Collected Poems (12 page)

The road against all laws

Of nature. I stay alive.

Who says a poet shouldn't drive

On a highway which descends so low

Yet climbs so high

From Jerusalem to Jericho?

EIN GEDI

(After Shirley Kaufman's essay: ‘The Poet and Place')

When David went from Jerusalem

The itch of death was in the air.

The salt sea bloomed.

King Saul bit himself and followed.

The cave had no windows to steam and view.

David's gloom was David's soul, and hid him.

Whether to go or stay became

A cloak that fitted when he went.

After the mournful grackle's note

Saul came searching for the kill

But never felt the sword that cut his cloak.

Darkness is our place.

The cave gave David birth:

Memory was born, and all his songs.

EVE

In Israel I looked out of the window

And saw Eve.

Her hair was so black

I called her Midnight

But no answer came.

Her eyes were amber

Jewels made at midday

When she looked at me.

She crossed Gehenna

In her sandals.

My daylight wanted her,

A few-minute love-affair

Lasted forever,

As she entered her City.

from
Tides and Stone Walls, 1986

RECEDING TIDE

The tide is fickle.

After going out it comes back.

The moon sees to that.

It's what the tide reveals

When it huffs and leaves

That means so much,

And what the tide covers

On nibbling back

That opens our eyes:

Archipelagos left unexplored

And rivers unsurveyed:

But before the meaning's known

The regimental rush of waves

Is preceded by

The brutal skirmishing of dreams.

BRICKS

Bricks build walls

They erect homes

Both rise up

Men make them out of earth and clay.

Water tightens them

Ovens bake them to withstand

Bullets and dour weather.

Rectilinear and hard

Red or blue

Porous or solid

Beautifully stacked:

They invite the mason's hand

To choose.

Bombs are the enemy of bricks:

Stroke them tenderly,

And share their warmth.

LANDSCAPE – SENNEN, CORNWALL

How many died when the height was taken?

Upslope the armoured horses went:

Old refurbished iron-men

Zig-zagging from rocks,

And knights already fallen.

The cunning defenders

Jabbed soft underbellies,

Brought riders down

On gleaming daggers.

Victors mourned

As the defeated King rode

Into rain beyond the hill.

Blood makes history,

And desolation

A winter's day.

BOARDED-UP WINDOW

If I rip these planks back

Will I see

Something new, or out of nature?

Years ago I put them on

Felt glee in my fist

As I swung the hammer

And saw each nail

Biting into seasoned wood.

I didn't know what I boarded up:

Sunlight on the beach

Pebbles in my palms

Grass in my teeth –

An upturned rowing boat.

Thumb and forefinger held the nail.

I laughed at something new

Or out of nature.

They paid me – though not too well.

If I have the strength (or tools)

To lever off those planks

My soul will dazzle me with grief,

And out of my own nature blind me

With what I boarded up.

DERELICT BATHING CABINS AT SEAFORD

Well, they would, wouldn't they?

They'd say anything.

Doris and Betty got undressed.

Bob and Fred did the same next door.

The things that went on in these changing huts.

Well, with the War over, what could you expect?

They came back like new men.

Well, they came back.

They came, anyway.

Sometimes it was you and my Fred.

Then it might be me and your Bob.

It was nice with us, though, wasn't it?

Nothing but a clean bit of fun.

Sad they went in a year of each other –

The dirty devils!

Nothing but a clean bit of fun,

When we changed into our costumes,

The sea washed it off, though, didn't it?

We had some good swims as well.

And now look how they've smashed 'em up.

Poor old bathing huts.

Never be the same again.

The sea chucked all them pebbles in.

Don't suppose it liked the goings-on.

Then the vandals ripped the doors off.

They didn't like it, either.

Old times never come back,

But at least we 'ad 'em!

SOUTHEND PIER

A pier is a bridge that failed,

You might say –

Whatever else is said.

At the end are fish, and ships,

And underneath is water,

Or jewelled shingle.

Lamp posts point to the signal station

So does the toytown railway.

People buy and sell.

The planks smell fresh.

Not liking salt

They reach for land.

A rotund father and thin daughter

Stroll hand in hand.

Good for business.

A walking-stick clatters

But don't look now:

The invisible man goes by.

Every pier has one.

He swaggers to the end and back,

Panama hat at an angle;

And then again returns,

Craving land beyond the water,

Wound-up to walk forever.

DERELICT HOUSES AT WHITECHAPEL

We came off the ship:

‘This is America. We're here!'

A shorter crossing

Than the railway trip.

Having to make a living

Was better than in Russia.

Nobody tried to kill us.

America was smaller than we thought.

We lived three generations

In those houses:

New Year

Atonement

Passover.

Bricks talk,

But Books are eloquent.

AFTER A ROUGH SEA, AT SEAFORD

He went to sea because he didn't like the dark.

He wanted his ship to be looked at from the shore

By a woman who would wonder

Where he was going and why

But not where coming from:

His mother;

And stared at by a man who envied him

And craved to follow:

His father.

Many do not like the dark

But on a ship at night the lights stay on

Inside yourself.

You take it like a mother into you

In case the sun won't show at dawn.

At sea there's only

Space, and you.

WINDOW, BRIGHTON

After thirty years he came home.

He had forgotten the house

But recognized the window.

His sister never married

But she knew he'd come.

They passed unknowing in The Lanes.

The first iron dewdrop of the knocker

Shook dust

From the flowers.

‘Not today!' she said.

He walked away,

Forgot the house

Forgot the window

Forgot his sister never married

Forgot the knocker made no sound

When it struck home.

TORN POSTER, VENICE

The Big Voice, the Visual Scream

Shouts about the National Lottery

Or the advantage of travelling by Aeroflot

Or the holiness of the Virgin's Grotto

Or a film about the antics

At the court of King Otto;

Or did someone win

A Motto Competition –

First prize a reproduction

On a theme by Watteau?

Or, taking it all in all (and altogether)

Let's have a scenario like this:

The Big Bang Lottery Prize

Is a trip by Aeroflotto

To the Virgin's Grotto

In a corner of the Empire

Of mad King Otto –

From which you come back, if at all

(You've guessed it)
BLOTTO;

Crossing the frontier in a haycart

Concealed inside the wrappings

Of a Cracker Motto

Against an idealized backdroppo

As designed by Watto.

Speculation is a dead-end,

So forget it. A mindless hand

A single rip: we'll never know

Where poster-dreams

And demons that lurk behind them go.

New Poems, 1986–1990

CAMOUFLAGE

In winter trees don't move:

Half the lawn is coppered with leaves,

Scollops under the bare trees.

A snow-blue sheet, no sky:

A ginger cat from copper into green

Stalks careless birds.

Can't tell when it reaches bushes,

Form and colour blending

For its survival.

DAWN PIGEON

Below,

Cars slide on macadam tracks

Called streets.

Almost a circle,

Vision pauses to detect

A winter warning from the east.

People

Clatter towards train and bus,

Traffic a departing Joseph-scarf.

Vibrations shiver up the slates

To aerial filigree of bars

For webbed feet to grip.

No rival dare approach

His view of dustbins

Under blistered sills.

Well-fed and grey,

Lord as much as can be done

From his high perch –

Swoops when he decides to go,

Down, not up,

A common pigeon of the Town.

EARLY SCHOOL

Claptrap, I said. Don't like this school.

Or probably much worse. If I'd learned

Nothing else I cursed like a sailor.

But five years old. Yet good, as good as gold:

They think I'm a fool?

Why am I here? They can say what they like.

They show me the swimming pool.

I get pushed in. It's cold.

My arms ache. I hold the bar,

Then aim for the other side. Not far.

Definitely don't like it. Suck my thumb.

Don't suck your thumb!

Scratch my nose. Don't do that!

She tells about The Wooden Horse of Troy.

Even I wouldn't have hauled that toy

Through the city walls like that.

She gives out bricks. We have to build.

Two suns blind her glasses.

Build, she says, build!

So I build a town. It gets knocked down.

Shall I throw them? Watch that frown.

She reads of Abraham from the Bible.

God says: Tie your son up on a pile of stones

Then slit his throat to show you love me most.

Isaac doesn't like it but his father

Lifts the knife. Just in time God tells him: Stop!

I believe you now, so drop the knife.

Make up your mind. Abraham cuts him free:

All that way for nothing.

My father did the same to me.

After school I longed to climb a tree.

But he held my hand

And at the bottom of the hill

He set me free.

5744

The year comes to an end

Like a shutter in September.

Close the door on the new moon

And at the evening meal

Drink to the gift of life.

Mosquitoes come inside from cold,

Fragile letters on white walls

To mark the year's end.

Water the garden, for there's no frost yet

To melt in liquid on the flowers.

The spirit makes a full stop

When the New Year in Jerusalem begins.

Summer cool on every cheek turns suddenly to autumn,

And grates that smell of soot in England

Wait for the heat of winter,

And New Year to turn

Five more degrees upon the circle.

FIRE

Fire is always hungry –

As long as someone feeds:

It eats as if to melt the earth

And those who live on it.

All hunger threatens me,

And fire devours forests

More fiercely than the passion forests hide:

And fumigates pure heaven.

That's why I have a love for water,

A cool annihilating ocean

To devour the terrible devourer

And show the moon's white face in passing.

HIROSHIMA

You ask for a statement on Hiroshima.

All right:

If there's blood on the returning arrow

Bend the wind and suck

Till it becomes a flower.

Soldiers planted them among the rocks

And plucked chrysanthemums.

Who wanted peace before Hiroshima?

Mothers water soil with their tears,

And gardens thrive.

Don't let the Book of Memory close.

Stand among the flowers and read:

There will be no more ruins.

A statement on Hiroshima from me

Bleeds a peace

That brings more arrows.

SMALL AD

Fanatical non-smoking teetotal fruitarian,

Bearded, early fifties,

Good walker, plays chess –

But finding life dull,

Wants to meet big bosomed

Class conscious

Fox hunting

County-type carnivore female

With view to conversation

Or conversion.

WORK

Coming down first thing I see

The house in a lake of frost and mist,

Bare trees as in a battlefield

From which bodies have been moved.

By afternoon Life's all we've got,

No more over the horizon.

Mottled flame on a sure bed of coal

Burns out in the parlour grate,

Me at the desk creating lives: