The Reed Bed Read online

  I had a spring that emptied into memory.

  Tongs

  My mother sits by the grate

  with a newspaper pressed

  like a sail sheet

  against the tall tongs.

  Behind, the fire whooshes

  as the draught ascends.

  When the flames have taken

  she lifts her feet

  onto the lower mantel,

  legs splayed neatly

  before the open hearth.

  She drops asleep

  without her glasses on, mouth open

  like a singer taking

  a breath, and the hands in her lap

  form a cup

  into which passing strangers

  might have put

  some small token.

  She is sleeping

  between shifts.

  Her chair is tilted.

  One little toe in the brown nylon

  is bandaged.

  On the green fire-tiles

  her two shoes.

  In the nook the long-legged tongs.

  On the window the bars.

  When We Talk of What’s Out There

  When we talk of what’s out there

  inside us the real thing goes on

  being said. ‘Will you stop your snivelling,’

  the dying woman said to the husband by her bed,

  ‘you’re making a fool of me.’ Then she went off

  to the place she feared most. And so the outpourings

  of the normal save us from despair. ‘The nights

  are drawing in,’ says a man as he looks

  at his beasts. And what he means is all of this

  won’t last. ‘Venus, I think,’ the woman says, looking up,

  but she might as well have said I have not slept

  since John went. So do not speak of despair. Tell me

  of one solitary object I can hold on to.

  Give me its name. Watch how he sleeps,

  the man who has cursed God.

  He is holy and absolute in sleep.

  Those Days

  Those days

  I could not pass a house

  where a child was crying

  without wanting to run.

  Run where?

  There is nowhere to run

  after you leave a daughter,

  after you leave a son.

  And what have they lost?

  A ghost typing

  in the spare room

  knowing that

  with every year

  an old tenderness

  is fading. The early days

  grow so distant they hurt,

  and when we meet

  it’s like old people

  who knew eachother

  when they were young,

  so far back

  they have to begin

  inventing it, that

  awesome past,

  and you think you

  will never get over it,

  the loss at your side

  just here,

  waist-level.

  The Reed Bed

  1

  So it is with the reeds. I pass them daily

  but the minute I’ve gone by

  and the rustling stops

  somewhere behind me

  among the floating trees,

  they no longer exist,

  and then I start

  wondering what is it I lost,

  what was that thing,

  that important thing,

  I left behind me

  on the dreaming road?

  2

  And then comes the moment

  when returning home

  I turn perchance their way

  and there they are,

  the familiars I lost

  that morning,

  sifting, by the dark tree

  that marks the edge

  of their watery bed,

  a tossed acre of amber reeds

  feather-headed,

  frail, summoning.

  3

  And this is when

  they truly exist,

  when you come

  upon them

  at the last moment

  and the eye

  suddenly catches them

  nodding in their bed

  of cinnamon,

  getting ready

  in a flurry of whispering

  to leave you again.

  Only Just

  1

  … When night falls

  the day passes

  over Helen’s child face

  and she is back in a pram

  or in a pink-laced cot

  under a table,

  there’s washing in the air,

  Saturday’s midday news,

  a plain ceiling,

  then somewhere

  near five

  you toss suddenly

  and scream

  as they bury you

  alive, in a wet grave …

  2

  … Wakening you

  is like pulling someone

  out of surging waters,

  you flounder

  with wild eyes

  in the bed, say thanks,

  and take my hand

  and squeeze it

  with trust,

  then fall back in

  to the deep

  with a sigh.

  The spear thrown

  by ancestors misses

  the sleeper, only just …

  3

  … Now your pillow is full of sleep

  while mine is

  awake all night.

  Whoever the other fellow is

  who dreams in me

  he cannot be worse

  than myself

  when I cannot

  rest. I’m on duty

  at the gate

  of a tremendous city

  where complaints

  and crazies

  are on the go

  till the early hours …

  4

  … When you get up

  my shift is over. I fall

  into your heat

  and your shape;

  above me is

  the plain ceiling;

  the news is on

  in the distance. I slip

  my head onto your pillow

  to hear bird talk

  from the garden

  and what, for a second,

  it is like to beat

  in silence against

  the wet coffin …

  The Task

  Go down into the dab with the rock,

  I’m told, go down into the dab,

  right down into the blue dab

  is the job,

  it’s there you’ll find

  purchase for a wall,

  man dear,

  again’ the say.

  I’m down in the dab for hours

  before I take a break to see

  how far there is to go. Right

  round the alt and on forever,

  and I realise he’s set me

  a task for a lifetime, that man,

  that man who sent me

  down into the dab

  to hoke

  again’ the ocean.

  I tell myself be patient.

  Carry smaller stones

  but carry some.

  Don’t go,

  you fool,

  with nothing in your arms.

  Chalkey’s Grave

  The moon came in on the ebb,

  jib-sail aloft,

  and filling fast

  chased through

  the blotted sky

  sending every shadow

  towards us,

  raced across the troughs

  and bar, the broken plough,

  abandoned car,

  as if this must be got

  over with quick,

  this torrid century

  and the next:


  then on her side

  she stopped

  to dock

  a moment in

  a flood

  of winter

  stars, everything

  fell into

  oblivion, the spade

  moved back

  from the house

  and stood still

  as sentinel

  and dule-tree

  at the spot in the garden

  where I had

  jammed it

  into the dank earth,

  not a bark to be heard

  on the headland,

  not a bark

  from the house,

  nothing, as the moon

  passed overhead.

  For a while

  everything was upright,

  then, as the shadow

  of the spade’s lean handle

  started slowly back

  across the garden

  sheds and walls

  went on the move,

  the wee bare sycamore began

  to climb,

  the moon went in behind

  a cloud

  and doused the glim;

  down, dog, down.

  Then the moon swung above

  my trousers on the line

  and went beyond the vests

  and shirts and turf,

  the tin rooves

  and lewing cows,

  till, with sea-cloud trailing

  in her wake,

  at the alt

  she took a look

  at Horse Island,

  lit the salt

  in Moffit’s field,

  the wall of cockle

  brightened

  and the long shadow

  of the gallows spade

  crossed

  the loose earth upon

  the dog’s grave.

  It’s done: turning west

  she baled light

  onto the Yellow Strand

  and, lightened

  of her load,

  went on.

  Who is That?

  Who is that at the door?

  The cat with a young lark in her mouth.

  And that?

  The thump of colour on a boulder.

  Who is breathing?

  Everywhere light is breathing fast.

  It’s breathing on gulls,

  on ravens that stroll the burst sea-bed.

  What is that on the sand?

  The light that carries sound inland.

  And the shriek?

  The shriek is a warning.

  Even the warm sun in the mist

  is a warning.

  Who is that at the door?

  The cat with a young lark in her mouth.

  A Warning

  1

  I see it happening

  again, all that happened

  last night,

  numerous times,

  many nights,

  the same ravine,

  the same attempt

  to save myself …

  2

  Till I realise at last

  that dreams

  go over it

  word for word,

  that perilous descent

  we make each night

  to hear

  the warning.

  3

  A warning has been

  sent to me

  from where things

  happen over and over

  and then once

  only, and continues

  even as I write

  these words down.

  Sunday, 16 August 1998

  In Omagh

  on a deserted street just after dawn

  there was no one abroad

  but some lone cameraman

  taking a shot for the news. And at a slight incline

  above the piled debris

  the only thing still working

  beyond his lens

  was the traffic lights.

  And there, though no car stirred,

  the lights went red,

  the lights went green,

  and red, and green again;

  for Stop, though no one stopped,

  for Go, though no one went,

  nor stopped, nor went again.

  Undisturbed by all that happened

  the lights still kept urging traffic

  through the crack that opened

  between ten-after-three

  and eternity. And then they went faster

  as if the bomb had damaged time itself,

  then slowed again as if somehow they could

  go back to normality.

  Then faster still, the light for Stop,

  the light for Go, the light for Stop,

  the light for Go, the light for Stop,

  for Stop, for Stop, for Stop.

  Alas

  In the dead house

  pictures have been

  turned to the wall

  and the mirror

  sheeted

  with a pillow slip

  in which

  you can trace

  the faint outline

  of the sleeping head

  that once lightly rested

  there, and

  the chant of prayer

  rises for fear

  we might hear

  the unmilked cow

  lewing in the flooded

  haggard,

  and again —

  there it is —

  the shake in the hand

  of the bereaved

  repeating itself

  as she steadies

  her fingers

  upon the forehead

  of the beloved

  like someone, alas,

  finding

  balance

  The West End

  in memory of Douglas

  Good day, mister, I say.

  Good day to you, sir, he calls back

  and salutes, a sharp snap of the full hand

  to the forehead, then we trundle by eachother

  on the beach road.

  And this went on for several winters,

  the salute, himself and his dog, and after that dog

  another, the two of them braving sleet

  and churlish wind,

  and he always calling me sir!

  Sometimes I’d meet him dropping into Ellen’s

  for crisps and fags. And heading West

  he’d lift his bald terrier to let a car pass.

  After the worst storms he’d appear on the road

  carrying shopping home.

  Then one day I learnt that he had worked

  next door to me in Picadilly years before

  and so I stopped up to tell him the news.

  He looked at me for some time.

  Are you the author? he asked.

  I am, I said. So what happened, he said,

  that we found ourselves in this dreadful place?

  The want of wit, I think, he said,

  and he headed off to his caravan

  in the dank West.

  And so for some years here we were

  far from Eros and all the girls,

  the Classic cinemas, the strip joints,

  hamburger stalls, the French House,

  Wardour Street, Ward’s,

  of no consequence to each other

  except for that co-incidence in the sixties.

  We share a past, mine more sordid than his

  perhaps. Men from office days

  in the West End

  tipping outdoors when rain is finished

  into another West where the murder of the sea

  is news, or mud-wrestlers in Jordan’s,

  and now and then, a squad car on the dunes.

  We know few here

  except those we took with us.

  Good day, sir, I call. Good day to you, sir, he calls,

  and leans back and salutes

  like a book that always
opens

  at the right page.

  All Soul’s Day, November 1998

  The Words

  The rain started slowly,

  began with a single perfect drop

  that took an age

  to run down a page,

  then came another and another

  till the glass was streaming.

  Soon the hail was peppering the lakes

  and driving across the Atlantic;

  a cloud-burst

  struck the wide empty desert;

  a bullfrog

  sang,