Authors: Tony Harrison
He dumped his bombs in t’park and damaged nowt
missing t’rows of ’ouses either side.
’umane! ’umane! And ’im a bloody Kraut!
And but for him, I thought, I could have died.
So now I celebrate my narrow squeak,
the unseen foe who spared our street in Leeds,
and I survived to go on to learn Greek
and find more truth in tragedy than creeds.
I stroke my shrapnel and I celebrate,
surviving without God until today,
where on my desk my shrapnel paperweight
stops this flapping poem being blown away.
A flicker of faith in man grew from that raid
where this shrapnel that I’m stroking now comes from,
when a German had strict orders but obeyed
some better, deeper instinct not to bomb
the houses down below and be humane.
Our house, thanks to that humane bombardier,
still stands; and those of Hasib mir Husain,
Mohammad Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer.
Thanks are due to the following publishers and periodicals for permission to reprint poems in this book:
London Magazine Editions – for ‘
Thomas Campey and the Copernican System
’, ‘
Ginger’s Friday
’, ‘
The Pocket Wars of Peanuts Joe
’, ‘
Allotments
’, ‘
The White Queen
’, ‘
The Heart of Darkness
’, ‘
The Songs of the PWD Man
’, ‘
The Death of the PWD Man
’, ‘
Schwiegermutterlieder
’, ‘
The Curtain Catullus
’, ‘
The Bedbug
’, ‘
The Nuptial Torches
’, ‘
Newcastle is Peru
’ and ‘
Ghosts: Some Words Before Breakfast
’
from
The Loiners
, 1970
Anvil Press Poetry – for ‘
The Morning After I
,
II
’, ‘
Bye-Byes
’, ‘
Testing the Reality
’, ‘
The Effort
’, ‘
Jumper
’ and ‘
Changing at York
’ from
Ten Sonnets from the School of Eloquence,
1987
Rex Collings Ltd – for ‘
Doodlebugs
’, ‘
Curtain Sonnets
’, ‘
Durham
’, ‘
Sentences
’, ‘
Voortrekker
’, ‘
The Bonebard Ballads
’, ‘
Social Mobility
’ and ‘
History Classes
’
from
The School of Eloquence,
1978
; and for ‘
On Not Being Milton
’, ‘
The Rhubarbarians I
,
II
’, ‘
Study
’, ‘
Me Tarzan
’, ‘
Wordlists I
,
II
,
III
’, ‘
Classics Society
’, ‘
National Trust
’, ‘
Them & [uz] I
,
II
’, ‘
Working
’, ‘
Cremation
’, ‘
Book Ends I
,
II
’, ‘
Next Door I
,
II
,
III
,
IV
’, ‘
Long Distance I
,
II
’, ‘
Continuous
’, ‘
Clearing I
,
II
’, ‘
Illuminations I
,
II
,
III
’,
Turns
’, ‘
Punchline
’, ‘
Marked With D
.’, ‘
A Close One
’, ‘
Blocks
’, ‘
Bringing Up
’, ‘
Timer
’, ‘
Fireeater
’, ‘
Background Material
’, ‘
Self Justification
’, ‘
Divisions I
,
II
’. ‘
Lines to my Grandfathers I
,
II
’, ‘
The Earthen Lot
’, ‘
Dichtung und Wahrheit
’, ‘
The Birds of America
:
(i) John James Audubon (1785–1851)
,
(iii) Standards
’, ‘
Loving Memory
’, ‘
Looking Up
’, ‘
Killing Time
’ and ‘
t’Ark
’ from
Continuous
,
1981
Bloodaxe Books Ltd – for ‘
A Kumquat for John Keats
’ which was published as a pamphlet in 1981; for ‘
Oh, Moon of Mahagonny
!’ from
U.S. Martial,
1981; ‘
The Fire-Gap
’, 1985 and ‘
v
.’, 1985
Encounter
– for ‘
Confessional Poetry
’, ‘
Flood
’, ‘
The Queen’s English
’, ‘
Aqua Mortis
’ and ‘
Remains
’
The Times Literary Supplement
– for ‘
Grey Matter
’, ‘
An Old Score
’, ‘
Still
’, ‘
A Good Read
’, ‘
Facing North
’, ‘
Giving Thanks
’, ‘
The Red Lights of Plenty
’, ‘
The Fire-Gap
’, ‘
The Heartless Art
’ and ‘
Cypress & Cedar
’
Observer
– for ‘
Isolation
’, ‘
Pain-Killers I
,
II
’, ‘
Breaking the Chain
’ and ‘
Old Soldiers
’
London Review of Books
for ‘
v
.’
Poetry Book Society Supplement –
for ‘
Currants I
,
II
’
Quarto
– for ‘
A Piece of Cake
’
Stand –
for ‘
Stately Home
’
Firebird 3
(Penguin Books, 1984) – for ‘
Birds of America
:
(ii) Weeki Wachee
’ and ‘
The Lords of Life
’
PN Review
– for ‘
Dark Times
’ and ‘
Skywriting
’
New Statesman
– for ‘
The Call of Nature
’
Collected Poems
(Viking, 2007) – for ‘
The Mother of the Muses
’, ‘
Initial Illumination
’, ‘
A Cold Coming
’, ‘
Three Poems from Bosnia
’, ‘
Fruitility
’, ‘
Fig on the Tyne
’, ‘
The Krieg Anthology
’ and ‘
Shrapnel
’
Not too much to ask, is it? It was in 1935 when Allen Lane, Managing Director of Bodley Head Publishers, stood on a platform at Exeter railway station looking for something good to read on his journey back to London. His choice was limited to popular magazines and poor-quality paperbacks – the same choice faced every day by the vast majority of readers, few of whom could afford hardbacks. Lane’s disappointment and subsequent anger at the range of books generally available led him to found a company – and change the world.
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PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London
WC2R 0RL
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First published 1984
Published simultaneously by Viking
Second edition published 1987
Reissued in Penguin Books 2006
Third edition published 2013
Copyright © Tony Harrison, 1984, 1987, 2013
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
The acknowledgements on pp. 9–10 constitute an extension of this copyright page
ISBN: 978-0-14-195730-2