Selected poetry

My first love was ‘The Cat in the Hat’. The rhymes drove me wild with excitement. Then, or before then, Mum got us to sleep at night by reciting – always from memory – ‘Old Meg she was a gypsy’ and ‘I will arise and go now’ and ‘What is this life, if, full of care…?’. This was Stapleford, circa 1960 – it was ‘Shelford and those parts’ where folk had ‘twisted mouths and twisted hearts’. I was ‘in very heaven’ when I cottoned onto the fact that verse could go with music and become song.’I’ll be loving you..always’ sang Mum.

In about 1963 I wrote on bonfire night ‘When I look out of the window I see the bare trees. Night of blackening skies lit by flame and of ripening apples’. It was passion and it lasted. Always connecting with the natural world, I looked out of the window through the thick curtains to the moon outside one night when I would not have dared to leave the lit house and I petitioned ‘Speak now, Lord, for I am listening’ like Samuel in the temple. And I do believe he heard. I read The Bible under the blankets.

So when you fetch up in an unpresumptuous place like Fulbourn Psychiatric Hospital you dig deep and dig I did. I began to write from a place I had never plumbed before, which must have been secretly resonating with the echoes of that early affair with poetry. ‘Surely to God!’ was my song. Like John Clare I worked with an interconnection with nature where Mother Earth cares for her own and we rely on her and she relies on us. My years were filled with the pursuit of the lyric, the drive to capture the word and then throw it back into the water alive.

Letitia

14 Jun 2009

‘I used to hear them calling out my name!’
Cried Letitia to the ocean
‘Now I don’t hear anything at all
Save the swell and the fall of the sea’
‘Birds’ they said. ‘Birds will show you where’
Describe the birds:
I see them here on the fields, singly or in pairs
And the wide horizon provides a spacy backdrop to their flights
Pigeons, doves, seagulls, magpies
I can see them nearing the windows or struggling skyward beyond the wheat
Letitia is immortal, in fact
She agreed to become immortal just before

(‘Think of Kettles Yard, in the tideless fens
Round grey pebbles in perfect poses
You tend to remember the boats but not the painter)

She was an ancestor, you see
And, born again, she still lives now
The source of my high cheekbones – kept a pig
The source of my high spirits – kept a pub
In near-teetotal Wales (so far from here and the birds and the soaring fields)
But they had to put her soul on ice
And the nearest she gets to her own drink
Is the salty sea and its silent spume
And the birds calling unfathomable names
And the rest is dumb

Zen Wisdom

14 Jun 2009

There are many different flowers in my bunch
One star can be a point in any sign
Each word must have a million, million uses
One step does not always make a path

Where does the fog begin and end?
Why is the clock face always right?
Where is the box for a tissue of lies?
Why do the wise ones always laugh?

The light is made of seven different colours
Does the sea take or bring the shells to the beach?
Is the giraffe too tall to reach the treetops?
Where are the asymptotes on the graph?

I know the shore is tiny grains of rock bits
I see the sun get up and go to bed
I trust that the children play in the woody forests
I hope the dirt will justify the bath

A Sight for Sore Eyes

14 Jun 2009

What an eyesore! What a fright!
Like a haggard spectre
Squalid hag, grim-faced scarecrow
Disfigured satyr, lumbering toad
Caliban or Aesop’s doppelganger
Monstrum horrendum in forme ingens
Cui lumen ademptum

The children have been home alone for two weeks – How goes the washing up?

Form, elegance, unadorned symmetry
Pulchritude, polish and glass
Belle tournure blooms with sublimity
Chic, style, swank even; je ne sais quoi
Goodly Aphrodite! natty Adonis!
It is a work of art

Patient Care

14 Jun 2009

Literally invalid
We sit for hours
The day passes
Daily purposes – He phones his wife
She mixes cake – Cannot be yours
A small, dumb place
Without circumstances
White with the blind contradiction of connection
The sitting room
Hums with boredom
A crippled, euphemistic kingdom
Of pills or ‘medication’
Meals cooked and crockery washed
‘Neighbours’ : drama mimics life
Has Max left Steph?
Is Skye expecting?
A concept forms unbidden – ‘Care’ means nothing

‘Talk to me!’
It doesn’t matter what you say – What are the children doing?
Have they opened the new Arcade?
How did Hilary Clinton do in the primaries?
Is Tescos cheaper than Waitrose?
I will wear a pair of reliable shoes to the wedding
Let’s play charades
I will finsh the crossword, then play chess
Will you come with me to Bravissimo?
Do you remember the Rolling Stones at Knebworth?
Did you prefer Paul MacCartney or John Lennon?
I will tell you off-.by-heart my favourite poem
I haven’t always been a lemon’

-This poem will be published in a report on the opinions of psychiatric patients on their care

What If?

14 Jun 2009

On the back of their black bomber jackets:
Andy Peter’s ELVIS tour 2002
The young child with them begins to cry
‘Quiet now, Presley’ warns Dad

Chorus
I can hear the distinguished heart of the galaxy beat
I see His ways and fall impotently at His feet
From a pocket buried at my core
Filling my breasts, a secret
The sky rolls over, like a benevolent beast

‘I couldn’t get a job, so they got an order to evict
There was no job to have, a saturated market
With four levels of discrimination, they said I was inadequate
Now I can’t work, since I am on the street’

Chorus:

In Still Water. 'Do Not Give a Man a Gun Until He has Learned to Dance' - Dances with Wolves

14 Jun 2009

A streak of the moonbeam’s gleam
The nimbus’ halo flushed
Lustre of sparks reflected in tinsel
Half a tone of tinted defraction

Nitid, lustrous, radiant
Burnished, glassy, orient
Garish, relucent, fulgidgent
Bright as silver, phosphorescent

Pipe the time of peace
Put your voice to silence
Of one path, hand in hand. Unanimously
Swim with the single-minded stream
Tranquil, in still water

Chorus:
Kick suicide
Crucial passion
Affectionate addiction
It is him or it’s rejection
No option beside
At the verge of romance
Desire so tender
My rock and my defender
Celtic warrior
I have learned to dance
Like a wound-healer
A destruction-stealer
Salvation-dealer
Dervish-whirler
Reeler and jigger
I surrender my armour

Copelia

14 Jun 2009

Floats a wish
yellow lily
Strata fish
Perform waltz moves
Trip light, fantastic
Steps, hooves like
Slippers in a ballet

Circles in a pond
Rocks of coloured stone
A couple wave a hand
Exiled by a bridge
They float a yallow wish

Floats a wish
yellow lily……

Be Kind

14 Jun 2009

Hitler killed Stockhausen’s mother
Because she was mentally ill
Karl quite lost his interest in melodies
As you might, if you’d been through the mill

Sylvia Plath was tormented
A compulsion to ditch her good fortune
She taped up the kitchen and turned on the gas
Bread and milk for the kids not forgotten

‘John Clare is mad’ said his family
‘His verse is a figment of fancy’
But he knew that the countryside’s beauty
Is a reason for singing and dancing

That worm you are killing was somebody’s mother
Be kind to all sentient beings
Not just the ones you prefer, but the others
They are like you, with just the same feelings

The Snail on the Window

14 Jun 2009

A snail lives on my kitchen window, he
Holds to his interests like a limpet
He knows he has to like or lump it

‘I will talk to you when you are better’
‘Come home when you have taken your medication’
Can you manage to relate to my confusion?

I cling to a place, to health and breath
I let my snail stay free
His need does not insult me

Chorus:
Sylvia, I don’t want to die
I do not intend to be posthumous
The popcorn-munching crowd yells ‘Crucify!’
I will go a little later, with less fuss

Lace

14 Jun 2009

That was the day the coriander flowered
Its blossoms matched its white lace pot
Of last year’s forget-me-not

And if I’m old
I will make lace
Wind bobbins on a cushion, beads in place

And will sail the atoning sea
And search for shells
And learn the songs the ocean tells