Out of the Blue (4 page)

Mr Lear has left a ring in his room.

Is it of value, is it an heirloom?

Should we pack it with brown paper and string

And post it after him?

He hasn't the air of a marrying man

He hasn't a husbandly air.

No, his gait is startled and sudden,

And is he quite all there?

Poor Mr Lear has left a ring in his room

And it's not of value, it's never an heirloom,

But we'll pack it with brown paper and string

And we'll send it wherever he's gone.

Two of us on the tired pavement

with the present pushing past

into the pungent smoke of the coffee-shop,

carrier bags stuffed with cargo

from Wal-mart and Tesco.

A tree of heaven, bright yellow

spreads its leaves above the peardrop

solvent scent of ASNU VALETING SERVICES.

She looks where I’m looking

this woman who asks questions

and tells me everything I’ve ever done.

For twenty pounds she’ll give me a golden future

for ten pounds she’ll give me a silver future

for a fiver a slam of bronze.

I believe in the glow of the leaves

in the shine of car-wax, in Wal-mart

and in the whiteness of her false teeth.

She would like to lie, but whatever possesses her

won’t let her. Here it comes again

clearing the coffee-smoke, thinning the cargo

of carrier bags pushing past us,

until the Saturday men and women

lose their foothold in time.

Now they are the dead walking

at the pace of long-ago film.

There he stands, blind on slivovitz,

eyes closed, face beatific,

propped against the side of the coach

while two girls rub him with snow.

He goes sleeveless in the snow

as if he belongs elsewhere

in a land where blood alone

is enough to warm him.

But this isn’t spring. A hyacinth’s

white whip of root in a jar in November

won’t stop winter. The sun will go down,

the wolves will sample the woods

and snuff his footprints. But the engine’s running.

Its vibration scrubs him awake

and those girls are laughing.

In ten long easy minutes

he will have left the summit.

is to go back, but never quite back.

Through all those trees I am unable

to glimpse the house. Where the new road swings,

the dark lane made for footsteps remains hidden.

Where lilac-striped convolvulus

wound its scent in the dust, new road signs

describe the route in numeral and symbol.

There is the hill, but not the right hill.

There is a blood-red rhododendron

by a breeze-block wall – but not the right wall,

and those children in a sunburned straggle

who face the oncoming traffic (thicker now),

have bought the wrong sweets at the wrong prices.

They have too much cash: they are not the right children.

Clearing the mirror to see your face

I’m sure you are there.

You came into the room behind me

but when I looked you disappeared.

Look. I am breathing out mist

like a horse in winter.

The glass I almost kissed

has gone cold. Now, is it you here

sitting in your usual chair

under the light, with your Guinness poured

and the best bit of the newspaper?

Let’s have a tenner on Papillon, I’m sure

he’ll do it this time
. You show me the form.

I put out my hand for the winnings

and take the notes which are warm

from your touch. But the mirror is cold, sparkling.

How hushed the sentence is this morning

like snowfall: words change the landscape

by hiding what they touch.

‘How is he –? Has he –?’

Bridget takes off her glasses

and rubs the red pulp of her eyelids.

The world is a treasure-house of frost

and sparkling roof-tops. A few doors down

the sentence works itself out.

A roller-blader slashes the street like an angel

with heaven-red cheeks. A fag-end smokes

in the gutter where a dog noses. Such elation!

The labour of goodbyes

goes on quietly behind windows.

With short, harsh breaths

and lips hitched to each syllable

you read, but not aloud.

You rise and go to the stairwell

as if to call someone. Look up

at the whitish skylight, the peace

of another rain-pocked eleven o’clock.

You are here and you want her

but she’ll come no more.

You keep her letters in a box

and deal them out like patience

to lie on your breakfast table

stamps obsolete, envelope eagerly torn

by the man who once lived in your skin.

You read the postmark again.

It’s September, four years after the war.

Listen. She’s speaking.

It was you I heard, your tiger pad on the stairs,

your animal eyes blazing. Now you have my face

between your paws, tiger. It’s time

for the first breath. Your playful embrace.

Suddenly you take away my texture,

the sheen I’ve had since I was born.

My hair. You comb it out with your claws

until the gloss and colour are gone.

My skin puckers slowly. Your whiskers quiver

as I keep still between your fore-feet

while you drink my juices, and for the first time

rake the lightest glissade down my cheeks.

Time for you, tiger, to do as you want.

I heard your footfall and waited in the dark,

expecting you. When will you come?

I can’t say why so many coffin-makers

have come together here. Company, maybe.

More likely jealousy bites their lips

when they see another’s golden coffin

where the corpse will fit like a nut.

No doubt they swap the lids about

at dead of night, scratch the silken cheeks of the wood

so when the mourners come to watch the hammer

bounce off the nails, they’ll say it’s no good

and in their white clothes they’ll swarm

all over the coffin-maker like angry ghosts.

There’s no need for it to be like this.

They could lend their tools to one another.

They could watch each other’s little shrines

in case the candle goes out. Instead they blow it out

and sourly scour the insides of another cheap

deal coffin for the common man.

How many golden coffins can anyone want?

Of those who appear at the alley-end,

they prefer the advance buyers. It takes know-how

to select a coffin for yourself.

‘In our family it’s cancer. Allow for shrinkage.’

‘Dropsy does us. Add it on to the width.’

Can a man know the shape of the wood

that will encase him? Can a woman

close her eyes and breathe in the scent of cedar?

These are the ones the coffin-makers like

to sit with by the spirit-lamp. For these they bring out

tea-plums, infuse
Silver Needle

and drink before they do the measuring.

Time to compare wood-shavings,

rubbing their curls between the fingers. Meanwhile

man and wife from the flat upstairs

take their blue bird for a walk

to the evening park, still in its cage.

Snug as a devil’s toenail embedded

in blue liass, plastic

in your movements as in dreams, you kick

for headiness at the rich

red walls that close on you like elastic.

But now they’ve shucked you out, bare-naked

in the devil’s kitchen, toes curled

flinching from chip scraps, ash,

lino sticky with beer tack,

the nail-on-nylon scrape of the cold world.

You are born, wed, dead, buried.

The wooden walls of your coffin

grip like hands, reassuring. You bang them

for joy that they’ll bang back, booming

that you’re hidden, hidden, hidden within.

The halls are thronged, the grand staircase murmurous.

There’s a smell of close-packed bodies, lilac,

hair-gel and sweat. Handprints on the brass railings

fade like breath on a cold window.

Outside the city is stunned with snow.

There he is, just where he should be

by that leather-topped, deeply-scored table

where fortunes are lost and made. He explains,

and those at the back lean closer

to catch the ripple of laughter.

A joke, and the group dissolves

to stare, study, and point a finger.

He waits for them to catch up with him.

You need a guide, with so many rooms

and between them, so many turnings.

I am there too, but not speaking.

I wait while the paint peels,

alone with the pulse of a Matisse

and the sunlight beating full on us.

But perhaps I say this

as I see him hasten down another staircase:

‘You always had a blessing with you,

and you still have a blessing with you.

Keep moving. Go as fast as you can

and whatever I say, don’t listen.’

I lay and heard voices

spin through the house

and there were five minutes to run

for the snow-slewed school bus.

My mother said they had caught it

as she wiped stars from the window –

the frost mended its web

and she put her snow-cool hand to my forehead.

The baby peeked round her skirts

trying to make me laugh

but I said my head hurt

and shut my eyes on her and coughed.

My mother kneeled

until her shape hid the whole world.

She buffed up my pillows as she held me.

‘Could you eat a lemon sole?’ she asked me.

It was her favourite

she would buy it as a treat for us.

I only liked the sound of it

slim, holy and expensive

but I said ‘Yes, I will eat it’

and I shut my eyes and sailed out

on the noise of sunlight, white sheets

and lemon sole softly being cut up.

A draught like a bony finger

felt under the door

but my father swung the coal scuttle

till the red cave of the fire roared

and the pine-spiced Christmas tree

shook out plumage of glass and tinsel.

The radio was on but ignored,

greeting ‘Children all around the world’

and our Co-op Christmas turkey

had gone astray in the postal system –

the headless, green-gibletted corpse

revolved in the sorting-room

its leftover flesh

never to be eaten.

Tomorrow’s potatoes rolled to the boil

and a chorister sang like a star

glowing by the lonely moon –

but he was not so far,

though it sounded like Bethlehem

and I was alone in the room

with the gold-netted sherry bottle

and wet black walnuts in a jar.

That violet-haired lady, dowager-

humped, giving herself so many

smiles, taut glittering smiles,

smiles that swallow the air in front of her,

smiles that cling to shop-mirrors

and mar their silvering, smiles

like a spider’s wrinklework

flagged over wasteland bushes –

she’s had so many nips and tucks,

so much mouse-delicate

invisible mending. Her youth

squeaks out of its prison –

the dark red bar of her mouth

opening and closing.

She wants her hair to look black,

pure black, so she strands it with violet,

copperleaf, burgundy, rust –

that violet-haired lady, dowager-

humped, giving herself

so many smiles, keeping the light on.

They fly

           straight-necked and barely white

               above the bruised stitching of clouds

                  above wind and the sound of storms

                      above the creak of the tundra

                         the howl of weather

                            the scatter

                               and wolfish gloom

                                  of sleet icing their wings,

they come

      on their strong-sheathed wings

          looking at nothing

              straight down a freezing current of light,

              they might

                 astonish a sleepy pilot

                     tunnelling his route above the Arctic,

      his instruments darken and wink

         circling the swans

         and through his dull high window at sunrise

            he sees them

               ski their freezing current of light

                  at twenty-seven thousand feet

                      past grey-barrelled engines

                         spitting out heat

                             across the flight of the swans,

   and they’re gone

                       the polar current sleeking them down

                               as soon as he sees them.