Collected Poems Read online

No thanks, I’ve given up. Feel better for it.

  Part of Susan’s two-year plan for a new and fitter man.

  She’s even got me jogging. I adore it.

  Yes she loves teaching. Can’t wait to get back.

  And to be honest, neither can I.

  Need the money since I got the sack.

  Mind you, things couldn’t have worked out neater

  Means I can spend all my time with the baby

  Bringing up and educating Rita. Why Rita?

  Just our little secret. A name that binds us.

  And here they come now. The two I love the most.

  Aren’t I a lucky man? Ladies and Gentlemen – A toast!

  This be Another Verse

  They don’t fuck you up, your mum and dad

  (Despite what Larkin says)

  It’s other grown-ups, other kids

  Who, in their various ways

  Die. And their dying casts a shadow

  Numbering all our days

  And we try to keep from going mad

  In multifarious ways.

  And most of us succeed, thank God,

  So if, to coin a phrase

  You’re fucked up, don’t blame your mum and dad

  (Despite what Larkin says).

  The Darling Buds of Maybe

  Get out as early as you can,

  And don’t have any kids yourself.

  ‘Perfick,’ said Old Larkin

  The last kid put to bed

  He took the Missus in his arms

  Gave her a kiss and said:

  ‘I’ll pop out for a quick one

  If that’s all right with you?

  I’ll not be long, I promise

  ‘Cos I’ve got work to do.’

  ‘You mean the roof,’ said Ma,

  ‘You’re going to mend that leak?’

  Philip stopped.

  ‘No, “This Be The Verse”,

  That final stanza’s too bleak.’

  From ‘Les Pensées’ by Le Duc de Maxim

  Beside the willowèd river bank

  Repose I, still and thinking,

  When into the water fall a man

  Who fast begin the sinking.

  Chance at last to test

  A maxim, so unblinking,

  I toss to him the straw

  Through which I drinking.

  Sure enough, he clutch the straw

  And scream, alas in vain.

  He grasp until he gasp his last

  And all is peace again.

  Homewardly I pensive trek

  Impatient now to note

  How the fingers of the sun

  Did linger on his throat.

  And how he sank, and how

  The straw continuèd to float,

  ‘How wise the age-old axioms,

  And yet how sad,’ I wrote.

  Toffee

  It gives me no pleasure to say this

  But he won’t be missed.

  Resentful when sober, aggressive when pissed.

  Though not proven, it is rumoured

  That he pays to be spanked.

  And worse, he can’t write for toffee.

  Small magazine stuff over the years.

  The same poem thinly disguised.

  Recycled, retitled, endlessly revised.

  I would like to say that book launches

  Will never be the same

  Without his snide comments.

  That literary gatherings will seem tame

  Without his drunken outbursts.

  But I can’t.

  It does me no credit to say this

  But in his sad case,

  Posthumous the better.

  Poetspotting

  On the train to Bangor from Crewe

  Jo Shapcott and I, as tutors tend to do

  gossip, and get to wonder

  which of the passengers are headed

  for Ty Newydd. That orange-haired

  punk in tight leather? Unlikely.

  More likely the old lady wearing purple

  (see Jenny Joseph), daring people

  to come close, if any do, they’re kissed.

  Or, pissed in the corner, surrounded

  by throttled cans of Guinness,

  the man who shakes a mottled first

  at a muse unseen, and screams:

  ‘Orange, orange, there must be

  a rhyme for feckin’ orange!’

  Trust Me, I’m a Poet

  Your husband upped and left you

  After years of playing the field?

  My heart goes out, I know the type

  Of course, my lips are sealed.

  Let me be your confidant

  I’m generous, let me show it

  Champagne, I think is called for

  Trust me, I’m a poet.

  ***

  Put my wallet on the counter

  When I turned round it had gone

  And I’ve got to meet my agent

  In town, for lunch at one

  To sign a five-book contract

  I’ll be back before you know it

  Can you lend me fifty quid?

  Trust me, I’m a poet.

  Wheelchairs

  After a poetry reading at a geriatric hospital in Birmingham, December 1983

  I go home by train

  with a cig and a Carly.

  Back at the gig

  the punters, in bed early

  dither between sleep and pain:

  ‘Who were those people?

  What were they talking?’

  The staff,

  thankful for the break,

  the cultural intrusion,

  wheel out the sherry

  and pies. Look forward

  to a merry Christmas

  and another year of caring

  without scrutiny.

  Mutiny!

  In a corner,

  the wheelchairs,

  vacated now, are cooling.

  In the privacy of darkness

  and drying piss,

  sullen-backed,

  alone at last,

  they hiss.

  For Want of a Better Title

  The Countess

  when the Count passed away

  During a Bach

  cello recital

  Married an Archduke

  the following day

  For want of a better title.

  Memento Mori

  I still have the blue beret that JFK

  was wearing the day he was assassinated.

  If you take the nipple between finger and thumb,

  hold it up to the light and twirl it round

  you can see the bullet holes (or, to be precise,

  the two holes made by a single bullet).

  For many years I kept in store, the fox-fur stole

  that Virginia Woolf wore in March 1941

  when she walked into the River Ouse at Rodmell.

  But those sharp, little eyes had seen too much.

  They disturbed me so I disposed of it.

  This leather jacket, however, I would not sell

  for a million pounds. Her Royal Highness

  was wearing it on that dreadful night in Paris

  when her Harley-Davidson skidded on black ice.

  This may interest you. John Berryman’s silver

  fob watch, still showing 9.24. The exact time

  he hit the frozen river. Minneapolis, 1972.

  A Serious Poem

  This is a serious poem

  It wears a serious face

  It will not fritter away the words

  It knows its place.

  Perfectly balanced

  Neither too long nor too short

  It gazes solemnly heavenwards

  Like a real poem ought.

  Familiar with the classics

  It drops names with ease.

  Here comes Plato with Lycidas

  And look, there’s Demosthenes!

  A serio
us poem will often end

  With two lines that rhyme.

  But not always.

  Awful Acrobats

  Poets make awful acrobats.

  Good at barely moving

  Idle musing has impaired

  Their sense of balance.

  Once the horizon tilts

  Everything begins to slide:

  Cups and saucers, trees,

  Buildings, spirit-levels.

  Out of touch with the ground

  They are out of touch with themselves.

  Struggling to make sense of air

  They become entangled with it.

  The roll of drums:

  A few floppy cartwheels

  A crumpled somersault

  Then up on to the high wire…

  After the first falter, the fall.

  It is faultless. The safety-net

  Holds out its arms. The poet

  misses.

  (Gravity hangs its head in shame.)

  ***

  Poets have a way with language

  A certain jauntiness with hats

  They can make a decent curry

  And are very fond of cats

  Though some are closet fascists

  In the main they’re democrats

  But all things being considered

  Poets make awful acrobats.

  It’s Only a P…

  Feeling a trifle smug after breaking off an untidy,

  Drawn-out affair with somebody I no longer fancied

  I was strolling through Kensington Gardens

  When who should I bump into but Gavin.

  Gavin, I should point out, is the husband.

  ‘I’m worried about Lucy,’ he said, straight out.

  ‘I don’t blame you,’ I thought, but said nothing.

  ‘Suspect she’s having an affair. Any ideas?’

  ‘Divorce,’ I suggested. ‘You might even get custody.’

  ‘No, I mean Lucy,’ he persisted. ‘Who with?’

  We walked on in silence, until casually, I asked:

  ‘An affair, you say, what makes you so convinced?’

  He stopped and produced from an inside pocket

  A sheet of paper which I recognized at once.

  It was this poem. Handwritten, an early draft.

  Then I saw the gun. ‘For God’s sake, Gavin,

  It’s only a p…

  It’s Only a P… Part Two

  A shot rang out. The bullet was not intended for me.

  It embedded itself harmlessly into a tall sycamore.

  (Harmlessly, that is, except for the tall sycamore.)

  Gavin pocketed the gun. I was shaking like a leaf.

  I seized his arm. ‘It’s over now,’ I stammered

  ‘There was nothing in it really. A moment of madness.’

  I was lying and wondered if he could tell.

  He gave no sign, so relaxing my grip we walked on.

  ‘You’d better have this,’ he said, and held out the poem.

  ‘But I’d rather you didn’t publish. Spare my blushes.’

  I took it. ‘If not for me for Lucy’s sake.’

  ‘Trust me,’ I said and crumpled it into a ball.

  Behind us, the sycamore rose swaying from the bushes,

  Staggered across the ornamental lake

  And collapsed against a wall.

  Coach and Horses

  One of those poems you write in a pub

  on a wet Friday. On your own and nothing to read.

  Surrounded by people hugging each other with language.

  But you are not without a friend in the world.

  You are not here simply for the Alc. 5.5% Vol.

  To prove it, you appear to have had a sudden thought.

  Writing, like skinning beermats, is displacement activity.

  You word-doodle with crazed concentration,

  feigning oblivion to the conversations that mill around.

  The seductive, the leery, arm in arm with the slurred

  and the weary. For some reason, possibly alcoholic,

  the doodles coalesce into a train of thought.

  Actively displaced, you race along the platform

  as it gathers speed. But before you can jump aboard

  Time is called, and it comes off the rails.

  But this is your secret. Unacknowledged legislator,

  you drink up and leave, with a poem so full of holes

  you could drive a coach and horses through it.

  Poem for a dead poet

  He was a poet he was.

  A proper poet.

  He said things

  that made you think

  and said them nicely.

  He saw things

  that you or I

  could never see

  and saw them clearly.

  He had a way

  with language.

  Images flocked around

  him like birds,

  St Francis, he was,

  of the words. Words?

  Why he could almost make ’em talk.

  The Filmmaker

  (with subtitles)

  He was a filmmaker with a capital F.

  Iconoclastic. He said ‘Non’ to Hollywood, 1

  ‘Pourquoi? Ici je suis Le Chef.’ 2

  A director’s director. Difficult but good.

  But when Mademoiselle La Grande C. 3

  Crept into his bed in Montparnasse

  And kissed him on the rectum, he

  Had a rectumectomy. But in vain. Hélas. 4

  And how they mourned, the aficionados.

  (Even stars he’d not met were seen to grieve,

  The Christies, Fondas, Streeps and Bardots.)

  And for them all, he’d one last trick up his sleeve.

  ‘Cimetière Vérité’ he called it (a final pun). 5

  In a fashionable graveyard in Paris 3ième.

  He was buried, and at the going down of the sun

  Premiered his masterpiece, La Mort, C’est Moi-même. 6

  The coffin, an oblong, lead-lined studio with space

  For the body, a camera and enough light

  To film in close-up that once sanguine face

  Which fills the monumental screen each night.

  The show is ‘Un grand succès’. People never tire 7

  Of filing past. And in reverential tone

  They discuss the symbolism, and admire

  Its honesty. La Vérité pared down to the bone.8

  FIN 9

  When I Am Dead

  I could never begin a poem: ‘When I am dead’

  As several poets still alive have done.

  The jokey Last Will, and litanies

  Of things we are to do when they have gone.

  Courageous stuff. Written I shouldn’t wonder

  The Morning After, in the throes

  Of grim despair. Head still ringing from the noise

  Of nights keeling over like glass dominoes.

  The chill fear that perhaps the writer

  Might outlive the verse, provides the spur

  To nail the spectre down in print,

  To risk a sort of atheistic prayer.

  God, of course, does not appear in rhyme,

  Poets of our time being more inclined

  To dwell upon the price of manuscripts

  And how they want the coffin lined.

  Or ashes scattered, cats fed, ex-wives

  Gunned down. Meanwhile, in a drawer

  Neat and tidy, the bona fide Will,

  Drawn-up and witnessed by an old family lawyer.

  And though poets I admire have published poems

  Whose imperfections reflect our own decay,

  I could never begin a poem: ‘When I am dead’

  In case it tempted Fate, and Fate gave way.

  Repelled by Metal

  I don’t drive, I’m afraid.

  Never had the inclination or the need.

  Being antimagn
etic, I am repelled by metal

  And unimpressed by speed.

  Nor am I being ‘holier than thou’.

  Thou art a godsend to be candid

  You with the car and the welcoming smile

  Without your lift I’d be stranded.

  And it’s not that I dislike cars

  Though noisy and dangerous I dare say

  Money-eaters and poison-excreters, okay

  But I don’t dislike cars, per se.

  It’s just that I know my limitations.

  I’d be all thumbs behind a wheel.

  Don’t laugh. Could you park a poem

  In a space this small? Well, that’s how I feel.

  The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse

  (Reviewed by Georges Perec)

  This havy volum is a must for popl who lik potry.

  Pom aftr pom, in a glorious fast of litratur.

  Mmorabl simils and mtaphors ar vrywhr

  whil fin rhyms and imags lap out from vry pag.

  Grat poms ar faturd from th liks of Louis MacNic,

  John Btjman, Hilair Blloc, T. S. Liot and Td Hughs.

  Not forgtting Larkin’s favorit pot, Hardy, who has

  twnty svn poms comprd to only nin by W. B. Yats.

  This anthology, though havily criticzd by thos pots

  who ar not includd, is likly to rmain a standard