My favourite poems of the month (1996)

Facts about Pusan

In Yongdusan Park Admiral Yi Sun-Shin,
Inventor of the turtle ship, uncomplainingly
Accepts bird-dropping on his grey plinth.
He rests under the fortress
Of Kumjongsam, among pagodas
Nesting in pines and maple.
His stone eyes gaze seawards.

The Pukwan ferry makes for the East Sea,
The freighter Atsumi Maru passing
To starboard. Ibis and pelican
Stream up the Naktong river,
The hills are littered with statues,
Heroes against Japanese invaders.
Eel and flounder, unloaded at Nambumin-Dong,
Wriggle in Chagalchi market.

Such partial, mundane details, easily verifiable:
Pusan lurking at the edge of the atlas,
Only ocean beyond it--the old "metal" sea,
Yellow sea and Sea of Japan.
Long ago I succumbed to the spell
Of a name opening out like an accordion,
An imaginary city with an air
Of lubricious melancholy. It suggested foghorns,

Vice, doped figures scurrying,
And here it is, surf a soap-flake blue,
The port blistering among shoals
Of islands. "A cauldron city"
The Japanese called it, treacherous colonisers
With a taste for torture. More sensible,
Learn secrets at the limits of nowhere.

Alan Ross (b. 1922), from: After Pusan (London: The Harvill Press, 1995)

Warming Her Pearls
for Judith Radstone

Next to my own skin, her pearls. My mistress
bids me wear them, warm them, until evening
when I´ll brush her hair. At six, I place them
round her cool, white throat. All day I think of her,

resting in the Yellow Room, contemplating silk
or taffeta, which gown tonight? She fans herself
whilst I work willingly, my slow heat entering
each pearl. Slack on my neck, her rope.

She´s beautiful. I dream about her
in my attic bed; picture her dancing
with tall men, puzzled by my faint, persistent scent
beneath her French perfume, her milky stones.

I dust her shoulders with a rabbit´s foot,
watch the soft blush seep through her skin
like an indolent sigh. In her looking-glass
my red lips part as though I want to speak.

Full moon. Her carriage brings her home. I see
her every movement in my head.... Undressing,
taking off her jewels, her slim hand reaching
for the case, slipping naked into bed, the way

she always does.... And I lie here awake,
knowing the pearls are cooling even now
in the room where my mistress sleeps. All night
I feel their absence and I burn.

Carol Ann Duffy (b. 1955), from: Selling Manhattan (Anvil Press Poetry 1987)

October

She meets the train
at Burning Stone station,
red leaves in her pocket
and the river from the mountain
green as an eye.

The sun keeps rhythm
through the pines. The train beats time. She tells me that
her name translates as Three Eight Sweet One,
Sickle-Hand, and that her town
is famous for carrots, and that

The moon has no face in Japan,
but the shadow of a hare, leapt
from the arms of a god.

Later, under the sod-black trees
she hides her face against the wind
and asks me to teach her to kiss.

Tobias Hill (b. 1970), from: Midnight in the City of Clocks (Oxford University Press 1996)

Thoughts of Home
(Seoul, Korea: 1993)

I do not know if I can go back.

Now that I inhabit the air,
a pilgrim betrothed to solitary transit,
journeying across the skies and seas,
finding earth and home in fables.
Today I am the weight of salt,
the somersault of leaves,
the trance of bees.

I do not know.

Now that this place no longer shudders
at the rumour of wound,
nor freezes from the grip of winter,
mornings come with greetings,
evenings settle like peaceful doors.

Can this really be home?

Between parted words
lie rooms that are shared;
between the crack of seasons,
syllables find their twin,
the skies find their color.

Am I going to be at sea once more?

Loreta M. Medina (b. 196_), from: Heading Home (Quezon City: Giraffe Books, 1996)

The Right Mask

One night a poem came up to a poet
From now on, it said, you must wear a mask.
What kind of mask? asked the poet.
A rose mask, said the poem.
I've used it already, said the poet,
I've exhausted it.
Then wear the mask that's made out of
a nightingale's song, use that mask.
Oh, it's an old mask, said the poet,
it's all used up.
Nonsense, said the poem, it's the perfect mask,
still, try on the god mask,
now that mask illuminates heaven.
It's a tight mask, said the poet,
and the stars crawl about in it like ants.
Then try on the troubador's mask, or the singer's mask,
try on all the popular masks.
I have, said the poet, but they fit so easily.

The poem was getting impatient,
it stamped its feet like a child,
it screamed. Then try on your own face,
try the one mask that terrifies,
the mask only you could possibly use,
the mask only you could wear out.

The poet tore at his face til it bled,
this mask? he yelled, this mask?
Yes, said the poem, yes.

But the poet was tired of masks,
he had lived too long with them,
he snatched at the poem and stuck it in his face.
Its screams were muffled, it wept, it tried to be lyrical,
it wriggled into his eyes and mouth.

Next day his friends were afraid of him,
he looked so distorted.
Now it's the right mask, said the poem, the right mask.
It clung to him lovingly and never let go again.

Brian Patten (b. 1946), Transcript of the poem as read on British Poets of Our Time: Roger McGough & Brian Patten, Poems read by the authors (London: Decca, 1974/1975)

The Peepshow Girl

Amongst the long grass
of down-town Berlin
Manet settles
Behind shutter five
And begins to sketch.

She flexes her back,
Turns on a stare.
Other shutters shoot up.
She rotates--her back
Curved to Picasso

She knows that Degas
Is watching her legs.
Coins fall through the slots
The shutters shoot up
For a minute; clatter down.

Her limbs drift through postures
The minutes fall.
She will leave fully clothed--
A throng already gathering
For the next session--

Take the U-Bahn with tourists,
Schoolboys out after hours,
The unmarriageable, the deserted,
The curious street artist--
Disquieting them with avid eyes.

Marion Lomax (b. 1953), from: The Peepshow Girl (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, 1989)

A Puppy Called Puberty (1985)

It was like keeping a puppy in your underpants
A secret puppy you weren´t allowed to show to anyone
Not even your best friend or your worst enemy

You wanted to pat him stroke him cuddle him
All the time but you weren´t supposed to touch him

He only slept for five minutes at a time
Then he´d suddenly perk up his head
In the middle of school medical inspection
And always on bus rides
So you had to climb down from the upper deck
All bent double to smuggle the puppy off the bus
Without the buxom conductress spotting
Your wicked and ticketless stowaway.

Jumping up, wet-nosed, eagerly wagging --
He only stopped being a nuisance
When you were alone together
Pretending to be doing your homework
But really gazing at each other
Through hot and hazy daydreams

Of those beautiful schoolgirls on the bus
With kittens bouncing in their sweaters.

Adrian Mitchell (b. 1932), from: Blue Coffee, Poems 1985-1996 (Bloodaxe 1996)

Censorship

The BBC does not like certain words.
Dildoes and buggery are always out.
´Cocks are OK, as long as they aren´t sucked´ --
a young researcher telephoned me back.

Latin´s polite. Vagina just meant sheath.
What doctors use, of course, must be all right.
(But penis was a penis -- nothing else.
The Romans liked to call a prick a prick.)

The BBC´s De-effer bleeps things out
or else suggests a synonym instead.
A poet I know was told he should use screw --
his line -- ´There´s fuck-all fucking in the grave.´

I got away with using bugger once.
I tried to be demure at first and said
it rhymed with Rum Tum Tugger, but the host
coerced me to recite it at the end.

In Wales, I said a simple ´prick´ and ´piss´ --
the show´s producer had okayed both words --
but when the bosses´ switchboard jammed with calls,
her earphones buzzed ´For God´s sake, get her off!´

These days, when on the air, I just conform
and skirt around like the professionals,
so audiences can play a crossword game --
´Four letters, sounds like duck, begins with F.´

Fiona Pitt-Kethley (b. 1954), from: Dogs (Sinclair-Stevenson 1993)

Aubade (1977)

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
-- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused -- nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of ist wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear -- no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

Philip Larkin (1922-1985), from: Collected Poems (London: Faber & Faber, 1988)

Musée des Beaux Arts (1938)

About suffering they were never wrong.
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forget
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer´s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Brueghel´s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

W. H. Auden (1907-1973), from: Selected Poems (London: Faber & Faber, 1979)