To An Acquaintance Gone Into The Country

"Piccadilly and its halls" - Piccadilly underground station was notorious at this time as a meeting place for homosexuals; "County Hall" - the headquarters of the Greater London Council, subsequently abolished by Mrs Thatcher after it developed tendencies to regard itself as an independent socialist republic.

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The moral life, who cares for it one jot?
The folk of this benighted town do not!
From fops dissolved in giggles that they be
A part of Islington society
Where politics and fashion daily mix
And make acceptable the Dance of Dicks,
And beefy women crammed inside their jeans
Discuss what “Deconstruction” really means,
To sharks and youthful spivs who hang about
And play the coward or, when safe, the lout,
Lifting a wallet, swilling cans of Coke,
Daring the knife-edge between Threat and Joke –
All, all agree that someone is to blame
For that Dissatisfaction with no name
Which, on their shoulders, urges them to act
By throttling Reason and destroying Fact.
The rich and handsome, bopping in the street,
Fling down a vicious gauntlet at your feet,
The gays in Piccadilly and its halls
Descend to darkness and the grope for balls,
The wasted winos, loose in Leicester Square,
Demand your charity with half a glare,
The politicians, mad at County Hall,
Make one decision and begin to brawl,
And lo! the clergy in a final cod
Embrace The Issues and denounce their God!

A change of scene – what finer remedy

For stark disgust with man and accidie –
Takes you to purlieus where the skies are blue,
Where life is different and decisions few.
But what is this beside a bubbling beck?
A trailer park and gaudy discothèque!
And squatting loathsomely beyond your arm
Battery units have engulfed the farm.
Out in the fields a tractor roars its way
Across a monoculture all the day,
Grubbing up hedges, charging at the wood
Where fifty of the finest oak once stood.
A countryman, by wisdom deeply scored,
Allows you access to his hidden hoard
And taps his nose across the public bar
To let you know he knows just what you are.
He leers and shows his teeth and pulls an ear
And taps his nose again and drinks his beer,
And with an air mysteriously-wise
Makes up false maxims and then tells you lies;
And later, all goodnights devoutly bidden,
Strolls off to wisely contemplate his midden.     

Dr Swift Considers an Arts Council Grant

This poem is redolent of a different age, one of arts funding largesse. The poem's argument is jejune in places but just about holds together. In 1980 the then Arts Council of Great Britain had sumptuous headquarters in Piccadilly. Havergal Brian was subsequently remembered for producing over thirty symphonies in almost complete critical neglect. The Faber poetry list was, of course, in its heyday - although not to my eyes; the Northern Ireland Troubles were in full swing and the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan.

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Suggested by a sentence in Ifor Evans’ book Portrait of English Literature.

Gentlemen,

A cloud of dust is in the Strand
Where students march and raise a hand;
They stop the traffic, block the road
And roar with all the might of God.
Their banners and their shouts declare
The apotheosis of hot air,
And uncouth dress and surly ways
Are loci where the state decays.
They treat the people in the streets
As little more than bourgeois cheats,
Though in the respite of a pause
They claim they share a common cause.
Policemen herd them to the kerb
Where someone flings a basic verb,
And ushered on in disarray
They curse the night and damn the day.
(A lonely creature in his sleep
Hobbes turns and shudders all the deep:
The pages of Leviathan
Tremble for the fate of man.)
I came my way through the East End
Where the right price will sell a friend,
Where those who use coherent words
Are suspect like exotic birds,
And the local style is populist –
Which means that people use their fists.
Quarrels spike the muggy air
And someone rages, “I don’t care”;
A reasonable request is turned
Into an order duly spurned,
And deference, the social key,
Becomes a thing of history.
Unhappiness and pointlessness
Drape Aldgate High Street like a dress,
And the old woman in her room
Fears a sudden, bloody doom
While outside like a metaphor
The ceaseless lorries roar and roar.

A Remnant

No, not a sonnet,
Flush with fervour
Like a Victorian hymn;

Not an ode, nor an elegy,

Sweating like faces
With the tears of truth;

But a bone

Sprung from the furrow,
Crazed with the runes

Of the inarticulate earth –

Such, such is my love.
Dear, will you risk a finger

On these splintered pieces,

Bathing them once more
In the balm of your hand?

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© September 1984

A Tardy Epithalamium

For X and XX

All vows given and received, all papers signed,

The wedding breakfast eaten and guests roundly
   Thanked, the car with tin cans and streamers
   Is despatched with deep elemental

Leers. Later, after the disco, as tipsy

Voices disappear down darkened streets, a last
   Light is flicked on and off, a door tried
   And a key turned as everything drains

Into the vast breathing silence of the night.

And so another occasion by which we
   Measure the old, slow wandering of
   Time is placed in an album or ranged

On a mantelpiece and we can turn back to

The curious business of living in which
   Days, weeks, months are lost without a trace –
   Can it really be six years ago?
 
On chilly autumn Saturday mornings you
Drag yourself from your musty cave of breathing
   And stand before the shaving mirror
   All bleary eyes and dreary soap suds –

How did this tyranny of weekly shopping

So easily assume undisputed sway?
   After a long week of bought ledgers,
   Angry telephone calls and delays

On the trains (how often do you get home at

Past eight o’clock?) a Saturday lie-in would
   Have been a more than necessary
   Treat, but here you are listening to

The ‘Early Show’ and wondering as you shave

If that creaking plank can really be your neck.
   Through the window in the October
   Gloom you can all too visibly see

The frankly mutinous realm of your married

Estate: the lawn with its weeds, the roses which
   Were never dead-headed and, under
   Your nose, the side-wall spitting out its

Pointing like a baby’s first teeth. Come Monday

And you will stand on the station with hundreds
   Of others, all ruefully counting
   The lost years and wincing at thinning

Crowns, dubious after all about the joys

Of ‘Begonia Close’ and a one hour rail
   Link with London. And it’s then that you’ll
   Cling to this Saturday shopping as

A chore which silences awkward thoughts, which puts

The workaday stumble into perspective
   And lets you believe that should life turn
   Lucky, you with your choices would stroll

The High Street, day in day out, watching the herd

Rush to be shouted at or glumly ignored,
   Thinking, “The sun shines on the truly
   Free. If only there were no winters...”

The Self-Condemned

Last night as an August warmth
Chilled into September
I completed my education.

Autodidact of sorrows,

Arranging my systems
In exquisite precision

I subjected them

To the test of tears.
They crumbled. In the ruins,

Half-sought, half-forgotten,

Was a word shattered like a
China cup. The word was Love.

For years, shunning

The basking crowd,
I sought for the Good,

Read books and made notes.

A woman – my wife –
Brought me food and listened:

My chin chafing my collar

I informed her of the nature
Of things. As she closed the door

Her eyes were awash.

I considered the facts briefly
But could find no explanation.

One night I started:

I was reading Spinoza
When a thought like a knife

Turned in my brain,

“How hateful
Is an abstract love.”

Longing for her hand,

The shy hiss of her breath,
I ran downstairs

But she had gone.

She had left a note –
“I, too, am human” –

Her suitcase had scuffed the hallway.

Collapsed on the stairs,
Shaking the banisters like a child,

My tears melted her words.

Overhead, swollen like tumours,
My books were suave, replete.

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© August 1983

 

Mr Longley's Dream

This is something of a rarity for me. I think I was aiming at the 'younger market'. I subsequently went through a period as a vegan - it was hard work. Nevertheless, man's mass, indeed industrialised, cruelty to animals is a mighty problem.

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James Longley was in business,
   He did it very well,
Battery farming was his line,
   He gave those creatures hell.

His farm was many acres

   Stripped of tree and hedge,
Long grey factory units
   Stood on a concrete ledge.

His birds in semi-darkness

   Lived four or five to a cage,
They were not allowed to turn round
   Or else he got in a rage.

Mr Longley went home to dinner,

   Slapped his paper with a hiss,
“I gave an interview to that man –
   The result is this.

Says I mistreat my chickens,

   Says I’ve done it for years,
But I’ve never had a single one
   Come to me in tears.

Of course some die in their cages

   Gone mad or pecked to death,
But the rest are blithely happy
   And as buoyant as a breath.

My technicians tell me often,

   Pointing to a chart,
That the optimum production curve
   Puts them in good heart.”

Mr Longley filled his wine glass,

   Picked his teeth with a pin,
Thought of all the hungry people,
   “Doesn’t he know the world’s starving?”

Later in bed he snored so hard

   The moon could hardly hear
The chickens in their batteries
   Muttering in their fear.

A Transatlantic Call

Our condition is contentious. Ill-at-ease,
Clinging with cities to a crust of rock,
We manage history, that sprawling torque
Of nations, contracts and economies.
And love, your dear voice rising through a surf
Of sound, made neutral by the nasal sting
Of distance, tells me that though still breathing
We have yet to sign a treaty with this earth.

Now, like a conscience, dusk disturbs the sky

Troubling a well-fed moon become insane.
Elsewhere, as the turbid day is burning south,
Caring for disease and rags on the plain,
Someone is allotted language – a cry,
Which bubbles in blood upon a fly-black mouth.

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© 1976-77