have to come out for a start.’

  He stabbed a cold finger into its heart.

  ‘Needs cutting here as well.

  This can go.

  And this is weak. Needs building up.’

  He paused…

  ‘But it’s the Caesura I’m afraid,

  Can’t do much about that.’

  My palms sweated.

  ‘Throw it away and start again, that’s my advice.

  And on the way out, send in the next patient, will you?’

  I buttoned up my manuscript and left.

  Outside, it was raining odes and stanzas.

  I caught a crowded anthology and went directly home.

  Realizing finally that I would never be published.

  That I was to remain one of the alltime great unknown poets,

  My work rejected by even the vanity presses,

  I decided to end it all.

  Taking an overdose of Lyricism

  I awaited the final peace

  When into the room burst the Verse Squad

  Followed by the Poetry Police.

  The Poet Takes an Autumnal Stroll on Hampstead Heath

  Light rain, like steam

  from a cup of camomile tea

  poured from a copper kettle

  heated o’er a sandalwood fire

  bids him return home

  and consider an alternative career.

  Creative Writing

  Why can’t I teach Creative Writing in Minnesota?

  Or, better still, be Poet in Residence in Santa Fe?

  Where golden-limbed girls with a full quota

  Of perfect teeth lionize me, feed me, lead me astray.

  A professorship, perhaps, visiting in Ann Arbor?

  (Nothing too strenuous, the occasional social call.)

  What postcards I can write, what ambitions I can harbour:

  Hawaii in the springtime, Harvard in the fall.

  Meeting the Poet at Victoria Station

  A day off for you to recover from jetlag

  and then the tour begins in Brighton.

  Neither met nor talked, but I like your poems

  and the face on the back of your Selected.

  No sign of you under the station clock

  nor at the ticket office, so I make my way

  to platform 12. Do I hear castanets?

  Tap dancers busking for the pure fun of it?

  No. Sitting on the floor, back to the wall

  surrounded by bags, books and foolscap,

  a woman is pounding a typewriter, oblivious

  of commuters stepping around and over her.

  You are dressed all in black, wearing glasses,

  and your hair is wilder than in the photograph.

  Not too late for me to turn back and ring

  the Arts Council: ‘Laryngitis’… ‘Gingivitis’… ‘St Vitus’

  Instead, I ask you to dance. You give me your hand

  and I whisk you across the marble floor,

  my arm around your waist in the old-fashioned way.

  Waltz, Foxtrot, Villanelle, Quickstep.

  Ticket inspectors clear the way for us

  as I guide you in and out of Knickerbox.

  Shoppers stop and applaud as we twirl

  around the shelves of W. H. Smith and Boots.

  A Tango so erotic that Victoria blushes.

  Rush hour but nobody is going anywhere

  except in a centipedic circle as we lead

  the customers in a Conga round the concourse.

  A voice over the tannoy: ‘Take your partners…’

  Rumba, Samba, Salsa, Sestina.

  Things are hotting up as the tempo quickens

  Charleston, Terza Rima, Cha Cha Cha.

  Suddenly the music stops.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I say, ‘are you the poet?’

  Removing her glasses she looks up from the typewriter.

  ‘How did you guess?’ I help carry her bags to the train.

  Blazing fruit

  (or The Role of the Poet as Entertainer)

  During dinner the table caught fire.

  No one alluded to the fact

  and we ate on, regardless of

  the flames singeing our conversation.

  Unaware of the smoke

  and the butlers swooning,

  topics ranged from Auden

  to Zeffirelli. I was losing

  concentration however, and being

  short on etiquette, became tense

  and began to fidget with the melting cutlery.

  I was fashioning a spoon

  into a question mark

  when the Chablis began to steam

  and bubble. I stood up,

  mumbled something about having left the gas running

  and fled blushing

  across the plush terrain of the carpet.

  The tut-tut-tutting could be heard above

  the cra-cra-cracking of the bone china.

  Outside, I caught a cab

  to the nearest bus stop.

  While, back at the table,

  they were toying with blazing fruit

  and discussing the Role of the Poet as Entertainer,

  when the roof fell in.

  Take a poem, Miss Smith

  ‘Take a poem, Miss Smith.

  I will call it The Ploughman.

  “The ploughman wearily follows the plough,

  The dust that lies upon his brow,

  Gnarled as the dead oak tree bough,

  Makes me think of how… of how…”

  How nice you smell, Miss Smith.

  Is it Chanel? I thought so.

  But to work: “The ploughman wearily follows…”

  Ah, but I am wearied of ploughing.

  File it away under “Nature – unfinished”.

  ‘Take a poem, Miss Smith.

  It is entitled Belfast.

  “Along the Shankhill Road, a pall

  Of smoke hangs, thick as… thick as…”

  Hair, something different about the hair.

  A new style? It suits you.

  But where was I? Oh yes:

  “Along the Shankhill Road…”

  No, I feel unpolitical today.

  Put it away in the file

  marked “Wars – unfinished”.

  ‘Take a poem, Miss Smith.

  It will be known as Flesh.

  “The flesh I love to touch

  Is soft as… soft as…”

  Take off your blouse, Miss Smith,

  I feel a love poem coming on…’

  An Ordinary Poetry Reading

  Tonight will be an ordinary poetry reading

  A run-of-the-mill kind of affair

  Nothing that will offend or challenge

  No language as far as I’m aware.

  The poets are thoroughly decent

  All vetted by our committee

  We had hoped Wendy Cope might appear

  But she’s tied up more’s the pity.

  And that other one, whose name I forget…

  Quite famous… Recently died…

  He’d have been good. But never mind,

  At least we can say that we tried.

  Personally, I prefer
actors

  Reading the Great Works of the Past

  The trouble with poets is they mumble

  Get nervous, and then speaktoofast.

  And alcohol is a danger

  So that’s been kept well out of sight

  As long as they’re sober this evening

  They can drink themselves legless all night.

  By the way, they’ve come armed with slim volumes

  Which of course, they’re desperate to sell

  Otherwise, there’s coffee in the foyer

  With KitKats and Hobnobs as well.

  Well, I think that covers everything

  All that remains for me to say

  Is to wish you… an ordinary evening

  Such a pity I’m unable to stay.

  After the Reading

  ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’

  said the lady in fur coat and trainers,

  holding out a book for me to sign.

  ‘Do you mind if I sit down, I’m all of a tizzy?

  You must excuse me, I haven’t been myself

  since it happened. Three weeks ago and I’m still shaking.

  I was walking down the road minding nobody’s

  business but my own, when, suddenly,

  it leaped out at me. There was no escape.

  My back to the railings. Straight out of Hitchcock

  it was. A nightmare. I fought to protect myself