Unadopted Affinities

Unadopted Affinities

Twelve deaf children did not arrive at dawn 

With pick-axe handles to pound the stout old door

Until the welkin rang and good old friends 

Did not bring schnapps and old accordions.   

No street urchins called out as they passed by,

“The Latimers are off to Filton Squinney!”

The day the Latimers moved in,

One of someone’s special casseroles

Wasn’t waiting for them on the porch

In Gammy Belchard's periwinkle dish

With a request attached to return it Friday night –

 “Some neighbors will be dropping by for drinks.”

Filton Squinney didn’t bid them welcome.

From the morning chorus of obscenities 

To the nightly fusillade of human faeces 

Their life was a running sluther of abuse.

But Latimer was stalwart – even when

The neighbours ate his wife and children.

One night when the air is full of falling stars 

And all the world except the Latimers 

Lies buried in the fields of Filton Squinney,

A shining lamb will come to Latimer 

As he sits weeping in his garden shed

And bring him tidings much too deep for tears:

“I am Thredgar, Lamb of Lavender.

Death will never come to this gazebo –

Or pavilion, call it what you will.

The world that never used to be your friend 

Is now your oyster – but not your Shangri-la.

So I have come to be your missing pearl.”

The Account

The Account

There are many ways to achieve greatness, said Brodie,

Acknowledging the applause like a man holding up traffic –

This is one that worked for me.

And I watched him strip the girls in the front row

To their undies, figuratively speaking, as they leaned forward

To catch every nuance of his slithering tongue.

You might think I despise Brodie, or even pity him,

But you must remember that I’ve been there, done that,

And had a wife, a dog and a hearth

To show that men can change.

I’ve been lucky. Death always followed me

At a respectful distance, like an accomplished spy,

And my secrets have never been desperate enough

To die for. But Brodie reminds me of how it ends,

How it always ends when you live like a lunatic.

Nobody feels confident enough to mourn

And only comedians remember you.

The Great Receptionist looks up from his desk

And asks the usual questions. His understanding smile

Says he’s not afraid of parables.

I tell him about the things I hoped to achieve

And he gazes at me through the sky, patiently

Waiting to hear how it always ends.  He checks the form

And says: Occupation? He’s pleased to note

I have no regrets. And then he picks up his quill

And writes: Vagabond.

Old Sarum

Generosity, unchallenged fortitude

And a wealth of unrecorded history;

Flowers and birds and men with pointed hats;

Pretty girls with grave accordions

To accompany their songs of golden lads

Who will forever break their mothers’ hearts

And write the sweetest elegies known to man 

And die alone in droves for love of women 

Who died alone two thousand years ago.

Always late August, always half past five,

Dust and insects in a stagnant haze

Over the long grass where the bodies lie 

Unburied in a dream of perfect joy. 

We’re locked in honey here; we’ll never reach 

The bottom of the jar. When Jesus died 

It’s almost true to say the world rejoiced.

I was enchanted by your disbelief;

I want you fresh from hell and raw with grief.

Grief Is So Bracing!

A bitter wind from the Caucasus

Whips across Streatham Common, whistling in the trees.

It is March – and I have come to say goodbye to a friend.

A ring of magnolias surrounds me and I’ll wait

Until it’s safe for me to leave.

It snowed here yesterday, and patches remain

Like something they forgot to clear away. 

Everywhere I look the air is blue, colder

Than anything I have inside me. And I remember

All those things we can never remember forever,

Which he will never forget.

The magnolias surround me like sentries. I should know

More about flowers – when they bloom and when they die,

And what they mean to those who know.

But I will know when it is time. I feel the light

Fading, folding into evening,

While he is where there is no change.

And being here, I know it will never be time

To turn from the shadow and slip from the silhouette

Until I learn to be still in the light and forget.

My Terrible Vocation

The sheer immensity of my relief

Was far beyond the scope of words alone.

When fear is gone the world is much too big

To be confined to poetry or song.

It takes time and endless vigilance to learn

That time will not give back the things we've lost

Or heal the open wounds their absence leaves.

Blood that fails to clot denies the past

Its proper destiny, and the heart that fails 

To memorise the life in full will feel the dread

Of vacancy deprive it of the right

To learn from its mistakes and mourn the dead.

"So this is your brown study!" The prison governor

Grinned all round my room. "Calamity

Is a word that ladies use." His favorite phrase,

He said, was teaching opportunity -

"And here's an opportunity to teach!

 You start tomorrow. There's nothing to prepare.

All wisdom emanates from suffering -

My motto is your theme and you will share

"Your anguish with a privileged elite

Of trustee lifers who'll appreciate

The epic grandeur of your sacrifice -

But don't expect them to reciprocate,

"Acknowledge or admit benign intent.

Weeping and bleeding are their secret shame.

Your missionary tears and fertile blood
Will make flowers bloom in deserts of wasted time."

Damage

Sporting a bandana which was set – as is de rigueur with these things – 

at a jaunty angle, Mr Green came into town and laid waste

to huge swathes of what was formerly 

Upper Cleveland Street.

This was considered an act of mercy.

Those who knew Mr Green

affected a knowing insouciance, and men with commerce

at the hub of their lives, merely reinvested

their interest elsewhere.

All was fine and dandy

until the people began to stir.

Reconciliation

We know our will is free, and there’s an end on’t.

   Samuel Johnson

People often ask why God,

Whose Omnipotence is clearly beyond dispute,

Doesn’t lift a finger to save the starving children 

In war-torn enclaves laid waste 

By imperialist sacrilege, or – to be

Even-handed – offer comfort to the world-wide

Victims of Marxist tyranny.

What these people forget is that even religion,

In deference to the Enlightenment, accommodates

Free Will, 

And so to frustrate the will of Man would be

Against Philosophy.

Appointment in Wrocław

You travel beautifully.

Flight, escape, the fulfillment of a promise;

There is a world elsewhere and this is it.

You’re not depleted by the journey.

With every mile that disappears beneath your wings

You become more thrillingly yourself.

You step lightly from the plane

As from a refreshing shower.

You appraise the airport, pleasantly surprised

By its crisp decor and refreshing fragrance.

You appreciate the little things

They’ve done to make you welcome:

Lavender and white rose.

We chose a city neither of us knew;

We said we’d make it ours.

Nobody we know has ever been here -

And not because they chose to stay away.

We did our homework, vetted the place thoroughly

For any hint of cholera, terrorism

Or hostility to guests from overseas.

Everything we learned about the city

Stiffened our resolve to make it ours.

                             *

A city street, a rainy night. A night to be indoors.

The wind is more specific: A night to take refuge

From the wind - an observation that the wind

Might well have made a million times before;

The kind of thing Victor Borge might have said.

No matter where you thought you were

 - I saw his show in London and New York -

This was his city and he your genial host:

Welcome to Vienna... But this is not Vienna.

Because I’m always late

I arrive forty minutes early and kill time

By caving to a habitual conceit:

I’m in the wrong place.

I’m waiting on the wrong corner - and I know

From uncommunicable experience that a map

Will never help me relocate myself.

I used a map to choose our meeting place

Long before I had a chance to see this street

Or stand on this street corner, which seemed to me,

From studying the map, the perfect point of vantage

From which to see our city at its best:

To get to know its people at their best,

And learn its public ways, its secret life.

But now I’m here - if here is where I am -

This corner’s not the place I thought it was.

It doesn’t occupy a place of prominence

In any area that may be called

The Montparnasse of anywhere.

It’s not the sort of place where you can stand

Secure in the knowledge that where you are

Is where you always knew you’d be

When the time was right. The time is right

But these are not the people I was promised:

The auspicious, shining spirits who assembled

At a brilliant corner of my mind -

So similar in so many, many ways

To this unwholesome, half-deserted place

That the resemblance is, to say the least, uncanny -

Knew the sympathetic magic that drew us here

And would recognise, I’m sure,

The desperate inertia that keeps me here

And bids me in the stern voice of destiny,

Be still and wait.