Poetry: Selections from Giles Constable

Strong and Frequent Language From the Outset

This utter cocking fuckery first words

to pop out as the doc broke the news.

Very sorry to tell you blah the tests

blah degenerative blah prognosis

blah death death. He did well enough.

As he’d been taught on the course,

dignified. As if he was the one being brave.

MRI showed the frontal lobes

chock-a-block with elaborate cheese.

 

Neither one expecting I would lamp him

with the phone. Run off through the halls

screaming christ knows what whilst grabbing

at nurses. Soon taking a quantity of soupy

cider whilst asking a man about the odds.

Sold me something resinous in a wrap.

 

Which I ingested in a cubicle.

The many hours then tumbling to a void

toward a dank room. Big Susan’s house.

Her carbuncular son with a bat.

Fraught negotiation, me departing in haste

and pursued and trouserless.

 

I have not endured my changed condition

with fortitude nor dignity nor grace.

 

My driving appalling and brought the end

to a Chrysler Crossfire and a Honda Jazz.

I have been in the cage of a van,

failed to appear at small claims courts,

warned for contempt. I have killed a goat

And may also have stolen an owl.

 

A seven hour taxi to the Western Isles.

Turned away from a sky diving course.

Fomented revolt at a women’s cricket match.

Fished twice from the Thames.

Fires set in bandstands.

Cards declined at unlicensed casinos

in a number of county towns.

 

Thereafter: howling in lay-bys,

a badger chased across a motorway,

I have slept often in woods, stolen pastries,

defecated in the modern poetry aisle

of a notable municipal library.

 

What little time is left.

I shall challenge the stars,

punch an oak,

brawl with the rising tide,

stop the trains, cancel crows,

dispute the case of a certain fate.

I shall disrupt the gathering dark

and throw a cantaloupe

at the head of a head of state.

Rented World

I do not sense a presence,

do not feel as I enter the room

a sudden chill, some slight shift

in the weight of air,

a soul moving through and beyond.

Never think, when I wake at four,

that I hear a muffled laugh,

a cry or crockery disturbed

two floors down.

 

They are gone. Have left no note.

but I think of them,

those who have known the house,

occupied it as fully as I,

could find their way in the dark,

fret over a patch of damp,

stop on the stair having forgotten a glove

or gripped by grief, by love.

 

Inhabited every moment

as if the present was eternal,

theirs to possess

as much as the mirrors and pans,

the chaise, the scuttle, the house.

 

Only to find in the end

that we own nothing.

The magnificent construction,

the gorgeous dresses made for parades,

the portraits, the great sequence of todays,

have us immersed

 

until they do not.

And the years, all the goods they contain,

did not come for free and are not ours to keep.

Seated at a different table in the same room,

we study brochures, write new lists, make other plans.

 

See us at the windows from passing trains.

We enjoy a summer breeze and the views from the house

that has domesticated us,

the home where we have wept and sung,

decorated the walls a while,

marked upon them a ladder of years

as we wait for the latest tomorrow,

our currency exchanging with time.

Set in Stone

A labour of effort and thought

Has informed the words.

Beloved by all that knew him

A stilling of anger and grief,

A sequence to capture loss,

To hold on to the loved one.

Now safely home

 

Chiselled into the slab of rock

Planted in the chosen plot to mark

Where the bones are boxed.

My dearest we must part

A claim staked for perpetuity,

Occupation of this piece of land

For good. Forever in our heart

 

A quiet spot under a yew. Stream close by

A place to visit. Sit quiet

Weep a little. Lay fresh flowers.

Until we meet again

Contemplate the rain and what was good

In the dead. Omit the rest.

Friend to many, stranger to none

 

The children grow bored.

Hide behind tombs of others

Unknown as, with time,

Their parents become less sad

Always loved, never forgotten

And have other business,

Their own paths to take.

Like an imperishable sun

 

Funds are stopped to tend the site

And the young ones, grown,

No longer recall where grandpa

Was put. He led a life well-lived

The ivy is curious. The trees spread roots,

At last insist the stones tilt.

I will sleep in peace until you come to me

 

In time the words set down,

Under the work of the winds and of the rain,

Lose depth, are redacted by lichen.

The monuments become vacant markers,

Your love will light the way

Scented by passing dog and fox,

A perch for robins and intoxicated teens.

Stripped of purpose, unvisited, lost.

 

Blank stones are scattered,

Mute horde gesturing at the unlabelled dead.

Notching the ground, counter pegs,

Passers by avert their eyes, lean into the breeze,

Head for the train and bus and home.

We leave. All too soon.

And once left, then infinitely gone

The Old People

Just look at them. The old people.

The assumption that is easy to make,

that is almost impossible to avoid

as they stumble around in their antiquity,

in their ghastly elasticated slacks,

the ill-fitting jumble sale of clothing,

in slack cardigans, in cushioned shoes, in beige,

rendering themselves degrees more invisible

to the rest, to the younger, the youth

who pass them by as if they had no more animation

than a wall or wheelie bin, as if their desires

amounted to nothing beyond a wish not to be dead

yet and their capacity to dream or want

long since spent, back when they were happy,

happy because not so unforgivably old.

 

Easy to assume that they were always like this,

blotched and shambling, hair in the wrong place,

no one giving two fucks what they are doing,

where or when. That, if they had a past,

it has uncoupled from them,

they have trundled on, now marooned,

gawping at fistfuls of coins at the till as eyes are rolled.

 

Yet even these antique humans, on their scooters,

wrapped in bruised and parchmented skin,

even they wake to each day as a new arrival,

a step on which they have never before stood.

They too have no experience of this unique present,

may find their most recent perch

a cause for bafflement or delight,

invigorated or exhausted from the climb,

the air thinning at the increasing height,

the view below of those who follow on,

heads down, about their inevitable pursuit.

Father’s Watch

The dense black hair of his forearm,

summer long gone but always tan,

His certain grip on a lofted iron.

Invariably straight the flight

to the heart of the green,

the weight of what he said,

with which he struck the putt.

A man who had the lay of the land.

 

Wound tight the spring at the end

of each day judiciously

to uncoil in its measured way,

partition time as he would decide.

Busy at tasks that adults do.

And none more grown up than him.

 

His daily disappearance marked time,

often further afield for weeks,

about vital work, tending to his affairs.

His views beyond debate to a child

waiting on the stairs for his return,

allotting what was right what was not

through the depths of his voice.

Opinions incontrovertible as the tides

made their inundation of the house.

 

As did the black moods, the repulsive

force of his sulks spanning weeks,

every space laden with his gloom.

He did the best he could to be close

but not one for smaller talk.

What he could not comprehend

mostly dismissed and I do not know

if he was afraid in the weeks

he lay so still and so silent

as I sat reading by the bed,

my invigilation of his end.

 

The watch I wear now also at his side

as the hours lost their shape and sense,

Not sure why it has come down to me.

I have his grasp round my wrist.

He holds me still but I leave it unwound.

An ornament of him. Look at the face.

He looks back befuddled

at the hands which I leave idle,

his device which I celebrate

with a new permitted purposelessness.

The Fate of Lullabies

Seal the fate of lullabies  

banish spinning toys  

mark the card of whistling  

outlaw idle joys  

 

put a stop to pottering  

punish bonhomie  

desecrate a welcome home  

cancel childish glee  

 

calumniate a cloudless sky  

spell the end of words  

humiliate a simile  

defame the flight of birds  

 

traumatise a kindly act  

swim demons in the sea  

denounce the lolloping of dogs  

alarm festivity  

 

dispute the case for easels  

cease laughter by decree  

halt all combing of the beach  

disband symphony  

 

imprison flair and fancy  

decapitate first love  

stop the pluming fountain  

give giddiness the shove  

 

ridicule superstition  

miss the point of song  

shame a gentle frisson  

prove mathematics wrong  

 

tear down towers of longing  

mock a mother's grief  

extinguish sunlight on the leaves  

prefabricate belief  

 

whisper lies about the stars  

monger gross deceit  

tyrannise the nurseries  

meet rapture with defeat  

 

 

dissolve the bonds of reason  

climb fear into each heart  

despise the words here written  

take us to the dark  

Local History

There they are, inhabiting their lives,

The fellows who linger on corners,

Walk with a hat and a stick and an air,

Sit atop a horse drawn tram, frown at the man

Who captures them in his box.

Commits them to that spot, there without end,

In the ancient clothes, elaborate facial hair.

They are strolling or in haste, cheery

Or beset. There is a lot to guess.

 

And here the bright abundant youth at the Lido,

1928, squinting towards the camera, the sun,

Oblivious of all to come, needs must.

Some of the men wear their costume

Off the shoulder, like Tarzan perhaps,

Flexing their biceps, the women

Not obviously impressed. A great amount

Of waving and, so it looks, of delight.

 

Where have these people gone?

Most now must be strewn below

The great urban sprawl. Enriching the subsoil,

Scattered as we go about getting on,

Lodged up here in our own morsel of time.

 

Think of all that was said, the confidences,

Wisecracks, promises, the passings of the time of day

Released poolside that summer afternoon,

Words exhaled to the present colour of the Rye,

Folded amongst the laughter and sighs.

All that language flown. Impossible to know

What it did or meant. The talk just an instrument

In the end to move across the days.

 

They are always rising, always leaving,

Great drifts of words launching away from sense,

Disarticulating, lifting elsewhere what was vital and here,

Our urgent meaning held in its moment

Then released, returning to air.

Murmuration

I am often not brave,

often afraid,

wake deep in the night,

swaddled in grief,

the dark a stone on my chest,

many moments sightless.

 

I turn to you

and there you are, still.

I tie your breath to mine,

Pulled by your tide.

We fall and rise in time.

 

You stir and sigh soft birds

which fly from your warm nest,

take to our interior sky.

 

They rise and twist,

caress space into shapes

impossible and new,

defy care’s gravity,

disperse worry into air

 

until, as if by command,

they float down as one,

to drift about us, settle,

soft as the kiss you give

when you wake from sleep,

as the brush of a folding wing.

Baby Grand

It may fall like a baby grand

from a height. A great weight,

absurd, unforeseen, an assault,

the world rearranged

in the wake of the one who was there

always, as present as touch, as the sky,

as boredom and Tuesday and delight.

 

Then not. Just that. A full stop.

The beloved excised from life.

We stumble on, not prepared

for the vehemence of the exit,

the definitive gaping trapdoor of it.

 

So as you are leaving by stages

I find myself grateful I think.

As if lights are being put out

one by one, as if you have breathed

on a window and the breath fades,

as if I see you handed kindly

from the arms of one on to another,

borne towards a gathering distance.

 

And you are not happy

but you are not unhappy,

holding my eye, allowing it,

being carried slowly and away

until you are somewhere else

and, as it must be in the end,

beyond my reach.

Giles Constable lives and works in London.