Writer of Poetry, Screen Plays, Stage Plays & Fiction
Writer of Poetry, Screen Plays, Stage Plays & Fiction
For a generation, like weather cocks,
their skeletons swung near the highway.
James Price and Thomas Brown had robbed the Mail.
Years turned. The Gowy flooded and the heath
flowered. Travellers noted the bones
hanging in chains by the Warrington road.
Justices ordered the gibbet removed,
the remains disposed of. In Price’s skull,
while Napoleon was crossing the Alps
or Telford building bridges or Hegel
defining Historical Necessity
or Goya painting Wellington’s portrait,
a robin made its nest.
‘But the worst mistake I made was that stupid suburban prejudice of anti-semitism.’ Ezra Pound
Sitting in a traghetto, Olga Rudge
from Ohio and Ezra Pound from
Idaho – together fifty years,
from concert violinist to poet’s helpmate,
poet maker to fascist propagandist,
he, typically, with stick, wide brimmed hat,
floppy collar, she, wearing woollen gloves,
left hand clutching a large, canvas bag, right hand
a carefully folded scarf, dressed, like any
elderly woman, for a chilly day –
For Evelyn b. 13.1.10
Born to good music by strong women,
Ella’s ‘isle of joy’, Nina’s ’it’s a new dawn’ –
how you nestle in your parents’ untrammelled
love, how you suck with unrelenting hunger!
Born into a world of rubble, with children
buried alive, a world of chicanery
and hatreds – you have entered a difficult,
place, little Evie, somewhere remarkable,
full of tears and amazing kindnesses!
Born into a world of snow,
The silence woke her. Beyond the locked door
by now her maids should be chattering
in that harsh tongue. She went to the window.
Even the gulls on the battlements were mute.
And no guards on the ramparts, nobody
in the bailey. The straits were the colour
of the emerald at her neck – her father’s
wedding gift. A barque moved edgily
through the sands. Its pennants spoke of home.
The island’s coast was clear in the sun.
She imagined the light summer wind
stirring its fecund,
You are Princess Ayesha, the principal girl,
in the youth group’s pantomime at St Barnabas,
West Street, Crewe. Disguised as a boy, you are searching
for Aladdin – your true, lost love – in the canvas
forest and the bazaar, among the painted caves
and the amphora. Heavily Max Factored, dressed
in torn shirt and ripped shorts – having crossed the desert,
outwitted each one of the forty thieves, bested
Abanazar, bamboozled the Genie and charmed
Widow Twankey to be downstage centre –
The hostel women came one summer evening
after tea. The noise brought Judith and me
from hiding-from-the-Germans, our game
in the bushy borders of the gardens
in our block of flats off Finchley Road.
A crowd of women, with some small children –
a few men were outside on the pavement –
were at the back of the building where we were
forbidden to go and the bins were kept.
A row of aspen saplings, planted
alongside the back fence,
A SHORT HISTORY
EZRA POUND IN VENICE
A SHORT HISTORY
WISHES
WISHES