Marvellous Andrew

(after Edward Thomas)

Yes. I am in London Airport, transiting there,

Idly scanning a book of poetry to pass the time

As I wait. It is 4 o’clock in the morning

On the August Bank holiday.

A disembodied voice announces “ Gate 23....”

And phalanxes rise like a tidal surge,

Their vacated seats quickly filling.

I keep my eye on the screen for my flight number

And watch, as shoppers buying their booze and bags

Shuffle through the fashion shops and duty free,

No whit less intent on their task

Than in any high street in any town,

And in that instant screens flicker.

Twenty flights are announced within the hour

Between 4.30 and 5.30, transporting whole populations

Do you see what I see? You may not yet,

But look again. I'll persuade you yet.

Does this disgust you too? It may not yet,

But just repeat. I'll persuade you yet.

Does this make you laugh too? It may not yet,

But read again. I'll persuade you yet.

Do you find this amazing too? You may not yet,

But consider. I'll persuade you yet.

Does this make you angry too? It may not yet,

But think again. I'll persuade you yet.

Surely this makes you cry too! No? It may not yet.

OTHER MEN’S FLOWERS

Let me show you around the playground; Notice how it’s full of ladies waiting for 3.15. On the whole they’re a friendly bunch, but see How they come together in cliques to chat Their daily inconsequential chat of this and that, Keeping the uninitiated like me away.

Consequently I rarely know their proper names. So when I think of them, I think of them as flowers I’ve grown. Here, for example, comes sultry antirrhinum (Snapdragon once). Notice that certain directness in her look That appears at times to say “come on.” But my imagination runs amok, and I have no doubt She’d bite it off if I were to chance my arm.

How I love to pass shy violet, coming now; A white variety, I think, rather than the blue. See how she inclines her head, very slightly, when we pass, But meets my eye and never fails to say hello. I often joke with wild hollyhock who seems pleased to see me And laughs at everything I say. Listen! Hear how she’s laughing her greeting now From across the playground for all to hear. But hiding over there is mysterious orchid Who looks right through me as though I’m just not here. See, she averts her eyes, glancing left and right, At anything and everywhere. But not at me. But here is one who makes my heart leap, then skip a beat. She has, you see, the palest skin, like milk, Which seemed to glow when first we met; A lily closed, I thought. See how it opens when she smiles.

So. My Bouquet. My Fragrance. My Anthology then, Of flowers that don’t belong to me, but other men.

.....stands gaunt. Limbs drawn down.

There is concern;

Smoke seeps in wreaths

Through skirting leaves,

Blown by the wind in fleeting shrouds.

There is alarm;

Flames flick and lick

In tongues from twig to branch.

There is dismay;

The vortex roars.

And ash-white petals fall softly.

Inside the skirts a bed of tinder leaves, brought in

By eager hands to build a den,

Where dreams were dreamed and plans were planned,

Where guilty secrets feared no reprimand.

The weeping elm, for childhood years a den,

Until one April when that....careless spark?

He had a name for it, my friend, an engineer,

This ability to see things at a tangent, on a slant,

To produce something unique, where the rest of us

Would simply extrapolate in a straight line.

Being "non-linear" he called it.

Other creatives can do this too,

Architects, composers, scientists, mathematicians,

And poets, who can see the extraordinary in the familiar.

Craig Raine for example, in "Flying to Belfast" during the Troubles;

In the place of neat and ordered fields and towns

And the glint of sunshine on windows,

He sees, from his aircraft, a circuit, laid out,

Wired-up and soldered -----like the inside of a radio

He says, with the back ripped off.

And with innocent words

Creates an image of a country

Hard-wired to violence.

"We need something out of the ordinary"

My friend would say. " It must be simple, easy to make,

And unlike anything else on the market.

Let’s give the job to so-and- so,

( after listening to some recent pronouncements

on, eg. the free movement of people across borders;

the ownership of guns; the extermination of non-believers;

cicumcision; fgm; creationism; property ownership,

from the stalwarts of the EU, the NRA, ISIS,

and a number of religious and political organizations )

I believe in the one Establishment,

The primacy of its culture and beliefs

Traceable to the founding fathers

Through generations, millennia.

I will protect its values.

I will promote its rules and regulations.

I will voice my wholehearted support.

I will not entertain criticism or accept failure.

I am the Establishment Man

And I feel strong in the certainty of its culture.

It defines my inalienable freedoms

Written into our Constitution,

I want it to make me laugh, and angry;

I want it to make me happy, and sad;

I want to say I agree wholeheartedly, and violently disagree;

I want to feel mystified, but not too much;

I want it to create an attraction, and disgust;

I want to say "now that's clever," but not too frequently;

I want to feel baffled, but not for long;

I want to be amazed at the scholarship, but not all the time;

I want it to create an unexpected emotion;

I want it to be memorable;

I want to say "I wish I'd written that."

7. LATER.....

.......when, three hundred miles away

Near the old railway arch

Where wild garlic tangs the air in May,

I'm pulled back seventy years

As I rest my head against the stone

And hear again that soft "pwa, pwa, pwa"

As he lights his pipe,

And watch, as clouds of pollen, drift,

A veil of yellow haze,

Along the old abandoned railway line, and settle

YELLOWING DAYS

6. To Lizzie Slade ( after Thomas Hardy )

5. PASSING THROUGH

I was just passing, nearby,

And I detoured to show them.

"This is the village where I once lived," I said,

"In this cottage of still-standing stone, all

Of 30 years ago. I've not been back since.

It now looks, well, so small;

I can almost touch the sill of my bedroom window.

And can this be the wall where, with my ten-bob bat

I played the ball, to emulate my hero at the time,

Called "The New Boy" then,

As I glanced one off my legs for 4?"

Kingcups, hazel, and iris gold there were,

Not here now though, but familiar still,

Here, where I once played

Where the sign says "Quarry Road".

Now filled in and overgrown

With bungalows, built for newly-weds,

Walls newly white with plastic boards.

"I used to play here" I explain to a suspicious mum.

"All these were here when we moved in" she says,

"And we've lived here, oh, at least two years,

But we're moving soon. Nothing to do, the place is dead."

That must be Daisy. She and Cecil owned the farm.

I'd recognise her by her chest, a wonder to behold

Even for a pre-pubescent 10 year old,

Now, alas, like autumn's swallows, long-gone south.

"Do you remember me......?"

Says she sold the farm when Cecil died.

Now sits behind a desk three days a week.

Tends phones instead, for the local village taxi firm.

Good Lord! There's Liz's Mum. Eighty, if she's a day.

"Do you remember me....?"

Says Liz moved away many years ago.

Married a potter. Had four kids.

Lives on Hayling Island I think she said.

But now I'm here, I see the rosy bubble's burst;

Time has leached the colour out.

Many of those I once knew have died, have moved away,

While some, like me, are just passing through.

So on the whole, a mistake I think, to think

The past remains quite as you remember it.

Better to let it live in memory where you can hold it

4. LEAVING UPLYME

They could no longer manage,

(Though I didn't know it at the time).

Nan, bat-blind; Grampy, deaf, isolated,

Permanently angry - couldn't manage, they said.

And me, 15, growing big, demanding;

Needed to be civilized, they said,

(Though I didn't know it at the time).

So back to Ma,

Who, war-wearied, and with a new man,

Had farmed me out aged 10.

So, a few cases, some coats,

A book or two and that was it,

Five years' worth of stuff

Piled into a car, ( whose?),

Driven 60 miles, ( by whom?),

Clutching a leaving present from next door,

A Mars Bar, in exchange for my cat

Who "wouldn't settle in" they said,

Swapping my fields, my farm, my trees, my stream,

My square mile for a wide city, for buses,

Cinemas, libraries, for swimming pools and shops.

"This will be the making of you" they said,

(Though I didn't know it at the time).

And aged Mrs. Mathews and aged Mrs. Finnemore

Outside their two-ups and two-downs,

Waving me off, smiling their relieved smiles,

Turning away inside to make their tea.

And Liz,

My pal at 12,

Enigmatic at 14,

Speaking a language I didn’t understand at 16,

Vanishing round the bend forever

Into the past.

3. FISHING

In Middle Mill, in meadows by the Lym where pools collect

And minnows swim, I learn to sit and concentrate,

With broom-handle rod and clothes-line string

Held taut by a hook, two inches long,

(big enough, he said, to catch a shark),

And watch it dip, then dip again

As clouds of minnows nibble at the bait.

He, my Grandfather, leaning back,

Leans, back against the pungent bank

And settles down to light his pipe, elbow cocked

To catch the flame, and with that soft pwa, pwa, pwa,

2. INTRODUCTIONS

Then, sex didn't exist, or was just an accident.

My Nan and Gramp, good Baptists, and upright both,

Didn't see it as their task when they took me on,

And kept such topics out of bounds,

And boxed my ears, occasionally.

But they hadn't reckoned on the farm,

A Mecca for a curious ten year old,

Where birds and bees were a constant source,

And a cow and a bull at the appointed time.

"What's he doing ?" to Daisy leading a bull,

By his nose, heaving and bellowing.

"I'm taking the bull to the cow" she replies, evasively.

Peter and Pat, her boys of eleven and twelve,

And old hands at the game and planted, they said,

1. 1948

Daisy, standing by the gate

Calls "Cow, Cow, Cow" and rings a bell

To summon her parishioners, Dot and Spot and Co.

Swinging up the hill, full milk-sacks swaying,

To ruminate in quiet stalls, yielding streams that spurt

Through expert fingers into ringing pails.

Daisy churns, and by some alchemy

She turns the liquid into gold.

"Let's see if you like this" says my Nan, stooping low,

Hands cupped to hold a buttercup beneath my chin

Where skin glows --- as it always does.

"Good" she says; "now find me some for my dressing table,

Cowslips clamouring to be picked

And primroses hiding from the sun."

Liz and I slip away, to play by the old quarry,

Cocooned by hazel and sentinelled by iris flags

Bearing swords as sharp as steel.

"Would she like a newt, flashing it's belly

In a jar by her bed?" We laugh,

But I am ten, and choose instead, lush kingcups,

Necklaces glowing at the water's edge, to float

In a bowl on her washing stand.

On high-summer's days, with dust hanging in the air,

Wains snail their way through shaven hay,

Parched throats flushed from cider flasks,

Finger-hooked, arm-crooked, and laid

In cool grasses under a hawthorn hedge,

Where, surreptitiously, we steal a swig;

While in Autumn's mists we pluck the cobs

Couched by Midas, and gather mushrooms

As big as saucers that cracked the earth

Like aliens in the night.

Too early though for us to hear a rumour in the air

Of combines, threshing and baling in prairied fields,

Or machines that hum, and suck the fluid ounce

From Number 256 in a distant hall.

Too early too, to see grey wreaths

Stubbling the fields, that mask

It wasn't his. Not made by him, consciously.

He just came across it, one day, on the beach.

But it caught his eye. Attractive. Almost round,

Smooth and lozenge-shaped,

That fitted into his hand, snugly;

Light grey that darkened to a shining black

When he spat on it.

He rubbed it as he walked, holding it, caressing it.

He wondered what rock it was, where it came from,

How long it had tumbled within its universe,

Smoothed and fashioned through long years.

He thought of these things, mulling them over,

Thought of keeping it,

Adding it to his flotsam and jetsam

As he wandered, collecting casually.

But it seemed too much,

And seeing the vast float-glass sea

He sent it on its way,

Bouncing, three, four, five times, until

Energy spent, it sank to the depths

A part of life, then,

Long worshipful Sundays,

Matins, Eucharist, Evensong, Sunday School,

"O Lord, open thou..." " And our mouths shall show forth..."

“Our Father....”

Choir practice twice a week,

The special days, special occasions;

Prayers at my bedside - "gentle Jesus meek and mild...."

And singing, “ Little boy kneels at the foot of the bed....”

Heads bowed at mealtimes - "for what we are about..."

Disowned when it seemed preposterous

By my know-all teens.

But by then, deep-down;

"Give me a child..."

And still word-perfect after fifty years.

If you'd cut me now and count the rings,

He staggers, his trousers around his knees,

Pockets bulging with nuggets of burnished copper,

Arms cradling a paper bag, filled with the treasure

He can't bear to lose as he struggles home,

Fingers stinging from prising open the green shells.

He imagines the fivers, tenners, some would become.

These would be winners he would swop

And barter for other desirables.

He empties his pockets onto the bedside table,

Handfuls of copper - pennies and tuppences,

As he’d conveniently handed over the fivers or tenners,

His pension he’d collected from the Post Office,

To pay for a newspaper, milk, bread, salad.

The two carrier bags had made his arms ache

While his pockets were bulging and heavy as he walked home.