Writer of Poetry, Screen Plays, Stage Plays & Fiction
Writer of Poetry, Screen Plays, Stage Plays & Fiction
The TV presenter speaks of ‘sacrifice’.
She is al fresco on a purple sofa
with puce cushions. In the middle ground
are dignitaries, veterans, and a band.
Beyond are the War Graves Commission’s white ranks
of the British dead from Sword and Gold.
Only one speaker – beret, blazer, medals,
a RN signaller on a landing craft –
comes close to hinting that no one chose
to be a sacrifice. His speech is short,
even appropriately amusing,
I was Gratiano, Bassanio’s pal
in The Merchant of Venice. He ends the play
with an obscene pun. We were an ensemble
of drama teachers performing the piece
in English at Rüsselsheim’s Stadttheater,
the year after the Wall came down – so the pun
was probably lost somewhere in translation.
We were a couple of hours from the border.
One of our group became ill. The doctor,
treating her in the hostel where we stayed,
thought at first she was an ‘Ossie’.
The prisoners were dispersed across the north,
being too numerous for one assize –
many had followers, women and children:
a lost cause’s collateral damage.
An unrecorded number – of both rebels
and dependents – was held on the heath
a quarter of a mile due west of here
where I am researching and typing.
They wintered among the gorse and the heather.
Maybe there were tents, or perhaps bivouacs,
certainly for the guards.
For Alison and Georgia Robson
‘If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.’ Isaac Newton
The ancient pear tree next door has not been pruned,
I would guess, for at least seventy years,
long before our time here, or the neighbours’.
It is now as large as a medium-sized oak,
with the remains of a magpie’s nest.
Its fruit, in these last days of summer, glow
a ruddy green; are plentiful,
Driving on education business to Crewe,
a quarter of a century ago,
I stopped for petrol on the Nantwich Road,
and there in a rack with Blur, Celine Dion
and Bon Jovi was Fred Astaire, Volume 2.
How my life changed! So many favourites
on one disc! I put the CD in the slot,
drove off the forecourt, and pressed the switch.
‘Heaven, I’m in heaven, And my heart beats
so that I can hardly speak, And I seem
to find the happiness I seek When
we’re out together dancing,
When I return with mugs of peppermint tea
you are asleep in the October sunshine –
a fallen golden birch leaf at your feet,
a last wasp buzzing in your shadow.
We have grown old together, ancient
in our ways. But age is a wrinkled
masquerade. ‘Old clothes upon old sticks
to scare a bird,’ as Yeats wrote, at sixty,
a mere stripling. We seem sole survivors
of our youth and prime – so many dead
have fallen by the way.
HINDSIGHT
A SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION
ON FIRST READING ‘THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO’
A SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION
BIRTHDAY GIRL UNDER HOUSE ARREST