Writer of Poetry, Screen Plays, Stage Plays & Fiction
Writer of Poetry, Screen Plays, Stage Plays & Fiction
For Barbara and John Huddart
On this calm summer evening the North Sea falls
unheard on the wide sands below the castle
in whose inner ward the play is set – and we
(an eclectic collection of friends)
have brought folding chairs, prosecco, pop,
and fish suppers from Seahouses nearby
along this coast of raiders and saints.
‘My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The beds of varicoloured reeds, fields almost,
stretch north and south along this bank for miles,
and westwards, nearly to Wales, across the wide,
silted river. Unseen marsh creatures scarcely
disturb the grasses. Egrets and herons
fly in and out of hidden lagoons.
Before silt, from here, the Dublin packet sailed –
with G.F. Handel and Jonathan Swift.
On the opposite shore are the ruins
of Flint Castle where Richard was dethroned –
‘…night-owls shriek where mounting larks should sing.’
The park’s diagonal avenue of limes
is in leaf. A warm southwesterly
billows through the foliage like falling surf,
like the tumultuous rushing of flames.
I watch you walk away under the trees,
and disappear into the green shade.
On the path directly opposite,
across an uncluttered expanse of grass,
you reappear some moments later,
undeterred by a surge of carefree cyclists
taking short cuts, or self-absorbed dog walkers.
You vanish beyond the wind-swept tennis courts.
Impelled by Wall Street and the Pentagon,
and the vanity of Presidents,
the astronauts had seemed to sail beyond
experience – but we TV millions watched
live ‘Old Glory’ stiffen above us;
heard Nixon speak; saw Aldrin at attention.
Meanwhile, oblivious, the Vietcong
were waiting patiently in their tunnels.
***
The day of the moon landing we walked up
Bidston Hill to the Observatory,
where my great grandfather – who had captained
coffin ships to Boston –
Sleepless I opened the slats of the bathroom’s
white Venetian blind expecting darkness
but the eastern sky over our neighbours’ roofs
was already pale, and the Morning Star glowed
gilded, and I suddenly remembered
being in the yard of an old coaching inn,
standing by a sandstone horse trough still used
for hunts, its water frozen so deeply
I could only crack the surface with my fist.
Behind the inn farmland – ploughed, hoar frosted,
horse trampled – stretched unfenced over a rise.
I watched the TV parade of affluent
(and mostly public school) chancers, liars,
fantasists, hypocrites, law-breakers
vie to top each other’s warmed-up clichés
and self-serving platitudes. The social
and economic future dystopia most
seemed to desire would, they assured us,
bring out the British best in all of us,
just like the Blitz. I thought of bomb-razed
building lots in major cities still empty,
and a tale a cabby told me years ago,
taxiing me from the railway station.
OCTOBER 4TH
OMENS
THE FIVE GIANTS
FROM THE PERCH ROCK CAUSEWAY, NEW BRIGHTON
FROM THE PERCH ROCK CAUSEWAY, NEW BRIGHTON