Tuesday, December 23, 2014

The Wet Ottomans

Book I: The Argument

The Ottoman – eh?  Let me count the arms.
“None, sah!” reports Midshipman Ripples;
“They’s made that way, and with no back neither,
“So as to offer comfort to cripples.”

Used in the empire of the same name
For adulterous romps and more, I suspect,
It arrived in America in 1789
As an “Ottomane of velours d’Utrecht”,

Bought by a Mr Thomas Jefferson,
Who happened to see it by chance
And used it to muse and relax on
After taking Louisiana from France

And writing the Kentucky and Virginia
Resolutions – secretly, mind –
So people would come for miles to see
The chair that had no behind.





Book II: The Events Preceding The Night In Question

“Jesus Christ, you need a steam room
“To dry these things out – they’re soaking!”
“How many are there – in total, that is?”
“Eighteen.”  “Eighteen?  You’re joking!

“Count them again, oh please,” pleaded Kate,
“Eighteen’s too many to rescue.”
How well she remembered the sodden ottomans,
Growing up under Ceaușescu,

As a young Romanian girl that year
When the floods came out of the sky
And everyone north of the Danube
Would kill for a pouffe that was dry.

Lou counted them from wall to wall
And, as she said, there were eighteen in all:
Two had disintegrated, three were just wettish
(Ideal for couples with that fancy fetish!)
While four were quite sodden and, as for the rest,
They ranged from drenched to damp at best.

“Do you think, if we turn the radiators on,”
Said Kate, skipping gaily upstairs,
“That we could dry them before Tim gets home
“And sees what we’ve done to his chairs?”

“This wouldn’t have happened in Jefferson’s day,”
Avowed Lou, grinding her incisor,
“But if we torch the whole fucking house,
“Then Tim’ll be none the wiser.”





Book III: The Ottomans On The Night In Question

Superindent Faraday puffed on his pipe
And surveyed the desolate scene:
A mangled mess of steel and glass
Where once Tim’s house had been

And he turned to Sergeant Keddie:
“What the blazes is this all about?”
“Blazes, sir?  A good one!
“Well, according to my snout,

“A man was seen emerging
“From the flames at about half-past five.
“If he’d left it any later, sir,
“He wouldn’t be alive.
“He claims it was his sister, Lou,
“Who set the house alight
(“His sisters live in Basingstoke
“But were staying overnight).”

“Let’s interview this sister, Lou,”
Said Faraday, looking tense,
But Lou swore blind she’d been asleep
And the mystery made no sense.
Faraday stared at the ceiling
And, perplexed, he scratched his head,
And pursed his lips and picked his nose
And eventually he said:

“This is no ordinary burning of ottomans,
“We’ll have to call in the Met.” –
For the strangest thing of all, you see,
Was that the ottomans were still wet!



Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Sure & Certain Hope


The next day I went to the Town Hall to register your death. I found the Register Office and handed over the documents I’d been given at the hospital. The clerk gave me your death certificate and a license authorising the funeral director of my choice to bury or cremate your body according to my instructions. On the clerk’s advice I bought seven extra copies of your death certificate. I was ready to move on to the next stage, like a participant in a treasure hunt. 

   While I was doing the paperwork with the clerk there was a man hovering quite close behind me. He seemed impatient for me to finish. I didn’t turn to look, but I could hear his quick, shuffling steps, never more than two or three in any direction, before he’d scuttle back as if to protect his place in the queue. When I turned to leave there was no queue. There was just this man smiling at me. He took me gently by the arm and led me out of the room into the corridor. We sat on a wooden bench.

   “I want to help you,” he said, “to understand what’s happening to you.”

   He explained that for some time to come there would be a vacancy in the air where you used to be—a vacancy precisely the same size and shape as you. He asked if I’d ever visited Pompeii and did I know how archaeologists located citizens lost in the volcanic storm almost two thousand years ago? Those empty pockets in the lava were eloquent impressions of lives, he said, and that was how he wanted me to think of the awful vacancy that had been occupied so brilliantly and for so long by you.

   He found it utterly understandable that I was for the moment unable to see beyond the narrow confines of my grief, but assured me that if I allowed time to perform its subtle alchemy, the sadness of a life lost would be transformed into a million happy memories of a life lived. And these happy memories (and this is where perhaps he took a step too far) would pour into that vacancy and then, when it was full, the magic would happen: this trove of remembered joys that was shaped exactly like you would step out of nature, wave a loving farewell and walk away from me into the radiance of eternity. And my grief would end.

   “And this is something I’ll actually see?” I asked.

   “You have my word,” he said.



Sunday, November 30, 2014

Losing A Sock


I lost a sock today – ’twas one of three,
And all the more maddening to me
As I had lost a leg at Waterloo.

Last week I lost a tenner in a game
And now I’ve not a penny to my name,
Only the other leg I didn’t lose.
                                    
Two weeks ago while swimming in the sea
I lost an earring that I’d had with me
Since I lost that leg at Waterloo.

I’d put the sock I lost inside a shoe
That fits the foot I kept at Waterloo,
Which is ironic when you think of it.

I have another shoe, another sock,
But neither fits the only foot I’ve got.
The trouble is they only come in pairs.

I’ve won things too: a cutlass and a ship,
And thirteen hamsters in a lucky dip
But socks are very difficult to find.

Perhaps the gods, or kismet, will be kind:
I’ve lost the sock, but I might find the shoe
Among the other legs at Waterloo.


Monday, November 24, 2014

This Is My Heart

I haunt the air you breathe, the food you eat,
The water you wash in, trust and drink.

When you enter the house,
I walk in front of you to clear a path.

I warm the spaces that you occupy;
And occupy the spaces you leave warm.

When you leave the house I say goodbye; 
Here are my tears.

I am custodian of all that belongs to you;
I am silent and leave no odours.

I take inventory of the house and contents;
It is my gift to belong

And yours to take possession of my gift;
And yours to take possession of my gift.

This is my heart;
I wait my turn.





Saturday, November 8, 2014

Inordinately Fond


The air is fresh; tonight the wind will bring
Solace to the sweaty, even here,
Where sun has burned the hillside and the dogs
Eat the rotting remnants of a deer.

For our last intercession did the trick
And Power deigns to grant us this reprieve:
Shall we now stay and cultivate the soil
Or be the first to grab our hats and leave?

Angora is the softness of her bosom,
Dynamite the power of her mind;
How could I leave her when her faith’s forgotten
The innocence not even fear can find?

We’ll stay then, wrap ourselves in satin robes
As befits a naughty monk or friar
Dissembling in the tragedy, who hopes
To grant forgiveness in the face of fire.

We love this circus and its painted lies,
The bear who laughs, the antelope who frowns,
The ringmaster inviting us to share
His stricken smile, donated by the clowns.

We miss the imperfections in the home
Which others see and titillate their ardour;
But we are not designers: curse the gate
And keepers who exhort us to try harder.

We visited the land of songs and verse
And love and sex and jolly good boating weather,
And for this swift and hedonistic crime
Were shown the door and legged it hell for leather.

We only ask to live where we are known
Biblically, as Amos, Ruth and Paul;
And to Damascus, then, on route to which
The prophet said, when he was known as Saul:

Christ is risen.  Hallejulah, boys!
And, like a liegeman, venerate your Lord!
Let him seduce us, for his silver tongue
Is not as sharp or mighty as the sword.

And, like a liegeman, love the soil we own
For it will soon be subject to the bond
Which fastens us to service of that lord
Of whom we are inordinately fond.

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Holme, Norfolk; July 28th, 1998

                                                
The low spring tide's at ten past ten;
Don't miss it - it will never come again.

The light of the full moon clings to your feet and stinks.  
It’s an hour’s soft plod through sweet sublunar mud
Down to the henge, there at the turn of the tide:
A circle, twenty feet across, of fifty-five split oak trunks,


Inward facing, sunk deep and shrunk to a low
Unmoving ring of patient, wizened elves
Around a shallow pool - spectators who dedicated themselves
To long-form entertainment four thousand years ago.  

Then they were a stockade ten feet tall;  an outer ring 
For Club-Foot John, the one-legg’d slow-motion target-diving devil,
To spot as he dropped from the upper sky, his fall scheduled
To take five thousand years.   But this was no climate for loitering.  

As the sea rose, his imperceptible downward crawl
Became an imperceptible rush for safety.   The creature
Watched his blank become a wink, a tidal feature,
And adjusted the aerodynamics of his fall

To make a headlong dive.   When his terrified fingers 
Touched the surface of the pool - 1912’s
The date recorded by the watchful elves - 
The cheer was so profound the echo lingers

And returns at these deep tides.   His fall goes on.  
Now John is an inverted oak.   The root, cut flat like an anvil,
Juts from the middle of the pool - it’s the diving devil
’s club foot.   In thirty years it will be gone;

John will be lost under the sand, under the sea,
But tonight he’s here.   And so are we.