My favourite poems of the month (1997)

Dreaming in the Shanghai Restaurant

I would like to be that elderly Chinese gentleman.
He wears a gold watch with a gold bracelet,
But a shirt without sleeves or tie.
He has good luck moles on his face, but is not disfigured with fortune.
His wife resembles him, but is still a handsome woman,
She has never bound her feet or her belly.
Some of the party are his children, it seems,
And some his grandchildren;
No generation appears to intimidate another.
He is interested in people, without wanting to convert them or pervert them.
He eats with gusto, but not with lust;
And he drinks, but is not drunk.
He is content with his age, which has always suited him.
When he discusses a dish with the pretty waitress,
It is the dish he discusses, not the waitress.
The table-cloth is not so clean as to show indifference,
Not so dirty as to signify a lack of manners.
He proposes to pay the bill but knows he will not be allowed to.
He walks to the door like a man who doesn't fret about being respected, since he is;
A daughter or granddaughter opens the door for him,
And he thanks her.
It has been a satisfying evening. Tomorrow
Will be a satisfying morning. In between he will sleep satisfactorily.
I guess that for him it is peace in his time.
It would be agreeable to be this Chinese gentleman.

D. J. Enright (b. 1920)

Being Alive

The only reason for living is being fully alive;
and you canīt be fully alive if you are crushed by secret fear,
and bullied with the threat: Get money, or eat dirt!--
and forced to do a thousand mean things meaner than your nature,
and forced to clutch on to possessions in the hope theyīll make you feel safe,
and forced to watch everyone that comes near you, lest theyīve come to do you down.

Without a bit of common trust in one another, we canīt live.
In the end we go insane.
It is the penalty of fear and meanness, being meaner than our natures are.

To be alive, youīve got to feel a generous flow,
and under a competitive system that is impossible, really.
The world is waiting for a new great movement of generosity,
or for a great wave of death.
We must change the system, and make living free to all men,
or me must see men die, and then die ourselves.

D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930)

l(a

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af
fa

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s)
one
l

iness

E. E. Cummings (1894-1962)

Duck at Haldon Ponds

At evening watches the duck
slow feeding the waterline.

Praises the duck. Such a fine
white miracle breasting the mayfly.

Green of her tail feathers,
space of her neck doubled in water
paddles off with my mind.

Ducks I have known.
Old duck mates of mine
inspecting the meeting of air and liquid.

Make no mistake, duck.
Iīd like to eat you well cooked
one bell-battered Sunday in April.

And Iīd wear your gorgeous feathers in my hat,
make a soup of the bones
and give your leftovers to the cat.

(1972)

Ken Smith (b. 1938), from: The Poet Reclining - Selected Poems 1962-1980 (Bloodaxe Books)

Warning

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesnīt go, and doesnīt suit me,
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say weīve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when Iīm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other peopleīs gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes to keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We will have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practise a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old and start to wear purple.

(1961)

Jenny Joseph (b. 1932), from: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books)

What the Chairman Told Tom

Poetry? Itīs a hobby.
I run model trains.
Mr Shaw there breeds pigeons.

Itīs not work. You donīt sweat.
Nobody pays for it.
You could advertise soap.

Art, thatīs opera; or repertory--
The Desert Song.
Nancy was in the chorus.

But to ask for twelve pounds a week --
married, arenīt you? --
Youīve got a nerve.

How could I look a bus conductor
in the face
if I paid you twelve pounds?

Who says itīs poetry, anyhow?
My ten year old
can do it and rhyme.

I get three thousand and expenses,
a car, vouchers,
but Iīm an accountant.

They do what I tell them,
my company.
What do you do?

Nasty little words, nasty long words,
itīs unhealthy.
I want to wash when I meet a poet.

Theyīre Reds, addicts,
all delinquents.
What you write is rot.

Mr Hines says so, and heīs a schoolteacher,
he ought to know.
Go and find work.

(1965)

Basil Bunting (1900-1985), from: Collected Poems (Oxford 1988)

Making Connections

Passengers talk through a porthole
to a man in a glass tank.
He has red-rimmed eyes
and a rubber stamp.

A scant metal bridge, humped
like the one on the Willow Pattern plate, spans
two platforms and a view
of the lost igloo city of cars
painted by children.

Thereīs a photograph booth
(against loss of identity en route),
a news stand with The Plain Truth
available free, in a dark corner,
and a row of telephone cotes
to home in the lonely.

I eavesdrop the news --
īHe should be here at twelve minutes past fourī
(Twelve minutes past, repeated,
as if repetition will bring him for sure) --
and wait for her

who is too young to be running over bridges
after love and trains --
this little go-between, this bridge-hopper
moonlighting between mother and father.

Small as the Chinaman on the plate
she waddles across the bridge with her case.
īWhy didnīt you telephone me yesterday?ī I scold
waving loveīs big stick.

Diana Hendry (b. 194?), from: Making Blue (Peterloo Poets 1995)

America

America Iīve given you all and now Iīm nothing,
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956.
I canīt stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I donīt feel good donīt bother me.
I donīt write my poem till Iīm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
Iīm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I donīt think heīll come back itīs sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
Iīm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what Iīm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I havenīt read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid Iīm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up thereīs going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalist thinks Iīm perfectly right.
I wonīt say the Lordīs Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still havenīt told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia.

Iīm addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
Iīm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
Itīs always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybodyīs serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I havenīt got a chinamanīs chance.
Iīd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles an hour and twenty-five thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underprivileged who live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that Iīm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles more so theyīre all different sexes.
America I will sell you strophes $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings
they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing
the party was in 1935 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch
Mother Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have been a spy.
America you donīt really want to go to war.
America itīs them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russiaīs power mad. She wants to take our cars from our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Readerīs digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our filling-stations.
That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
Iīd better get right down to the job.
Itīs true I donīt want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories, Iīm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America Iīm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

(1956)

Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)

On the Island

All around the National Gallery
are Poles selling their inheritance to Turks.

īThis samovar cost me 22 marks!ī says one Turk
leaving, to another arriving.

Itīs Tuesday. Even if the rest of the week
doesnīt happen, you can walk out to Krumme Lanke

look at the nudists, take yr clothes off yrself,
if you feel like it, or fall in love again at the Polish market

& have me tell you the story of Henry Rivers,
(at the Polish market),

who had a yellow balloon, in which he breasted the hill
to the next valley, wherin lived his inamorata, Elvira Cigarettepaper,

and he, unable to land, pulled her up into the basket
& as they went up...down came their underthings.

This you can do in Westberlin as you walk between the objects
which Polish people have set out for sale:

a ceramic rolling pin, a large glass horse...
some matching ceramic-handled spoons...

And bearing in mind how long these people have travelled,
over what roads, bearing what documents, speaking to what officials,

the beauty of the city seems to reside in that horse
in which I see reflected the buttons on yr shirt,

& my fingers, foo fast for the buttons, & the eyes
of the Polish vendorīs daughter, from Katowice or Osnowiec.

Not far away, you can hear fleets of yellow buses
as they plough the Street of the Seventeenth of July.

I am Henry Rivers. This is my balloon.
You my geliebte Elvira, my little Eck-kneipe,

my Brücke der Einheit across which spies are exchanged,
you are my summer residence by Friedrich Schinkel,

out of Hohenzollern summers & Prussian flatness, you are
the treffendes Angebot I find whenever I take a step, & the Polish merchant

heads me off into the corners & squares on a city map,
where haggling wears an unpronouncable name, like love. And I want to tell him:

īBeware!ī

īOn Fasanenplatz I saw a lighted bus reversing into darkness!
It was full of elderly people, tense & trembling,

& I saw that the driver was frightened & had lost his way,
as he eased his bus silently into the shadow & disappeared from existence

like a man who realises the only way out of a hopeless parking situation
is to move in a direction formerly considered impossible!ī

Well, itīs true that the parking situation has become acute,
so let me recommend to you the midnight dancing cruise:

Northwards over the Wannsee holding yr glass horse in one hand,
my fingers undoing yr blouse with the other, while the trumpets stagger about like drunks,

& a Man from the East buries his stubble in yr blue-veined throat,
as if it were truly possible to have a Wirtschaftswunder on the dance floor.

īForward in disorder!ī cry Elvira & Henry, those famous Berliners,
wastrels of the post-war years, making uneconomic miracles

out of the simple plot of vanishing when they are wanted,
rising into the night beneath the pregnant belly of their Luftschiff,

yellow stretch marks creaking into warm summer darkness, as
a spiritual breeze unfastens their transparent silk garments,

& as they taste one another, gingerly, on the inside of each otherīs thighs
while the jazz band below crashes around & finally falls into the water,

& the Polish girl slips her fingers into my zip, & draws me toward her car
murmuring: īDas gläserne Pferd ist unbezahlbar, einfach nicht zu bezahlen...ī

The Palace of Sophie Charlotte crumbles at her experienced touch,
& the Pomeranian crows are turned to crystal in midflight,

that slow, beating, sinister flight of the hooded grey,
which Henry reaches out from the basket & firmly takes hold of,

letting it cool & harden in his hand, feeling the cables groan,
as Elvira (for his sake) tries to be as naked as she can...

(1990?)

John Hartley Williams (b. 1944), from: The New Poetry, ed. by Michael Hulse et. al. (Newcastle upon Tyne 1993)

Vegetable Love

Iīd like to say the fridge
was clean, but look at the rusty
streaks down the back wall
and the dusty brown pools
underneath the salad crisper.

And this is where Iīve lived
the past two weeks, since I was pulled
from the vegetable garden.
Iīm wild for him: I want to stay crunchy
enough to madden his hard palate and his tongue,
every sensitive part inside his mouth.
But almost hour by hour now, it seems,
I can feel my outer leaves losing resistance,
as oxygen leaks in, water leaks out
and the same tendency creeps further
and further towards my heart.

Down here thereīs not much action,
just me and another, even limper, lettuce
and half an onion. The door opens so many,
so many times a day, but he never opens
the salad drawer where Iīm curled in a corner.

Thereīs an awful lot of meat. Strange cuts:
whole limbs with their grubby hair,
wings and thighs of large birds,
claws and beaks. New juice
gathers pungency as it rolls down
through the smelly strata of the refrigerator,
and drips on to our fading heads.

The thermostat is kept as low as it will go,
and when the weather changes
for the worse, whatīs nearest
to the bottom of the fridge starts to freeze.
Three times weīve had cold snaps,
and Iīve felt the terrifying pain
as ice crystals formed at my fringes.

Insulation isnīt everything in here:
youīve got to relax into the cold,
let it in at every pore. Itīs proper
for food preservation. But I heat up
again at the thought of him,
at the thought of mixing into one juice
with his saliva, of passing down his throat
and being ingested with the rest
into his body cells where Iīll learn
by osmosis another lovely version
of curl, then shrivel, then open again to desire.

Jo Shapcott (b. 1953), from: Phrase Book (Oxford, 1992)

Inessential Things

What do cats remember of days?

They remember the ways in from the cold,
The warmest spot, the place of food.
They remember the places of pain, their enemies,
the irritation of birds, the warm fumes of the soil,
the usefulness of dust.
They remember the creak of a bed, the sound
of their ownerīs footsteps,
the taste of fish, the loveliness of cream.
Cats remember what is essential of days.
Letting all other memories go as of no worth
they sleep sounder than we,
whose hearts break remembering so many
inessential things.

Brian Patten (b. 1946), from: Armada (London: Flamingo, 1995)