Some poems on the other Great Topic.

     
AT REST

After the birth of her last child in 1921 she was declared mad.
They put her in the state psychiatric hospital. Its official name was The Hospital for the Insane, but everybody called it the
     nut house.
The truth was that in the face of madness, even the best people were helpless. For the family, it was overwhelming,
     unspeakable, to have a mother, a wife, who was mad.
She died there after a few months. Her death certificate says ‘exhaustion’ and ‘acute mania’: the thought scrapes at my brain.
This is her grave, overlooking the sea. On a bright day, it takes on the cheerful blue of the ocean; in the rain, or when the
     southerly gets up, you’re aware they return us to the poorest soil.
Unless you know about her, you don’t notice that the stone says, At Rest.

     1997
     

WHERE ACHILLES IS

          To the memory of Ed Howard

     What first?

Achilles started at field’s end; but zomp!
he went past like a bolt
toes tearing back the continuum

and all I really saw
was his weathered backside
muscling into distance.

I’d reckoned I was quick
but after that
they called me Tortoise.

‘And Zeno’s face!’ I’d say,
‘trying to count the slices of the instant
through your dust of infinitesimals!’

and my friend
(who liked the stronger wines)
would give his quiet laugh. Good times.

     And then?

Look down this world-line,
this tumultuous kaleidoscope -
that’s us, two pirates

flinging the dice
with redcoats turncoats raiders;

see our plotted charts,
the fleets manoeuvred
for the whole of Treasure Island,
even a cavalry of savages
in a desperate rescue!

And then the cheering,
the huge carouse of victory
and - of course - the empty chest.

So it was separate ways,
just now and then another bottle
the more rejoiced for its rarity.

     Where is Achilles now?

Now? He has no Now.
Irony got him -
a faulty pacemaker.

I find I stare
at my hand, my table,
the rainbow in the glass

wanting a crack, a flaw
between the smudged and seamless points
that weave us into space,

a crack to take the crowbar’s point
and prise dimensions open,

step to that strip of past,
that living, hard and funny place
where still Achilles is.

     2001
     

GIGUE FOR A DEAD PRINCESS

Over childhood’s rosy
posy
on aery toes
goes
The Princess Margaret Rose.
Forget-me-not eyes
and Cupid’s lips
of a size
to launch a thousand quips;
and in the silken slipper, a blister,
an older sister.

Alas for love’s defeated plan!
Concerning her rather senior man
The Times had written
You’ll never go down
to the End of the Town
in the face of the force
of an archbishop’s frown -
what’s the Battle of Britain
compared to Divorce?
And she ended up with an inflated Mister
(instead of the mate who kissed her)
and of course
an older sister.

With an irony
almost Byrony
this bridal, intended
to ensure propriety, itself ended
in recourse
to divorce
(which, after all the ’50s’ prick’s tease,
shows what a debt the ’70s owed the ’60s).
And a harder-eyed version was seen,
regular grasper
of a real rasper
of a gasper
under a gush
of gin or of toddy
in the lush
Caribbean,
not sparing the Roddy
or indeed her own body;
and she found no answer
to the old cancer
that makes uselessness bleed,
no clyster
that the soul might need
for the burden of an older sister.

Now, at the close
on scalded toes
The Princess Margaret Rose
goes
behind the Great Uncertain
Curtain.
Unlucky with men
they murmured, But strike!
she was a worry.
Still, it’s sad that no one’s in a hurry
to look upon her like
again;
but I’m one who’s missed her
and so’s her older sister.

     2002
     

TWO DEATH SONGS

1.

Goodbye you bastards, you dirty old lags,
     with whom I kept wassail.
I know your jokes. I’ve ordered them
     to burn me without fail
’fore you chuck me on a pismires’ nest
     and my head in a pickling pail.

2.

Life won’t come again
     and is never long.
Where will love be then
     after the song?

     2004
     

WHAT THE FIRST WIFE SAID

He’ll die this week,
her hand on his.

So wrong. She steals
the parting that belongs to me.

     2006