An Invitation

Stop! Take a breath and start again.
We know that work is not much fun,

with crazy colleagues, highs and lows;
the meetings, deadlines, e-mail, news;

the letters waiting to be sent
and trains arriving always late,

so find your home and close the door
and settle in your favourite chair

with glass of wine or perfumed tea
or take a bath, the senses free;

tone down the lights and in the dark
set up some candles, banish talk

and find a little calm and space;
relax, just let it go; try this.

From Some Fine Old Ways To Save your Life
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Apples don't fall far from trees

For Dad

Those seasoned words have followed me
at least for twenty years or so,
and through that time I've tried to write
some thing you'd like, accept or take
on board not as a challenge but
as proof you'd done a good job, Dad.

I guess our split was at sixteen
when we both knew my hungry mind
would not make do with humdrum life,
that it would ask for proof and more.
But what we share is clear to see,
our pain not working for ourselves,
our joy in simple country things,
the way we smoke, our love of wood.

And love comes into this for years
ago you said you'd like to glimpse
the Taj Mahal before you died,
with Mom, of course, your only friend;
but never having the wherewithal,
the dosh, the chance, the heart perhaps,
you never made that trip out East
and wander now in darkened fields.

So here I am, your seedling love,
at Taj Mahal myself to find
out something of what love can do
when faced with loss, when faced with death.
I stroll about this marble cool
and ponder family, sex and trees
on which to hang a fruit or fall
backwards or forwards into dreams.

The bulbul on the branch I saw
is just another nightingale
and sings as sweet to one and all,
how often can we hear its notes?
Which brings me back to earth and graves,
sad songs on the demise of queens.

The words were always difficult
and Emperor Shah Jehan himself
took twenty years or so to press
'this teardrop on the cheek of time',
Tagore's phrase; I'm still at a loss.
Suffice to say I wish we'd talked
back then instead of drifting far;
you to your older age and dark
and me, for love, to far-off lands.

Agra 2001

From Some Fine Old Ways To Save your Life
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Consorting with Angels

For Mary Jane

When certain music plays I hear
a voice that sings the sounds of love
and lose the sense of daily life.

What can they mean, these angel notes,
is this the poet's work like Blake
his garden talk with Gabriel?

And what about the Eastham* angel
coming through the wall like stone
and finding telling form in light?

I listen to the spiritual,
then talk with those who are not there
and find in stone a sacred charm.

*A tiny village in the Teme Valley, Worcestershire.

From Some Fine Old Ways To Save your Life
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Dying in December

for Basir Sultan Kazrni

It's always desperate when it happens
and I count now a dozen or so who've died,
a handful very close, bad timing all,
but to die in December seems cruel,
doubly so, cheerful festivities planned.
 
Not knowing how poorly your mother was,
Faraza's message came out of the blue
and stabbed something that was anaesthetised
by my father's glide from 'seriously
ill' to a state nearer stability.
 
Your prayers for his well-being were noted
by more than just me; those things that touch us
most deeply are common to all it seems.
I remembered your mother in her chair
impassively watching the video
 
of the memorial of your father's
literary life and too early death,
wondered how twenty five years' absence felt.
While, up the wall, a silvered gecko slid,
to me, anyway, quite incongruous.
 
It is the helplessness that torments most;
like no longer being able to make
that call or send that silly epistle;
proffer the steady hand in dizzy times
or simply be in love, trust or friendship.
 
The departed one has gained the shadows
of a metallic, grey evening, skating
beyond the trees now on December ice,
with the moon for lighting and in the west
the icy, winking embrace of Venus.
 
From Email from the Provinces

Blue Irises

For Rosa
 
Driving round the forest again;
this time with an artist who wants
to illustrate some 'Wyre' poems.
I tell him the origin of
the name "Gladderbrook", my first home.
 
And how one old, village lady
had once told me she'd gathered
blue irises from the stream side
in the 1900s when she
was a girl no older than you.
 
Later that week at the station
in York I find myself looking
into your blue eyes and buying
irises from the flower stall
to give to Mummy when she comes.
 
Their 'overworne blewish colour',
as Gerard would have it, quite suits
my mood; the slender green lances
skewer rather than gladden my heart.
You, smiling, see only bright flowers.
 
From Email from the Provinces

Unfinished

A flash of reddish hair can still
set me all a jangle in the street,
persuading me for the moment
that we should try to make it work.

But the occasions of love are few
and should not be strained or studied;
rather they should be taken gently
and treasured, not mourned for.

And if the writing down, the fet-
tering, can keep love's edge in a-
beyance, why is that the words
still move on the page and jam me up?

We've been apart for a year now
        *        *        *        *

From The Occasions of Love
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