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| ISBN-13: | 9781847779298 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Carcanet Press, Limited |
| Publication date: | 01/01/2011 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 96 |
| File size: | 260 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Selected Poems
By Peter Sansom
Carcanet Press Ltd
Copyright © 2010 Peter SansomAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84777-929-8
CHAPTER 1
House
Half-three. Mum's at bingo
so the house is quiet. Joss is asleep
with his hand covering his face
from the light or from view.
The clock ticks either side of his breathing.
There's nothing in the paper
though the headline is 'Fish for Free'.
The dolphin thermometer
from Marineland, Scarbrough, breaks surface
in the shine on top of the telly.
The fire's built up but the room's cold.
Out of the window is the weather.
Dad comes in from upstairs,
the blood on his collar
is where he's been shaving
for tomorrow or the day after
if they haven't a bed. 'There's Half-pint,' he says,
'back from the gardens.
Nice clump of beetroot that.'
He presses his hand against the glass
and I see us for a moment on the allotment,
my foot on the too-heavy spade
pushing into October soil.
'I'll be off then,' I tell him,
'take the barrow down for the winnings.'
Snookered
Dad nods in the straight chair and me and Mum
are down to shandy. It's less and less likely
Jimmy White will stop Davies now. Midnight
when our Steve knocks, black from bagging up since dinner.
He's brought another hundredweight. Davies
puts another frame away while me and Joss
help him get it in the coalhouse. He stops for a fag
and a can of mild, and laughs when Davies
misses a sitter. 'Mr Interesting,' he says.
It's tense. Jimmy can't let this one slip.
Next door's phone goes – it should be disconnected
and when it stops I picture a white hand
lifting the receiver. We groan. Now Jimmy
needs snookers, and sure enough Davies sinks
the last red. Right, says Steve, but he sits back down
when the cue ball travels three angles to go
in off. 'The start,' he says 'of the biggest comeback
since Lazarus.' Nice, but we've heard it before,
and we'd have to see it to believe it.
Bingo
The stain on her finger like a bruise
told on her to the doctor,
a young man fool enough
to tell us in our own house
we'd not to smoke in here.
They'll just be going in at the bingo.
Dad's hands are jittery too
down the plaited wire
like a blind man to his cardigan pocket.
He turns the bevelled edge
like tuning a station
to what we're not saying,
and the hearing aid whistles.
He looks blank when we tell him
and sings about bluebells: bluebells are blue.
Mother shouts, 'You crazy mare,
switch that thing off.'
She holds the prescription tight,
like gripping a board with the winning card
two or three from house.
The Folklore of Plants
Joss slices hunks of ham
off the ham-hock. His hand clamps
the bone to the table
and he cuts away from himself 'because that way
you never cut yourself'. When he
eases the pressure, the milky pearl
of the knuckle shines more brightly.
I'm reading The Folklore of Plants.
It's Saturday tea,
makeshift, because Mother is poorly.
Blockbusters tells us the Italian-born pioneer
of radio was Macaroni. Dad grips the loaf
and butters the open edge before slicing.
Tea appears by magic
from under the rabbit tea cosy,
and I pour. Dave has given up sugar
but has to go in any case. His car-coat
half-on he looks helpless
when Dad says, 'You'll be blower-catched,
it's five-and-twenty past.'
So far no one's thought to ask Mother
if she wants a cup or anything to eat.
She's in bed again with the ulcer she kept
to herself for fear it was the cancer
that killed her sister.
Dave leaves and another brother comes in.
'Our Brian,' Dad says when he hears the door go,
but it's Tony. He has a big bunch of holly,
he doesn't say for Christmas
but for winter. He doesn't know
it's bad luck before Christmas Eve
(Mother wouldn't have it in the house)
and nobody says. 'Another book,'
he says cheerfully, shaking his head at me,
'you bloody live in books.'
Vacuum
The face and pate of a monk
and always wet-shaved to a blush.
Here to take the family to the sea
for the day, and by some anomaly
talking: explaining how a flask
keeps your tea hot or even Coca-Cola cold
to our Cynth's youngest. She listens
politely, but flinches from his kindness
when he goes to stroke her hair.
His hand is webbed with plaster
from glazing the greenhouse. For a moment
there's nothing to be done.
He looks round, an only son
to the aunt who's saying,
'Yes, they'll put the flags out
the day he gets married.' When he coughs
it's the bronny he's been off with
three painful weeks. He never took the tablets
and the doctor said they were
doing the world of good. At last
the sandwiches are done and stowed
with care in the huge beach bag. He stands,
suddenly a big man under this low ceiling.
But when he hands back the flask, he bends
beneath the tell-tale shingle-sigh
of broken silver glass.
One Night
One night I lay on my back in a field,
a warm clear summer night in the Lakes,
and looked up, with nothing better to do,
at the stars. And thought about matter
compacted to a pinhole of light,
and considered for the first time that I lay
with my back to a planet, and I named
the constellations that a friend's dad taught us
through binoculars in their back yard.
He took his own life, the dad, a hosepipe
to the exhaust in the middle of a forest.
I still don't know why. Maybe nobody does.
He enters my head tonight walking a lane,
a cold, clear winter night in the Lakes,
and I look up.
Funeral Morning
Another pot of tea at half seven and kick-off's
not till one. Another go with the sellotape
at the cat hairs so the trousers look ok.
Mum's put a button on the white shirt.
I won't be going beneath anyone. She means
our Chris in his uniform. He's in the navy,
was there when the Belgrano went down.
Half eight. They're delivering coal across the road.
The pullover is Brian's, 'just your sort'.
She needs to pee like a dressmaker, but Dad
won't put his socks on till she's cut his toenails
and we'll have a houseful in a minute.
A lad in a sweatshirt comes up with the flowers,
white chrysanths in the shape of a heart,
and I sign the card 'Sister Ruth, Bill and Family'.
Auntie Olive. My auntie Olive, though I don't
give her a thought. Or Donald, though we don't know
what he'll do now. I'm busy thinking
how I'll look in Dad's jacket and those brogues.
They're all coming, from as far as Long Eaton
and Stoke. Our Joss is back with the milk.
He's remembered the matches, and we light up,
a last cup, with a drop of brandy. I stand
to tie and retie the smart new tie in the mirror.
Dad's jacket's alright, but his shoes are like boats.
Living Room
The window is a blue
square dulled by net curtains.
The carpet strange beneath my bare feet.
Upstairs the bath is filling. In my hand
a cake of soap and the towel I forgot.
In my head an engagement ring. The clock ticks.
I stop my heart my body stutters –
a murmur – and at once it passes
but I sit down from respect. Odd
sitting naked in an armchair. In its own time
the water rises, and I know she was right.
I picture bubbles at the lip of the enamel, before
it pours over, becoming clearer, clear,
glazing the blue patch of lino.
Already cool, it slides under the door,
eventually to the stairs, down a step,
three steps at a time. The house,
the town, my head is empty. It's over.
I stand, take a breath,
and go up for my bath.
5th September 1989, Small Hours
Do you exist here, where
the cat like a dancer treads among glasses
upturned for tomorrow and then on to
the table open-leaf and clothed
against an unfamiliar wall
ready for the buffet? Are you
in the chair you occupied for under a year
but almost continually the short days
in this more practical flat? Days
you spoke your mind as never before,
preferring till then to let Mother
speak for the both of you, but gradually
making up for it with all those vanished
friends and enemies, until it became
yammering, yap-yapping, Abide With Me.
Lucid moments came less and less
to break our hearts. They came for you.
You sat in that chair, resisted,
looked up, said clearly, 'Should you go, Tony?'
When he nodded, you said 'Alright.' It was
everything I'd heard, that place.
I couldn't believe it, the curled rocking shells
in the day-room like to like,
the others to and fro in the corridor, needing
money, the way to a bus, who couldn't fathom
the cunning handles on the doors.
I can't believe we put people
in that place together. You're in a better place?
I can't believe that either.
But you're not here, and won't be,
not in my lifetime at least. Now the cat
is in among the bottles, brandy, rum,
whisky, port, sherry – Mother says
they intend washing you over Jordan,
that you never learned to swim. One bottle
staggers and falls, but doesn't break.
The cat peers down at it, very still,
as if willing it to move.
Language
She wasn't going to have the knife
and she didn't, tablets putting her right,
which was noat but an ulcer, thank the Lord.
God's good and the Devil's not a bad'un,
we've not starved a winter yet, and now in this smaller flat,
central heating, cheaper rent, there's less of
Come by this fire, I'm cold, and
Get something to eat, I'm hungry.
But still, Wednesdays was a walk round the table, and
Do like they do in Sheffield: do wi'ert.
Never much bothered, and less bothered these days
though switching the telly off at bloody bleedin blindin swearing:
'I don't friggin swear.' When Joss came in it was
A top-coat warmer out there, and Half-pint won the Tote.
If you couldn't believe it, you
Looked at him gone-out.
Daft as a brush, that was him and that was Dad,
and Police Squad was too daft to laugh at.
I was the scholar, though even reading a map it was
You want to save your eyes, you're bloody studying again.
He was a clever man, my dad, though I didn't notice
and no one said. He was a daft bat, a crazy mare,
who left school at twelve, they all did. Not much
to say, and what they said was Tek no notice,
I've come to that conclusion.
But they wouldn't swap me, not for all the tea in China,
though I'll never have no money
so long as I've a hole in my arse.
The fox in the writing class
stares. That's how you know it's a wolf
and not a dog, George says. Someone muddies
the water by introducing the Latin name
Vulpus canis, and we get down to intensive
writing with the matter still in the air.
Because this is poetry, the fox is not red
but a pungent ginger; the tail fizzes out
and the bib it wears and its four white paws
are grey, like rain. It's on a plinth labelled 'Fox'
in Letraset. When Clare prods it in the belly
Linda keeps expecting it to snap at her hand
but then can't resist fiddling herself with the tail
to see if it's really plaster of Paris and wire. It is
getting on for nine. Now we are silent except
for our pens and the teacher's intense questions.
Above us, the air-conditioning whirrs
like drizzle on ferns beside a falling-dark pine-forest.
My girlfriend enters in one of the lines but I know
she'll want out in the next draft. Rain. Rain! What a relief,
the dust was everywhere, in our eyes and up our noses
and choking the many farm and woodland creatures
raised by our writing. And the local harriers too
are very glad of it, with over five miles to go.
And yet, if there ever was a fox
in this undergrowth, it's long since gone, there's only
this one, this one here, but we persevere because
in a moment we can all go for a drink. Then it occurs to me
the fox's snout fits over its jaw like the lid
on a shoebox. And that's it, I push the pad aside
like a cleared dinner plate, and slide back in my chair.
If this is not a poem, I think, reading over my scrawl,
I'd like to know what is.
Agony
As a teenager I plucked
my eyebrows excessively and they are now
24, married, with a small, sensitive skin,
which is very sparse. Is it too late
to start training? It has deepened from petting
to brunette and is very greasy. Frankly
I have almost never slept with a man
and wine has little or no effect
upon my extremely prominent lower jaw.
I wonder is it perverted or just unusual?
You see I feel I'm secretary to a boss who is
frequently away spoiling my youngsters
with sweets and TV. This is an orthodontic
problem isn't it, because it's never for myself,
only for my body. And heaven knows
I don't want to act 'the jealous wife' but he
enjoys making love to me while I'm asleep
and I am getting seriously
continued on page 150 and yet I
never wake up sometimes two and three
bottles in an evening and during these rows
things come out that are best left unsaid,
terrible things about split ends
and the usual creams. Can you help me?
Borrowdale Morning
for Richard
The sun is flat white. A gull labours
through the valley and the valley
recedes like an echo.
Beyond the dew-wet tent-flap
the campsite simmers in mist, and we
lie looking out with our tin bowls of muesli,
a little kettle rattling to the boil.
Then rolling a roll-up for afters. Boots
close-focus in the doorway gasp for dubbin
though what we see's a slice of fells and trees,
new colours we walked in yesterday,
the day before. But this snapshot
is last day and even the youth group are packing up,
pratting about with ridge-poles and Karrimats.
Even the girl next door who sneezes in German
is packing up.
Now we have shadows. A second gull
trails swallow-flight intake walls
and we set-to too, folding: folding
ridge-walks in rain in the brightest
of bright orange cagoules,
folding the wood-smoke pub,
and the walk back stopping to stargaze pee
in the black lane surprised
by a sheep. Folding the hours
of Explorer maps
that fold like a trick
we've not yet mastered
onto our backs
a last staggering look
and we leave all this suddenly by bus then train.
January
1
You stand at the door (you sometimes are
the door) and, according to tradition, look
to the past year as well as to the new;
but me, I'm all for that watch, moving on
in a room so quiet I can almost see
the second finger as it beats against each mark,
though for a while I can't place it, there
by the blank diary on the uncluttered desk.
Mid-morning the beginning of 1993.
We've been to the coast, as we do.
The garlands are down, the tree undressed
and hoovered under, bin-bagged and put out.
2
According to tradition and by name
you look to the past as you look forward, and what is
is people skating on their arses down Slant Gate,
burst pipes, a broken tanker spilling oil,
or the fox's single line of prints
to scramble our ice-locked gate for scraps
we first of all put out for the birds.
Now we put out rind, bread, apples at night,
for him, always the same young fox.
3
Reading by candlelight, next door's telly
on with this year's honours, I saw you,
at that moment, or thought I did, on a long slow track
out of evergreeen woods, the start
of a ridge walk between two counties
when the valley was a stopped snowstorm
and the mountain air was white in our lungs
all morning gradually higher and higher,
my friend and I, what great friends we were then.
Till, reaching a summit, we could look down
with all of nature in our English pocket,
and point out screes and gullies, scattered homes,
and name the named mountains round us
before picking our way back to the pinched-grey lake,
the straggling winter village, the mini-mart and café.
I saw you all right, but your back was turned.
4
Young and old, you give voice to a bell
telling midnight across an estuary,
crossed, uncrossable, the air thick with salt;
and that voice has the gawky confidence
of sharp bright metal; but that voice too
is the round, sober parish bell, the copper tang
of licking an old penny. Its chimes roll by
to where you are; and, at the last of them,
you are here, unassuming, a fox
in that fable of the old fox in his cave,
pretending to be ill and inviting
all the animals to visit him
so he could eat them without having to go out.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Selected Poems by Peter Sansom. Copyright © 2010 Peter Sansom. Excerpted by permission of Carcanet Press Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Dedication,
Acknowledgements,
House,
Snookered,
Bingo,
The Folklore of Plants,
Vacuum,
One Night,
Funeral Morning,
Living Room,
5th September 1989, Small Hours,
Language,
The fox in the writing class,
Agony,
Borrowdale Morning,
January,
Lake,
At Blea Tarn,
A Stone in a Drystone Wall,
A Walk,
What the Eye Doesn't See,
A Dream Mistaking a Person for What He Has Come to Represent,
Aldeburgh,
Bliss,
At the End of Here,
Whitby,
Sitcom,
Some night by chance,
Clinical Depression,
Death Cap,
Summer Evening,
Baker Street: Poet in Residence (Day 1) 45,
To Autumn,
Words for Paul Cézanne,
Top Withens,
You'll Like This,
Beard,
About Time,
Teeth,
My Mother on a Seat Outside a Hospital,
Crich Stand,
That was the day it snowed,
Ted Savoury,
Breakfast in the Dunblane Hilton,
Anyone for Tennis?,
Ironing,
Sheffield by Night,
On Not Being George W. Bush,
L.O.V.E.,
I'd heard about the man, who, drunk,
On the Road,
Born-again bikers,,
The Wife of Bath's Tale,
Joss,
Bluebell Wood,
The Day He Met His Wife,
Stepladder,
My Brother's Vespa,
Autumn Term,
Keymarkets,
I used to faint,
Moon,
Petar K, 1957–2847,
Croft Juniors,
Instead of going to work,
My Town,
The Night is Young,
Index of Titles and First Lines,
About the Author,
Also by Peter Sansom from Carcanet,
Copyright,