Counting Backwards Read online

  Lissom as lilies, they shake dark curls

  And watch the car.

  I say: Are you girls all right?

  And she says: We don’t like

  The look of them. Two men

  In the dark of the car, also smoking.

  She swings the gate shut.

  They might be my daughters –

  A little older, I reckon –

  But those men don’t look

  Much like the sons of anyone.

  It’s late, almost two A.M.

  They are both inside the gate

  With one shoe-strap broken

  A packet of cigarettes

  Brief lovely dresses.

  I ask: Will you be all right?

  They don’t want to come inside,

  They just didn’t like the gate open

  When those men were waiting

  Like that, with the engine going

  And from time to time a rev

  So we don’t forget.

  In Praise of the Piano

  In praise of the piano that slips out of tune

  I raise my needle from the dusty record

  And watch the vinyl turn and turn,

  In praise of the unrepeatable, the original,

  The one thought clinging to the one word

  I dip my nib into the inkwell,

  In praise of the only known photograph

  Of your great-grandmother, I hoard

  Film, blackout, developing bath.

  O needle jumping on dusty vinyl

  O letter stuffed in dirty pigeonhole

  The fragile, the original

  The one word before the blot falls.

  Finger ballet on the telephone switchboard,

  The one word that flows from the lips

  And the one heart by which it is heard

  Unrepeatable, fragile. In praise

  Of all that cleaves to the note, then slips

  From it, and never stays.

  Re-opening the old mines

  But you would have to go below

  The bare bright surface. And I suppose

  Out of the dark would come marching

  Men with tattoos

  Of dust on their forearms,

  And as for the gorse burning its own fuse

  Or the boy who drops to his knees

  Shuffling along his seam

  Towards the pock of an explosion

  Heard from above, miles out

  In the fishing grounds,

  He’s in the shop, serving

  Eighty flavours of ice cream.

  Drip drip goes brown water

  Into the shaft while harebells quiver.

  Under the houses there’s a cavern

  So deep that when the camera

  Was lowered it swung pendulum

  While the void kept opening

  But I suppose that in the veiny dark

  Tunnels that knit the rock

  They are still blasting,

  And ponies which never see the light

  Snuff sugar and are content

  As may be among the rare metals:

  Antimony, molybdenum,

  Wolframite, uranium

  Gold, silver and indium.

  Inside the Wave

  And when at last the voyage was over

  The ship docked and the men paid off,

  The crew became a scattering

  Dotted, unremarkable,

  In houses along the hill top

  Where the lamps flared in welcome

  And then grew dim, where a woman turned

  As if from habit to the wall.

  In the bronze mirror there was a woman

  Combing what was left of her hair

  And beside her, grimacing,

  A dirty old mariner.

  He swore and knocked back the chair.

  Yes, then Odysseus opened his mouth

  And all that was left

  Was the sound an old man makes

  Between a laugh and a cough.

  His toenails were goat’s hooves

  His hair a wild

  Nest of old stories,

  He straddled the tiles

  As a man of the sea does

  But she would not touch

  His barnacled lips.

  From the fountain, pulse by pulse

  Came gouts of blood.

  Everything stayed as it was,

  There was no unravelling

  Of wake behind him,

  No abandoning

  Unwanted memories and men.

  Besides, the earth stank.

  He went down to the black rock

  Where the sea pours

  And the white sand blows,

  He turned his back to the land

  And thought of nothing

  For the voyage was over,

  The ship dragged by a chain

  Onto the ramp for inspection.

  The waves turned and turned

  Neither toward nor away from him,

  Swash and backwash

  Crossing, repeating,

  But never the same.

  At the lip of the wave, foam

  Stuttered and broke,

  It was on the inside

  Of the wave he chose

  To meditate endlessly

  Without words or song,

  And so he lay down

  To watch it at eye-level,

  About to topple

  About to be whole.

  Odysseus to Elpenor

  But tell me, Elpenor

  Now that I have conjured you

  From those caverns so deep

  No camera can fathom them

  Now you have come to drink the wine

  Poured on the ground in libation

  And slake your fleshless appetite

  On the snuff of blood,

  Tell me how you came here

  Fleeing like a cloud shadow

  Over restless water –

  You frighten me, Elpenor.

  Look, I have drawn my sword

  Are you not afraid?

  You were a handsome fighter –

  Will you come on?

  Take the heat of my hand

  Elpenor, between your palms.

  Bow your head for a blessing

  Houseless boy, and now tell me

  How you came to die.

  We are not heroes, any of us,

  Only familiars

  Of grey shores and the sea-pulse,

  Laggards, like the tide.

  Was it you, Elpenor

  Who rowed when the wind died

  Until your hands bled?

  You fell asleep in Circe’s house

  Drunk, like all of us,

  Playing the fool

  As you plunged from the roof.

  When your neck broke

  We were already racing

  Down to the harbour

  Where our black ship quivered,

  Even when our sails filled

  And we scudded before the wind

  We could not catch your shadow.

  We had left you behind

  But you are ahead of us

  Waiting, unpropitiated

  Poor boy, unburied

  Come to lap at the blood.

  Dawn pushes away night’s curtain

  Your body must be burned

  And your hair tied with ribbons

  As a remembrance.

  You ask me in the name of my son

  Not to let you be forgotten

  But to build your grave mound

  Where the pebbles meet the tide

  ‘And thrust into its heart my oar

  So that I may row myself forever.’

  Plane tree outside Ward 78

  The tree outside the window

  Is lost and gone,

  Billow of leaf in the summer dark,

  A buffet of rain.

  I might owe this tree to morphine,

  I might wake in the morning
r />   To find it dissolved, paper

  Hung in water,

  Nothing to do with dreams.

  I cannot sleep.

  Pain is yards away

  Held off like bad weather,

  In the ward’s beautiful contentment

  Freed by opiates.

  Hooked to oxygen

  We live for the moment.

  The shaft

  I don’t need to go to the sun –

  It lies on my pillow.

  Without movement or speech

  Day deepens its sweetness.

  Sea shanties from the water,

  A brush of traffic,

  But it’s quiet here.

  Who would have thought that pain

  And weakness had such gifts

  Hidden in their rough hearts?

  Leave the door open

  Leave the door open! We cheep and command

  From the shared double bed or from the cot

  With bars that make tigers out of the dark.

  We want the fume and coil of your cigarettes,

  The smoke that has embraced us from birth,

  The click of your footsteps on the wooden landing,

  The wedge of light that parts us from the dark

  As I hold, hold to it like a sword.

  Leave the door open. Go downstairs, go out

  After priming the neighbours to listen,

  Go to your world: the cider-bottle cap

  Askew on its stem, the pellucid gin,

  The ashtray overflowing with stubs,

  Radio laughter and suppressed voices

  As you creak upstairs without waking us,

  But don’t forget to leave the light on

  So the spill of it falls where it must.

  We can breathe now in our coffin of sheets

  So tangled we can’t get out of them,

  As long as you leave the door open.

  My life’s stem was cut

  My life’s stem was cut,

  But quickly, lovingly

  I was lifted up,

  I heard the rush of the tap

  And I was set in water

  In the blue vase, beautiful

  In lip and curve,

  And here I am

  Opening one petal

  As the tea cools.

  I wait while the sun moves

  And the bees finish their dancing,

  I know I am dying

  But why not keep flowering

  As long as I can

  From my cut stem?

  The Bare Leg

  There we sat in the clattering dark

  As the carriages swayed downhill

  Under London’s invisible rivers,

  There our faces were mute

  With a day of burdens

  As we recovered ourselves,

  Some read star signs from a column

  In a left-behind newspaper,

  Some sighed and shut their eyes.

  When the train came to a halt

  For nothing in the dark of the tunnel

  We breathed out silence

  And when the voice came

  Lulling with news of a red signal

  We sighed again and rolled our eyes

  Or adjusted our standing positions

  To lean into one another more gently

  And if we had room to turn our heads

  We looked down the long corridor

  Of carriages aligned

  As if the driver had drawn them

  Onto the straight, and left them perfect

  And in the next-to-one carriage

  Less crowded than our own

  A bare leg stretched into the aisle

  Taking up room

  As if this were a beach in summer.

  We studied the delicate anatomy

  Of shin and knee

  The putting together and planting

  Of toe and heel

  The tension of thigh,

  And beyond it nothing

  For the body was hidden

  By the bulk of a boy

  Inopportunely leaning

  To adjust his headphones.

  As if this were a beach in summer

  The leg took its own time

  And flexed luxuriously

  While the signal held against us

  And delay surged into time

  Lost, irrecoverable.

  The driver told us again

  We would be on the move shortly

  But no one believed him.

  This was what we had always known

  Was about to happen: the calf tightening

  The vessel of the hip cupping

  The thrust of the bare leg,

  The naked precision of the human

  As it steps into action,

  And down the long corridor, swaying

  As the train resumed,

  The chant, the murmur

  Of foot soles, someone

  Merely walking into the next room.

  The Place of Ordinary Souls

  In such meadows the days pass

  Without shadow, unremarkable.

  On time, the bus pants at its halt,

  Passengers peel their thighs

  From hot vinyl, and step down.

  Swift-heeled Achilles strides

  Through the fields of asphodel

  Flanked by heroes and warriors

  Who have left their mark on the earth

  And want nothing to do with us.

  With impatient glance at the starry fields

  And kit on their backs, they’re gone

  Route-marching to Elysium

  Where the gods are at home.

  We are glad to see the back of them.

  In the fields of asphodel we dawdle

  Towards the rumour of a beauty spot

  Which turns out to be shut.

  No matter. Why not get out the picnic

  And see if the tea’s still hot?

  The bus shuttles all day long

  With its cargo of ordinary souls.

  We lie on our backs, eyes closed,

  Dreaming of nothing while clouds pass.

  (According to Greek legend, ordinary, unheroic souls pass the afterlife in the fields of asphodel.)

  My daughter as Penelope

  Seven years old last birthday,

  With waist-length hair,

  White tunic, yellow ribbon

  Threaded at neck and hem,

  She has learned her lines,

  The chalked-in positions,

  The music which means

  She must come out of the wings.

  In the dusty cave of the theatre

  The children’s bare feet patter.

  My daughter thrusts out her arm

  And beats her suitors,

  In pride at the laughter

  She forgets the pause,

  But chides them, berates them

  Like an abandoned woman

  Who has over cold years learned

  To preserve the hearth.

  Odysseus, so long expected

  Would scarcely be welcome –

  A man of many distractions

  At this very moment

  Oblivious of her

  Conjuring the dead with blood.

  My daughter as Penelope

  Shakes back her hair and cries

  That they should all go home

  Here they will get nothing,

  While the little capering boys

  Evade her blows.

  I made her tunic, I threaded

  Those ribbons at neck and hem,

  I brushed and loosened her hair.

  She leaned against my shoulder

  In pure naïvety. ‘I didn’t know

  You could make anything

  As good as this,’ she said.

  The theatre swallowed the child.

  We thought they were too young for it,

  They would freeze, or be afraid,

  But they w
ere blithe, barefoot,

  Running from the underworld

  To butt like kids against the white sheet

  That marked the kingdom of the dead.

  The skin rose on our arms

  The hairs prickled. They’d gone.

  My daughter as Penelope

  Seven years old, thrusting

  Her bare arm out of her chiton

  Pushing away her suitors

  As one may do in childhood.

  The sheet quivered

  For the dead could barely contain

  Their desire for the living

  And the play was long.

  The cave of the stage grew vast –

  A mouth without a tongue

  Consuming our children.

  The Lamplighter

  Here, where the old Industrial School was

  And then the porn-film sheds,

  Stands the last lamp before the water.

  Dead as he’s been these ninety years

  The lamplighter on his beat

  Walks with ladder on shoulder.

  Above the Mardyke Steps and the donkey track

  He fixes ladder to pole, stands back

  Then climbs nimbly into the mass of flower.

  His head is a ball of petals. He barely coughs

  As the soft skin of petunia

  Plasters itself against his nostrils.

  Now he takes up his torch

  Tips the lever and touches the gas.

  A big rude flower, a dahlia