A New Language

 

He has decided to translate all of his poems

into a new language.

First of all he must decide what that language

can be.

A language of totally different assertions and persuasions,

a language of discovered light and leaping freedoms,

a language spoken only when you know

what it is to say.

In this language there are shocking umbrellas

and aunties on skateboards and cardinals dancing

and the sea is always to be found in the sunlit lounge

and none of the flowers have names.

He first sensed this language in Madrid

and later, much later, at Lake Como

almost concealed by long grass.

It will take a long time to translate all of his poems

and bits of poems and to get some new ones going.

He will no doubt still be writing them after he is dead

and his publisher has packed up and his daughters can only smile.

It will take perhaps one hundred years

before a researcher will discover something in a box

in a room beneath some university library

and the cleaning ladies will see the researcher leap up

to dance on the table by the window where there

was once a view of an impossible cathedral.

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It did not happen like this.

It did not happen at all.

This is how it happened.

These words made it happen.

The words contain the sea.

The words contain other words.

It did not happen with these words.

Here is a word that fell out.

Here is a word that doesn't mean.

At all. At all. At all.

Beneath some of the words.

In addition to all these words.

I put some words in water.

This garden doesn't need words.

Each word begins where it ends.

Do not listen to any of this.

Between this and that and listen.

Can you hear us in between?

What I said meant nothing.

It did not happen like this.

The

 

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

X.

Poet at a Glance

 

It is a person filled with beginnings.

It is a person who keeps saying things beyond words.

It is a person who finds birds inside silences.

The poet has a thing about red wheelbarrows.

The poet keeps finding apple trees in the fridge.

This poem is going upstairs.

This poem is getting off at the wrong station.

I must. I must. I must.

The silence of old hats is disturbing.

This poem has not been written yet.

As If Angels Came

for Clare and Emily

 

I do not know what I should say to you.

Who are you anyway and with what words do you make me?

All these trees will of course die and go into the sky

and the end of today is in a bird song already.

The poet has a door in his head and he needs

to keep it open, even at night, OK?

Between one understanding and another

there is this rush of recognition as if angels

came into our classroom and then Jesus arrived.

At The Hat Museum

 

At the hat museum you can see the hats of

murderers, mad vicars, policemen and nurses.

They also have the hats of mountain climbers,

famous gardeners and film stars

and of course great artists; Renoir, Rodin, Rubens.

The hat of Orson Wells like a thunder cloud

and the clowns' hats lit up and there is music.

The cardinal's hat keeps moving beneath

its glass cover as if something like a brain

was still twitching on meaning.

There is a special selection of

hat bands and damaged hats,

helmets, head pieces from distant battles.

There are dunces’ hats and prisoners' caps

and babies’ bonnets and I wonder what

they will do when I present my father's hat

with its false brim and blood stain?

Will they ask if my father was important?

Will they ask whether the blood is human?

Will they listen when I tell them about how

you can hear the Somerset wind if you

hold it to your ear? Will they listen

if I tell them about the reason for the

fake brim? Are there finger prints?

The main hall is best when it is

raining. All hats make me think of rain

and night winds and bored cowboys.

In one room there are photographs of

Mad Hatters and a woman eating a straw hat

and the Elephant Man's hat and even his hood.

Once when we visited there was a kid

asking his mother whether Jesus ever wore

a hat. They paid a lot for General Custer's

hat. They paid nothing at all for Joanna

Southcott's cap. It sits in one room waiting

for something to happen. All of these hats do that.

Hats off. Hats on. If the cap fits.

Throw your, pass your, feather in your.

Hat. Cap. Helmet. Bonnet. Bowler.

Into the distance with Charlie Chaplin.

Up close with Al Capone.

What The New Yorker Does To You

 

"I thought I'd never laugh again. Then I saw

your jacket." I'd seen ties that cried

and shirts that sank and shoes that were losers

but your jacket said fashion bash, stuff

style, is that a stain or are you just leaking?

It was like wearing rain or a split sunset.

It was like wearing a wound and I began

to think of laughing at you in your party dress,

your mother's furnishings, your father turning

his gaze and the idea of a sister still sending

you jigsaw puzzles. The barman asked if we

were all OK. Not just OK but "all OK."

You said my smile reminded you of butterflies.

You laughed so much. I had to stop you.

Dreaming Real

 

The only time it gets to seem real

is when somebody kills somebody or

when the elegant tap dancer keels over

or the bishop burps or the man in the bed

tells you a story that is better than dreams.

And when they do this dying thing one is left

deserted between the pianist’s gesture and the

untouched keys, the image of the aeroplane

that suddenly becomes flames, the moment

before the tree falls to make a million matches.

Real is somewhere between the idea and ones response

to somewhere else. Real is Hitler visiting a tap

dancing school. Real is Arthur Miller not being

able to tell this story, write it down, for fifty years.

Real is walking songs, walking novels, dreaming real.

 

The President has decided to tell them this story;

not now, the next day or in a week or two, or in

a month or so; but soon. This story will replace

the prepared text, the stuff made into words

that he gets from the machine. This story will

remind the nation, the world and perhaps even

beyond the world that he is his own man.

The trick is, the trick is; exactly what

should the story be about?

The President has once or twice mentioned his pet dogs

and his offspring in their earliest days and certainly they

already know how his mother read him 'Great Tales

Of History', and 'What To Do In The Face Of A Communist'.

The trick is, the trick is to find the Communist

that you are meant to do this to.

The President has of course heard the voice of God;

all presidents have heard this. Some have decided never

to mention this, especially to their wives and telling the Pope

would be no joke and anyway what the doctor advised was

surely best. What afier all could he say that had

not already been said about life and death and environmental

ruin and poetic frenzy and the beauty of duty and what

computers might tell you of Heaven and Hell and if children

are angels why are they shooting at each other in schools?

The President knows that what he must not tell them

is about silences and prayers like snow and what is built

inside the biggest mountain and that sometimes when he

is jogging he wishes that the space ship would return

and lift him up again, in dazzling radiance, once again.

With Reference to Your Report

 

With reference to your report today regarding my demise

I hasten to assure you that although I may be sometimes late

I am still very much alive.

It is true I do not intone the 'amens' with such vigour

and the Membership Fee has become prohibitive

but I am still very much living.

I recall that when Kenneth got lost in the jungle

he walked about reciting Homer until it fell

into mumbo-jumbo and much worse.

Once I did get lost on the tube train between

that place and the next and the bits in the middle

and a teddy boy came to my aid.

Today I am here and writing this and reading again

the Obituary and wondering just who it was who

gave you such incorrect information.

Don't you check? What exactly is your system

and how did it let you down for I am very much

alive in my tree house?

The postman and the parson and the Prize Draw Manager

all know where I live and more particularly that I am.

I am. I am.

One final thought. Dead men may be beyond numbers of wives

and all that but cricket is cricket and I never played it

and I regret it but I did not go to a pubic school.

An Apology After Three Days of Struggle

 

I am very sorry. I now accept that it is entirely my fault.

I observed all the polite notices about keeping the curtain inside

and only turning it on to full power if absolutely necessary and about

positioning the mat securely. I heaved the shower head into an

entirely original position so that my own bodily needs were subsidiary.

I even thought of letting it take a shower by itself! I'd stand in

the bedroom with the television on and let it do its own thing.

I am very sorry. I now accept that after three days of struggling

and padding about with towels and sloshing down with yards of

loo paper that this is not in fact a shower at all.

So, what is it? What is this little room and all its apparatus and all these

neat notices about? Suddenly I have it! It is an ancient spring.

Entirely misplaced in the hotel it has reclaimed its divine identity

and pleads to be released. The slow scattering of water, the persistent pooling

towards the door, the soaking of slippers and socks and shoes. Either we

send in monks or bards or this will persist until the third floor rots.

A great and mighty mouldering via floorboards and stucco ceilings.

Meanwhile a little goes a long way. Management, however, does

not note the significance. Central heating hides so much;

the ancient route to the garden, the lawn, the cave, the magic well.

The Lost Gardens of Cornwall

How do you lose a garden?

All the gardeners go to war.

How do you lose the idea of garden?

The rain it raineth and missing seasons.

How do you find them again?

Flying Dutchmen and screaming trees.

What then?

Whistling. Old Glass. Ghosts.

What then?

Follow the sound down to the sea.

And?

Find the gates to fix.

And?

Dig for light.

Silent Farm

Even the windows catch fire

but we cannot watch

as our farm burns, is taken in flame,

ripples to ruin.

We had kept the animals in, watched,

listening out for the instinct of the thing,

the stories of what it was like,

treachery.

Shut fields. Shut tracks. Closed words.

Waiting to hear. Seeing the other fires and then

our own animals stacked, piled high, aware of

the strangers in white who could not stop

to hear our story.

This morning our animals are all in death.

Fire is over. The six dogs are quite still.

Brief telephone calls from nowhere. Compensation talk.

Our father fumbling with his words.

We see him stride out into the yard and stumble

into silence.

Rain. Rags. Silent.

In the stomach.

Open Letter to Tomaz Salamun

I wish they would beat more drums. They should

do this before anyone makes a speech. Better still

they should do this during the speech or instead of

the speech. The children should learn how to use the

drum, how to amaze us with drums, how to shake

up the silences and these trembling afternoons. We

could have drums instead of weather forecasts and

drums to tell us when to close each day and

drums to bring out more wine and dreams.

I will suggest this to the mayor and the teacher

and the newspaper editor and Saint Francis when

I next see him shaking the birds from his shirt.

Meanwhile I will connect this drum with my laptop

and tell you about how the war ended because

nobody turned up.

Hey

"Hey," he says, plucking the shirt from this

massive machine that hisses and splats;

and he parades through the hospital laundry

as though posh, human, a person.

"Hey," he says, as the sheet comes out

with the impregnation of Jesus on the cross;

"must be because it’s Easter. Some bleeding

geezer' s got the sweats."

"Hey," he says, the one who never talks,

the one hungry for zeros and shut doors

and rain dreams and always waiting;

"this tie's full of lies."

Then it's switched off. It's over. The

boxes and the piled up sheets and clothes

and the knowing that it will all happen

again. Only the socks escaping.

I Wish You

for Kier

Between one word and another

I wish you silence.

Between the going out and entering

I wish you laughing.

Between the hill and the cottage

I wish you sea.

Between thunder and snow

I wish you visits.

Not To Hurry

Looking out on winter fields, rain silvering earth,

territory defused by planting, the people who return

to this place, walls and hedges and silences.

Are these scarecrows jesters or prophets at play?

Is that sun or a vision of things?

Failing tracks and the grass whispering.

Last year we were caught in ice for seven weeks.

All the chickens came inside and we slashed

at the frozen pig with billhooks.

The policeman said he thought we

had all been lost.

Today I hear mother singing again.

I wait outside the door

not to hurry her.