For Clare

The librarian's bear is an articulate bear.
The librarian's bear is a biophysicist bear.
The librarian's bear is a Christian bear.
The librarian's bear is a dancing bear.
The librarian's bear is an eager bear.
The librarian's bear is a female bear.
The librarian's bear is a Guardian-reading bear.
The librarian's bear is a happy bear.
The librarian's bear is an intellectual bear.
The librarian's bear is a journalistic bear.
The librarian's bear is a knowledgeable bear.
The librarian's bear is a little bear.
The librarian's bear is a massaging bear.
The librarian's bear is a nominally plump bear.
The librarian's bear is an optimistic bear.
The librarian's bear is a popular bear.
The librarian's bear is a questioning bear.
The librarian's bear is a round bear.
The librarian's bear is a solid bear.
The librarian's bear is a trustworthy bear.
The librarian's bear is an uncommon bear.
The librarian's bear is a valuable bear.
The librarian's bear is a web-whizzkid bear.
The librarian's bear is an extrovert bear.
The librarian's bear is a young bear.
The librarian's bear is a zestful bear.


The above lines were written in 1998, the year Clare and I married, and were published in Streetwise 32, autumn 1998, p. 18.  I should say that I was editor of Streetwise at that time.  I am posting them on the eve of our 15th anniversary.

Strictly speaking, Clare is not much like a bear, and has never been seriously plump.  However, when we met in 1982, she was less slight than the woman I had been told she resembled, and 'plump' is a word I like the sound of.  I draw on that first plump impression for a continuing licence to say it.

Clare is the first person to see my poems and comment on them, and they sometimes reflect her work in science journalism.

More numbers poems

In 1986, I wrote a poem called 'Values: what the parties think of the number nine'.  A couple of years later, I conceived the idea of incorporating 'Values' into a sequence of poems, one for each of the digits 0 to 9.  I wrote all of the projected poems, but soon realised that I had to deal with them separately, if I wished for any hope of publication.  I evidently came to that decision long before I began keeping my poetry card index in 1994, and I cannot now lay hands on a copy of the sequence as a whole.

The poems for 3 and 4 I put together.  They were published in Streetwise 12, October 1993, p. 26.

3 4

4 4

hard to hold against pulse and a holding

in balance in tension impossibly

big for cohesion and tight for division

three is a time and a stretch and a way

Four, plus-minus, fridge, central heating, neat,

clicks over, give or take, its even beat,

four weeks a month, an issue every quarter,

four simple elements, earth, air, fire, water,

four mind-forms, melancholic, or phlegmatic,

or sanguine, or choleric, automatic

four strokes to turn an engine. Give or take,

four is for things we comprehend or make.

The poem for 7 doesn't explicitly mention the number at all, but it mentions the whole-tone scale, which has seven notes, and the last two lines have seven syllables each.  It was published in the Poetry Now anthology Mating rituals, edited by Veronica Hannon (Peterborough: Poetry Now, 1993), p. 142, and is, I suppose, the kind of thing I have had in mind when I've described myself as partly failed puritan and partly failed enfant terrible.

NB

Straights are major, gays are minor,

transsexuals bitonal,

and awkward in their whole-tone

scale some choose to be alone.

The poem for 8, on the other hand, names the number in the title and first line.  It is concerned mainly with visual images; the date in the first line has to do with the figure 8 as a sun and its reflection, not with historical events.  The picture that I had in mind when writing the quatrain was the cover illustration of the Unesco Courier for November 1987.  It shows the remains of a ship, which went down two centuries ago, caught by sonar imaging on the floor of one of the Great Lakes, with masts still standing.

EIGHT

The eighth of August eighty-eight,
a shimmer of reflected suns,
the water heating back the light.

Sound shudders through, down, octaves down,
echoes the vessel, fathoms drowned,
displays green of years or water,
shadows two masts on a deep ground.

'Eight' was published in Saint Matthew's church magazine, Cambridge, May-June 1989.

Irrationally sinister

This dates from 2004, and was published in Streetwise 59, summer 2005, p. 6.


IRRATIONALLY SINISTER

A jib-crane and an England flag.
Strong breeze, November dusk,
the crane still, the flag flying,
the building site in its betweenness.

Irrationally sinister:
a jib-crane and an England flag.
Perhaps it was the web report --
BBCi, from Iran,
the jib-crane's engine starting up
in early dawn, the killer hoist,
choking, twitching, in the wind.

Irrationally sinister:
a jib-crane and an England flag.
Perhaps it was the TV thriller --
a man fixed high up on a boat,
brush in hand, hasn't painted once
in the last hour. A dressed-up corpse.

Irrationally sinister:
a jib-crane and an England flag.
Perhaps it was the photograph --
a boat-train and a Swedish flag,
not sixties-new, as I thought then,
but from before the First World War.

And we know what old photos are.

Traces

This poem has me, in Norman Nicholson's phrase, looking back to looking back. It was written in 1994. I believe that the discovery that triggered it was made that same year, though a scan of my diary for the whole of the University's Long Vacation 1994 yields no reference to it.

The memo referred to was dated 1982. My thought on finding it was not "How far we've come in twelve years!" but "1982? Really?"

I have noted three publications of this poem: in Streetwise 17, December 1994 (p. 17), in Cambridge University libraries information bulletin 39, Michaelmas 1996 (p. 8), and in Perimeter 8, July 2000 (p. 21).


TRACES

The library where I work now quiet
(deep in high summer, a day in August):
weeding old files, I find a warning
to staff, twelve years back, on both sites,
about this man, dirty, mad, belongings
all rammed into a bag -- he's recognizable
indeed by the bag and the dirt --
the only one, it seems, in all the world....

I weed some more, watching out for the memo
permitting first names on Faculty premises,
or the schedule of words, with shillings off your wages
for saying them, or the statement
on isolated cases of divorce, reported
in other sections of the University,
that they should not give any cause for alarm.
But the files contain no more of the kind;
there might be something in the books.

Windozelle and Windosil

WINDOZELLE AND WINDOSIL

(an entry in the English National Opera Mini-Operas script competition; inspired by Neil Gaiman's The sweeper of dreams)


WINDOSIL's flat. Curtained window, with some light beyond it. Kitchen counter, with kettle and loaded toaster; table with cereal-and-toast breakfast setting for one. On the floor, the detritus of Windosil's dreams: toy dinosaurs, model railway tunnels, books with titles like The book of nasty photographs and 101 reasons you should commit suicide.

WINDOSIL sits at the table and stares glumly. WINDOZELLE stands, enjoying her complete mastery of WINDOSIL's life.

WINDOZELLE: On sister duty. I'm here for Windosil,
sticking up for her when the Sweeper of Dreams
arrives to take her nightmares. He's a bully.
I despise nobody more than him.

WINDOSIL: Oh Windozelle, you can't control the fall.

WINDOZELLE: The things he said drove Windosil
to drink and then it made her ill,
mad. She downed fifty of her pill.
She jumped from fifty feet and still
it wouldn't end.

WINDOSIL: Oh Windozelle, you can't control the fall.

WINDOZELLE: You never listen to me, Windosil,
and now all this. Do as your sister says
to keep the Dream Sweeper in his place –
five fruit a day
no travelling
no cheese at night
no tea at night
no wine by day
no consecutives
no adjectives and adverbs
no colour on colour
lie on your back, head to left, knees to right
avoid using the word got
don't talk to people you can't see
pull yourself together like a pair of curtains
dip the powdered bandage in water, every hour on the hour
reset the risk thermostat every night
and leave the morning reset to the Dream Sweeper.

WINDOSIL: Oh Windozelle, you can't control the fall.

Enter the SWEEPER OF DREAMS.

WINDOZELLE: Yes, you. I'd like a word. It must be dull
for you, monotonous, that broom.
I want to give you some variety,
make your life useful. That is why I told you,
when you come here, don't just sweep, but reset
Windosil's risk thermostat. The poor girl
finds it difficult, another cause of worry.
I told you this three months ago and yet
each day she has to make her own reset.
Not what I'd call too big a thing to do
for somebody just sweeping trash like you.

The SWEEPER OF DREAMS stops sweeping.

WINDOSIL: Oh Windozelle, you can't control the fall.

The SWEEPER OF DREAMS attacks WINDOZELLE with his broom. He knocks her over. Then he sweeps her, with the dreams, the entire length of the kitchen and out of sight.

Musical crescendo under the remaining action?

WINDOSIL goes to the window, opens the curtains, opens the window. Sunlight, birdsong, traffic noises. WINDOSIL moves over to the kitchen counter, and switches on the kettle and the toaster; then to the table, and pours some cereal into the bowl. You can't eat and sing at the same time; let's end there.

Poems in Orbis

These poems are about to appear in Orbis 158. They have had the benefit, as Orbis poems tend to do, of editorial suggestions by Carole Baldock.

'By degrees' was my entry in the 2008 Keats-Shelley competition, whose theme that year, I seem to recall, was the word 'lost'. Keats-Shelley has a way of giving its entrants one-word themes that are very stimulating. 'A sentence' was written in 2011, probably for the Rhyme and Reason competition on the theme of 'time'.

The competition pattern re-asserts itself!


BY DEGREES

Soon it will be a twelvemonth since you lost,
whether by jump or push, your livelihood,
and ran to earth your heat in online post,
recycled Booker, climate science booed.
I lack much science, but, ad hominem,
am consoled, although saddened, when I see
your posts, the different ways of signing them:
two of them, a matter of geography.
For readers living in the USA,
you sign as ‘Dr’ at your new address;
for audiences here in the UK,
who know you, you still sign doctorateless.

Is this the old tradition of the prophet
honoured abroad, at home less well regarded?
Well-meaning, earnest? Other readings of it
spring up like Jack, and will not be discarded.
I cannot say what method’s best to measure
the profit of this title that you use,

not money, true, but cachet, psychic pleasure,
against what, as it’s false, you stand to lose.


A SENTENCE
The phrase ‘a prisoner doing time’,
tautologous, suggests the hand
of a sub-editor – ‘prisoner’
taking the place of ‘pervert’ (banned)?

I have no proof. Editing good,
censorship bad, I know. What time
changing ‘pervert’ to ‘prisoner’ took
was at worst a minute’s waste, no crime;

if hours, a background process, not
the trial months, the years of jail,
the decades from his bullying
strictness to this shock. And those measures pale

against the time he’s doing time for
against the lives he’s doing life for
against the time against the lives
against against against the lives
against against against against

against against against against

Competition poem

This would have been my entry in the Haddon Library's 2009 poetry competition, had I not been ineligible to enter because I was the organiser.

I'd asked entrants to write around one or more of the numbers 800, 1209, and 2009, interpreted freely -- so 1209 could mean £12.09, or 12 September, or some area code. The present poem to my own brief was written shortly before the closing date of this competition and entered in the competition run by Manchester Cathedral. It was one of the runners-up! And published in the competition booklet for 2009.

The reference to "Crediton, Landscore, Cain, Read, and Judge" concerns an incident -- an email indiscretion on the part of a school receptionist -- that made news that year.


AFTER CHURCH

(written around Cambridge University's putative 800th anniversary, 2009)


(i)

Church is over by 12:09, these days;
the sermon's shorter, the service tighter, brisker.
Pretty well everyone prefers it so.
By 12:09 we'd now be having coffee,
or even biking home on Coldham's Lane,
the country highway bit, the airport rise.

That's where we live. Meanwhile, in Devon --


(ii)

After the incident, the email round the church;
and after the email, the concerned reader;
and after the concern, the boss;
and after the boss, the Institute;
and after the Institute, the journalists;
and after the journalists, the bloggers;
and after the bloggers, the hate-mailers;
and after the hate-mailers, the poets.

Poems about the news don't often find
much that the journalists have left behind.
Shirking reporters' legwork, poets tell
what others thought and may have said quite well.
To news that broke on Darwin Day 09
I can add little that will make it mine
in insight, wit, or fit words. If the shame's
that no one's yet made something of those names,
and you succeed in that, I won't begrudge
you Crediton, Landscore, Cain, Read, and Judge.


(iii)

2009 was when Richard Holloway,
nine years an ex-bishop, labelled himself
"after-religionist". That's fair enough.

Farewells to cars

I myself do not drive, and probably cannot be taught to. My reaction times are fast enough for cycling, but no more. However, I like the challenge of writing poems to order, and the order has occasionally included a request from a friend grieving for a car. Two such elegies were published in the church magazine Streetwise 16, October 1994, p.25.


TWO ELEGIES FOR CARS

(i) In memory of Amy Dolomite Triumph-Ettrick, died of rust, January 1993

A much-loved car may turn more pain,
passing away, than should be true:
it had the life it had from you,
and cannot give it back again.

The business of the parting (make
internment to interment, led
for Amy, long already dead)
is after Christmas, and grey ache.

Here is the yard where every state
of wreckage -- loss of faces, hearts --
waits rusting, gives up fewer parts,
continues to disintegrate.

Leave her poor corpse for fifteen pounds,
fifty of which will have to go
towards the new car's tyres, which blow
bathos in those appalling grounds,

and see the roads keep pumping life
mechanically through the town,
racing or jammed or slowing down,
stoppable, yes; not for this grief,

and kids notch pencil gates, five bars,
adults, parked oddly as the Ark,
click little counters as they mark
the passing of the vans and cars.

(ii) To Clare on the loss of her Metro

Awkward, you were, at the acquisition --
flushed, almost as for a dishwasher,
as much as for a man,
lots more than for a television --
high-minded to make a healthy
reduction in your use of the road:
by trains for cross-country travel,
buses in the city, or your bike,
and where the streets are steepest, walking,
paying to go green as the policy
insures drivers against driving and its embarrassment,
anxious to justify journeys, or excuse them,
ashamed of leadening the Leeds air.
Well, the stained air can be said to have won:
August, and work is all washed up,
beachedly dull like decaying boats,
and moist has crept through the car's metal,
rendered its body brittle with rust.

THANKS FOR THE JOURNEYS TO CHURCH AND STATION,
THANKS FOR PRAISING MY NAVIGATION,
BEARING MY MISTIMED SPECULATION
ABOUT SOMEONE ELSE'S ORIENTATION,
BIT OF A HARD AND KNOTTY CLUMP
TO PULL UP AND THROW AT YOU ALL OF A JUMP
SHORT OF A TRAFFIC-LIGHT, DRIVING THROUGH RAIN
AND LEEDS' ONE-WAY SYSTEM IN TIME FOR A TRAIN.
AND KNOWING THAT YOU AND I GO BACK AS FAR,
MORE OR LESS, AS YOUR Y-REGISTERED CAR,
I THANK GOD, HEARING SOME OF THE THINGS I HAVE SAID,
THAT ONLY THE CAR IS CORRODED AND DEAD.


A more recent elegy is for a car that was stolen from outside our house in the night of 27/28 April 2004, and discovered, even before we knew it had gone, in the grounds of Soham Village College. The poem was published in Orbis 135, Winter 2005, p. 61, and includes some amendments suggested by Orbis editor Carole Baldock.


OUR CAR, ABANDONED NEAR THE SCENE OF AN OLDER CRIME

(to Clare, again, on the loss of a Metro)

Deep in ancient embarrassments,
I did not see
that I'd put my bike through
where our car ought to be,
and I could not recall,
when you rang with the question,
if I'd seen the car then
or mere auto-suggestion.
But before you rang,
the car had been found,
fourteen miles away, early,
in a school ground.
So before I pushed bike
through car-space and mind's nettle,
the car was already
a wreck of burnt metal.

Perhaps, like a churchyard,
the grounds of that school
are marked for outrageous
breakings of rule.
I can’t tell if that’s so
from my tiny self-knowledge,
full of my idiocies
at school and college.
But after the breakings,
do the breakers find
they can silence the growth
of nettles in the mind?


The car's replacement is still with us, but we have for many years been following the advice in the book Cutting your car use by Anna Semlyen. In 2003, we drew up a pledge form for others who might wish to make a thing of cutting their car use. Feel free to download....