FALLING
Clubbed by kindness
I sit here stunned
By the knowledge that
You loved me once
Possibly.
No room for any doubt on my side
But you were forbidden fruit
About to fall from the tree
Trouble was
I never tried to catch you
Not really.
And now I have fallen further
Than you ever could
And there you are
Somehow
To pick me up
I think Craig Raine’s new poem, Gatwick, deserves an airing, if only because of all the controversy it appears to have caused. It’s a great poems imo; funny, clever, and contemporary. His work reminds me a lot of Philip Larkin. Any poem that gets a line to rhyme with ‘Gatwick’ deserves to be read!
GATWICK by Craig Raine
I
Tom Stoppard sold his house in France: ‘I was sick
of spending so much time at Gatwick.’
II
At the UK Border,
I double
and treble
through the retractable
queuing barrier.
Now I have my passport splayed
at the requisite page.
She glances, she frowns,
she turns it upside down
so it can be read by a machine.
She stares at a screen.
And then she asks,
looking up from her desk:
‘Craig Raine the poet?’
We have less than half a minute.
‘I studied you. For my MA at uni.
I did an MA in poetry.
Now I’m in the immigration service.’
I want
to give her a kiss.
But I can’t.
Why is this
so marvellous?
So hysterical?
We are close. We are both grinning.
We have come
together by a miracle.
Two sinners simultaneously sinning.
In passport control. No shame.
III
She is maybe 22,
like a snake in the zoo,
shifting, tightening, dwindling,
stretching, lost in her Kindle.
I want to say,
I like your boots. The way
the laces criss-cross
under, without piercing the eye-holes’
white majolica gloss
rising like perfect bubbles.
I want to say, hey,
I like your moles.
Which you get from your father.
This family of Swedes
sit in different seats,
directly behind each other
on the Gatwick-Oxford bus.
I want to say I like your big bust.
Which you try to disguise with a scarf.
You’d like it smaller by half.
I want to say,
you’re so young today
it’s almost painful.
For both of us.
And slightly disdainful
to your grateful parents,
patient, tamed creatures.
But when you get old,
(gradually, without a fuss,
because it makes sense)
you will have the handsome features
of your mother.
(I choose to ignore
her mother’s pelvis, large bore,
and the two foot span
of her hefty can.
Which is older and wider,
and also lurking inside her.)
I can say these things, I say,
because I am a poet and getting old.
But of course, I can’t,
and I won’t. I’ll be silent.
Nothing said, but thought and told.
SEX, CHOCOLATE AND STATINS
Want to lower your risk of heart disease and stroke?
The answer is to have more sex,
At least two orgasms a week.
This will reduce your risk of a cardiovascular event,
But only if you are a man.
For women – well, you have to take your chances!
Eating chocolate can also reduce your risk
As does listening to music
Though Nessum Dorma might be more beneficial than Taylor Swift.
Moving out of the city, living with others, having a good boss
Also helps;
But men with a high orgasmic frequency do best of all.
So forget about Statins;
Chocolates, Vivaldi, and bashing the bishop
Are much more beneficial
And a lot more enjoyable.
Colum was born Patrick Collumb in a County Longford workhouse, where his father worked. He was the first of eight children born to Patrick and Susan Collumb.[1] When the father lost his job in 1889, he moved to the United States to participate in the Colorado gold rush. Padraic and his mother and siblings remained in Ireland. When the father returned in 1892, the family moved toGlasthule, near Dublin, where his father was employed as Assistant Manager at Sandycove and Glasthule railway station. His son attended the local national school.
When Susan Collumb died in 1897, the family was temporarily split up. Padraic (as he would be known) and one brother remained in Dublin, while their father and remaining children moved back to Longford. Colum finished school the following year and at the age of seventeen, he passed an exam for and was awarded a clerkship in the Irish Railway Clearing House. He stayed in this job until 1903.
During this period, Colum started to write and met a number of the leading Irish writers of the time, including W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory and Æ. He also joined the Gaelic League and was a member of the first board of the Abbey Theatre. He became a regular user of the National Library of Ireland, where he met James Joyce and the two became lifelong friends. During the riots caused by the Abbey Theatre’s production of The Playboy of the Western World, Colum, with Arthur Griffith, was the leader of those inciting the protests, which, as he later remarked, cost him his friendship with Yeats.
To have a clock with weights and chains
And pendulum swinging up and down!
A dresser filled with shining delph,
Speckled and white and blue and brown!
I could be busy all the day
Clearing and sweeping hearth and floor,
And fixing on their shelf again
My white and blue and speckled store!
I could be quiet there at night
Beside the fire and by myself,
Sure of a bed and loth to leave
The ticking clock and the shining delph!
Och! but I’m weary of mist and dark,
And roads where there’s never a house nor bush,
And tired I am of bog and road,
And the crying wind and the lonesome hush!
And I am praying to God on high,
And I am praying Him night and day,
For a little house – a house of my own
Out of the wind’s and the rain’s way.
AN APPRECIATION
Looking at a lovely woman
Is like eating chocolate all day long
When they look that good
They can do no wrong.
Her loveliness is a line
That runs from her crown to her toes
There is music in her smile
That follows her wherever she goes.
THE REMOVAL MEN
She sat huddled on the wall by her front door
More scarecrow than human being
Her dog cuddled on her knees
Looking at nothing; the sun-kissed morn unseen.
Her inner world was hers alone
Who knows what her dreams were?
She, who had passed many a word with me,
Now looked at me as if I was a stranger
Which I was, standing on her sun-dappled steps:
She didn’t know me from days of yore,
I don’t think she even knew herself any more.
The puzzlement on her face was evidence of that,
As the men dodged round her
Carrying her belongings in black bags
To the waiting car.
She was a child again,
A lost child;
A few months ago she was lively and bright
Chattering inanely about this and that
About how the seagulls carried away her cat.
Now she tottered along, clutching at the railings for support
Walking her dog
And sometimes forgetting to come back.
She watches the men now,
Their loading almost complete.
And as they move towards her
There is puzzlement, almost defiance, in her face
Who are you, and why are you taking all this stuff from my place?
I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman-- I have detested you long enough. I come to you as a grown child Who has had a pig-headed father; I am old enough now to make friends. It was you that broke the new wood, Now is a time for carving. We have one sap and one root-- Let there be commerce between us.
A POLITE ENQUIRY
Tell me Mr White Man,
You turn blue with cold
Green with envy
Yellow with fear
Red with embarrassment
And you turn brown in the sun,
How come we call you White Man?
THE PLASTERER
He had a way with walls;
His arms windscreen-wiping over the surface
His float arcing like a skater’s blade on ice
Wiping the lines that had gone before.
In between times he kneaded a bucket of pink dough
Or sprinkled the walls with cloudy water
IN NOMINEE PATREE, ET FILE, ET SPIRITU SANCTUS
His shiny head speckled like a giant plover’s egg.
His good eye was his spirit level
Unblinking until every line was true
All corners trim and proper
Reminding me, for some reason, of you.
SCOTLAND FREE
Bonnie Prince Charlie tried and failed
At Culloden his protest stalled
And Cumberland his forces mauled
For him there was no other chance
He ran the gantlet back to France.
Now Scotland has its chance again
You had it once, a nation then.
Independent, free, no tyrant’s yoke
For Scotland freedom’s not a joke
Fight like a fishfag, Union be damned!
Your hills, Your lochs, your lives, your land.
My Writing Life 