Prelude

One night as I lay in my bed and thought

And failed to find the theme for which I sought

A bird began to sing (or I to hear)

Above me in the blackness, loud and clear,

Threading the dark with easy lines of song

That seemed – as I lay wakeful for so long

I saw the sky was lightening – to say:

“Here’s one who, focussed, hasn’t lost his way.”

Then, softening to neighbours who I’d heard

cursing the selfsame or another bird,

fretting that I would never be content

Unless I wrote, fearing contentment meant

The end of art (a self-defeating choice),

I heard this in the bird’s melodic voice:

“A man stood in the shadow of a King

who told the man he’d give him anything

His heart desired – land, women, gold or boys:

He only had to ask. ‘But these are toys,’

as if he saw posterity beguiled….”

As I lay there I felt compelled to choose,

Yet knew that either choice meant I would loose:

That moment total happiness appeared

Impossible. “It’s no more than you feared.”

I told myself and, putting from my mind

Such dismal thoughts, I fell asleep, resigned,

And dreamt Beethoven and Mozart were struck

By how each saw the other’s state as luck –

The lonely bachelor’s dreams of a wife

Idealised in song; the married life

embroidered by its opposite; yet each,

Sublime beyond most other artists’ reach,

Must craft from need to be (not show or  tell),

to earn a brief reprieve through art from hell,

or let imagination fall from grace

and send another to it in one’s place.

“Revealing weakness, we illuminate”

they told each other, “Humankind’s estate,

depicting not what is, but rather what

the artists suffers for not having got.

For those who understand our states (the rest

will hear the catalogue and be impressed)

We lay our night times bare, as others days,

and cast in silver their more glittering rays.”

I sat beside my lover as she slept

In Tuscany; the bright flames licked and leapt

Along the slowly charring logs, and turned

The stubborn wood to ashes as they burned,

And saw the sight she pointed out to me:

Laid upright on the grass, felled lengths of tree

At first sight dead, were shooting vivd green

As full of life as they had even been,

Demanding (as half dazed with sleep, appalled,

The dream still clutching him, Pharaoh had called

For someone to say what the dream was for,

Shouting for explanation) metaphor.

If wood, then, is experience (its rings

The fingerprint of all important things),

Conscious volition is the axe that chops

Clean through the chambers threading it, and stops

The capillary, nourishing sap-tide

rising unseen from root to leaf inside;

And as from the unfathomable dark

between the dying heart-wood and the bark

new life shoulders its way out of the wood

till green shoots in a living circle stood

keen-fingering the changing Tuscan sky,

so in between the bone and skin there lie

the secret regions of the human heart

whose rank and sweet fecundity breeds art.

The hail that bounced amongst the grass has gone,

And mauve wisteria petals lie upon

The table, path and lawn: the Tuscan sun

Is hot upon us. More than half is done;

Few days remain in which to apprehend

Some clear expression of the time we spend

Together here. The unfamiliar tongue

That we have paid to spend these days among

Arranges, soothes and praises, while the wind

Is just below the surface of our mind,

And Beatric¾ bawls her infant rage

At teething-pain somewhere indoors. Offstage,

There wait the hilltop towns whose narrow lanes

Are silent, high above the patchworked plains,

As we explore their steepnesses, and dine

On menu tipico and local wine,

Happily missing artifacts and sites

Through easy days that lead to ease-filled nights.

The cypresses, bearing their store of cones

As if bedecked with pale gray snails or stones,

stand tall against the flawless sky; between,

Olives spread trembling leaves of silver-green.

Here are no pines: instead a fruit tree bears

Clear pink (for apples, possibly, or pears)

Beside a spout that pours, after the rain,

Out of the bank. Beside the house the lane

Becomes a shallow stream that I watch run

Transparent in the hot afternoon sun;

Asphodel, hyacinth and orchid burn

Star-white and purple, till the clouds return,

Amongst the bank-grass; iris share their hues

And skied are echoed in the bugloss’ blues,

While buttercups and daisies point a green

More emerald than I have ever seen….

The slender branch of banksiae arranged

Curving across my kitchen window changed

The way I think of beauty. Adding grace

And lightness to the flat, right-angled space,

Its fine, long, elegant recursive strength

Inclines to gravity; along its length

At unworked periods, small single stems

Bear others like them, leaves, and diadems

Of tiny reflexed flowers, primrose-pale,

And all of them, according to some scale,

More miniature and frequent, as I cast

My eye along its wonders, than the last.

The beauty of the individual parts,

Or all, is where appreciation starts,

But where it leads – I catch a glimmer now,

Studying it – is understanding how,

Interrelating, deeper beauty’s made

That puts the former beauty in the shade.

Then, put unwillingly to bed, I find

A beauty waiting of a different kind:

The beauty that a vase of random blooms,

Arranged perhaps haphazardly, assumes,

That shown no pattern and no symmetry,

Except in each component, to the eye;

And yet the beauty of each leaf and flower

Can neither sum to, nor explain, its power –

That the effectively infinite scope

Of all its angles offers us the hope

That Nature’s inexhaustible domain,

The outer edge of chaos, will remain

Our nursery forever, and Dame Kind

A store of wonders for the restless mind.

This insight takes a week; then, as with verve

Assertion, skill, and not a little nerve,

You drive us, Friday, north, and I expound

My thesis using what I see around –

A cone-shaped roof whose symmetry of style

Is balanced by its random-coloured tile;

A field, unweeded, balanced green and white,

Its flower heads all at a single height –

I meet (but not, thank god! beneath a bus!)

The gods Apollo and Dionysus

Measured and mocking as they welcome me,

And after working all that week I see,

And though I know I’m seeing nothing new

I’m satisfied to have my point of view;

Yet now the skirmish, not the war, is won,

And wit this time, sat in the evening sun

The workshop finished and the poets gone,

When I must find my breath and battle on,

To keep the poem’s promise, and rehearse

The application of these rules to verse.

Firstly, the poem must provide delight

(as much to read as first it was to write)

if not in every liner, yet in enough

to make the reader persevere for stuff

worth excavating: first-sight love, while fine,

depends upon the working of its mine

for permanence: prognostication’s poor

for love that fails to find a seam of ore,

and poems where one reading yields up all,

with few supreme exceptions, quickly pall.

And what delights? Fine poetry will storm

The heart and head with feeling, sense and form:

A striking or a haunting metaphor,

an image that one hasn’t met before,

a way of seeing different to one’s own,

adding to one’s perceptions, or the known

affirmed in recognition, a sublime,

a witty or an unexpected rhyme

in which some new relationship is caught

by juxtaposing what one hadn’t thought;

and, though one can’t be certain of it, yet

reading the greatest verse one seems to get

a sense of truth, a glimpse into the soul.

Second, the shape and contour of the whole

Works its effect upon the reader, though

S/he may not realise that this is so,

The tension built in every word and line

Discharged according to the form’s design:

Ottava rima’s punchline couplets – yes,

We all see those: less easy to assess

A subtle sonnet’s turnings; harder still

To see the isomorph of Jack and Jill

(the basic shape of feeling) not in line

or verse or stanza, but the whole design

which if effective, mimics all the drives,

in shape, at least, that underlay our lives,

the appetite (and whether its for bread,

fame, self-discovery or three-in-bed,

the shape’s the same) that once it’s started, grows,

unless it fails, until the creature knows –

conscious, unconscious, keen or loath – it must

do something where it irritates, adjust

its habits or its hormone-levels (which

depends upon the nature of the itch);

and what the organism does to find

release, gratification, peace of mind,

full stomach or fulfillment – all’s the same:

the only variations are the name

and which way skewed the line whose length and height

(how long and how intense the appetite,

where does it reach the stasis of its start?)

maps onto works of all but plastic art.

Third, though conventions change from age to age

The seen aesthetics of the printed page –

The perfect typescript, margin straight as die

Or quaintly patterned – gives the reader’s eye,

Especially the poet’s, pleasures clear

As spoken or imagined verse the ear.

Last is the mystery, that which we owe

Whatever Muse inspired the words to flow,

Obedient alphabetics trail or chase

Our cursor or our pen from space to space,

That solves he riddle posed by verse: the way

We say things modifies the things we say.

For while the same thing might be said in prose

In different ways, and so we may propose

That three plus for equates to four plus three,

The same does not apply to poetry.

And as one might define the highest part

Of gardener’s or flower-arranger’s art

As playing profusion as one might a lyre,

Charming or forcing pan-pipes to a choir,

Accepting the materials to hand –

The sort of flowers and the stretch of land –

Conducting the contingent in a dance,

So poetry embraces circumstance

And from the unique moment spins a thread

Of meaning that can’t otherwise be said,

Whose manifold determinants – the view,

The things the poet couldn’t quite construe,

Her intimations of the far divine,

The cheese she had for dinner, or the wine,

The bee alighting briefly on the page,

The import of her or her epoch’s age,

The words that came to mind, and those required

To fit the scheme by which she was inspired,

The state of her digestion and her soul –

Fall either side the margins of control.

So if a poem finally gives voice

All that’s required a poet is: rejoice!

But all’s not Eden. Soon the world is wrecked

If entropy is left to reign unchecked.

Massed greenfly take the tender Rose to dine,

And caterpillars ravage Columbine;

Unbarred, mosquitos find their way within

And penetrate the Poet’s fragile skin;

Dust mounts, the pile of dirty dishes swells,

The garbage underneath the work-top smells,

The bills unpaid, the services are stopped;

His friends come less and less until he’s dropped;

His much relieved employers ‘let him go’;

Unkempt, unwashed, he wanders to and fro;

His most determined lover disappears;

His home, neglected, falls around his ears;

As, finally, he sits and stares beyond

Some institution for the frail or fond,

Exasperated family refuse

To visit him, and leave him to his Muse.

No. This wont do. The Poet can’t evade

The choices that must constantly be made;

Good sense or toilet-training make him loth

To take extremes: he’ll follow none, or both.

He hedges bets, believes in “middle way”,

And muddle through the options of the day;

Has always kept a foot in either camp

And, neither wet nor dry, is deeply damp;

Attempts a life of reason (though it’s true

He used to feel nostalgie de la boue

As he matures he feels it less and less –

If ‘maturation’’s apt for such a mess).

And so he works and plays and finds the time

Amongst it all to write a little rhyme

With what he thinks of as a gowing skill

At balancing or juggling – but still

Feels sometimes vaguely discontent, as when

A week’s gone by with nothing from his pen;

Sometimes, uncertain, wonders if he’s right

To shade in gray what might be black or white:

And might not all be worth it for one fine

Enduring sonnet, or one deathless line?

But then he thinks: “Eternity is vast,

And if, a million million light-years past

The centre of a slowly spinning core,

Upon some minor constellation’s shore

Expires a smallish sun, that has a moon

On which a creature, rhyming June with spoon,

Feels sometimes troubled…” Here he stops, and grins;

A poem ends: another one begins.

logos

Preparation

1

Heatwave. August. High summer, and scant wind
to launch a voyager upon the sea,
and yet Odysseus is again content.

He sees a young man lying by a house
whose angled doorway catches, holds, the sun,
nothing to do, nowhere he has to go,
is suddenly aware of what he feels:
for heat, light, air, sound, silence, expectation
hold him, too, in their balance, set him free
to roam, when he is ready to, the world;
is struck by insight: “Why – this is contentment,
filling me completely!” and resolves
to fix this moment in his mind forever,
frame and feeling, there for memory,
for future need.

Older Odysseus smiles
beneath the broad white canvas’ shade and thinks
the youth was right,  remembering. He sees
bees working the hypericum, a mottled
butterfly resting on a green stem
of sky-blue, sea-blue hebe. The lanterns,
their candles burnt, before him as he writes
have last evening’s cool in their emptiness,
look to tonight. The sun’s upon his back
and he will wait Penelope’s return
to move the shade. And this – a man’s faint song,
birds cooing in his trees, the distant sounds
of agriculture, butter yellow blooms
of oleander, agapanthus white
as gulls against the blue sky – seems enough.

2

Penelope knows how to read his moods:
eight months she’s watched and seen his doubts increase
until he calls himself ‘ex-mariner’;
she sees in him, at moments he recalls
his Odyssey, uncertainty, self doubt,
that he’s unsure what all this might be worth
compared to that, whether he has the strength,
cunning, luck, skill…whatever, that it took
once upon a time. She sees him sigh,
his eyes unfocus as he recollects
that recollection’s not enough. The lines
on his brow deepen. Sometimes he looks lost….

And now that August’s near, feeling his wounds,
sleeping long, taciturn, recouping strength,
he finds his Muse again: his tongue unbound,
he starts to scribble, jots in the notebooks
she knows she will read when his voyage is made
and he’s returned, for she is full of faith.

Shipbuilding

1

The Earth has sailed a circle round the Sun
since the keel was laid: Odysseus
forgives himself for not reading the signs
until his nose was rubbed. The two worked well,
his (younger) brother and her elder boy,
clearing a level place on which to set
the beams that built the raft, fetching the wood
and fixing it. While he looked on and mused…

It came as love comes: suddenly, behind,
kissing one’s nape, a possibility
instantly seen and known, changing one’s world,
changing two’s. This was his craft, his season.

2

Some time that spring Penelope or he –
he can’t say who – first floated the idea
the cross-planked structure underneath the trees
could be a raft for him to voyage on
the coming summer; as the plan took hold
they both became their deeper selves again.

The launch

Some things could not be done:  he planned to make
a ceremony when his brother came,
to show him and to thank him for the gift
and pour some wine – but though he led him out
and told him as he stood upon the slats
what it all meant, how he had changed its shape,
boarded its edges, had the gangplank laid,
there was no sense of celebration shared;
and neither could he name it, though he searched
the star map and the sky. And so the launch
was gradual: a retrospective launch
if such were possible: one blissful day
he recognises he’s at sea again…….

Casting off

1

Landlocked Odysseus on his slatted craft,
planks brown against the sea of tangled green,
watches a world where nothing moves but wind,
the sun minutely, loud fat drops of rain
falling from where they’ve gathered on the trees
that spread a canopy above the raft
as sails that he sees now in his mind’s eye
sheltering little from the fierce sea-sun,
speeding him on past voyages. And noise,
his constant, noticed most when least present:
roosting birdsong, running water, wind,
the silence of the seven earthed masts, mossed
and ivied, here beside him as he slips
his moorings, waits to feel the current’s lift
and take, his craft’s slow swing onto the sea.

2

Odysseus feels no urgency, could stay
all day here, waiting for the wind to rise.
He sees a sunlit village, a harbour,
paints, as if by numbers, a white house,
an ochre roof, a dusty road, his son
off bathing, his daughter in a straw hat
sat smiling in a quayside taverna,
smells the jug of wine on the broad table,
the roasting lamb….someone’s eyes see a head
falling towards the sand….He turns seaward
and hears the seagulls cry; and still he waits,
thinking: “The time will come. The time will come.”

3

The sea will not leave him: indigo-throated,
bluer than the bluest sea he’s known,
hibiscus opens new blooms to the sun
daily: refracted light beneath his hull
shimmering fishes. And always the wind.

Solitude

Of course he has known loneliness, adrift
for weeks and months, marooned or prisoner,
even while fêted felt the tug of home,
but not before like this, unmixed with grief
at losing men, rage at the fates, or fight
against the odds: no, this is unforeseen –
long hours with only thought for company,
half-dreaming and adrift upon the currents,
content to watch himself as, motionless,
he roams remembered pasts, imagined futures,
slipping across the line between the two,
the present moment, as a fish’s tail
flicks it unthinking from the limpid water
of river outfall to the deeper green
of ocean. So he sits, entirely lost
in musing, while the world turns around him
unheeded, and the currents take him back
past voyages southwards and far to west
which he returned from changed and marked for life,
to moments when his future pivoted
upon a single word; then a sea-change
sweeps him beyond himself, to the horizon
arcing around him, yielding sun and moon
alternately through all the time he’s left,
and all the many lives he now imagines,
of which he knows one only will be his,
enriched and not diminished by his dreams,
as he needed to see just once the night’s
infinite brilliance above the ocean
to be illumined by the sight forever.

Sirens

What do they sing to him? “Odysseus,
come to our arms and we’ll love you forever;
our bodies and our beds will keep you eager;
O, listen to us, sweet Odysseus,
listen: we share your secret appetites:
there’s nothing we won’t do, won’t let you do,
if you will only come to us and love us…”

He has a mast from which, securely tied,
to listen to the sweet, seductive madness:
wrapped in each other’s arms Penelope
and he make dreaming love for hours, tell
their stories to each other, one of which :

“A river sparkles in the morning sunlight,
as does a woman’s jet-black glossy hair
while she waits for her transport. And here come
our heroes: holy men walking to where
need not concern us. As they near, they’re asked
to carry her across: one man half-kneels,
sets her astride one shoulder, then stands up
and in both stride; and she’s carried across,
watches the pair continue on their way.

Little is said between the men: maybe
nothing till nightfall; then, as they turn in,
one asks the other: ‘Since we’re not allowed
dealings with women, how it is that you
did what you did this morning?’ The reply:
‘I put her down beside the river: you,
brother, are still carrying her tonight.’”

…Odysseus says he’s carried through decades,
giving him both licence, and a key
to one of the conundrums that makes him
the man he is (no different from the others,
he’d say), in the same safe place that he keeps
‘I cannot praise a fugitive or cloistered
virtue.’ , a sentence which unlocks a trunk
containing the same treasure, winds a spring
in the same clockwork of his age-scarred heart.

Monsters

Their absence troubles him. For weeks he tries
to summon them, hordes, flights, squadrons of them,
any and all the monsters that he’s known,
heard hinted at. But still they refuse
even imagined conversation, evade him;
his voyage founders on this absent rock,
becalmed for days with no progress in sight
and this for no reason he can discern:
the wind is up and tossing the tall waves
of strange, familiar, half-remembered seas –
Odysseus must fight to steer his craft,
submit to the winds’ serendipity,
or something in between, as images
are gusted here and there like pennants snatched
from a snapped lanyard, and he with them –
then dies and leaves him once again becalmed,
nauseous, his solar plexus crabbed,
breath short, eyes rheumy. Nights without much sleep,
too much navigation of the soul,
too much fantasy unships his bearings:
he misses turns on maps, attention lags
and lapses, lids close. All around a surface
close-wrinkled as his hand’s back and as mobile,
a tiny segment of a sphere’s surface,
vast in scale, and coloured as no hand
since his forebears painted themselves for battle,
meets the smooth unbroken sky.  A toy,
pointed, painted, dances on a string,
balanced between the wind and gravity;
he’s leaden, but the sky is a comfort:
a sea of sky for ever wave of sea,
so vast, what can he hope to set against it?

Sea-sickness is a victory of sorts,
better than nothing. The nights’ residue
can, perhaps, be forced to be of value,
something that he is prepared to own:
but in a world where so much is wasted –
thistledown scaling the off-shore wind –
should he expect, just because he’s called
Odysseus, of all the multitudes
of multitudes launched into existence,
to be the one to fertilise the egg?
Wouldn’t it make anyone desire
to vomit – with their backs against the wind
of course – also? Wish again for days
of reasoned navigation, sleep-filled nights?
cut losses, anchor-chains, mooring-ropes,
rigging, umbilica? Where does it end?
What should he keep and what should he destroy;
diminish or enhance his epitaph?
What does one do and then obliterate?
What does it mean to be one’s audience?
Who does what to whom? Who is afraid
of what? When will he stop asking questions,
start answering? Who will listen? Why does he
want to reveal what’s hidden? It has to be
survived, and he knows how, at least, that’s done:
this is what it means to be Odysseus.
this is his gift: to live until he dies
his own free man, to navigate himself,
while the sun sets and mal-de-mer subsides.

Homecoming

All journeys have their histories: he knows
that she and he are changed when he makes landfall –
and comes ashore sun-browned with a sea-haul
with which he’s almost careless, as if having
were of little account compared with getting  -
he can’t tell how, only that the wind blows
from points propitious, the Fortunate Isles

And though their journey, measured in sea-miles,
is three parts over, what’s to come’s the best,
the rest is sea-spume. “Yet sometimes wave-foam
is all there is to set direction home:
memory’s weathervane,” he writes, “heart’s clue.”
and shuts his log, prepares to pay his due
to Aphrodite of the shining breast.

eros

Odysseus offers himself to death

Stretched on a country gravestone, with a whore
old enough to be his granddaughter
leading his body through the act of love –
the air, the ministering flesh above,
the sun-warmed, moss-cushioned, hewn stone beneath –
each summer’s end he keeps a date with death.

Breasts in his palms, mouth on his mouth, her hips
steadily milk him, as a stockman strips
a bull, ‘till he shocks with his battle-shout –
then silence, as his semen pulses out
as if the man’s already quit the earth
and ships across the Styx towards the berth

he’ll ready for them both while, sobbing, she
runs off to break the news to Penelope.

Siren songs (1 – 3)

1

“That is the theme.” he says: ‘The variations
might start with the proximity between
a woman’s fragrance and a man’s nostrils,
the pressure of a shoulder and a thigh,
a toe chancing to brush against a member
under a robe, if either reach as far.

And then the possibility exists that he,
reaching the further shallows, stops beside
a large, flat, sun-warmed slab and, landing her
upon it, cups his hands and calls: ‘Don’t wait –
I’ll catch up with you later.’  Or he stands
up to his chest in water, while she slides,
skirt lifted, from his shoulder to his front,
her arms around his neck, cheek against his…..”

2

Water, islands, temples, nursery rhymes,
obscenities – all that’s heard is Creak, creak:
the smallest bed. Creak….. creak. Swap his sea-log
for one perfect erotic lyric? Creak,
Creak. Penelope stares hard into
the sea of lilies. Ochre fur, with fists
anchored, slides over bone. Girl, bear. Creak, creak.

3

“Narrow paths mown through the meadow lead
beyond the rushes bordering the half-
glimpsed pond, to there beside a small pagoda,
a close cut, dappled lawn, seen through the leaves
and branches of an ash, where Hylas kneels,
splendidly naked, fishes water-nymphs
out of the water one after another,
enjoys them on the grass.  He’s seen, somewhere,
Odysseus, a complicated toy:
a tiny painted fellow humps a group
of miniature mannequins, one by one,
while a handle’s turned. As, so it seems,
will Hylas, to his wishes, pull a girl
out of her element onto the bank,
and hold her down as one would hold a fish
just landed, liquid silver, knelt between
her knees, one hand upon a breast, the other
aiming himself down at what fishes lack
but these aquatic siblings sport and flash,
their little nips-and-tucks of skin, infolds
of flesh, moist sphincters, mollusc-slipperiness,
sea-manifests that Hylas enters like
another world in which his fate is not
to be pulled under, drowned for wanting what’s
impossible, but is crowned King.”

Penelope at breakfast

When one of her women takes a little while
longer than might be strictly necessary,
sitting on the terrace, Penelope,
waiting  for him, has been observed to smile,
acknowledging, towards the distant sea,
her man’s not lost his power to beguile,

his half-tumescent organ’s to mislead
(long, heavy, warm, lying upon a thigh)
fingers intending washing him to try
something more adventurous instead.

Omega, pi: until the outlines blur
she traces amber absently on bread,
thinking about the shared lives they’ve led,
wondering if the world should envy her.

Author’s introduction

It’s not unusual to find one’s Muse
Directed largely by the choice of diction
So that the form and shape (one has to choose)
Determines what’s the topic: fact or fiction,
Eternal verities or evening news,
Decided by the formal predilection
Of this, that or the other rhyming schema.
But how bizarre to write Ottava Rima!

And why Ottava Rima? I don’t know.
Believe me, chėr lecteur, I only write it.
Beyond me why it does or doesn’t flow:
Can’t say if it’s because of, or despite it.
We ageing hippies manqué, if you show
A bullet or a bait will have to bite it –
Although I hope the deep truth of the matter
Is (fingers crossed) the former, not the latter.

But since Ottava Rima is the way
We’re going, I’ll declare – not motivations
Exactly: that’s too definite – the sway
Of meaning it’s for me. First come relations
With poets: one, an age before today
Who showed what happens when we miss our stations,
A second not long dead and, I think, better,
Who on a journey wrote the first a letter.

And then, of course, there is another meaning:
My need for self-expression and applause,
My love-hate for authority, my leaning
To form and freedom, anarchy and laws;
(Does any of us ever finish weaning?
Do only insects end their diapause?)
My yen for structure and for deconstruction,
Rigidity, rebellion, rule and ruction.

But that is, as they say, another story,
Or not, at least, the main event, which is
To show our time, in all its passing glory,
To poets past, both like and unlike his
Or hers – e.g. though we’ve no Whig we’ve Tory,
if only just! And while we’re doing this –
put down that Pawn: a hand of Vingt-et-un –
to have, as well as entertainment, fun.

Canto 1  – O Tempora! O Mores!

Custom and courtesy agree, dear Hugh,
I should begin by begging someone’s pardon:
To start, then, I’ll apologise to you,
If you can hear me in that other Arden
(I hope there’s lots of chums up there to screw,
and you are blessed with an eternal hard-on,
and they): I just can’t call you ‘Auden’; ‘Wystan’
seems overblown as calling someone ‘Tristan’.

But ‘Tristram’. You once sweet young Scottish lad,
Your even sweeter mother, Maggie Stuart,
Was fine a mistress as I ever had.
(Don’t worry, T: I’ve not become a braggart,
but praise where praise is due: you won’t do bad
if you can have, or be, so sweet a sweetheart.)
And now – forgive me, Tristram, for the time,
While we made love, you found the garden lime,

And like a bat from …well, from Cricklewood,
I hurled us in my open Morris Minor,
As if I were the legendary Toad
Escaping from a  fracas with a shiner,
To Moorfields on the Marylebone Road.
You couldn’t have been treated any finer
In any other hospital, my dear:
They said your vision’d come entirely clear,

And clear I hope it is. But what remorse,
What self-reproach, we felt, your Ma and I,
So deep immersed in urgent intercourse
That we forgot to keep a watchful eye
To keep you, Tristram, safely from the source
Of house and garden dangers. By and by
As Maggie and I pleasured in my bed
You found the way into my garden shed.

I see you now, stood at the garden door
Rubbing at your tear-streaked powdered face,
And Maggie leaping up to reassure
And hug you a half-distraught embrace,
Bewildered, while we dressed and left and tore
Along the road as if it were a race,
Headlights and horn and jumping lights – because
We weren’t sure that it wasn’t, so it was.

That’s one transgression of a sexual kind,
though sex was somewhat incidental to it.
Another: parents coming home to find
Girl-friend and me in bed having a screw: it
Caused mayhem far beyond what I could find
To justify – my Dad would overdo it.
But neither scene compares with what, dear Hugh,
The mores of your epoch put you through.

Though times were changing, they were only just:
It still remained a criminal offence
When you first lusted to express that lust,
Given your harmless gender-preference
For which the middle-class professed disgust.
You had to cultivate a reticence
I never did: we just don’t feel the same:
We have no crimes that cannot speak their name.

You see, Hugh, you were never really queer:
It was the times you lived in that deflected
From all the values people should hold dear.
‘Only connect.’ said Forster – you connected,
and now sits on my bookshelf, ever near,
a fat book of your poetry, collected.
What counts is how it tells how you related –
not whether either lover was fellated

or buggered. Though there is a fascination
in knowing how you did between the sheets:
your else exemplary versification
says nothing of the strainings, sweats and heats,
the textures and the tastes of copulation.
We know these were, for you, forbidden sweets;
But though you didn’t know it, you were Gay,
And Gay’s as good as anything today.

Or almost good as anything: there’s still
Ground to make up. All isn’t equal yet.
Some churchmen (women too) maintain a shrill
Antagonism; out Mid-West the set
Of Newly Saved proclaim as Holy Will
Hell-fire for chaps who have a chap for pet,
(Though on the coasts it isn’t such a bummer)
And in the East it’s looking even glummer.

Here, though at sixteen girls may copulate
With anyone of equal age or greater,
Their brothers, if they’re gay, are told to wait –
It isn’t legal until two years later
For male to go with male, though they can mate
With girls, if so inclined, and they should cater.
But she can screw, two years before her brother,
Quite legally, her own sex and the other.

And Hugh, some of us think this quite appalling.
This freedom that you never could enjoy
Is second-class and consequently galling:
If girl can girl, then why can’t boy with boy?
But now, to give equality of balling,
One of our new MPs, the real McCoy,
This week announced he’s sponsoring a Bill
To give young Jack equality with Jill.

It won’t be won, I’m sure, without a battle –
A rearguard action (please forgive the pun)
Is on the cards, but I’d say even that’ll
Not last for long: the battle will be won.
For those who turned their nose up at our cattle
(with reason!) in the Court where anyone
in Europe can seek justice, gave a judgement:
the law’s illegal, and a kind of fudgement.

There’s been a widespread movement since the War
To federate the European nations
And limit each one’s power: this is for
The common good of harmonised relations.
So where we were competitive before,
We have (or will have) common aspirations
From here to where was once the Iron Curtain;
One currency – though this is less than certain.

‘Was once’: yes, Hugh, the curtain’s laid to rest,
Ditto the wall that Berlin used to straddle.
The Soviets now emulate the West,
Bandits and Mafioso in the saddle,
The rulers populist or drunk; the best
Are up shit creek and trying hard to paddle;
Others have legged it to a foreign shore:
Natasha’s now the Turkish word for whore.

And AIDS – But you don’t know what that is, and
I’ll find another Canto to explain it.
Back to the great Pan-European land
(it isn’t called that yet, but we’ll attain it)
where supranational has upper hand
through Parliament and Court; those who maintain it
are governed by a rule, familiarity
with which ain’t common, called subsidiarity

which means decisions should be – broadly – local.
The Court of Justice didn’t overrule
Westminster’s right to say at what age folk’ll
Have whom, where one can put, and can’t, one’s tool
If British – though the opposition’s vocal –
Those crucial days before the end of school
When one’s exams should be one’s major focus,
Not all this homophobic hocus-pocus.

Now all this talk of Europe and abroad,
And buggery (mentioned some stanzas back)
Leads to the other poet: you, my Lord,
Son of the infamous Gordon ‘Mad Jack’,
Who fled to Europe to escape a horde
Of bailiffs, lovers, infants and the clack
Of tongues accusing you of those two nicest
Of misdemeanours – sodomy and incest.

Not everything is mutable in time:
Debts are still debts, and somehow must be paid,
Incest is still regarded as a crime,
Some lovers lose their charm when they’ve been laid
And puking infants don’t help one to rhyme.
But since you died some progress has been made.
If you’d been born when I was, you’d have loved it:
It hardly mattered where a fellow shoved it!

For buggery (or ‘sodomy’ – its title
In 1806 when you left this land)
Is in some quarters thought to be a vital
Component of one’s repertoire, a grand
Alternative within the long recital
Of what gives pleasure: far from being banned,
One’s teenage daughter’s magazines extol
Judicious application to this hole.

The writer, not the painter, Raphael
In his biography, my Lord, of you
Suggests – though there’s no way, I think, to tell
With certainty –  you were inclined to screw
Your conquests in this way in case they fell
With child. And from a different point of view
Au fond you really wanted to enjoy
Your own persona as a darling boy.

For which there’s evidence: vide Augusta,
Your half-sister: Lord knows what games you played,
But sex with you clearly did not disgust her;
Back in the nursery, mixing man with maid.
And Lady Caroline could well pass muster
For pretty boy – her portrait, thus arrayed,
By Phillips, in the Courtauld, shows her cool
And capable of mastering a tool.

Well, Lord, you wouldn’t have to bother now,
Unless you wanted to, with such contortions:
There’s information everywhere on how
To choose, and then to take, the right precautions;
There’s even retrospective pills allow
Post-coital contraception; and abortions –
This week Marie Stopes clinics were the story:
Their lunch-hour service caused a small furore.

And now my Lord, and Hugh – a short farewell:
I’ll finish my first Canto by inquiring
(it’s not original, but what the Hell?)
had you not had such obstacles to squiring
or getting laid, would you have done so well?
Would calmer lives have been half so inspiring?
Would poetry have suffered had your pain
Been less? Would our loss follow from your gain?

Or maybe – this is just a mite subversive –
Would you have found some subject for your verse
No matter what? Are Muses so incursive
That none of us is proof against their curse?
Is what makes us write poems so dispersive
We can’t take payment from another purse?
Answer by e-mail, if you please, to me
Your author, humble servant, Heiser B.

Canto 2 -  On Top of the World

I’m writing this upon my word-processor
Snug in my bungalow in Camden Town;
You know, Lord, what a bungalow is for?
A dwelling with no upstairs, only down;
Ideal for those like us with no, or poor,
Mobility? Come now, my Lord: don’t frown –
A club foot isn’t something you need hide:
One wears one’s disability with pride.

A word-processor’s quite another item:
A marvel, though it now seems commonplace,
That stores my verses fast as I can write ’em
(I’ve all my output in this little space),
checks spellings, finds me rhymes – what’s this: ad litem?
I’m sorry, but that just won’t fit the case –
Powered by electricity. Oh dear!
How many things there are to be made clear.

Let’s just say electricity is power
Sent where it’s needed through a metal string
That lights like summer noon the midnight hour,
That when I want makes Pavarotti sing,
Cooks food, pumps heated water through my shower,
Raises my hoist and – not a little thing –
Keeps me alive when sleeping in my bed:
Without my ventilator I’d be dead

Since polio (Lord, there’s another new one:
An illness that I caught in Casablanca.
Astonishing, the harm that it can do one,
And yet I look back on it without rancour.
It is perhaps a strange thought, but a true one:
In some ways disability’s an anchor:
It drags one back, but also keeps one grounded –
Though on the whole avoidance is well founded)

At twenty-seven (can it be a quarter
Century past?) left me quadriplegic:
Something in the air or in the water,
And all I had with me was analgesic
(and much hashish – although we didn’t oughter,
we did: it made the scenery more….scenic…
stocks had been running low, we had to score,
so flew from Venice to the Berber shore).

And then I went to Bruce’s place in Philly
And saw myself decapitate a chicken
(The neighbours made my squeamishness seem silly).
Then some days later I began to sicken
Till nothing of me moved except my willy
(Which never lost the chance to lift and thicken,
But I was twenty-seven – what the heck?),
My right hand and the bits above my neck.

This was a trifle scary, I admit it,
But I maintained a British upper lip:
As long as circumstances would permit it
I’d show how firmly I could keep my grip,
Though hardly anything would let me grip it,
I’d so much tranquiliser in my drip,
Unknown to me, ‘till – Jesus Christ! – the day
They took it, without telling me, away.

Then there were tears – though not without misgiving!
But I digress. Here’s what I want to say:
What therapists call ‘Tasks of Daily Living’,
What people do unaided every day,
Technology – machines are made for giving –
Lets me do in an automated way:
I move around, go to the toilet, sleep,
With squeak and whirr and intermittent beep.

I won a human race, but never ran it:
Technology and luck kept me alive,
And living on the right part of this planet –
Caucasians are likeliest to thrive,
And since the time that Greybeard first began it
This is my hour: no way could I survive
If I had lived, my noble Lord, when you did,
Or came into the world when you, friend Hugh, did……..

And here, my Lord, I suffered Writer’s Block,
Which never seems to have afflicted you,
Whose instant verse and quicker trouser-rock
Were legendary, if the tales are true,
Your quick pen beaten only by your cock.
But ‘pinch of salt’, I reckon, don’t you, Hugh?
Particularly after Time’s abrasions,
Can any of us rise to all occasions?

And why was this? I’ll tell you that anon.
For now, I watched my Muse pack up and leave.
I knew of course exactly why she’d gone;
Though saddened, somehow didn’t quite believe
She’d not return. Awhile I struggled on,
Then gave myself a little time to grieve;
And had, without denying that I missed her,
A brief, but fun, liaison with her sister.

But fun was not enough, nor I for her,
And quickly the romance evaporated,
Until the only feelings I could stir
Were what my sad old fantasies created;
And soon the days and nights began to blur,
And I was feeling tired and dissipated.
I wanted Muse back, badly. Then – O bliss!
She came, and in disguise. It went like this.

I deal humanely with the single ant,
And carefully remove the dears from danger,
Believing deeply in – this isn’t cant –
My duty to each lone, imperilled stranger,
As would, I hope, some moon’s inhabitant
Were I a wounded or marooned Space Ranger.
But when there are so many, Lord, I crack,
And hope the Karma doesn’t circle back……

So here I sit avoiding washing-up –
‘What’s new?’ I hear you chorus. Well, friends, this is:
the ants are everywhere, in mug and cup,
on worktop, sink, floor, roof. I think that bliss is
(my patience ends) an ant-free bite or sup.
This pismire visitation really pisses
Me off. I just can’t handle this myself:
I’m going to call Environmental Health.

But every cloud has got a silver lining,
It isn’t ointment till you see the fly:
These ants have buffed my wit until it’s shining;
The well of inspiration that ran dry
Is flowing now. So far from undermining,
This swarm has done me good (I know that I
May change my mind if it’s eaten the roof,
But won’t condemn without sufficient proof.

That’s de rigeur, my Lord, because my day job
(I can’t support myself by writing yet)
Involves dispensing justice. An OK job –
Suits me as much as any job I’ll get.
Noblesse, therefore, since I’m a sort of Nabob
(Or governor) oblige, and you can bet
That I won’t jeopardise my reputation
By acting on unfounded allegation).

But O! Ottava Rima once again!
O happy day (or rather, happy night)!
While writing it is, I accept, a strain,
It’s more disturbing when I cannot write.
Since either way I’m bound to suffer pain,
I might as well do what gives most delight –
To me, I mean, of course – and hope my lamb
(there’s Caro’s here, Lord) takes me as I am.

So – back to where my precious Muse departed,
Before my brief liaison, and the ants,
When, fickle, and lamentably faint-hearted,
I dived into her sister’s and my pants;
To where this rather long diversion started,
With all its heretofores and ci-devants:
With ‘squeak and whirr’ and reference to ‘bleeper’.
And now I’ll do what must be done to keep her.

My legs are almost paralysed completely;
My arms and shoulders paralysed in places;
My back and stomach muscles work discretely
(That’s coy for saying ‘parts of them’ or ‘traces’);
The bits of me that used to function sweetly,
That danced and won, occasionally, races
And games of rugby football – never pool
Or billiards, but darts sometimes – at school

And sometimes met the day as it was dawning,
Crossing half of London on my feet,
Still slightly high from partying, and yawning –
For I was in my youth, and youth was sweet –
And used to walk through Regent’s Park each morning
En route to work near Little Titchfield Street,
Packed up: also the diaphragm and chest of me
(My intercostals) buggered as the rest of me.

It’s six a.m.. I’m lying in my bed,
A bed that operates by electricity,
And at a button’s push lifts feet or head,
Where I’ve enjoyed – I’ll be discrete – felicity;
And by it on a table top are spread
Radio, ‘bottles’, drink and, of necessity
Because I fail to breathe when not awake,
A box that takes the breaths I fail to take.

From this machine an inch-wide plastic hose,
Snaking across the gap, above the duvet,
Circles my head and hisses in my nose
Sweet air more precious than the rarest cuvėe,
Than which, I think, has never been un chose
More painfully perdue, more gladly trouvėe,
Except for life, and honour, and divinity,
Love, virtue and – no, one can’t find virginity.

And, willy nilly, here I stay ’till someone
Arrives to get me up. The tasks include
A private wash (a genital and bum one),
Getting me panted, trousered, socked and shoed,
And – this fazes  the fainthearted or dumb one,
But not the even moderately clued –
Sliding me on a plank of polished ply
Into my chair. And then we say goodbye.

Next to the bathroom (after cups of tea)
Where defecating isn’t problematic
Only because – I didn’t get it free –
I have a hoist: the type that’s automatic
And track across the ceiling, lifting me
Out of my wheelchair, mildly katabatic
(‘produced by downward wind’: admit, that’s neat!)
And lowers me onto the toilet seat,

And off again. And then, from there, my day
Is apparatus- and assistance-free
But for my chair (that mustn’t go away)
And charming taxi-drivers helping me
Into and out their cabs to work or play,
And colleagues making countless cups of tea –
Unless my programme suffers a hiatus
If later katabasis isn’t flatus –

Till bedtime, when a helper comes again,
Slides me onto the bed and then undresses me
(Reliability can be a pain:
The very thought of it sometimes depresses me;0
But Joshua’s a wonder, in the main),
And sometimes it’s my Lambkin, who caresses me,
Puts me to bed and joins me for a tup:
There’s going down before there’s getting up!

Now, two last things before the moral’s stated
That brings this second Canto to its end;
A moral oftentimes reiterated,
Not least by Al, my quadriplegic friend;
A moral that’s succinctly concentrated
In radio transmitters that depend
(or hang) around my bedside light, and neck,
and save my ship from pirates, storm and wreck.

One, when I press it, opens my front door,
The other calls emergency assistance.
Things that I thank God and the Council for –
Without them I would not have gone this distance:
They would have found me lying on the floor.
Thanks, Ivan, also, for your stern insistence
I wear them when I’m indoors on my own,
Especially when in bed or ‘on the throne’.

So here’s the moral, Hugh, and good my Lord;
I’m sure by now smart wits like you have guessed it:
Had I been born in your time, or abroad,
I’d have no pendant, so could not have pressed it:
No ventilator: I’d have briefly snored,
Then Rabbis o’er my body would have blessed it;
And even if I’d – somehow – sorted napping,
However could I have contrived the crapping?

No, here and now’s by far the best for me,
And what is more, the future’s looking hopeful.
I’m happy to be here, so I’ll just… be,
And what’s to cope with I’ll encounter copeful.
And those who want to thank a deity
Can thank it a lay preacher or a Popeful.
Just now I think the highest form of being
Is seeing through whatever does the seeing.

And though I’ll never walk again, or dance,
Or score a try or jump or lift a bucket,
On Wednesday we go Eurostar to France
And we’ll have fun: the rest’s not worth a ducat.
And if you think this not a proper stance,
I’ll tell you what my stance is: you can fuck it!
It isn’t what you’ve got, it’s how you use it:
If you define the race you needn’t lose it!

Now, last, I see I’ve named one or two friends.
I hadn’t meant to, but I have, and so
I promise that before this letter ends
I’ll mention you; and if I don’t – you know….
My memory…. So let me make amends
When next we meet. And meantime, let us go
Hand in whatever turns you on… and me,
Into a rather different Canto Three.
Canto 3 – The tastes of Honey

Alas! The opportunities I wasted
From adolescence to my fourth decade!
The pleasures, the delights I could have tasted
With this, that and the other girl I laid!
But, O, until she had ‘ex libris’ pasted
With you-know-what, where, I was too afraid
She wouldn’t, to put down my brush and gum,
And thought that it was finished when I’d come….

I was, I think, fourteen, and had a friend
With whom I shared a schoolboy fascination
With sex (ours was a boy’s school) and we’d spend

Free time absorbed in hot anticipation
Of what one did with pretty girls who’d lend

Their bodies to our proto-procreation.
And then one day: “There’s this Janine,” said Peter.
“I’m seeing her tomorrow: want to meet her?”

Did I? Of course, and thought of it until
Next day school finished and we caught a bus
To a small park set on a nearby hill
Where by the gate I saw waiting for us
In pale brown uniform (or eau-de-nil:
The colour isn’t really worth a cuss)
A schoolgirl: tall, bespectacled and homely –
My way of saying only fairly comely.

Janine and Peter clearly had it sorted
For, introductions done, they made a bee-line
Across the grass, where a lone dog cavorted,
And in the distance people stood in tea-line,
To where, I guess, nefarious couples courted
Amongst the dust and something smelling feline:
A small brick shelter, derelict and dark
Such as were found in almost every park.

And stood there in the half light and the dirt
I watched astonished as Janine, unbid,
Opened the buttons of her cotton shirt
and Peter reached his hand inside, and slid
the other underneath her knee-length skirt,

and at some point – I don’t know when –  undid
His flies, got out his penis, long and white,
And she reached down her hand and held it tight.

I was spellbound until the spell was broken
When minutes later Peter turned his head
And uttering the first words that were spoken
Asked: “Want to have a feel?” And then he said
“She’ll let you if you want to.” As a token
of acquiescence, Janine, blushing red
nodded – her hand still holding his erection –
excited and ashamed in my direction.

And I?   I shook my head. Said “No.”!  Declined!
(I hope I added “Thanks.”) I didn’t mean
to give offence, to be unkind – or kind –
I don’t know what I wanted. And Janine
Looked – what? – relieved. As if she didn’t mind.
And Peter asked me, as he reached between
Her thighs, beneath her lifted skirt, inside
Her knickers, to go stand on guard outside.

I turned my mind from what the pair were doing
The quarter-hour or so that I kept look-out.
I don’t expect they went as far as screwing;
As for that big erection that he took out,
Though there’s no way to tell for sure save viewing,
I guess the issue was most likely shook out.
Then after fifteen minutes out they came,
Him straightening his clothes, and her the same.

I was embarrassed, silent, as we walked
Out of the park and went our separate ways.
I never saw Janine again, or talked
To Peter of what happened. In the days
That followed we ignored the fact I’d baulked
At what they offered me, indulged our craze,
Instead, for fishing, slowly grew apart.
And here let our investigation start.

First question. Why on earth did I refuse
The chance of doing with Janine as Peter,
Standing, as it were, in Peter’s shoes?
Wouldn’t it have been entirely sweeter,
Rather than standing guard outside, to choose
To stand amongst the dusty, webbed concrete, her
Toes inches from my toes, as I discovered
The soft, delightful things that she uncovered?

A simple explanation: I was new
To all this, and it took me by surprise.
Though it was what I yearned so much to do,
I’d dreamed about doing it otherwise
Than being told: ‘She’ll do it with you, too’.
I couldn’t do it under Peter’s eyes.
I needed some attraction, some romance –
Not just a feel in some plain schoolgirl’s pants.

And question two. How might my life be altered
If, though romantic, shy, unready, scared,
I’d nodded (voice would probably have faltered)
And asked Peter to step outside, and bared
Myself as him? Would I have been unhaltered
By what we did? Would I have been prepared
For sex – and love – earlier, and because
It was this basic, better, than I was?

At seventeen I had just failed to win
A scholarship to Cambridge, had a place
At Durham in October, so was in
Holiday mode, with months and months of space
For travel, adventure and – I hoped – some sin.
I’d managed, earlier, my fall from grace
with V. on a car back seat, in a flurry
of mutual hunger, deep in well-heeled Surrey.

An hour or two from Marseilles I looked round
For somewhere – a hotel, a bar – to eat,
Room for the night. In two days I was bound
For Israel, by sea; now, I was beat:
I’d hitch-hiked all day across France. I found
A bus stop, line of shops, a slatted seat,
A small hotel. Street lights swung in the breeze
And danced in oil slicks and behind the trees……

I washed, unpacked a little, went downstairs
And found a standard bar, with four or five
Tables with plastic cloths and empty chairs.
A juke box kept the atmosphere alive.
A few men drinking at the bar. Their stares
Flicked briefly over, watching me arrive,
Then back to mam’selle – raven hair and eyes –
Behind the counter, chatting with the guys.

Omelette, frites, un demi-, Gitanes, a book ……
When it was time to get another beer
The bar was empty, but for her. Her look
Measured me up and down, and she leant near
And answered my question with her own, which took
My breath away, and suddenly made clear
Something I’d half-noticed. ‘Mam’selle, encore
Un biėre, s’il vous plaĭt?’ ‘Aimez-vous faire l’amour?’

Her black eyes flashed and left me bouleversėe
I stammered: ‘Non…merci…Mam’selle!’ and beat
A thoroughly confused retreat away
To the uncertain safety of my seat
behind my book, and tried not to display
My blushes when a man came from the street,
Leant on the bar and bargained. Price agreed,
They went upstairs and I tried hard to read.

Avoiding either’s eyes when they returned,
I paid and went up to my room alone,
Next morning checked out early. The sun burned
The night’s dewfall off honey-coloured stone
Beside the road as cars and lorries churned
South to the coast. Before the day had grown
Too hot I had a ride. Next memory:
Marseilles, a dish of fruits de mer, the sea.

So, question time. The first: why didn’t I?
As clear this time: embarrassment, confusion,
naivetė. But what I’d give to try
to bring it to a different conclusion!
‘Je suis un pauvre poėt. J’ėcrirais,’
I’d tell her, in bad French, but much effusion:
‘Si vous me foutre, une poėme pour mentrer
au tout le monde votre generositė.’

She’d look amazed, and then with sudden laughter
Lighting those eyes, say: ‘Jesus Christ, you men!
A poem! You must think I’m even dafter…’
‘No. Shrewd and kind.’ She’d laugh at me again,
then say: ‘OK; you’ll have to wait till after
I close the bar, at half-past midnight. Then…’
Well: just because she whored why shouldn’t she do?
French people value culture more than we do.

Though whoring is the oldest of professions
It doesn’t follow that from whores are sought
The oldest truths, nor that the oldest lessons
Are those that whores exclusively are taught;
Yet I believe that most of my obsessions
Might have been neutralised if I’d have bought
A night – an hour – ten minutes! – in her bed,
though I could just have caught a dose, instead!

I might have learnt neither to overvalue
(as, callow, I inclined to do) sex, or
to undervalue it (though it’s banal, you
remember I was British). Furthermore,
I might have learnt how far (will this appall you?)
Passion can be bought or bargained for,
Following her instructions and suggestions.
And, answering the second of our questions,

Had I, an age ago, told Peter: ‘Sure.’,
What I’d then done with J. might have prepared me
To counter-proposition: ‘Ah….l’amour….’
Instead of finding that the question scared me.
And had I told the tart: ‘Mam’selle, I’m poor,
But if a poem…’ and Mam’selle had mared me,
I would, when Liz sat down upon my bed
And shyly offered me her maidenhead…..
And so, untutored in the ways of whores,
I found another, quayside, hotel bed
And spent the day alone along the shores
And next day took a steamer ‘cross the Med
(Saw Turks, Stromboli, Toby, albacores)
to Pris and Ruke, sadly, both now dead,
waiting in Haifa (Mother’s sis-and-spouse)
and spent some months in their small, friendly house.

I sprayed the local pools against mosquito
And lugged cement in sacks beneath my arms
Two at a time – a formidable feat, O! –
And stayed at kibbutzim, collective farms,
And, though my aunt and uncle tried a veto,
Found further education in the arms
Of someone I met on a bus, called Ruti:
A young, newly divorced, Israeli beauty.

And Ruti ….Lord, we had a lot of fun:
Her body, tanned a deep chocolate brown
From all the hours spent poolside in the sun,
Was striped, where she took her bikini down,
Pale white…. Ruti was not the only one,
Before the train stopped high above the town
Where I would spend three years at Hatfield College,
With whom I’d had a taste of carnal knowledge…..

The copulative favour, then, that Liz,
A class-mate’s girl-friend’s friend, asked me to do her,
Sat on my bed, my roommate, Keith, out, viz.:
To deflorate her, take her cherry, screw her,
Was not a problem: I had done the biz.
So, Lord, can you surmise my answer to her?
‘Delighted’? ‘Honoured’? ‘Lovely, let’s to bed’?
or ‘Let’s arrange a time’? Oh God!… Instead….

I’m too ashamed to properly recall
My answer, but I do recall its drift.
I told Liz we’d be doing wrong to ball,
That she should save her hymen as a gift
For Mr. Right: this wouldn’t do at all.
And watched her leave my room extremely miffed,
As (Liz, forgive me) she’d a perfect right to,
Discovering she’d asked a perfect shite to.

And now, at last. One third and final time
I’ll try to answer those eternal riddles
‘Why?’ and ‘What if….?’, as in a different clime
King Oedipus essayed response to Tiddles.
(I don’t recall the question, quite. Though I’m
a devotee of ancient classic idylls,
this Canto’s quite exhausted me: I find
the episode is slipping from my mind.)

Reader, I think I’ve nothing new to offer.
So I’ll be brief. Romance, I think,’s to blame.
The explanations why I didn’t boff her,
The whore, and young Janine are all the same:
I couldn’t recognise a coin-filled coffer
Unless it was hand-gilded with the name
‘Perfection’. Opportunity and youth,
etcetera; a clichė, but the truth.

I was alas! completely unaware
That others’ needs might merit my attention,
That if I deigned to give a little care
To what they asked, or even might not mention,
Or were I big-hearted enough to spare
Some time, some effort, even some invention,
I’d reap the dividends in spades. But I
Was selfish, ignorant, and didn’t try.

As for ‘What if…..?’  Lord, I can hardly bear it.
As well as taking Liz’s maidenhead,
A pleasure in itself – if done with flair, it
Is possible that, starry-eyed, she’d spread
The news until she found she had to share it
With college virgins queuing by my bed.
At worst it would have helped me find a locus
To get sex, love and passion into focus.

For focus, Hugh, my Lord, is what I needed,
Focus and a measure of detachment,
For notwithstanding all the times I seeded
(Or simulated seeding, with attachment,
Those who without protection might have breeded)
Three continents and three decades my catchment,
I never knew, till very late, the pleasure
Of pleasuring my partner at her leisure.

But all that’s changed. The Fates have not forsook me,
And neither has my Muse. So, double-blest,
Apologising for the time it took me
To get my adolescence off my chest,
I’ll disengage, untangle and unhook me
And lay this latest Canto to its rest,
And, promising that it won’t be a blue one,
Invite you to rejoin me in a new one.
Canto 4 – Into the future

MY first two Cantos introduced the present:
Political (though these things change so fast
That what seemed settled now proves evanescent)
And personal, my daily life. The last –
Three scenes where I avoided, adolescent
And older, education in the past,
With pain and pleasure in the recollection:
And past and present point in one direction.

The future, then. And what am I to say,
Sat here before my screen (the third to date
Since I began this), keeping chores at bay
(The housework and the phone will have to wait),
searching for inspiration, while the day
Veers between rain and sun at such a  rate
It giddies me? I can’t reply: instead
I boil a pair of eggs and butter bread….

“Just tell the story!” Yes. Well, I’ve retired
Since Canto Two. My day job ended smartly
A year ago last fortnight. Things conspired
And I was made redundant; only partly
Reluctantly, for I was getting tired.
And now I’m my employer (work Gantt-chartly)
With just sufficient pension, since I’m fifty,
To give me time for writing, if I’m thrifty

Also, I’m chairing something known as LATA
(London Accessible Transport Alliance –
Lord: nearly scans!) of which I was a starter,
Which had, despite one Minister’s defiance,
Success in legislation, while its Charter
Is gaining near unanimous compliance,
To be replaced – the Commons Terrace, presto! –
In April by the LATA Manifesto.

The English law’s not stopped discriminating:
Remember, both: I told in Canto One
The age at which it’s legal to go mating
Or even have a bit of simple fun
Depends upon your sex and who you’re dating.
But now the final chapter has begun:
Tonight the Commons votes; the Other Place
Can’t stop it, but can only slow the pace.

And try they will. But – Lord, would you approve it? –
The Other Place (I mean the Upper House)
Is half-reformed. Blair couldn’t quite remove it –
For now, it’s got the power of a mouse;
But soon he will decide how to improve it.
I can’t help feeling sorry for the grouse:
For, thus relieved of legislative duty,
Their Lordships will have bags of time to shoot’ee.

Another issue’s Section 28,
A similarly homophobic stricture
Forbidding teachers funded by the State
To put their pupils fairly in the picture;
For should they try to morally equate
Those Straight and Gay, the law’s to cry : “We’ve nicked yer!”
Encouraging a great deal of dissembling,
Now stopped in Scotland, thanks to their Assembling….

With so much wrong in this land and elsewhere,
One has to wonder: isn’t it revealing
How much attention’s paid to how we pair,
How little to the quality of feeling?
And how much of this overheated air
Conceals hypocrisy, itself concealing
One’s fear of maybe finding out how nice it is
by saying of a virtue what a vice it is?

But, quack, sort out thyself… And, since digressing,
There’s something that I’ll publicly declare.
It isn’t inclination I’m confessing:
There’s nothing to confess (“How does he DARE!”)
It’s just that I would like to have your blessing:
My verse – don’t censure me if you compare
My rhymes with others, and you find they fit;
I swear to you it’s just a lucky hit.

There’s only so much one can do with letters,
The limitations of a single tongue;
a married one but more securely fetters.
O! the articulation of the young.
And creditors will hold the fate of debtors,
though debtors may slip creditors a bung…
Sea anchor: quickly! Quickly, fellow!! Shift!!!….
We’re drifting, but I hope you’ve caught my drift.

What next?…What’s now?…What’s noteworthy?…What’s new?
Nothing beneath the sun, or so we’re told.
But go above the sun – remember, Hugh,
Your first trip in an airplane: you were sold.
That fresh sight of a world spread out you flew
Into a poem. Now that’s for the old:
The young take it for granted; they aspire
To other worlds to spread their wings than Gaia

Because, therefore, or maybe just besides,
Giaia’s in trouble, terminal perhaps.
(”Ah,  nothing,” says philosophy, “Abides
for ever.” Please: a hand for Eyore. Claps.
Exit pursued by Bear.) The time and tides
Seem ‘bout predictable as shooting craps.
The long term prospect looks distinctly dreary:
From this perspective chaos isn’t theory.

But focus in, or out, and it resolves,
Thaws and resolves itself into a Jew
With glasses, staring till the screen dissolves
Into an inward or a distant view,
Till from this primal sludge something evolves:
A couplet or a chorus-girl or two,
Trying to find some new, diverting way
To keep the spectre Entropy at bay.

Look: Yes, I know the world’s mainspring’s unspooling,
The cosmic batteries are running flat,
Our planet is inevitably cooling,
One day the sun goes out, and that is that.
And anyone who’s had a little schooling
Knows in the end all tends to doodly-squat,
Undifferentiated matter, gloop:
We start with primal scream, and end in soup.

And every man, said Socrates – or Plato -
(I wonder, did he also mean his wife?)
believes he lives on (maybe so did Cato)
the downswing of the pendulum, his knife
and fork shoved in the mouldy mashed potato
he’s served with, while the restaurant of life
is running out of ketchup, which it is,
of course; whereas, at other times than his….

So what?  For still there’s poetry to write,
Food in the fridge, and bottles on the shelves,
A winter sun that somehow stays alight,
Lovers to please, and thereby please ourselves,
And time enough before that long good-night,
For modern Adam, while his new Eve delves,
To spin – at least attempt before he’s dead
(and who cares then?) to spin – one perfect thread.

Come Aids, el NiÔo, asteroid and star,
The melting ice-caps and the rising sea,
The over-heated air, drought, famine, war,
As challenge to our equanimity:
We’ll laugh and say that worse distractions, far,
For us whose aim is writing poetry
Are aching hearts with no sweet lips for kissin’
and bursting bladders with no pot to piss in.

And on this note of topical defiance
(Will we be tested? Do you think we’ll pass?)
I’ll take your leave, and wish you mėsalliance,
Up there upon the sempiternal grass.
Uncork the bubbly! Drink to non-compliance!
Pull down her knickers, bare Dame Fortune’s arse
And plant a rousing smackeroo upon it;
If she complains tell her I’ll pen a sonnet.

SO, here we are. Finis, I think, my Lord.
Let’s make a quick farewell of it. Adieu –
I hope this verse-epistle hasn’t bored.
I’m not the first to rhyme thus, am I, Hugh?
But imitation’s genius’ reward,
And nobody deserves it more than you.
Goodbye; it’s been a joy to have you near me:
Now, shall we stop pretending you can hear me?

The End