Now by Laurence Lerner

               Now

Yes, now, as I entered the tube,

As the door slid shut with unconcern,

As no-one looked up, I felt your grip

Tighten, and now my blood

Races in tunnels from you.

                                       Listen, now,

You catch at my heart and then let go.

I know those fingers, recognise the touch,

The tearing muscles, the insensate lurch,

The dip and the recovery of my heart.

My heart beats fast at its ring of fat,

Will go on beating as long as blood

Gets through the gap ; till I drop down dead

I will feel in my limbs what my heart is at.

As I did just now. The train moves on,

Flows in the tunnel like blood and the men

Rustle their newspapers. It’s not true

That it doesn’t hurt when you run your nails

Along the tissues. And what leaps up

When your fingers flex is no longer hope.

What flows in my veins is only blood.

Let me go. This time. Just this once

Let the train move on and the door slide shut

And you on the platform. No-one’s heart

Is stronger than so many times, and – now –

That was another. It isn’t true

That habit and newspapers kill the pain.

You can dry my blood though I know you so well.

I carry you with me. I always shall.

Laurence Lerner, Selves (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), no pagination.

Adam names the creatures by Laurence Lerner

               Adam names the creatures

. . . And him, and him, and then

That big one there in baggy skin,

The stamper. He roars, and sends,

Three messages into the air :

Two silver slivers and a wave of dark

– See how it lifts, and bends !

I’ve seen that darkness since,

Coiled round a tree. It shines,

It rears on air, it rides

(The bending grass divides).

Its tongue goes in and out,

Testing the temperature. It twists.

How can I come by all these names ?

Never by trying.

The world’s too empty, I must make them up.

Naming’s not lying.

Don’t ask me why I do it : I was told.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘lion, tiger, dog,

Goat,’ he said, ‘spider, hog –‘

But those don’t count, he said them.

A name is what you find.

Outside ? or in your mind ?

(When Eve lies down

Her breasts are flat,

Her belly is a bowl.

She has no breasts, but petals,

Bruises of red, that’s all.

She has geraniums.)

That’s it, that’s it,

Geraniums.

Who bit those leaves ?

Who scooped Eve’s silhouette, with one clear stroke ?

It has three breasts, it is

An in and out of yellow green,

It is a perfect curve, a woman leaf,

It is an oak.

I know them now.

The world has come to life.

I name you : elephant.

You needn’t pull your skin up, now.

You needn’t blush, stop stamping, or look pale,

Or dress in shadows :

                  I can see you now.

The darkness that the elephant let fall,

Twisting among the grass, I see that too.

Slanting across a tree its colours break.

Striped tree, dividing grass, I see it all.

I understand the world now :

            Eve ; and God ;

And snake. I call you snake.

Laurence Lerner, Selves (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), no pagination.

The merman by Laurence Lerner

               The merman

It was because I swam into their net

Because the net was there

The water thickened, there was no way out,

It was because it tangled in my hair

Because it caught the water it caught me,

I left the wet and came to live in air.

I learned to stand on two legs in the dry.

I learned to look at day, at brown and red

Till they went dark. And then I learned to die

And wake when dark was dead.

I learned to change the place I was, with legs.

Learnt to drink the air, but never learnt their talk.

They gave me hungry needing fish to eat

And called it ‘fish’.

Then after needing nothing fish to put

And called it ‘fish’. Fish, fish ; as if the same.

That same, that difference, they call that a name.

I couldn’t talk like that. I couldn’t talk.

When humans talk they split their say in bits

And bit by bit they step on what they feel.

They talk in bits, they never talk in all.

So live in wetness swimming they call ‘sea’ ;

And stand in dry and watch the wet waves call

They still call ‘sea’.

            Only their waves don’t call.

Strange are their pleasures, living in the dry.

Build a long finger on an empty house

And in it sing, four times a moon, and kneel,

And talk sea talk at last, talk what they feel

Not words, not names. I heard their holy song

It said belong, belong.

So one day in the finger house I stood

And sang of wet and swimming in the was,

And happy sang of happy singing till

They came all running noise and sticks of wood

And shouting devil kneel

And devil and that day I found out hurt.

That dark I did not die but ran away

To where the wet and swimming call and wait

And joined myself to swimming. This was back,

It did not hurt to change the way you lay,

It did not hurt to breathe. Just swallowing hurt

At first, till water washed the words out. Yet

I must have tasted too much dry up there

I must have got a taste for words, or air,

Or hurt, or something. Now

I follow ships from afar,

I climb on rocks and sit there till they see,

Till they put off in boats to bring me words

And nets, and hurt. Wait till they’re close and then

Almost reluctant, slip back in the sea.

Laurence Lerner, Selves (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), no pagination.

Hummingbird-Heart by John Moffitt

Hummingbird-Heart

Greedy bird, you are not more exasperating

Than a certain small person of preference—

You who have formed the alarming habit

Of drinking only out of the Audubon Society’s

Artfully camouflaged feeding-tube

Sugar and water mixed in precise proportions.

Shy, fascinating creature—

Shrilling to me impatiently to move away

Whenever I loom too near for your electric

Shape to dart down to flower level unafraid—

How was I to know you would prove

So fond of refined cane sugar as to make me

Fill your tube two and even three times a day?

How was I to know, amiable pest,

That you would take whatever I have to give—

Importunate, insatiable—

With never a thought of sharing your exquisite small

Self for more than the space contained

Between the opening and shutting of an eye?

John Moffitt, Escape of the Leopard (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974), 18.

Riddle

In Mornigan’s park there is a deer,

Silver horns and golden ear,

Neither fish, flesh, feather, nor bone,

In Mornigan’s park she walks alone.

The Faber Book of Popular Verse, ed. by Geoffrey Grigson (London: Faber and Faber, 1971), 39.

[My true Love hath my heart,…] by Sir Philip Sidney

My true Love hath my heart, and I have his,

    By just exchange, one for the other given:

I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss;

    There never was a better bargain driven.

His heart in me keeps me and him in one,

    My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides:

He loves my heart, for once it was his own;

    I cherish his because in me it bides.

His heart his wound receivëd from my sight,

    My heart was wounded, with his wounded heart;

For as from me, on him his hurt did light,

    So still methought in me his hurt did smart.

        Both, equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss:

        My true Love hath my heart, and I have his.

Everyman’s Book of English Love Poems, ed. by John Hadfield (London, Melbourne, Toronto: J M Dent & Sons, 1980), 44.

Bitter-sweet by George Herbert

Bitter-sweet

AH my deare angrie Lord

Since thou dost love , yet strike ;

Cast down , yet help afford ;

Sure I will do the like.

I will complaine , yet praise ;

I will bewail , approve :

And all my sowre-sweet days

I will lament , and love.

The Works of George Herbert, ed. by F. E. Hutchinson (Oxford: Clarendon, 1941), 171.

Report on Arrival by Robin Skelton

Report on Arrival

I

They ask me where I was born.

I have no history

but the length of my bones,

and my religion

is the tablet of stone in climbing grass.

They ask me how much I am worth.

In pounds or dollars?

Dollars.

I scrawl dollars upon the sky.

And will I settle here?

Will I ever go back?

The rubber stamp

rolls like a whale on the pad,

and silence waits like a heron.

I can’t go back.

That is why I am here,

why I am breathing.

II

At thirty-seven I make a new start with the sea

and the peeling arbutus by middens of clamshells humped

up near the Reservation. Officers hope

I’m in work,

                 have a place to live,

                                               won’t let Faith down

by raging through roads that are underseas to green

rag-hanging chestnuts and oaks with a bottle or woman

or setting a mountain ablaze.

                                           I will fire a mountain

someday up-country where bears have the masks of people

and whales tunnel down through the seas, and I will call

back,

         (They said “Call us back”),

                                                spinning black charred fingers

round the numbering disk

                                     “Yes, I have settled

nicely,

          pretty well fixed,

                                   yeah, doing fine,

protecting the fire from the green,

the blaze from the cold”.

III

Would you say I was

                               dangerous?

Tell me

soberly under these trees that drag flat fingers

down on the English roses,

                                        Would you answer

I was a dangerous man?

                                    I don’t lie down,

ever,

        without recalling

                                 a woman’s mouth,

a woman’s hands, a woman’s breasts, a woman

mocking the folded roses,

                                       Would you say

now in your letter that I should be given papers,

rights, and freedoms?

                                 Could you ever say

anything safe of this

                               here

                                       where

                                                 grey quail

in wool skirts

                    walk in line

                                     down the sidewalk,

                                     on God Street?

IV

You would rather see photographs?

                    I have photographs

         (taken against the light)

                    of my wife and children

And of a big brown house upon McLaren

        where you think

                    (quite reasonably),

                              that I live,

Having written me there, and

                    getting this answer

        on the right paper,

                                   headed with the right name.

The evidence all points that way.

   There is even a mortgage

      And an insurance policy

                                         which is signed

                    (yes, I admit it)

                             with my name.

                                                   And you

Want photographs of the trees?

                           of the porch?

                           of a sitting

Family smiling?

                        Would rather have that than this

attempt at a genuine map

                                      of an entirely

                different country

                                        where

                           we are all alone?

Robin Skelton, The Hunting Dark (London: André Deutsch, 1971), 9-11.

[I’d have you, quoth he] by Anonymous

     I’d have you, quoth he.

     Would you have me? quoth she.

             O where, sir?

     In my chamber, quoth he.

     In your chamber? quoth she.

             Why there, sir?

     To kiss you, quoth he.

     To kiss me? quoth she.

             O why, sir?

     ‘Cause I love it, quoth he.

     Do you love it? quoth she.

             So do I, sir.

Lovers, Rakes and Rogues: amatory, merry and bawdy verse from 1580 to 1830, ed. by John Wardroper (London: Shelfmark Books, 1995), 134.

The Machine by B. C. Leale

THE MACHINE

The room exists for the machine

The machine is wheeled into the room

The machine contains the poem

The machine exists for the poem

         which is plugged into light

The rays of light converge on a blank

         freighted with language

There are dense textures and tones

There are weightless phrases

There are solids floating on colours

         as if rocks were the echoes of

         their fires and their seas.

The machine exists for the room

         it gives it meaning

When light wheels out of the machine

         it suddenly breaks.

B. C. Leale, Leviathan and other poems (London, New York: Allison & Busby, 1984), 66.

‘in heavenly realms of hellas dwelt’ by e e cummings

in heavenly realms of hellas dwelt

two very different sons of zeus:

one,handsome strong and born to dare

—a fighter to his eyelashes—

the other,cunning ugly lame;

but as you’ll shortly comprehend

a marvellous artificer

now Ugly was the husband of

(as happens every now and then

upon a merely human plane)

someone completely beautiful;

and Beautiful,who(truth to sing)

could never quite tell right from wrong,

took brother Fearless by the eyes

and did the deed of joy with him

then Cunning forged a web so subtle

air is comparatively crude;

an indestructible occult

supersnare of resistless metal:

and(stealing toward the blissful pair)

skilfully wafted over them-

selves this implacable unthing

next,our illustrious scientist

petitions the celestial host

to scrutinize his handiwork:

they(summoned by that savage yell

from shining realms of regions dark)

laugh long at Beautiful and Brave

—wildly who rage,vainly who strive;

and being finally released

flee one another like the pest

thus did immortal jealousy

quell divine generosity,

thus reason vanquished instinct and

matter became the slave of mind;

thus virtue triumphed over vice

and beauty bowed to ugliness

and logic thwarted life:and thus—

but look around you,friendsand foes

my tragic tale concludes herewith:

soldier,beware of mrs smith

The Oxford Book of Satirical Verse, ed. by Geoffrey Grigson (Oxford, New York, Toronto, Melbourne: Oxford UP, 1980), 391-2.

Exchange of Letters by Wendy Cope

                                   Exchange of Letters

‘Man who is a serious novel would like to hear from a woman who is a poem’ (classified advertisement, New York Review of Books)

DEAR SERIOUS NOVEL,

I am a terse, assured lyric with impeccable rhythmic flow, some apt and original metaphors, and a music that is all my own. Some people say I am beautiful.

My vital statistics are eighteen lines, divided into three-line stanzas, with an average of four words per line.

My first husband was a cheap romance; the second was Wisden’s Cricketers’ Almanac. Most of the men I meet nowadays are autobiographies, but a substantial minority are books about photography or trains.

I have always hoped for a relationship with an upmarket work of fiction. Please write and tell me more about yourself.

                                                              Yours intensely,

                                                   Song of the First Snowdrop

The Oxford Book of Satirical Verse, ed. by Geoffrey Grigson (Oxford, New York, Toronto, Melbourne: Oxford UP, 1980), 467.

Ballade Tragique à Double Refrain by Sir Max Beerbohm

             Ballade Tragique à Double Refrain

SCENE: A Room in Windsor Castle        TIME: The Present

           Enter a Lady-in-Waiting and a Lord-in-Waiting

SHE:               Slow pass the hours—ah, passing, slow!

                                 My doom is worse than anything

                        Conceived by Edgar Allan Poe:

                                 The Queen is duller than the King.

HE:                 Lady, your mind is wandering;

                                 You babble what you do not mean.

                        Remember, to your heartening,

                                 The King is duller than the Queen.

SHE:               No, most emphatically No!

                                 To one firm-rooted fact I cling

                        In my now chronic vertigo:

                                 The Queen is duller than the King.

HE:                 Lady, you lie. Last evening

                                 I found him with a Rural Dean,

                        Talking of district-visiting . . .

                                 The King is duller than the Queen.

SHE:               At any rate he doesn’t sew!

                                 You don’t see him embellishing

                        Yard after yard of calico . . .

                                 The Queen is duller than the King.

                                 Oh to have been an underling

                        To (say) the Empress Josephine!

HE:                          Enough of your self-pitying!

                        The King is duller than the Queen.

SHE (firmly):        The Queen is duller than the King.

HE:                 Death then for you shall have no sting.

                                 [Stabs her and, as she falls dead, produces phial

                                 from breast-pocket of coat.]

                        Nevertheless, sweet friend Strychnine,

                                 [Drinks.]

                        The King—is—duller than—the Queen.

                                 [Dies in terrible agony.]

The Oxford Book of Satirical Verse, ed. by Geoffrey Grigson (Oxford, New York, Toronto, Melbourne: Oxford UP, 1980), 371-2.

Binary by Chris Wallace-Crabbe

Binary

WHY does a cauliflower so much resemble a brain? All those pale curved protuberances and hillocks tease the mind into activity . . .  at this point I randomly remember the complicated architecture of a particularly gothic dream. But brains and cauliflowers, ah yes, is this the same kind of parallelism as that which holds between pine cones and pagodas? There we go again, seeking order or duplicity in the stubborn universe. We ask ourselves whether the resemblance between a rose and a cabbage is like that between a clipped hedge and a high tin loaf, coming up with no answer at all. The brain and the cauliflower continue to rise up on their cortices, bubbly fruits that they are. Moon goes around earth goes around sun, et cetera, analogues active everywhere. Echo redeems Narcissus, shadow is touching reflection. We ask ourselves what it all signifies. Somewhere, in shadow, aged sages debate such questions on a lawn all day, over their wine and bananas.

The Oxford Book of Comic Verse, ed. by John Gross (London, New York: Oxford UP, 1994), 438.

To paint a portrait of a bird by Jacques Prévert

To paint a portrait of a bird

First paint a cage

with an open door

then paint

something pretty

something simple

something beautiful

something useful

for the bird

then place the canvas against a tree

in a garden

in a wood

or in a forest

hide behind the tree

without speaking

without moving . . .

Sometimes the bird arrives quickly

but he might also wait long years

before deciding

Do not be discouraged

wait

wait if necessary for years

the speed or slowness of the bird’s arrival

has absolutely no connection

with the success or failure of the picture

When the bird arrives

if he arrives

observe the most solemn silence

wait until the bird enters the cage

and when he enters

gently close the door with the brush

then erase the bars one by one

making sure not to touch the feathers of the bird

Then paint a portrait of the tree

choosing the prettiest of its branches

for the bird

and then paint the green foliage and the freshness of the breeze

the dust of the sun

and the choice of the creatures in the grass in the summer heat

and then wait until the bird decides to sing

If the bird does not sing

it is a bad sign

a sign the picture is bad

but if he sings it’s a good sign

a sign you can sign

Now very gently pluck

one of the bird’s feathers

and write your name in the corner of the picture.

The Chatto Book of Nonsense Poetry, ed. by Hugh Haughton (London: Chatto & Windus, 1988), 409-10.

Confounded Nonsense by Thomas Hood the Younger

Confounded Nonsense

Alpaca pictures of the previous past,

    Droop on the hovering confines of a snore,

And yet one further bloom, conversely vast,

    Springs bright in the perspective of the shore,

Where porphyry wings bear up an ardent pride,

    And rainbows drip from evanescent crags,

Where peaceful popinjays smile side by side,

    And immemorial franchise furls its flags.

So let it be: imperious tumbrils howl,

    And palpitating fixtures utter screeds;

Afar the murmurous aspens hoarsely scowl,

    And purple pageants echo frantic deeds.

Farewell! I see life’s periphrastic orb

    Shiver to scantlings with a latent sound,

Dark ether pours, while shrinking minds absorb,

    And blatant wilderness close around.

The Chatto Book of Nonsense Poetry, ed. by Hugh Haughton (London: Chatto & Windus, 1988), 324-5.

Incantation by Laughter by Velimir Khlebnikov

Incantation by Laughter

         O laugh it out, you laughsters!

         O laugh it up, you laughters!

So they laugh with laughters, so they laugherize delaughly.

         O laugh it up belaughably!

O the laughingstock of the laughed-upon – the laugh of belaughed laughsters!

O laugh it out roundlaughingly, the laugh of laughed-at laughians!

         Laugherino, laugherino,

         Laughify, laughicate, laugholets, laugholets,

                  Laughikins, laughikins,

         O laugh it out, you laughsters!

         O laugh it up, you laughters!

                                                               translated from the Russian by Gary Kern

The Chatto Book of Nonsense Poetry, ed. by Hugh Haughton (London: Chatto & Windus, 1988), 371.