First of the Last Chances Read online

  is a trick of the light, an invention

  of the skin on the top of the lake.

  I am here for the shadow tree’s sake,

  for its unannounced coming and going

  (no one plants, no one chops). I would give

  anything for a shadow tree, knowing,

  as its branches get caught in the sieve

  of the surface of water and live

  for a glance of the moon, moments only,

  that the dark fabrication I saw

  was a miracle, not like the lonely

  unexceptional lump on the shore,

  such a stickler for natural law

  with its sap, its botanical listing

  and its representation at Kew,

  its pedantic disciples, insisting

  that one cannot be both false and true.

  We are shadow trees. That’s what we do.

  He is Now a Country Member

  He is now a country member.

  The subscription rate goes down.

  January to December,

  If you live or work in town

  You pay more. You come more often

  And the fee, therefore, is high.

  In a vain attempt to soften

  Last year’s blow, he now drops by.

  Not a word since last September.

  He left town. We both know why.

  He says, ‘I’m a country member.’

  ‘I remember,’ I reply.

  Silk Librarian

  We have a silk librarian,

  One who behaves and looks

  Just like a real librarian

  When lending people books.

  We lost our first librarian

  Then others of her ilk.

  We need a good librarian

  And so we’ve gone for silk.

  A silk librarian endures.

  The paid and unpaid bills

  Are neatly filed in metal drawers.

  Eye-drops, inhalers, pills –

  Gone. We no longer house the cures

  For the imagined ills

  Of real librarians with flaws

  That far outweigh their skills.

  Real flowers used to be displayed.

  They died and made a mess.

  Genuine salaries were paid.

  Silk wages cost us less,

  Though, over time, the colours fade

  From eyes and hair and dress.

  Every two years or so, upgrade

  To maximise success.

  Feel free to disapprove, protest

  At what you never knew

  Until just now, and never guessed

  And cannot prove untrue.

  A sin too many, once confessed,

  Becomes a sin too few.

  While you deny that silk is best

  We cut the silk for you.

  God’s Eleventh Rule

  I want to sit beside the pool all day,

  Swim now and then, read Peeping Tom, a novel

  By Howard Jacobson. You needn’t pay

  To hire a car to drive me to a hovel

  Full of charred native art. Please can I stay

  Behind? I will if necessary grovel.

  I want to sit beside the pool all day,

  Swim now and then, read Peeping Tom, a novel.

  Pardon? You’re worried I will find it boring?

  My days will be repetitive and flat?

  You think it would be oodles more alluring

  To see the chair where Mao Tse Tung once sat.

  Novels and pools are all I need for touring,

  My Peeping Tom, Nostromo after that.

  Pardon? You’re worried I will find it boring.

  My days will be repetitive and flat.

  Okay, so you were right about Nostromo,

  But I’ve a right to stay in this hotel.

  Sienna: I refused to see il duomo.

  (Does that mean Mussolini? Who can tell?)

  In Spain I told them, ‘Baño, bebo, como.’

  I shunned the site where Moorish warriors fell.

  Okay, so you were right about Nostromo

  But I’ve a right to stay in this hotel.

  I’m so alarmed, my voice becomes falsetto

  When you prescribe a trip round local slums.

  Would I drag you from Harvey Nicks to Netto?

  No I would not. Down, down go both my thumbs.

  I’m happy in this five-star rich man’s ghetto

  Where teeth are, by and large, attached to gums.

  I’m so alarmed, my voice becomes falsetto

  When you prescribe a trip round local slums.

  It’s not an English thing. No need to grapple

  With the strange ways we foreigners behave.

  My colleague would be thrilled to see your chapel,

  Turrets and frescos and your deepest cave,

  But as for me, I’d rather watch sun dapple

  The contours of a chlorinated wave.

  It’s not an English thing. No need to grapple

  With the strange ways we foreigners behave.

  I want to spend all day beside the pool.

  I wish that this were needless repetition,

  But next to you, a steroid-guzzling mule,

  A hunger strike and the first Christian mission

  Look apathetic. God’s eleventh rule:

  Thou shalt get sore feet at an exhibition.

  I want to spend all day beside the pool.

  I wish that this were needless repetition.

  Where to Look

  The leaves that this year brought

  next year won’t bring again.

  If autumn has one thought

  it is not where? but when?

  Summer is on the ground

  long before winter’s sting.

  The loss must be profound

  to make us hunt for spring.

  Eyes down, we find it dead,

  red powder at our feet

  but staring straight ahead

  we see its green wings beat,

  all future and no past,

  baffled as winter grieves.

  Next year, not this or last,

  is where to look for leaves.

  Brief Encounter

  I loved you and I left you at the station.

  I watched you on the platform and I waved,

  Taking in every scrap of information.

  Every last detail of your face, I saved,

  Thinking that when the engine started running

  And as the train proceeded down the track,

  You’d shrink, then disappear. But love is cunning:

  The station café faded into black,

  So did the world around you and beside you.

  You alone seemed to grow. In broken hearts

  Both distance and perspective are denied you.

  Love looks no smaller as the train departs.

  The Cycle

  I cannot stay – I’m not the one deserting –

  Or go; you are no longer here to leave.

  I can’t forgive, not without also hurting,

  Forget, or I’ll be even more naïve.

  I can’t confer; I’d feel that I was cheating.

  I can’t concede a case I’ve never fought

  Or win and not administer a beating.

  I cannot settle in or out of court,

  Can’t give in case I implicate the taker,

  Can’t take from everyone with ground to give

  And gather acre on untended acre

  When I need just a few square feet to live,

  Can’t end this in a neat or messy way.

  I cannot start again. I cannot stay.

  Black River

  I asked to return to my original love

  but I gave the wrong code and access was denied.

  The clocks go back, though by no means far enough.

  My white form came up green on the other side.

  It was so long sinc
e I had tried

  that to do so was both a relief and a source of pride.

  I asked to return to my original niche.

  My house and furniture at Black River, I wrote,

  then read it through. It read like a limp pastiche.

  My white form came out smeared as a ransom note.

  I decided I must devote

  more time to the box marked Enter witty anecdote.

  I asked to return to my original ground.

  Original, scoffed the clerk, like there’s such a thing.

  I thought his procedures all the more unsound

  for being based on a rusty playground swing.

  Above us, a blackbird’s wing

  made a powerful case for never really bothering.

  I asked to return to my original point,

  but was that a person, a place or a state of mind?

  A man in the queue shouted out Let’s split this joint

  so I shared my stash and he left it all behind

  singing We, the undersigned,

  don’t know. Then I wandered off, and what should I find?

  Well, what I should find (though I cannot say that I did

  since the arrows were keen to point towards something new

  and all known rows, whether Savile, Death or Skid

  had become the past, the ephemera and the view)

  is that none of it is true.

  Go back to the starting line. Your original love is you.

  The Cancellation

  On the day of the cancellation

  The librarian phoned at two.

  My reading at Swillingcote Youth Club

  Had regrettably fallen through.

  The members of Swillingcote Youth Club

  Had just done their GCSEs

  And demanded a rave, not poems,

  Before they began their degrees.

  Since this happened at such short notice

  They would still have to pay my fee.

  I parked in the nearest lay-by

  And let out a loud yippee.

  The librarian put the phone down

  And muttered, ‘Oh, thank the Lord!’

  She was fed up of chaperoning

  While the touring poet toured.

  The girl from the local bookshop

  Who’d been told to provide a stall

  But who knew that the youth club members

  Would buy no books at all

  Expressed with a wild gyration

  Her joy at a late reprieve,

  And Andy, the youth club leader,

  And the youth arts worker, Steve,

  Both cheered as one does when granted

  The gift of eternal life.

  Each felt like God’s chosen person

  As he skipped back home to his wife.

  It occurred to me some time later

  That such bliss, such immense content,

  Needn’t always be left to fortune,

  Could in fact be a planned event.

  What ballet or play or reading,

  What movie creates a buzz

  Or boosts the morale of the nation

  As a cancellation does?

  No play, is the simple answer.

  No film that was ever shown.

  I submit that the cancellation

  Is an art form all of its own.

  To give back to a frantic public

  Some hours they were sure they’d lose

  Might well be my new vocation.

  I anticipate great reviews.

  From now on, with verve and gusto

  I’ll agree to a month-long tour.

  Call now if you’d like to book me

  For three hundred pounds or more.

  The Guest Speaker

  I have to keep myself awake

  While the guest speaker speaks.

  For his and for procedure’s sake

  I have to keep myself awake.

  However long his talk might take

  (And, Christ, it feels like weeks)

  I have to keep myself awake

  While the guest speaker speaks.

  Everyone in the Changing Room

  Everyone in the changing room pronounced it a disgrace.

  He’ll get short shrift in Baildon if he dares to show his face.

  He needs a damn good seeing to, that’s what all his lot need,

  Everyone in the changing room agreed.

  Everyone in the changing room reckons he’s lying low.

  The hot ones from the sauna want to tell him where to go.

  The cold ones from the plunge pool say someone should start a fund.

  Everyone in the changing room is stunned.

  Everyone in the changing room is certain it was him,

  Young mothers from aerobics and the runners from the gym

  And when they said it’s mental, this, and there’s no end in sight,

  Everyone in the changing room was right.

  Everyone in the changing room would fight for this good cause.

  We swim our lengths and lift our weights; you’ll want us in your wars.

  There will be no more tragedies, no waste or pain or loss

  When everyone in the changing room is boss.

  Your Funeral

  for L.W.

  Since our routine condolences are sent

  when someone dies, whether they’re young or old,

  even if while alive they were as cold

  as they are dead, if sympathy’s well meant,

  why should ungrieving relatives resent

  being unnecessarily condoled?

  Why should the blood associates get cross

  when bland acquaintances at wakes insist

  how much the coffin contents will be missed,

  how wonderful they were, what a great loss

  it is? Form here is all. We can’t just toss

  bodies away (although we can get pissed

  respectfully and in a mournful way).

  People are hypocrites. Why should we care?

  These days it’s not expected that we’ll wear

  a scrap of black. We’re not obliged to say

  a single word. We can just look away.

  Poor thing, the pain is more than she can bear

  some well-intentioned neighbour dressed in black

  will squawk, while we, in pinker shades of brown,

  watch the undear departed get on down,

  thinking of how we wouldn’t have her back,

  given a god-like choice, not for a stack

  of cash, not for a kingdom and a crown.

  Confident of the silence I’d maintain,

  I was prepared. Then suddenly you die

  and even silence seems too big a lie.

  My strange regrets chase decades down the drain.

  Can you still hear me now if I explain

  how much I’ve always hated you and why?

  Of course you can’t. There’s no such thing as you

  or hell, with all its demons and its fears.

  I should have told you in the living years,

  as Mike and the Mechanics said. How true.

  I didn’t, though, and so you never knew.

  Wreath after wreath arrives and it appears

  You got away with it. My mother went

  by plane to see you laid to rest abroad.

  I told her yet again what I am bored

  of telling her, that any money spent

  on duty, guilt and other forms of bent

  reasoning, one cannot, should not, afford.

  She went. She said I didn’t understand

  and maybe if all mothers were as good

  as mine, I would believe all daughters should

  behave that well, cross air or sea or land,

  even if they’re afraid of flying, stand

  beside their mothers in their crates of wood,

  but when respects can’t honestly be paid,

  only ensure the death i
s genuine.

  Reserve an empty pocket for a pin

  (as did James Coburn in the film Charade).

  Dig out a shallow oblong with a spade.

  Insert deceased. See that deceased stays in.

  Away-day

  Dear baby the size of an olive,

  Advise me on how to proceed.

  On Thursday we’ve got an away-day

  Which will be very boring indeed.

  We’ll be trapped in a room with no windows,

  Doing things of no value at all

  And I shudder to think how much nonsense

  Will drift through the uterine wall.

  You might hear the name David Blunkett.

  Forget it as soon as you can

  And look forward to treats that are pending

  Like your first ever ultrasound scan.

  Dear baby the size of an olive

  I can’t take you away from all this

  But in seven months no one can touch us.

  Think of all the grim meetings we’ll miss:

  All those votes for more rules and less freedom.

  What a fine time I picked to conceive.

  Down with what is now called education

  And hurrah for maternity leave.

  Mother-to-be

  Eating a good balanced diet, taking plenty of exercise and fresh air and finding the time to relax when you’re away from work will improve your chances of conceiving a healthy baby… You should take particular care to cut down on ‘social drugs’. Cannabis is known to interfere with the normal production of sperm. It is also thought that LSD can cause birth defects.