“After Corot”

‘After Corot’ 1979-1982, Howard Hodgkin

AFTER COROT

the train turning into the bay
enough to bring tears to your eyes;
reach & fall of your breathing

in the painting everything is
at a distance: cliff, harbour,
sea, sky

only wait
and the light breaks
white on the horizon
as a small boat painted red
hoves into view
and the land slips
another foot into the sea

untrammelled
blue seeps beneath
the edges of the frame
refusing to be bound

the slow rocking of the train
as it rounds the curve

your waking breath

the sea.

an ‘improved’ version of the poem in Bluer Than This, Smith/Doorstop, 1998

 

Orphans

I’ve been reading, and very much enjoying, Ann Patchett’s novel, Commonwealth, which follows, in well-articulated but deliberately haphazard order, the inter-connecting lives of two families based in Los Angeles and Virginia. I reminded me, as I’ve suggested elsewhere, of John Updike’s Rabbit novels, though it manages, I think to be both more sympathetic and, in places, harder-edged; also of the John Irving of Garp and The Cider House Rules. Which, in turn, reminded me of a poem of mine, dating back to the late ’80s, early ’90s, “Goodnight, Fuzzy Stone”. A connection made all the stronger last night, watching part of a Channel 4 programme called Finding Me a Family, in which young children waiting to be adopted meet and interact with prospective parents looking to adopt. Here’s the poem …

GOODNIGHT, FUZZY STONE

“Orphans are notorious for interior games”
John Irving: The Cider House Rules

Inside the folds of his box Fuzzy Stone has a dream:
when he picks up the phone she says she will be home
from work a little late; she arrives and there are
flowers in her arms, so many flowers.
They sit at either end of the sofa while she
tells him about her day; they have not kissed yet –
he has learnt not to claim too much too soon.

He believes in Santa Claus, the power of love,
the tooth fairy, the folk that play happy families
at the end of the rainbow. He believes
if he picks up the phone it will be her:
always.

When he was four his mother packed him off
with his own fork and spoon to find the party.

“Fuzzy is a loveable child who would benefit
from a warm and caring family, preferably one
with brothers and sisters of a similar age.”

Slowly fingering lines
mouth moving to the words,
Fuzzy recognises himself and smiles.

Cars come slowly over the hill,
even in the worst of winter there are cars,
singly or in convoy, and when they leave
another face stares back at Fuzzy
through a blur of moving glass.

When he was sixteen they gave him a new pair
of second-hand shoes, a travel warrant
and a testimonial” “Fuzzy is a pleasant
enough young man, decent and honest,
but when things become too stressful
he likes to climb back inside his boss.”

In the bus station he sleeps with on ear open
close to the bank of telephones.
There are other places: the launderette,
the air ducts out at the bakery,
behind the curtains in the camera booth –
colour photos three for a pound –
he loves to watch them slip into sight,
always when you have given up hoping,
there! Like magic. Like dreams.

The phone rings and he picks it up:
he climbs back inside his box.

What he really wants to do is drive
the wet miles till she holds him tight
in her arms (as he is certain she would).
“Turn over and let me snuggle you up.”
Isn’t that the kind of thing lovers say?

Say good night, Fuzzy Stone.

This poem first appeared in Ghosts of a Chance, Smith/Doorstop, 1992

 

 

Whitby 3

Here’s another Whitby poem from Bluer Than This that didn’t make its way into the more recent New & Selected …

The Wrong Wind

The wrong wind
marshals its forces along the channel
and that range of hills we can quite clearly see
against the northern horizon
will within minutes be lost to sight.

Down in the town
a woman bustles across the bridge
with lowered head, plastic shopping bags
bumping and banging against her legs.

Outside the Jolly Sailors
two dogs pause in their robust examination
of each other’s genitalia to sniff the air,
and along the street at number 54, the children’s
crossing guard, once assistant harbour master,
taps his barometer and scowls;
the parrot in its cage is one hundred and five
or one hundred and ten, depending
what you believe.

High on the West Cliff
we squat in the lea of blackened gravestones
and count our blessings: peppermints, lip salve,
four squares of dark chocolate, the return
halves of two supersaver tickets
to Pudset via Leeds and a compass
neither of us can read. A ladybird,
startled, stops its scuttling run along your arm
and braces its wings for flight. Too late now,
too foolish to make a dash across
open ground, we wait, and if our luck holds
the worst of the storm will pass us by.

 

Whitby 2

North Coast

Once, we stayed here, out of season,
arcades and the Magpie Café closed,
clouds massed like bulkheads in the northern sky
and around the municipal grandstand
only the melismatic cry of gulls.
Close by our feet, winter lay coiled like rope.
At night hope hung across the water like a child.
What is never shared, cannot be lost.

When she was seven or eight,
I brought my daughter here to stay.
Our first time in an old-fashioned B & B,
hot water bottles and flasks of coffee on request.
She laid out her clothes, folded and neat,
each item in its proper drawer,
alarm clock wound and set for seven,
books and diary on the square oak table
nudged against the bed.

There have been other lovers, other nights.
The town, I heard this morning, is falling
rock by rick and day by day into the sea.
Tied up against each forecast,
fishing boats, all colours, rack and slide.
My daughter ran yesterday from France,
she and the man she’s lived with for years
are breaking up. I shall come here again, yes,
I think so, with someone else or on my own.
We cling to what we can, and the rest,
one way or another, clings to us.

from Bluer Than This, Smith/Doorstop, 1998

 

Poetry : Outstanding Books

For its current issue, The North asked thirty poets to nominate the poetry book that has meant most to them in the past 30 years, with the opportunity to nominate an anthology and a pamphlet should they wish. For me, it was always going to be a toss up between Lee Harwood and Robert Hass and, in the end, it was Hass’s Human Wishes that won out.

Published in 1989, and so just inside the 1986 cut-off point, while being a favourite, it isn’t, in all honesty, my actual favourite of Hass’s work, which is the earlier book, Praise, but that was first published in 1979.

Praise contains what I think are probably among the best of Hass’s shorter poems – “Heroic Simile”, which begins with a reference to Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai; “Meditation at Lagunitas”, which begins “All the new thinking is about loss/In this it resembles all the old thinking”; and the wonderfully titled, “Picking Blackberries With a Friend Who Has Been Reading Jacques Lacan”. It also includes what is still my favourite of the longer poems – a form which by the time of Human Wishes had become more complex and assured – “Not Going to New York: A Letter”, which begins …

Dear Dan –
This is a letter of apology, unrhymed.
Rhyme belongs to the dazzling couplets of arrival.
Survival is the art around here. It rhymes by accident
with the rhythm of days which arrive like crows in a field
of stubble corn in upstate New York in February.
In upstate New York in February thaws hardened the heart
against the wish for spring.

The pamphlet I chose was Lee Harwood’s The Books, a tiny 8 page booklet published by Longbarrow Press, which comes in an envelope also containing an equally small CD of Lee reading, that was recorded in Brighton in April, 2011.

Not the beginning this time, but the ending …

She climbed down from the tree a queen.
As we all do, and then set out
across golden stubble to the river.

I don’t intend to sit here waiting in my coffin,
gathering dust until the final slammer,
adjusting my tiara.

I’ll stamp my foot
and, checking the rear-view mirror,
head for the frontier.

I didn’t choose a favourite anthology, because, if I were to stick reasonably close to the truth, my favourites, in so far as The North is concerned, were published too soon.

Penguin Modern Poets 10: Adrian Henry, Roger McGogh & Brian Patten. 1967
Penguin Modern Poets 19: John Ashbery, Lee Harwood & Tom Raworth. 1971
The Postmoderns: The New American Poetry Revisited. 1982

Amongst the other poets choosing their favourites of the past 30 years in The North are Mimi Khalvati, Ian McMillan, Helen Mort, Sean O’Brien and Matthew Sweeney. Amongst the authors chosen, Thom Gunn, Sharon Olds, Seamus Heaney, Moniza Alvi and Phiullip Levine.

To find out more about The North and/or to order a copy of the current issue, go to the Poetry Business web site.