One Thousand Nights and Counting Read online

  slouched across two places, a young man

  and fast asleep or so it – oddly – seemed,

  so suddenly he’d come. I hadn’t seen,

  I calculated, any soul at all

  in sixteen days, since from the slowing train

  I saw one man with buckets by a well.

  No one I ever saw again, and no one

  ever on this train. It was not Hell

  you know about. No one seen again,

  no one in here, and no one speaking this,

  the English language. This was not a tongue

  they spoke in Hell. Theirs was a gibberish

  devoid of rhyme or reason. But this one,

  perhaps a student, in his early twenties,

  appeared here when we stopped a while in rain.

  And his empty book fell open as he snored,

  and the pages leafed themselves until they came

  decisively to a page that bore the word

  Poems, bore the English word for poems,

  Poems, and I weakened then and cried.

  I didn’t even wake him with these moans

  of bliss. They were the train, perhaps he thought,

  grilling itself for stopping here. My hands

  were shuddering to the page to be a part

  of English, of these Poems, though I could see

  he’d written nothing in it, or not yet –

  the devils in me told me in my glee,

  Blow me, it’s all coincidence and Poems

  means in his world ‘Help!’ or ‘Edmund Lea,

  I’ve come to nail a lid on all your dreams

  of seeing home again!’ And then my fingers

  reached the page and stuck there like names.

  This woke him, and his book fell down between us.

  [from Book 3: My First Poem]

  In recollection what descended then,

  that cold illuminated mist, remained

  till Christmas, made a candle of each friend

  emerging, disappearing in it, made

  each smile a call to shelter; but in truth

  it must have lifted on forgotten days

  and let them by. What’s kept of it is breath,

  that’s certain, fog-white utterance of gossip

  overhead, a trade in rumour, myth,

  complicity. The girls around the steps

  at Record Time, Nick Straton sauntering by

  in his hairy hooded coat, the talk of trips

  gone bad in London, freakouts in the country,

  nights of ill-lit deep emotional candour,

  in blankets then, the sunrise ceremony,

  drowsing. Christmas Eve in the town centre,

  there they are – I see them clear as type –

  Stan, Mendis, Russ, Nick Straton, and some other

  name that’s gone. They’re slouched along a step

  below the Great War monument; their breath

  is white with cold or brown with smoke. ‘Slide up,’

  Stan calls. ‘I’m Christmas shopping.’ ‘Catch your death?’

  says Nick, thudding a fag from his gold pack

  to point at me. I join them. ‘Hanging with?’

  they’re asking me. Stan says, ‘We went electric,

  Lea, we got a session round at Nick’s.

  You hanging with?’ I smoke, the little frantic

  sucks we used to take. ‘Lay down some tracks,’

  they’re telling me. The Hunger was their band,

  they started it one term, they played some gigs

  at parties, we stirred drinks and stood around,

  amazed at them for looking that like stars,

  just standing there. They made a muddy sound

  and no one danced. We saw their bright guitars,

  their skilful hands, their amplifiers and cords,

  the nonchalance, the chance . . . There are no chairs

  in Nick’s garage, it’s dark, they crowd towards

  the back for a band meeting. I’m alone;

  I glide my hand along the chill bronze threads

  of an idle bass guitar. The boy called Moon

  rides up, he’s excellent. Nick doesn’t play,

  he sings their songs, he sings in a low drone

  I can’t decipher. Now the band is ready,

  counting four and starting, such a noise –

  I sit on a sagging box and wonder only

  when on earth I can buy presents now, in these

  last hours of Christmas Eve. A light goes on

  in mid-song, in mid-song, that memory

  I swear by, all six of them – Stan, Moon,

  Nick, Russ, Dodge Mendis, and the drummer – each

  in some way falters. Nick says through the song,

  down the loud blasting microphone, ‘The switch,

  the switch!’ Out goes the light again, and I,

  I think he’s called the girl who’s come this witch,

  this witch to break their spell? And I’m wondering why

  and who it is until it is Clare Kendall

  who stands there listening, so improbably,

  Clare, who halts there, tinted by the purple

  bulb they use for light, in her long coat,

  Clare, who yawns and makes the cutting signal

  past her throat. Nick Straton booms out, ‘What?’

  at which she rolls her eyes, and since the track

  is not about to finish, turns her head

  and stretches through between Stan Burke and Nick

  to where I’m watching this. I feel my side,

  my right side seem to warm or somehow quicken

  at how she sits quite near, and my left side,

  I can recall it, seems so cold and dragged

  I pity it. The Hunger play so loud

  the noise is dreadful, but I recollect

  these moments always as the purest silence . . .

  Her scribble passed to me on a train ticket

  suddenly in my hand: BIRTH OF A LEGEND.

  Mine passed to her: DEATH OF A CHRISTMAS EVE!

  Hers on a shop receipt: LET’S SAVE THE PATIENT . . .

  The song cranks to a stop. ‘It’s better live,’

  says Mendis as the drummer peters out,

  and Nick’s complaining, ‘That ain’t long enough,

  Staz, I got another verse.’ ‘Nah, mate,

  my solo ends it,’ and they’re toe to toe,

  while Russ asks, ‘Dig it, Lea?’ and I say, ‘Great,’

  as Russ and Dodge are standing near us now,

  dumb about the girl. ‘Jimi’s returned,’

  she tells them, ‘but we’re going to have to blow.’

  Nick hears this and stops arguing. ‘You can’t,

  you got to stay.’ ‘I gotta wot?’ she wonders,

  Dodge Mendis says, ‘The next track’s called “Burned”,

  it’s about some crazy chick.’ ‘Oh really, Mendis,’

  Stan’s now saying. ‘Anyone we know?’

  Nick storms out. Through the small garage window

  I see him looking back, and I know now

  he really liked her, but it’s me she takes

  back into town at dusk, it’s me somehow.

  [from Book 5: Mallarea]

  At times there’s little mystery to how

  I felt, it takes you little to get there.

  And should you want to, you can set out now,

  take map and money and go anywhere

  you never went in England, where a mall

  spreads from the railway line. Should you want to share

  further, only stand in that high hall,

  look upward, be the only one to, stare

  out the grey skylights, be the only still

  contemplative creation to be there,

  then say, with force and clarity, bright tones

  to bring detectives running: I am where

  I used to live. These people are my
friends.

  This was my only home . . . This simple game

  may help you picture me. Picture my hands

  grasping the other shoulder to be warm,

  my feet unsteady in a world at last

  of many and on ground that stays the same;

  picture me peering at it, see me pushed

  past by accident, me chuckled at

  for my old coat, observe me spun to rest

  on a sun-yellow bench where Polly sat.

  They’d lost me or I’d lost them in the crowd

  around a band of drummers. There the beat

  had got me swaying and I sang aloud

  whatever words came by. Then when I looked

  they’d gone. At least I’d found her. ‘I’m afraid,’

  she said while doing lipstick, ‘that, in fact,

  you’re really lost up here.’ What up here meant

  I couldn’t tell. ‘If you was all an act,

  if you was all an act or if you weren’t,

  eachways it’s just as lost. I hate this place,

  I done my shopping, Saturday I done it,

  only time I could. It’s just for Woz

  I thought I’d come here so he gets his done.

  Get the last train to Dad’s.’ She lined her eyes

  with a violet crayon: ‘Know what this is? Poison.’

  [from Book 7: Demundo]

  . . . They are assembled in the room

  to film themselves and film me go away

  into the place I go. I look for him,

  Wasgood, my old friend, and see he’s there,

  grinning at me with the welcome grin

  of one oblivious, and I seem to care,

  as I remember. I see all the girls

  about the place, and it perfects the air

  to see them smile. I envy the four walls

  that each will see them when no curtain here

  can hold the sky back from its meal of colours,

  and I can feel my enemy, his copper

  ice in my own pocket, the sour coins

  he deals to me, the red-eye, the decliner.

  That all around me is a site of bones

  is not worth writing: writing will itself

  defy it, fleshing out its broken lines

  for all it’s worth. They formed a ring, the twelve,

  when I was close to sleep. I heard the rain’s

  sublime disinterest starting to dissolve

  whatever would remain. I saw my hands

  begin to rise, ten fingers outward, those

  and these still seeing eyes, somehow to send

  a word to the sad twelve – to shield my eyes

  was all I thought my hands and eyes could do.

  But that was wrong – I’d have friends recognise

  the sight of them was dear; besides, no view

  could frighten me. I made my hands embrace

  in prayer and glanced above – I can’t see you,

  I whispered so that no one heard – and last

  my palms were upward-facing and my sight

  was on each person till each realised.

  And then my eyelids, with inhuman might,

  began to roll the screens across. I heard

  the hum of filming and a voice too sweet

  to keep me conscious – Angel, say a word –

  then I was waking, and my face could feel

  a rash of air, iron smell, and I beheld

  a flock of birds fly up and turn, then wheel,

  dark on the sky, white on a passing field.

  Playground Song

  When over the playground once they came

  to tag me It then dance away,

  I danced away and to my shame

  they’re waiting for me to this day.

  When I was called to answer why

  I wasn’t there, I wasn’t there.

  All afternoon you hear them cry

  explain this at an empty chair.

  When Juliet confided whom

  she loved and would I let him know,

  light-heartedly I left the room,

  forgot it till an hour ago.

  And tiny things too late to do

  have gone so far they can’t be seen

  except at dusk by me and you,

  and though I hide till Halloween

  you never come, not even now

  each hand has reached the other sleeve,

  not even now the light is low

  and green as you would not believe.

  The Sea Comes in Like Nothing But the Sea

  The sea comes in like nothing but the sea,

  but still a mind, knowing how seldom words

  augment, re-orders them before the breaker

  and plays them as it comes. All that should sound

  is water reaching into the rough space

  the mind has cleared. The clearing of that mind

  is nothing to the sea. The means whereby

  the goats were chosen nothing to the god,

  who asked only a breathing life of us,

  to prove we were still there when it was doubted.

  The Nerve

  Somewhere at the side of the rough shape

  your life makes in your town,

  you cross a line,

  perhaps

  in a dusty shop you pause in, or a bar

  you never tried, and a smell

  will do as well;

  then you’re

  suddenly very far from what you know.

  You found it as a child,

  when the next field

  to you

  was the world’s end, a breeze of being gone.

  Now it begins to give,

  a single nerve,

  low down:

  it sags, as if it felt the gravity

  at long last. You are chilled

  to have been told

  that way –

  but you ought to recognise it, it’s the one

  that may well fail one day,

  fail utterly,

  go wrong,

  be Judas, while the others, without thought

  of you, or of your pain,

  show no sign,

  are mute,

  assume they’re safe with you. Treasure the nerve

  suggesting otherwise;

  treasure its dis-

  belief:

  it’s straining to see the outline of somewhere

  inhospitable,

  with other rules,

  unfair,

  and arbitrary, something to endure,

  which nonetheless you spot,

  contemplate,

  start for;

  where you will face the choices that the nerve

  has suffered: to be plucked

  and, for that act

  of love,

  to have brought the soldiers running; to lie low,

  and, for that act of fear,

  have perished years

  ago.

  Gatekeepers on Dana

  The first act

  of the first light in the east

  is to make gatekeepers of those great twin pines

  on Dana Street:

  to find them,

  the needs and fissures in them,

  make heralds of them, the first of all to affirm

  by their aspect

  the emergency,

  or chillingly to imply

  the amplitude of what’s to come. When it’s gone,

  what it is,

  and you wonder

  what cranks the shadows round

  together like the beasts at a long feeding,

  who, finishing,

  move off,

  don’t try to ask that pair,

  because if you do they will ask themselves what gate

  has he in mind,

  then brush and murmur,

  why would it need keeping?

  shiver and hazard: Are you expecting something?


  Tell all.

  The Leonids

  The corners of our eyes,

  cold and alert to missing them, report

  a flash, and in the breeze

  we turn our heads

  to where the stars are quiet.

  It goes against the grain,

  to understand what’s next is going to shoot

  from anywhere. The brain,

  seeing a thing

  so like itself, falls flat.

  Leonids. A word,

  as if they had some source or destiny,

  as if this utmost speed

  they hurtle at

  were theirs – towards, away –

  and not our burning loop

  that lights the dust they are. As if this date

  were something that they keep,

  appointment reached

  neither too soon nor late,

  but punctual to the end.

  Leonids. Our word, our speed, our date,

  bawls the affronted mind,

  shaking the fixed

  stars this way and that.

  Haunted Hayride

  At the near edge of the field, a dollar a shot,

  the haycart waited with its horse and man,

  handing the children on and their mothers on,

  unhanding them to a place on a haycart seat,

  swivelling for the next. The field was a farm

  beginning by Route 9, a mile at most