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We are so like apes, a percent
of chromosomes away, and mutation
ticks remorselessly. From this we can
recalculate the evolutionary tree,
count back to the first divergence
of flesh from spirit in October, 4004 BC.
Because all languages tick
at 1.5% a century, we know that
Spanish and Portuguese split 600 years ago,
Sanskrit and Greek 4000 years before,
so there must once have been
a common tongue, a first kiss.
And because all languages have the same
word for olive, they grow on the hillside
where language first grew, and wherever your lover
is, she drinks nothing but Coca-Cola and phones
to say that it's just not working out, that, in fact,
American and English split months ago.
And because you didn't burn your bridges,
nor she her boats, you can prune back
to a few core words, and watch how fast they change:
water, star, mountain - not thankyou,
hotel, how much; the first words
you fumble for in phrase books.
And because it's autumn, London leaves fall
yellow as cabs. As you fall asleep,
a fire engine that used to hee-haw
like a seaside donkey goes wow wow wow.
A merchant and his wife on the riverbank stare out at us.
Behind are St. Pauls, the Tower, Nelson's Column,
the Globe Theatre, the Palace of Westminster.
Below, abandoned barges and an elegant woman, face hidden,
more likely his mistress than the mother of the ragged
boys making castles on the mudbanks.
He points with his stick past his wife to the far shore
where we see with impossible clarity the Taj Mahal,
ghats (smoke rising), a dancing white bear,
wigwams (smoke rising), a brass band of negroes,
and distant mountains shaped like Gibraltar, Everest
and Ayers Rock each with high waterfalls or abandoned castles.
No bridges or sails in sight. Two moored ships
with limp flags have arrived from The Scream to join
Turner's fleet in the golden water. Perhaps the couple
don't know that a rowing boat's coming to collect them.
She is plump, a sign of health, but her seams are giving way;
she's scared to move. Her skin's unwrinkled but cracking.
His hair is white and long, a little too dandy. The scroll
in his pocket is The Sun, the foreground vegetation
is unfinished. At his feet a sign says 'Beware Wet Paint'.
The water peels to reveal canvas - the missing sails
that billow leaving the river empty, beyond restoration.
It is night. All over the city alarms are sounding.
I remember you once showing him our photos upstairs.
I couldn't hear his little voice, only yours.
"That's mummy when she was little .... Yes darling,
people do get taller .... Yes, and taller and taller
and taller until one day their heads hit the moon."
You still look just the same to him in this strange bed.
He gives you a present that he'd hidden from me,
wrapped in silver foil with messy sellotape. He opens it
for you: his favorite car, the one we got him last Christmas
so you could brrmbrrm it along the sheets and get better.
The nurses spoil him while some asian doctor
takes me to a spare office. For him
I repeat my questions although I know the answers,
like the latest playground riddles. "Unmentionable", he says,
when I thank him. I think he means "Don't mention it."
I decode your sudden sweat, your shrivelled vowels,
as death buys you off, fills in your O's, sweeps your petals
into heaps, until my cleverness runs out
and you hold your breath as if straining to listen,
a sentry on the red edge of eternity.
He sleeps on the back seat as I chase the night into
the cul-de-sac of dawn, cities closing the distances between them,
one or other claiming every village like young lovers, greedy.
I carry him still sleeping to his bed, his doll eyes
briefly opening. He's only 4, only everything.
After a short illness, a sudden thaw worse than a storm,
sonnets tumbling from the trees, spinning to slow their fall.
The formally indispensable hero survives,
sky's orchestration left to apprentices.
Critics wind up their gramophones for icing cakes,
lift doors off their hinges to sleigh through slush,
looking for meaning in each image, an image in each melody,
turning it upside down, translating into chinese and back.
This framed ever-changing trapezoid will always be
more real than a book turned off by closing.
The purple patches become belladonna flapping in the breeze,
art for heart's ache, a stand-up comic finally going straight.
Judge us not by the dust behind our radiators,
or our butter's melting nostalgia for milk.
The glass slippers were really silk, but who cares?
There are no broken wineglasses to replace.
So much for love. An anonymous buyer steps in.
Here's a rose for your rifle, secateurs for your circled holidays.
Cycles cluck by, girls pass arm in arm and
Above, dazed James not Jim riffs his sitar,
Making words tadpole through your desklamp's pond,
Breaking concentration's ivory tower.
Reading, you hoard innocence while, punting
In shuffled couples, zigzagging friends go
Dunking canapes in Pimms till evening,
Giggling home for coffee and strip Tarot.
Easing from the pace, saving for the last
Bend, the leading pack's in sight but you see
Love as the arrow plucked from Zeno's chest;
Understood, unfelt. Head down you cram on,
Eager for starred recompense and when the
Stagger unwinds, you find yourself alone.
To work off nerves she scythed out space,
prowling within imagined jungles
to recorded beats of drums, all movement
from her knees pulsed through her slender waist
to arms which flung her rhythm
into corners out of reach, each beat
heaped into the same remembered moment
when we were falling, falling back
into the silence after the echolalia of sex
and I would peel the shreds of language
from her flesh. She dances now.
I'd seen her name handwritten on a poster
after work and sneaked into the back seats,
still suited, watching her sides and breasts
shadow with sweat as she sustained
her fragile illusion like a virtuoso plate-spinner
until, exhausted, she bowed and left
to subsultory applause. I stared at the empty stage
while those around me shuffled out
and saw her presence fade again, slow as the wake
seen from a ferry's stern, slow as depression,
the air returning to pristine void
with my clapping hands frozen to a prayer.
Poems come from Stand, Other Poetry, Poetry Nottingham and Staple.
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