A poetry editor friend of mine asked to see my County Durham poems as she
grew up there so I pasted them into a file for her. I might as well post the
file here. None of the poems are in the new book.

Published Poems


Durham


Is the processional headed by a black-robed cowl?
Green dapple and blue sky alternate above.
Jumbled we stumble along in the following crowd
Baked with dirt and the sweat of noontime sun.
The cobbled path up from the river is carved in mud.
Houses old and treacherous.
In our hands we carry the pike.
In our hearts we carry the fear.

The lady walks the cloister;
brown robed, high boned.
She looks not from side to side.
Her face stares at mystery.


A twenty mile march from Raby,
Our track stained by a blood-white rose.
Now the drums beat in the open square.
Ahead squats the cathedral block;
Toy stones collected for giant's play.
And ebullient we dash.
Thru love to consecrate our groins.
Thru love to consummate our lives.

The girl stands impatiently;
dark shirted, amber breeched.
She does not wait the future.
Her hand paws at her right hip.


Up the great nave we stride to the cross;
The hymn stills and the chantry empties.
The coolness of the stone breathes peace.
Before the altar we raise our knives
And stab and stab and stab and stab.
A sodden mop of fair hair.
A brown back oozing crimson.
Our joyful hearts will be worms' meat.

The imp sits with her mischief;
red sweater, red tongue.
She has forgotten herself.
Her nose twitches at answers.



Autobiography


I am of Ireland
And the holy land of Ireland,
I am of France
And the bonny land of France.

I was born to Scotland
The dour grim land of Scotland,
I was born in Durham
The dear green land of Durham.

I live deep down in England
The Saxon land of England,
I live secure in Roman Bath
The Somerset city of Bath.

It is a long way from Perthshire
And the tenements of Glesca,
A long way from Lanark
And the farms of High Blantyre.

The English hold me together
With their drugs and with their pills,
They bleed me six-monthly
To keep the nightmare from my brain.

I am of Ireland
And the holy land of Ireland,
I am of France
And the bonny land of France.

I loved Aphrodite
In the shape of three Scots lasses,
She tore at me and savaged me
Took me back to my childhood.

I was born to Scotland
The dour grim land of Scotland,
I was born in Durham
The dear green land of Durham.

I have seen the hills of Roncevaux
And I have swum the Grecian sea,
I looked out over the morning world
And made my way to the citadel.

I come from civilisation
The inheritance of Europe,
From Enlightenment to Renaissance
I was born with the silver spoon.

I listen to the songs of Robert Burns
`A Parcel of rogues in a Nation',
`Ae Fond Kiss', `A Red Red Rose'
`Auld Lang Syne', `Green grow the Rashes, O'.

I live deep down in England
The Saxon land of England,
I live secure in Roman Bath
The Somerset city of Bath.

I grew up to village and squire
I grew up to carry-oots and black pudding supper,
I grew up to Gilmorehill and Edinburgh New Town
And now they're dreams lost in The North.

I am of Ireland
And the holy land of Ireland,
I am of France
And the bonny land of France.

All alone from birth to death
No roots laid down in infancy,
All alone from birth to death
No love ever to intrude.

I cheated them; I robbed the grave
I carry my love within my heart,
And bring her out and dust her down
When there's no-one else awake but me.

I am of Durham
The Prince-bishopric of Durham,
I was born at an evil time
The poetry will survive.



from the village


`I am the last poet of the village'

                   ... Sergei Yesenin


a barbarian from the village
who, with the horsemen,
galloped down love
and finally found contentment
in the magical world
of computers.

I was going somewhere
out among the stars
until
the vast interstellar spaces
flung me back
on planet Earth.

the family came from Malcolmwood,
now sprung from Coatham Mundeville
to New Milton
and Darlington,
now spread through
all the old red Empire.

the assault on Heaven
stems from rivalry with John Keats;
I am twice his age
but I have never
touched him,
not with words.


I must make peace with my father
who used to play the piano for hours,
so proud of his left hand,
all the Thirties and Forties tunes;
who finished up
a sick old man.

My father set out to be a minister
studying Classics at the Uni,
financing himself with bursaries;
then he lost his faith
and fancied himself as
MOH for Angus.

Then commonsense prevailed
and it was to England
as a chest physician
handling the cure for TB
and empathising
with his patients.

The world caves in
for those who have
no faith in love,
they shrivel from within.
There are parents in this world
who do not teach these things.


There has not been such joy
in Scotland
since Montrose burnt Inverara'
as when Tommy Gemmell
put the ball
in the back of the Inter Milan net.

Jim Baxter playing footy-uppy
at Wembley in '67
while Denis Law clapped;
As a small boy
I was taken to see Tommy Ring
play at Shawfield for Clyde.

Simpson
Gemmell, Craig
Clark, McNeil, Murdoch
Johnstone, Lennox
Chalmers, Wallace, Auld
and Yogi on the bench with Jock Stein.

Shankly said:
`football's not about
Life or Death ---
It's more important than that.'
There's not a team
like the bully wee Clyde.


I haven't got a friend in the world
no-one to talk to
neither has Fritz Cat
he has no friends either
we make a right pair,
sitting passive in the silence.

this is England
friendship means the pub
nobody visits or phones
is it different in the North country?
it was when I was young,
we talked.

the starry nights at Glesca
I was going to solve everything
and I have
the mysteries unveiled
there is no mystery,
only living.

poetry says the simplest things
in the most complicated way
that is why
as you age
you leave poetry behind,
a broken husk of childhood.


little Mut adores son William
he is good for digging gardens
she battles
to rule his mind
protecting him from indolence
and disrupting his lethargy.

little Mut battles with dragons
as she on-faces the NHS
privatising
proselytising
singing the Owenite song
a Democrat

little Mut loves Auden
`Wystan was so promiscuous'
she reads Kathleen Raine,
Larkin and Peter Riley
but secretly
she prefers Agatha Christie.

little Mut loves her garden
she knows
all the plants by name,
she is a collector
forever scavenging fresh breeds
to lighten up her summertime life.


the generation to come
Calum, Sally and Diana
we always learn the hardest way
by our mistakes
it is a pity
experience is not inherited.

a barbarian from the village
educated by the English
a poor start in life
but ruler of the green world
of woods and bracken,
like Robin Hood.

taught Latin but not Greek
taught mathematics
bathed in science fiction
the escape from this dreadful world
to far-off suns and planets
where happiness reigned.

Coatham Hall is where I come from
the old house with windows
for staring at the moon
cats, dogs and idle afternoons
the train-set in winter
there is no way back.


I summonsed the horsemen
that were hunting the fox;
the fox that kills
for the sake of killing
we hunted across the world
and came to nothing.

I summonsed poetry
and rode it high
for twenty years
wondering where it would lead
the silver tongue
that ran out of magic.

Press the keys
before the little black box,
light up the window,
a computer is an entrance
to the interlinked pathways
that cross the globe.

I talk to America
and to Scotland
I play little local games
Fortran and fortune,
the technology rushes onward
to make my experience redundant.


a world where the knife
cuts little Mut
a world where they stretcher me
into Casualty
to find my blood disease
run amok.

the leeches lie in wait,
the messy side of life,
after forty
it is all downhill
I, who once,
was so alive.

the farm, the great house,
the row of cottages,
the pub;
the people so full of warmth
who looked over
my upbringing.

there is no way back.
to recreate
the vision in words
is for a master.
I just remember it
like some fabulous dream.



a beginning


I


lifetime to lifetime;
an age of horsemen,
hoofbeats...hoofbeats
           hear the gallop of a troop;
the charge at Marengo,
           at Fredricksboro,
the sad air near Balaclava,
Omdurman as genius faded.
           hear the hooves of a troop;
burnished breastplates glisten,
uniforms scarlet and blue,
wheel...in line,
and the flowing spectacle
           of a coursing run,
a solitary bugle, the banner waving.

to approach life;
           first with a nervous gait,
           then as confidence comes,
           the full weight of exhibition,
           fluttering silks, the entire ambition.
yes this is a beginning.


II


on the road to Marathon cicadae crackle,
the sun and the ancients,
a birth called Europe.
I was born to the greentime,
tall trees and long grass,
farmcountry, bustling brooks,
the Saxon church to the horizon.
Hall Garth by the winding river;
Coatham Mundeville
           a dozen houses placed on the A1,
sitting their hill,
           inviolate.
Jeb Stuart, Joachim Murat,
Belisarius, Patton;
as I on my bicycle,
stormed downhill
           to the sing of the wind,
lancing with reeds,
           pursuing those hated cats.
my bike was dark green.
is there too much pain
           the remembrance;
yes this is a beginning.


III


ah paper can you know what youth is,
the unburstable bubble inside one's head,
energy of lifetimes;
from dawn to dusk the chase continues,
effortless ease to a welcoming sun.

this carnivorous house,
three hundred years has kept and scanned,
families fade as seasons;
the broad land spun and sheared,
welcome to generations, the turning soil.

and rabbits rutting,
the honeycombed woods flowering,
aconite, snowdrop, the mulberry;
thick undergrowth, the weeping trees,
caught in tangles, creepertorn.

and the turnip pile,
to grab and chew the sweet meat,
cutting out with a knife,
Jack Lanterns at the Hallowe'en;
squabbling dogs, the roaring fire.

from lifetime to lifetime.


IV


my first visits to the town,
fascinated by model soldiers,
the dream of one's own little war.
I marched battalions.
and the horses,
supported by matches and plasticine,
those fragile legs;
building castles from wooden blocks.
and the horses;
the meet once started from our house,
black coats, pink coats,
and trembling nostrils, steam in the air,
lifting foot and foot,
nervously poised for the chase.
in those eyes, uncertainty of watching strangers,
fear of bustling hounds.

and a fox, a dog fox;
dashing across the main road,
hounds horses head over heels,
all traffic was stopped;
they trapped him by the river.

this memory of my christening cup.


V


dragging a sledge in the snow.
we used to slide down meadows,
risking the stream at the bottom,
a barbed wire fence, yes was danger;
the local pond of doubtful ice,
that too was risky.
icicles frozen solid at the back door,
break them off and suck;
cool crystal for a snowman's mouth.
I built a man as tall as I was.
cutting holly for Christmas decorations
I stood on steps and looked over the wall;
a white domain, heavy lorries on the hill,
trapped by slush they slide back down,
there was always trouble.
memories of moons and white snow;
not to stray far afield on winter nights.
the church choir come visiting,
the vicar fat and jolly;
especially shadows from the fire,
a set of six Indian braves
for my Christmas;
looked on them for hours;
hatchets bow and arrows finefeathered,
this remembered.

life was so much simpler in those days.


VI


and across to the bowler,
cricket on the lawn,
the appeasement of broken windows.
one brother to bat, one to bowl,
and another as wicketkeeper.
our stumps would mark the lawn,
and the frayed ground where the batsmen stood.
May, Cowdrey, Dexter;
all took their turn.
and six for over the house,
six and out for over the wall;
if over the wall the ball running down the road,
even to Hall Garth,
the fielder out the gate pursuing.
the lawn for tennis, croquet, football,
and jungle wars of the undergrowth.
Fred Trueman, Tyson, Lindwall, Miller;
small wars.
French cricket was devilish,
a family group of thrusting hands
as shadows lengthened on the grass.
strawberry teas,
analysis of innings,
there were no losers.


VII


with my father watching the barn
as fire consumed the baled hay;
took a day to fully burn.
the firemen ran hoses up the drive.
from the bright red blocks
of fragile appearance,
red yellow combs of sweltering heat,
unbreathable against;
I clutched his hand tightly.
a sacrifice to appraise the future.
consummation of harvest.
there were rumours of deliberate firing,
revenge for past accounts;
who would burn the sweat of a year's back?

poppies in our garden,
large petalled, the delicate seeds;
poppy day, Passchendaele;
not the wars of my youth.
to learn of bleed and bloody dying,
taste the inferno.
death tipped his cap at me,
I knew loss;
a stranger settled in my mind,
too young to recognise mortality.


VIII


Praxiteles' darling,
Alkibiades;
did the cities invent war,
never the countryside.
from Athens to Syracuse,
honey child to ignominy.
I think you preferred Thrace,
rough meadows, the churned butter,
sheeplands, to a city devouring its gods.

Alexander;
youngest of the generals,
galloping the shores of the Morea,
hoofmarks in the sand, the water rising,
a handful of horse accompanying;
if ever was greatness deserved Iskander,
man against the fates; won,
a poem lived and died.
Persepolis.

we all know Praxiteles in our youth.


IX


summer teas,
hot pancakes, still warm from the girdle,
the butter melting,
and strawberry jam;
cakes of every variety,
too many cakes.
the sun outside, heat haze to the distant,
the old house was cool.
families gathered for the weekend.
there was a tribe of us.
used to go up the moors for picnics,
pursuing plovers, the idle streams;
water waking with sparkle,
searching white heather.
or the beach, at Sandsend;
spent hours constructing earthworks,
moulding rivers to our will;
we battled the sea endlessly,
the incoming tide.
skinny little boys, thin boned.
a tribe of us.
there was only living.


X


Chretien knew of it,
the sacred chalice,
my christening cup.
I saw it often in the china cabinet;
unused,
born a pagan.
dreamt that one dawn
a flame would stir.
the grail summoned to Jerusalem,
to pay service for two thousand years.
born a pagan
after the solstice and the harvest moon;
at the meeting of the old and new,
the day the first V2 rose from our Earth,
puncturing the skies.
but Chretien knew of damsels, knights, lords,
flattered my thirst for romance;
Lancelot and Guinevere, the matter of Britain.
the great year swings round,
soon to be floodtime;
born a pagan,
not yet a Parsifal.


Envoi


where do you bury a bone?
wrapped in wreaths of forget-me-not,
those delicate remembrances;
a chaste bone.
meat, where's meat?
was it ever real,
the red juice spurting from a heart,
fluid excretal.
knew that pale face would catch a death.
trampled by a horse.
where's greentime?
buried with the mud.
I'd ask you for a prayer,
but born a pagan;
may the worms rot!



Raby Castle


an old faith --- a young queen

In the Great Hall of Raby
the Nevilles plan the Rising of the North,
aided by their rivals, the Percys of Alnwick.
It is nearly a hundred years since
Richard of Middleham, Duke of Gloucester,
died for having took the crown.
A Percy rode with him in the last charge.
Cicely, Rose of Raby, set that up.
Now the Hall bustles with planning
To aid the bonny Queen of Scots
And bring back the old ways
When there was one faith across the land.

an old faith --- a young queen

Summerhouse is on the road to Staindrop.
The Raby Hunt Inn is where we drink.
Michael has given up Theakston's
And taken on Marston's Burton Ale.
At lunchtime he serves duckling and banana splits.
We drive ten miles to drink his beer.
Calum Clark sleeps in his carrycot,
Rested between two chairs. He is always happy.
He was christened a Dissenter.

Kit Smart knew Raby.
He drank in the pub at Staindrop.
His cat Jeoffry is more famous than my Fritz.
He too went mad.
I wish I knew more about him.
He too left the land of Durham.
He served the Vanes.
There is only one motto for Raby
Shared by Dissenters and Nevilles

an old faith --- a young queen ---
a bonny bride for Calum Clark



Inside


The three of us sat round the crisp green apple.
The dark-haired Catholic artist with his dreams of Mary.
The violent skin-head with his abrupt actions.
Myself the poet.
In my mind it was the day I was to marry Susan
In Durham Cathedral.
The windows were locked.
The skin-head took out his knife
And cut the apple in three.
He served his Eucharist.
The Catholic boy with his vision bit hard.
I savoured the tangy fruit.
We were scared of the skin-head and his knife.
He was leaving that afternoon.
Just visiting.
The artist and I were inside.
The voices spoke of wonder.
God, it was horrible,
The stream of filth from the subconscious.
The green apple symbolised the end of our world.
An end of innocence.
Special people in a special place.
We three were chosen to make sacrament
To atone for the agony.
We bit on the apple.



Alone, at Durham


Comes a horseman, in Winter,
To the greatest cathedral north of the Alps;
It is the end of an old tale.

Bespectacled, with grey hairs,
In the mirror I view his face;
He once sent his voice around the world.

All he has now is pen, paper and the memory,
The distant tide of faith fast receding;
Snow, ice and the mad mists beckon.

Came a horseman, in Summer,
From the morning to the citadel;
The days of honey licking the silver tongue.

`Love is a vapour, we're soon through it.'
Uncle Basil had no more success than I;
I tilted my head at all the rainbows.

Comes a horseman, in Winter,
By Heighington village to the Raby Hunt Inn;
Thru fog, ice and snow to a welcoming fire.



Lines written for Martin Heidegger


1. Home


I come from Coatham Mundeville
Deep in the Neville lands of Raby,
North of the great Cistercian abbeys
of Rievaulx, Jervaulx, Fountains;
North of Middleham Castle.
The White Horse on the Hambleton Hills
is my Southern boundary,
I was born in England.

Catraeth is close at hand. We lost.
A merry summer drinking in Dunedin
and then we rode South to death.
My friend Aneirin sang it. Another Flodden.
At break of day the sun comes out,
The fast Tees flows thru green Rokeby,
The red ivy clings to Coatham's walls;
I am of the Old North.

Richard of Gloucester loved our land,
It reciprocated in kind.
The young days when the Streaks used to
head North and South at eleven and three.
Green-painted. Sir Nigel Gresley. Mallard.
It is a hard grim world laced with Theakston's beer,
Peases: The Stockton and Darlington Railway.
It is home.

The Neville horsemen took England
under Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick;
the Yorkist Revolution. Plantagenet.
The red-coated meet in the drive at Coatham Hall,
The hounds, the horses, stirrup-cup.
It goes back that far. To the beginning.
From the morning to the citadel.
The great rock of Durham. Forever.


2. Away


Twenty years ago:
A silver-grey Ford Cortina southward on the Fosse Way.
Ten thousand years since the first settlement at Bath,
The triple hot springs of Sulis Minerva
deep in the Cotswold forest. The West Country.
Down the fire-break to the clearing,
A return to the thing itself: Love.
In the beginning...

A homecoming. A stepping into the light.
The magic of existence. The shepherd of Being thrown
Into the world on his knees. The land of Wadsworth 6X.
Stonehenge and Avebury. Glastonbury Tor.
Adelard of Bath, the Benedictine scholar of Arabic.
The Summer County: Somerset is the graveyard of ambition.
Royal Crescent; The Circus; The Assembly Rooms:
Jane Austen was bored to death.

The Saxon King Edgar was crowned in Bath Abbey.
The Theatre Royal was built to rival London.
Arthur won his twelfth victory at Mount Badon. Artorius.
Shelley ran two households simultaneously: Mary and Clare.
The German bombers came in the Baedeker raids.
I walk across the green to the Englishcombe Inn
Where the guest beer is the landlord's own selection.
Fuller's `London Pride' helps me sleep.

It was here that the lady bathed in the fountain.
It was here that the books were written.
St. Catherine, patron saint of Bath,
In astonishment debates me philosophically:
`Go back to the beginning
And see if it could have been any different.'
In astonishment I answer:
`It is always different and always the same.'



Coatham Mundeville


I grew up at Coatham Hall
in the house of the Amundevilles,
of the Jarldom of Sadberge.
I am of Danish Darlington.

The Durham Ox was bred at Brafferton
by the Colling brothers of Ketton Farm.
The River Skerne wanders south to the Tees.
We have becks not burns.

You can see Aycliffe Saxon church on the horizon.
Nowadays the Motorway has come between.
It is the land of the South Durham Hunt.
Surtees' country. Jorrocks.

The Quaker Peases of Darlington created railways,
hiring George Stephenson to invent them.
Timothy Hackworth at Shildon built engines.
The green Streaks headed North and South.

I grew up at Coatham Hall
and played croquet on the lawn.
The grounds a wilderness fit for a Crusoe.
On my Hercules bicycle I probed the land.

The sun always shone; the snow was thick;
Icicles hung a yard long; there were cats.
Sandy, the spaniel, was our dog; Mac came later.
My mother baked hot pancakes on the girdle.



Unpublished Poems


The first four years


I was born at 107 Eastbourne Road
Just up the hill from Bank Top Station
Where Locomotion No. 1 sits on the platform.
In the last week of the war
A German bomber flew down our street
And my mother flung her body across my cot in panic.
I saw 'Pinnochio' and 'Sinbad the Sailor'
In the little cinema at the end of the road.
We lived in the hospital house.
I was born on a Saturday night
Just as the pubs were coming out.
I hurt myself dreadfully on the slide in the park.
We had two spaniels, Sandy and Rip.
I have no emotions about my childhood,
It is just something that happened to me.
It is not until I was five and we had moved to Coatham
That I enter on the scene.
But Pinnochio and Sinbad the Sailor
Have always been a part of me.
And I return from my travels
When I see Locomotion No. 1 on Darlington Station.
Something went terribly wrong for me there
And turned me into a magician of words.
I was born with the genius of place.



Susan at Coatham



I am the poets' poet.
Struck by lightning I name my cats:
I name Fritz, I name Ferdia, I name Ludovic.
Poetry, most innocent of occupations.
Language, most dangerous of possessions.

The dread of nothingness.
A hunting horn sounds out across the ruined shire,
Emily Bronte'; burns the manuscripts of Gondal,
The dusts sift and twine under the grassy stones:
To sleep forever; like Heathcliff.

I am on a holy journey.
And I can choose those who will accompany me ---
To meet Susan at Durham.
Twenty years ago, when I came to Bath,
I believed I carried the future of English poetry with me.

A man's life is like a sparrow
Flying through the hall of a king;
Who knows where it comes from
Or where it goes to.
The joy of homecoming.

`The road was our school. It gave us a
sense of survival; it taught us everything we
know and out of respect we don't want to
drive it into the ground... or maybe it's just
superstition but the road has taken a lot
of the great ones. It's a goddam impossible
way of life.'

`Though formerly I heard about the road
That all must travel at the inevitable end,
I never believed that this today
Would bring that far tomorrow.'

You have to tell a story.
I hunt through my head for the words.
The delapidated white summer-house.
The head-high green nettles.
Susan at Coatham.

No! Susan was never at Coatham.
The surviving photographs are of
Ann Kirkwood, Gillian Arthur, Josephine Arthur,
Mick Clark, Ron Clark and Mum working in the garden.
Susan was never there. She should have been.

It would have suited her.
The languorous summer days.
The sharp snows of December.
My father would stand and stare over the wall for hours
Out at the outside world of people.

The trees were cut when I was nine years old.
It is written: 'Woodlands'.
I remember Old Stokey saying to me
As I wrote my initials on his fresh concrete:
`This will last forever.'



Broceliande


From the forest of Broceliande
To the pastures of Raby
I hear the songs of Teesdale.
Like a greyhound pure from the slips
I dive into the Wear at Durham.
I sent the horsemen against Rome.

I am a child of the North Country.
In the distant vision of the snow
I found my way to the Western City,
Dreams are what I live.
Somewhere in this muddle is the heart.
I sent the horsemen against Rome.

I eat my steak and chocolate trifle;
Ludovic, my cat, gets fish cutlets in salmon mousse,
I can relax and enjoy my poetry.
The lady was won and lost,
The books written and complete,
I sent the horsemen against Rome.

In the afternoon I sit in the Englishcombe Inn
And brood on the decapitation of Empire.
In the evening I contemplate an independent Scotland.
The beginning. The morning. The citadel.
Somewhere in this pattern there is meaning.
I sent the horsemen against Rome.



Quixote



I

Coatham Hall is up for sale,
The house of the Amundevilles
At Coatham Mundeville
In the Jarldom of Sadberge,
Just five miles north of Danish Darlington,
We rented the older half.
That is my home.

Pevsner says
`Very plain C18 stone house with original staircase.'
'Large early C19 W wing. Shallow hipped roof over all.'
Coatham Hall is where I come from.
The wee Scots boy growing up in the English village.

II

Behind the high walls round Coatham
A wilderness:
Paradise for a small boy's summer.
Paths to be flattened through the head-high nettles
Where the trees had been cut,
The exploration through the woods to farmland.
The old house itself;
Kitchen walls five foot thick,
Damp running down,
The long stone corridor with the stag's head looking down.
I grew up there with clamped emotions.

III

Grandfather Clark was a Planter
And the Pettigrews were at the Boyne,
Land in County Tyrone and built Crilly House,
But our Pettigrews were from Malcolmwood.

The Duncan connection through the Macreadies,
And MacKinleys through Ireland. No Polks I think.
My father came out of Calton
Flushed with his brilliance.

Heir to Irish Glasgow
I supported Celtic,
And walked around the University in a dream.
The beauty of Mathematics.

A rich material world,
As entitled to from Coatham
But no meaning
Until Penelope blew my head off.
Love is all you need.

IV

Fiona and Susan.
Now thirty years and out of the mist,
Cats are much more sensible.
I came from the beginning.

Penetration is a male thing,
Not to be sneezed at.
I walked out in the morning air,
For it was that time of year.

The demons whisper: Have fear.
All love leads to breakdown,
Better to survive by oneself
Than live out an agony.

The old house at Coatham didn't have ghosts.
We played croquet and French cricket on the lawn.
Two younger brothers and my parents.
I wish I had the words for it.

`Love is a vapour/We're soon through it',
says Basil. Thirty years.

V

When I got my green Hercules bike
For my birthday, my first bicycle,
I fell off it badly in the snow.
In days I returned and mastered it.
For twenty miles around I explored
Past Brafferton and up to Great Stainton,
To Sadberge and Thorpe Thewles.
I even made it to the sea at Seaton Carew.
I loved my bike.
I would ride off for the day
And return joyfully to the empty house
With no one to greet me.
But there was the pleasure of returning home.

VI

In later years I had my black Ford Popular
Which took me to Glasgow and back.
And to Sitges in Spain
And to Freiburg before Celan.
I loved that car.
I could take the engine to bits.
I rebuilt the body to preserve from rust.
On the Corniche at Nice
Was its finest moment.
I drove through the rush hour in Milan.
And Paris with a bust headgasket:
Machine gun shots on the Champs Elysee.
I loved that car.

VII

Twentyfive years in Bath
Designing a wilderness at the bottom of the garden,
A substitute for Coatham.
Failing at another job.
I wish I could read my poetry aloud,
But too many nervous breakdowns.
I always sought the dream
Of having someone else inside your head.
And it came: schizophrenia.
My blood disease should kill me.
It tries every five years or so.
But love,
Not being alone in the world.
That haunts me.

VIII

The sand pit, the rockery,
The view over the wall at the Great North Road,
The white summerhouse,
Gooseberries and strawberries.
Edwin, my own age, at the farm.
I was born to greatness,
The English country house.
Now to be sold.
I went out from there determined
That I would solve everything.
And I have.
Me and the brilliance at Glasgow.
It is all clear.
I wrote it.







Douglas Clark, Bath, Somerset, England ....
 http://www.dgdclynx.plus.com