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  starched and stiffened to withstand a fall.

  Ladies in the bedroom not permitted!

  insists Mrs P through pert and proper grin.

  A nearly bald geranium in pitted

  pot nods with dry dissent from sin.

  O first-year hopefuls who unlock

  cloudy-mirrored wardrobe doors, prize

  open shallow mock-teak drawers, unpack

  your dreams! Will this lumpy chair capsize

  as you crouch to savour metered gas?

  Can you feel the rug’s biscuit patchwork

  prick through thin socks after lonely traipse

  back to pristine texts and dim-lit hack-work?

  Don’t miss High Tea at six

  seasoned with Mrs P’s prying talk:

  egg on toast, shiny ham, lurid cakes.

  Then how to bow out cheerily, stalk

  away from deadlines on Damoclean strings,

  and out towards hallowed lamp-lit recess

  where Flavia the Fair in gown and kinky stockings

  might come flowing from her bow-front fortress.

  NOTE Damocles praised Dionysius of Syracuse for his power and riches. During a feast the tyrant suspended a sword from a thread over his guest’s head to suggest the instability of wealth and status and the imminence of disaster.

  MR BUSY AND MRS: AN IDYLL

  Mr Busy, oh so busy, up and down your drive,

  past spruces well-spaced, tightly lopped and layered,

  serene spires in glistening gravel...

  off and back you drive, just for a little something...

  (Busy are you, Mr Busy?

  Lawn wants a trim, garage door’s peeling,

  leaves are going to clog the drain...)

  Mr Busy’s a mechanical man.

  His paintbrush makes me dizzy.

  So particular, so fussy:

  Mr Busy’s a busy mover.

  ‘ `morning Mr B_____! Nice day. Almost summery...’

  {{Look! The morn in russet mantle clad...

  How bloodily the sun begins to peer...}}

  ‘Keeping busy then? Just the day for jobs.

  Sorting the compost heap, I see. Plenty of tealeaves?

  Off again now!’

  (Smoothly does it in your shiny Roverette!)

  {{... charioted by Bacchus and his pards...}}

  ‘Prescriptions. It’s the wife, you see.’

  ‘Oh dear! Well...if there’s anything we can do...’

  Mr Busy and his bungalow!

  {{...one of the low on whom assurance sits

  as a screw-top on a can of turpentine. }}

  Busy bee keeping busy, making sure

  the honeycomb’s rich and snug

  about his central-heated queen.

  And there she is! Pink butterfly specs.

  (Nice and comfy, are you?)

  Looks through conservatory triple glaze

  on to shorn lawn, past Eight by Ten tool-shed,

  over rolling fields ripe for sileage...and smiles.

  ‘Mr Busy’s mower’s his life-support machine!’

  (Well that’s funny, Mrs Busy.

  Better check what Prudence brought

  through the puss-flap.)

  Mr Busy’s snapdragons are well and truly visited by bees:

  crimson, lemon, crimson, lemon, crimson, lem...

  Everybody’s busy these days,

  minding their own business...

  THAT YOU GEORGE?

  Too much it was,

  George,

  what with rippled footprints,

  crushed lilies,

  buckled larger cans,

  and those glittery fragments

  catching dawn under the east window.

  Then the shattered stone,

  shale... slivers of shale,

  George,

  bits of Beloveds, Sons, Nieces,

  tips of seraph wings,

  vases full of shiny wrappers,

  starlings raking through,

  sparrows having a damn good chuckle.

  As for the lytch gate,

  George,

  blooded all over with spray paint

  and paving sledged apart...

  Look on the bright side,

  Eh George!

  Friday night ringers at it again.

  Hear that tun-up kid

  taking a shortcut to hell,

  thrush on his steeple tree

  singing as if all were well.

  And all that stone lying there,

  like the stony dead:

  think of that, George!

  CLOISTER AND PROMENADE

  Under sun canopy among

  emptying tables, he reads and reads,

  hunched over heavy A4 paperback,

  cup, saucer and plate long forgotten.

  Close-cropped, skeletal, hirsute,

  all animation distilled into

  his flickering, light-reactor

  rimless spectacles. Enviably detached

  from afternoon-long lunch party

  in the teak-diner sanctum behind him,

  aviary of jabbered opinions ignored

  or gestured aside with ever-louder guffaws.

  If he looked up would he notice

  two little girls with no words in common,

  sit side by side, strangership dissolved

  in a shared pack of chip potatoes?

  Or wonder if they might be sisters,

  whose same brown, beady riveting eyes

  and sticky fingers scour every inch and corner

  where they happen to be this hot, sea-struck day?

  Would he spot that silver-quiffed old gent left

  by his burnished 50-something daughter

  with a pick-me-up glass of white,

  watch him cajole those heedless little darlings

  with smiling, half-articulated warnings

  that sound like final priestly blessings?

  HALLOWED GROUND

  If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels but have not love

  I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal (I Corinthians, 13, 1)

  1. ON YOUR HIGH HORSE

  Chapel’s celebrating four hundred years

  of scripture translated. Committee so much

  wants you to take part. Well-known piece,

  please, and any version you like.

  Delighted ! How could you refuse?

  Parted tongues of fire light your way

  to Pentecost. ACTS, Chapter Two.

  Might even fill them with Holy Spirit,

  to find there’s no foreign speech,

  all words God’s from time immemorial.

  Must be the King James mustn’t it?

  Took unnumbered scholars eleven years,

  rhetoric that rings with spoken sinew,

  a voice for ever crying in the wilderness

  to make straight the way of the Lord.

  You’ll stroll from pew to brass Eagle wings

  where rests heavy tome sanctified

  by years of blackening thumbs and fingers.

  Find the place with reverence while noses blow

  throats clear and shuffling feet fall still.

  2. DAY OF RECKONING

  Airy shibboleths must give way

  to what to wear and whether to tuck

  that tight-packed quarto in coat pocket

  or clutch and swing it to announce

  the Lord’s Day and where you’re duly bound.

  Unspectacular you scatter gravel

  beside chequered, boldly-buttoned coats

  and very practical handbags, filing in

  by the narrow way, eye of the needle

  into the fold of sheep the shepherd knows.

  Not prepared for no-nonsense white-wash?

  No hymnal, nothing to bow to, no pulpit

  to declaim the Word interpreted.

  A monitor displays the first hymn.

  You’ll sound like
an over-piped organ.

  All about you, sedate on creaking chairs

  a genial crowd whose tucked-in postures

  and hairdos bristle against airs and graces.

  A modest book-rest on chrome pillar

  awaits you with your fancy notions,

  you with God’s word and rows of patient faces

  whose muscles would scarcely twitch if

  Cretans and Arabians spoke in their own

  day-to-day tongue the Lord’s mighty works.

  Be thankful for your words. Mouth them well.

  One of the crowd at last you sing

  a hymn with gusto till a shirt-sleeved preacher

  preludes with glosses, then performs

  from a Cockney New Testament

  the miracle at the feast in Cana of Galilee.

  OUR MAN IN THE OBERLAND

  Kein weltlich Getümmel

  hört man nicht in Himmel!... (Des Knaben Wunderhorn)

  Soon to move on to another resort

  he calls Greendelvowelled, he’s solo

  at a patio table picking at a punnit

  of raspberries. “Hard to deal with

  heavy meals here. So good

  to sit with alpine panoramas. I get

  strains from Mahler’s 4th. You know the one

  with that last song about Heaven?...”

  We like his easy-care, sober dinner suit,

  robust yet understated hiking kit,

  his cool demand for consultation,

  launching into schemes of ‘heading out’

  with such troubled doubt and rigour,

  we’re in the unknown and he’s a pioneer.

  Bleary-eyed at breakfast we’re presented

  with his 3D model relief map.

  “Take it to plan your high-level trek

  above that tuna-whatsit lake.” (That’s

  the ice-blue expanse of Thünersee)

  “Appreciated your filling me in

  on ways down from that viewpoint

  and how to take that quaint funicular

  from the rail station by the river.

  Noticed it’s upgraded year by year!

  So what do you guys do back home?”

  Retired! We can’t be serious! Active couple

  like us must be mid-40s at most!

  Farewell circumstantial buddy,

  our own Quiet American!

  There’s no side to you. How come

  you make us feel everything we say

  opens up a whole new dimension?

  NOTE Epigraph taken from the song mentioned in line 8:

  you hear no worldly hubbub in heaven...

  DINING

  A threesome hogs sash windows that overlook

  glabrous lawns, Friesans grazing their shadows,

  distant cars glinting like trinkets in low sun.

  Club-Blazer-and-Tie breathes heavily over

  his chins, seldom exceeds a phrase in rich, slow voice,

  defers to his melon with a gentle forking,

  lets wife and female crony make the pace.

  Queen Pin scintillates through blue-tinted specs,

  emits chill fire at what she wants to see or hear.

  Dressed down tight as disapproving lips

  she wields a burnished hairdo set against dissent,

  while flabby Number Three rumbles in agreement.

  One tale ends with masticating nods, and

  You’d think her parents would have had more sense,

  then with melodious quite right, quite right!

  perspiring Drop-Jaw fuels the next assault

  with another round of Côte du Rhone.

  Can the main course douse incessant talk

  of who’s who and others’ mess and muddle?

  Chewing adds relish to the moral. Every forkful

  perfects the verbal stab and makes conviction

  piquant till it hardens like the arteries.

  Copper beeches blacken, mist creeps up,

  haloes distant processions of lights,

  while an agitating choice of suites is followed

  by Remy-Martin, Grand Marnier, and Crème de Menthe.

  Chatter shuffles to the hall, solid slams resound,

  and gravel crunches under heavy wheels.

  SPENT

  White, uniforms converge bright-eyed

  to coax, change and adjust him.

  Young, eager to show no holds are barred,

  they manipulate his bulk like navvies,

  find purpose in sores, faeces, tubes,

  maintain this flaccid mechanism,

  once cock of the walk who reckoned to tread

  every hen that fluttered across his path.

  Now he sucks on each rationed cigarette

  like a salving last request, wastes

  his stock of words on what’s served up

  as food and who can’t be arsed to visit,

  swivels pale eyes up and down

  these ayahs who rearrange his fragments.

  EGO

  You’re Alright Jack passing moochers

  who surely put on age like protective gear.

  Wait till all those aches and niggles

  entertained as passing blips, take root

  and shoot

  with mechanical precision.

  Then try to get smartarse Jack

  off your back.

  Feel him tug when you hobble to

  the coach after yet another toilet stop,

  trying to spot your partner’s hairdo.

  If you’re lucky and she’s still there,

  helping you trudge unlikely extra miles

  on brittle bones and muscles drained of blood.

  TOGETHER

  Couples should fill us with hope,

  walking with that assured clasp,

  children again, wandering anywhere,

  whimsical in their surprising leisure.

  Such meanders, such pleasure in each other,

  such florid dreams that cannot wilt or wither.

  Forget those routine stairs their feet

  will tread, rooms that seem replete

  with cluttered memories and trinkets,

  assumed like the bond of debt and habits.

  IN THE CAFÉ OF YOUR CHOICE

  She’s half listening but I broach my fear

  that options keep displacing one another.

  “I’m doing X, and beyond return, knowing it

  could have been Y, had I considered

  as I now need to, α and β. Or even Z,

  given the advantages I begin to suspect

  of accounting for X,Y, α and β, not to

  mention θ which has just occurred to me.”

  (Wait, though. The ageing gent over there

  stares painfully at a cocksure trendy.

  Why do I think he might object to fairisle

  tanktops, slicked-down hair or a partner

  having to listen to one or two notions

  repeated in a hundred and one guises

  over several capuccinos ?) “Perhaps,” I resume,

  “this shows my days are numbered and I’ll lose

  my appetite for taking algebraic stock.”

  “You’ll get over it. It’s tension,”

  she says. “And too much isolation.”

  Now let me consider this very carefully,

  I think I say, or am I mumbling ? “Next time,

  and not just at one of these plastic tables,

  I’ll begin as I mean to go on:

  setting out to find a solution.”

  Clearly though she’s not impressed.

  GOLD & SILVER

  I.

  She censures our unruly world

  with every step, and bourgeois gold

  kindles her hair tossed here and there

  to say Try me! As if you’d dare!

  II.

  Marigold open to noon-day sun,

  this is your now. You need not<
br />
  be seed, shoot, bud or rot.

  Unlike ours your cycle’s just begun.

  III.

  When her hair’s thinned and silver

  she’ll look back and think proudly:

  I found my own man and lover

  and not a murmur disturbed me.

  IV.

  Known mainly for tepid social grace,

  she breaks out in sudden praise

  for the lovely sound of silver and bell,

  her tongue tingling with their spell.

  POET BROADCASTS

  1. ME

  I’m all about myth re-explored.

  You can’t exhaust myths: everything itself

  yet something else. Who needs empiricism!

  I’ll match A with B and see what arises:

  lab.-work without a book of formulae.

  I’m after anti-drama, coolly playing down

  the awaited in a world that’s mezzo-forte,

  mezzo-relievo, mezzo-just-about-the-lot!

  2. IT

  Take this geranium stewing in its pot:

  it brews aromas of damp nightfall

  on the edge of woods over which a disappointing moon

  hesitates in butterfly clouds that once

  soared over the skies of your brittle childhood,

  or maybe it was after you stepped from the car

  in which Orpheus drove away from his terrible loss,

  stung by the memory of a serpent in long grass

  and of a swaying light, once a promising train

  that resounded with half-forgotten melodies

  before he’d lost his metro ticket...

  Meeting a shadow of what she was

  he’d noticed a slight twist to her mouth,

  lobe-less ears, a high, glacial forehead,

  how her left forefinger itched the air.

  Was it worth encountering those monstrous guards

  and officials with references and excuses in triplicate,

  agreeing to ridiculous conditions for her release?

  Even to this day he can’t recall what she wore:

  probably something pleated that bellied out

  in the first blasts of upper air as he turned round

  to warn her about snags in the cave floor...

  And then the automatic doors closed

  and he watched her looking for a seat,

  shaking dust and damp wind out of her hair...