Not my Best Side
Not my best side, I’m afraid.
The artist didn’t give me a chance to
Pose properly, and as you can see,
Poor chap, he had this obsession with
Triangles, so he left off two of my
Feet. I didn’t comment at the time
(What, after all, are two feet
To a monster?) but afterwards
I was sorry for the bad publicity.
Why, I said to myself, should my conqueror
Be so ostentatiously beardless, and ride
A horse with a deformed neck and square hoofs?
Why should my victim be so
Unattractive as to be inedible,
And why should she have me literally
On a string? I don’t mind dying
Ritually, since I always rise again,
But I should have liked a little more blood
To show they were taking me seriously.
II
It’s hard for a girl to be sure if
She wants to be rescued. I mean, I quite
Took to the dragon. It’s nice to be
Liked, if you know what I mean. He was
So nicely physical, with his claws
And lovely green skin, and that sexy tail,
And the way he looked at me,
He made me feel he was all ready to
Eat me. And any girl enjoys that.
So when this boy turned up, wearing machinery,
On a really dangerous horse, to be honest
I didn’t much fancy him. I mean,
What was he like underneath the hardware?
He might have acne, blackheads or even
Bad breath for all I could tell, but the dragon-
Well, you could see all his equipment
At a glance. Still, what could I do?
The dragon got himself beaten by the boy,
And a girl’s got to think of her future.
III
I have diplomas in Dragon
Management and Virgin Reclamation.
My horse is the latest model, with
Automatic transmission and built-in
Obsolescence. My spear is custom-built,
And my prototype armour
Still on the secret list. You can’t
Do better than me at the moment.
I’m qualified and equipped to the
Eyebrow. So why be difficult?
Don’t you want to be killed and/or rescued
In the most contemporary way? Don’t
You want to carry out the roles
That sociology and myth have designed for you?
Don’t you realize that, by being choosy,
You are endangering job prospects
In the spear- and horse-building industries?
What, in any case, does it matter what
You want? You’re in my way.
Cat in the Manger
In the story, I’m not there.
Ox and ass arranged at prayer:
But me? Nowhere.
Anti-cat evangelists
How on earth could you have missed
Such an obvious and able
Occupant of any stable?
Who excluded mouse and rat?
The harmless, necessary cat.
Who snuggled in with the holy pair?
Me. And my purr.
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,
(Who got it wrong,
Who left out the cat)
Remember that,
Wherever He went in this great affair
I was there.
What are you doing here, ghost, among these urns,
These film-wrapped sandwiches and help-yourself biscuits,
Upright and grand, with your stick, hat and gloves,
Your breath of eau-de-cologne?
What have you to say to these head-scarved ladies,
For whom your expensive vowels are exotic as Japan?
Stay, ghost, in your proper haunts, the clubland smoke-rooms,
Where you know the waiters by name.
You have no place among these damp and nameless.
Why do you walk here? I came to say goodbye.
You were ashamed of me for being different.
It didn’t matter.
You who never even learned to queue?
Christmas
This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future’s
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.
This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.
This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.
And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect
Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.
OLD MAN, OLD MAN
He lives in a world of small recalcitrant
Things in bottles, with tacky labels. He was always
A man who did-it-himself.
Now his hands shamble among clues
He left for himself when he saw better,
And small things distress: I’ve lost the hammer.
Lifelong adjuster of environments,
Lord once of shed, garage and garden,
Each with its proper complement of tackle,
World authority on twelve different
Sorts of glue, connoisseur of nuts
And bolts, not good with daughters
But a dab hand with the Black and Decker,
Self-demoted in your nineties to washing-up
After supper, and missing crusted streaks
Of food on plates; have you forgotten
The jokes you no longer tell, as you forget
If you’ve smoked your timetabled cigarette?
Now television has no power to arouse
Your surliness; your wife could replace on the walls
Those pictures of disinherited children,
And you wouldn’t know. Now you ramble
In your talk around London districts, fretting
At how to find your way from Holborn to Soho,
And where is Drury Lane? Old man, old man,
So obdurate in your contracted world,
Living in almost-dark, I can see you,
You said to me, but only as a cloud.
When I left, you tried not to cry. I love
Your helplessness, you who hate being helpless.
Let me find your hammer. Let me
Walk with you to Drury Lane. I am only a cloud.
Under the long flat fingers of the beans.
REINDEER REPORT
Chimneys: colder.
Flightpaths: busier.
Driver: Christmas (F)
Still baffled by postcodes.
Children: more
And stay up later.
Presents: heavier.
Pay: frozen.
Mission in spite
Of all this
Accomplished –
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
MEN ON ALLOTMENTS
As mute as monks, tidy as bachelors,
They manicure their little plots of earth.
Pop music from the council house estate
Counterpoints with the Sunday-morning bells,
But neither siren voice has power for these
Drab solitary men who spend their time
Kneeling, or fetching water, soberly,
Or walking softly down a row of beans.
Like drill-sergeants, they measure their recruits.
The infant sprig receives the proper space
The manly fullgrown cauliflower will need.
And all must toe the line here; stem and leaf,
As well as root, obey the rule of string.
Domesticated tilth aligns itself
In sweet conformity; but head in air
Soars the unruly loveliness of beans.
They visit hidden places of the earth
When tenderly with fork and hand they grope
To lift potatoes, and the round, flushed globes
Tumble like pearls out of the moving soil.
They share strange intuitions, know how much
Patience and energy and sense of poise
It takes to be an onion; and they share
The subtle benediction of beans.
They see the casual holiness that spreads
Along obedient furrows. Cabbages
Unfurl their veined and rounded fans in joy,
And buds of sprouts rejoice along their stalks.
The ferny tops of carrots, stout red stems
Of beetroot, zany sunflowers with blond hair
And bloodshot faces; shine like seraphim
