The Thing Which Sticks

This is another abandoned long poem in which I lost my way. I remember lengthy sessions trying to puzzle out where it was going and how on earth I would end it. After the initial sections which do not seem too bad the poem becomes abstract, insufficiently substantiated by image and symbol. And the focus changes from the significance of the 1930s writers and the Spanish Civil War to a meditation on time, history and the individual. As with other of my abandoned long poems I have done a lot of editing to rescue a spine of meaning.

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(Young Writers of the Thirties Exhibition, National Portrait Gallery, London, Sept. 22^nd 1976.)

They seemed, even in their not-knowing, to be prescient.

Their confident tone, perhaps, was the starting of this,
With all the assurance of hikers lightly equipped
At daybreak who measured the mountain and its squat cone
Of cloud with a thumb. And in books, studies and extended
Articles, our affair with the lacunae that constitute the past
Has built a significance to chivvy their every aside
Into order, almost demanding that the wide dance
Of the Thirties come clear in their pages. Only later,
In the broken grass, did we notice the notebook with its leaves
Torn out. In such ways we make sense of the past:
But insofar as we deal with an image between us
And an act, whose location in space-time we don’t know;
A gesture, the limits of which are inevitably lost;
And a thought inferred from a jotting hurried for the post;
That is, as we bully the material to create something
Consistent as evidence but impossible to verify, perhaps
It is best to pack the archives in the college vault
And let the scholar descend to return with ordered
News. For here under the hidden lights
Which put brown in the corners, and the matt dusk
Of respect which leans across cases like a bearded professor
With eyeglasses, these gathered samples are measly stuff: –
The first editions become anaemic from afternoons
Lost beneath shelves, their spines hanging like doors;
The programme notes, the wrinkled photographs of friends
In Oxford bags with legs as carved and faceted
As English oak; but mostly the letters and scrawls,
Lonely and silent like the restless faces of patients
On pillows when beckoned by the surgeon’s nod – all
Testify to the imaginative work performed
When papers are fingered and lamps adjusted to reveal
Significant objects from significant lives. Retrieved
From the interstices of the forgotten day they disclose
The frenetic, large-eyed men, with grins as confident
As impresarios’ (the world turning gravely about them),
Who wagered amid the discussion of books and payment
Of fees the nervous tic of their doubt on a strenuous
Effort to stand as close to their time as a simile.
But from mornings at a desk with pencil and paper; meetings
With connections at luncheon; and dull afternoons with Goethe
Or a tract for the times, they hurried to the challenge of evening,
And like those who rushed across town through soaking streets
On numerous and crucial errands, fell back exhausted
But released from the unequal struggle with the misread map.
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"Now Barabbas..."

Now Barabbas was a robber,
   A cheat and killer too;
For thirty bits of silver
   He’d slit you through and through.

He skulked in gloomy alleys

   To evangelise the rich;
His gospel was the dagger,
   His covenant the snitch.

He hung around the backdoors

   When the labourers came home;
He had no pity on a flabby purse
   Nor a frightened moan.

He didn’t attend to the widow,

   He didn’t cough up for the poor;
He strolled along the High Street
   Scattering cheques in every door.

He wasn’t a marvellous husband

   Nor a father with many ideas;
He squandered every bit of love
   And quickly ran up arrears.

He ignored the higher learning,

   What priests and sages see,
But always boasted in the pub
   That the truth had set him free:

That the mob had chosen him squarely,

   That Pilate had acquiesced;
That the soldiers had shoved him out on the street –
   Who cared about the rest?

What obligation should he feel,

   What urge to make amend?
Be careful how you answer
   For you are Barabbas, my friend.

Yes you are Barabbas, the drunken-eyed,

   Telling your story through,
And I, your fuddled drinking partner –
   I am Barabbas too.

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© December 1979

Mattins and Evensong

In the morning I sought my God.
The mist-cry of the thrush and starling
Was an invitation to persist.
The green bush rustled,
Beginning to flame in the autumn air.
Prayer sank and rose in whispers
In the oaken hush of the church.
In the morning I sought my God.

In the evening I found my God.

The green bush crackled
With invisible flame in the smoky twilight.
The purity of a surplice moved through the church.
Prayer and the heart debated,
But the sufficiency of hands
Was about me.
In the evening I found my God.

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© October 1979

An Expostulation

Time flies. It is interesting to note that the preoccupations which now dominate much public debate were already taking wing in 1980 when this poem was written, e.g. environmentalism, minority ‘rights’ and new age spirituality. A few notes: 5^th stanza – the USSR and the Cold War still existed; Jimmy Carter was US President; despite the ideological divide the US was selling large quantities of grain to the Russians. 6^th stanza – it was regarded as a cultural triumph that The Who had been booked to play in Dallas, Texas – God help us. 7^th stanza – “Christopher Street” was a term for the homosexual lobby. 10^th stanza – “Giroux” is Robert Giroux, Chairman of Farrar, Straus & Giroux who spent a lifetime discovering and publishing a huge list of significant writers.

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What is the use of books in bed,
The half-read and the to-be-read
   With no-one at your side?
The clock becomes a mass of ticks,
The blankets do not yield to kicks
   And vanish like a tide.

England meanders into night –

A room gone quiet after light –
   This dull autumnal day;
The U.S. with the poet’s wife
Beneath horizons bursts with life,
   And makes demotic hay.

In California golden men

With names like Brewster and like Ben
   Are riding on the surf;
The sun-soaked cities eat the coast
Like young PR’s devouring toast
   Out on the morning turf.

In Oregon, that lovely state,

Committed young make drivers wait
   Until they’ve checked the gasses
That spluttering from a cracked exhaust
Might visit minor holocaust
   Upon the natural masses.

In mid-West states the farmers bring

Their combines to the harvesting –
   The glowing plains are shorn;
They loathe the Russians, all they do,
Think Carter should rough up a few,
   But want them to eat corn.

In the New South of dust and plain

A cowboy flies an aeroplane
   And drinks at Caesar’s Palace;
A businessman concludes a deal
To civilize the commonweal
   And bring The Who to Dallas.

In Washington and in New York

Discrimination’s all the talk
   Against the blacks and women;
And Puerto Ricans, Mexicans,
Christopher Street and Indians,
   And anyone not winning.

Off Union Square a church is full –

A group debate the pentacle
   And study the “I Ching”;
Next week it’s “You and Worry Beads”.
Outside, a faded notice reads
   “The Church of Christ the King.”

On campuses a few old men

With shaky lips remember when
   They lectured on the Good;
Their students sat in quiet rows
Developing a canny nose
   For what was gold or wood.

But Giroux in his office grooms

The products of cheap, rented rooms
   Refusing to allow
That Art and Culture should become
As hollow as a beaten drum
   Or bellow like a cow.

In England now the pundits write

As if they ever had been right
   And try to scan the times;
Boring as men in urinals
They only know that criminals
   Incline to commit crimes.

Our intellectuals drink their juice

As subtle-arrogant as Zeus
   And open the New Statesman;
From front to back it’s full of “it’s”
And other non-elitist bits,
   As surly as a placeman.

The poets rise soon after noon

And spread their butter with a spoon
   Singing a small “introit”;
If Pope or Chaucer stood before them
And spoke of wit or of decorum
   I fear they would not know it.

The people who produced the ballad

Now struggle for a crazy salad
   And know not want they do;
The streets are like a vale of sighs,
Their windows are accusing eyes
   Demanding “Who are you?”

As sullen as an offshore rock

That’s grazed by a forgotten flock
   And cut off by the tide,
England sings ditties to the sky,
Scratches its cheek, is jostled by
   The flotsam at its side.

The storm clouds of this latter world

Are spreading fast like flags unfurled,
   The Furies search for blood;
We play our corner of the game,
Giving our number and our name,
   And watch the rising flood.

Think of the starving and the fraught

Whose lives are no more than a thought
   As officers prepare
To move their armies to the front
Where villages will bear the brunt
   As if they were not there.

Come back my love on the last ’plane

And we shall bill and kiss again
   Before the thunder starts;
For soon a sword will draw a line,
The generals will give the sign,
   And frenzy grip our hearts.

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© January 1980

Jabbok

Jacob at the guarded ford
   Held nuclear fission on his tongue;
   The Stranger said, “What song was sung?”
These are the words of the Lord.

Jacob at the guarded ford

   Moved crack divisions in his brain;
   The Stranger said, “What mother’s pain...?”
These are the words of the Lord.

Jacob at the guarded ford

   Weighed pelf and hunger in his hands;
   The Stranger said, “The burning sands...”
These are the words of the Lord.

Jacob at the guarded ford

   Plucked rose and lily by the stem;
   The Stranger only said, “Idem.”
These are the words of the Lord.

Jacob at the guarded ford

   Ignored the wound his brother had;
   The Stranger said, “The wise are mad...”
These are the words of the Lord.

Jacob at the guarded ford

   Arraigned the lion, soothed the lamb;
   The Stranger only said, “I am.”
These are the words of the Lord.

Jacob at the guarded ford

   Fought till the night was almost dim;
   His shrivelled sinew cried, “Elohim.”

These are the words of the Lord.

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© February 1980

 

Pithom and Raamses

“And they built for Pharoah treasure cities.”(Exodus I:xi)

A dusty laughter scuffles in the streets

And calls the faithful to a bitter thought;
The youthful gangs, the madmen and the cheats
Denounce a way of life they never sought.

The poorest man puts butter on his bread

And takes a little sugar with his tea.
The temple scribe can only scratch his head
And think of gentle winds far out at sea.

The treasure in the bunkers falls asleep,

Its guards play dice and do not watch the doors;
The faithful find it difficult to weep
And cannot find forgiveness for old scores.

At Sinai a jealous God awaits;

But no-one stumbles from the ill-hung gates.

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© March 1980

"Who Can Interpret a Broken Branch..."

Who can interpret a broken branch
   Or a spot of blood on the Down?
Who can discover the locus of pain
   Or the exact mid-point of a frown?

At midnight the sky is a blank, black disc,

   As blank as a disused noun:
A ship is gnawing its bones on the rocks,
   The seamen pray as they drown.

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© March 1980