Writer of Poetry, Screen Plays, Stage Plays & Fiction
Writer of Poetry, Screen Plays, Stage Plays & Fiction
‘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,
Our DNA is filled with wondrous
commonplaces, luminous platitudes:
refugees from pogroms in the Ukraine,
refugees from the Famine in Connaught.
*
This was the house my mother’s family moved to
from 7 Moses Street, off Sefton Park Road,
Liverpool, three years before she was born;
Ma, Da, her two small sisters, her two teenage
step brothers; a rented end of terrace –
with gas, running water, outside privy –
in a cobbled cul-de-sac, where bread
still warm was delivered in the Co-op’s
horse drawn van,
ASYLUM SEEKER
THE DIGITAL MUSE: THE POET AS WEBSITE OWNER
THE LION OF KNIDOS
THE LION OF KNIDOS
THE BRIDGE