LETTER FROM LEEDS

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1. TO LEEDS BIG ISSUE SELLERS When I come from the Smoke to visit my son on the ward I see you everywhere: by the station, by the neon sign of ‘Squares’ By every shopping mall. Leeds seems to have more of you than anywhere: How do you stand there for so many hours in freezing winds When most you solicit […]...
2. A Requisition to the Queen Smiths Buildings No. 19 Patons Lane, Dundee. Sept the 6th. 1877. Most August! Empress of India, and of great Britain the Queen, I most humbly beg your pardon, hoping you will not think it mean That a poor poet that lives in Dundee, Would be so presumptous to write unto Thee Most lovely Empress of […]...
3. LETTER FROM HAWORTH Poems do not always satisfy the soul, The feel of cobbles underfoot is at this moment more Than all of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the unending vistas Of the moor, an infinity of purity that excels even Mallarmй. I sit on the cracked steps to the church, sipping tea With my eye on the Black Bull where […]...
4. Love Letter Written In A Burning Building I am in a crate, the crate that was ours, Full of white shirts and salad greens, The icebox knocking at our delectable knocks, And I wore movies in my eyes, And you wore eggs in your tunnel, And we played sheets, sheets, sheets All day, even in the bathtub like lunatics. But today I […]...
5. WYTHER PARK SCHOOL LEEDS FIVE I stood there in front of forty-five faces The first day of term, not especially fancying “Exercises in Mechanical Arithmetic” and so instead I read a poem from Kirkup in Japan, about Nijinsky, Hand-written on a fan of rice-paper. Thirty years later, taking a Sri Lankan girl In search of her first job around London […]...
6. LEEDS 2002 What ghosts haunt These streets of perpetual night? Riverbanks fractured with splinters of glass condominiums For nouveam riche merchant bankers Black-tied bouncers man clubland glitz casinos Novotel, Valley Park Motel, the Hilton: Hot tubs, saunas, swim spas, en suite Satellite TV, conference rooms, disco dinners. I knew Len, the tubby taxi man With his retirement […]...
7. LEEDS O my beloved city, How many times have I deserted you For the sights and sounds of Babylon? How often and from how far Have I conjured your broad boulevards O Quartier Latin, crowded street cafйs With white and scarlet awnings, gold Adornings on stone cupolas, Byzantine domes And plinths of equine statuary before The […]...
8. Letter To My Wife 11-11-1933 Bursa Prison My one and only! Your last letter says: “My head is throbbing, my heart is stunned!” You say: “If they hang you, if I lose you, I’ll die!” You’ll live, my dear My memory will vanish like black smoke in the wind. Of course you’ll live, red-haired lady of my heart: In […]...
9. A Letter To My Aunt A Letter To My Aunt Discussing The Correct Approach To Modern Poetry To you, my aunt, who would explore The literary Chankley Bore, The paths are hard, for you are not A literary Hottentot But just a kind and cultured dame Who knows not Eliot (to her shame). Fie on you, aunt, that you should […]...
10. LETTER TO MICHAEL HOROVITZ It is time after thirty years We had our Poetry Renaissance Rise, Children of Albion, rise! It is time after nightmares of sleep When we walked the streets of inner cities Our poems among the burnt-out houses And cars, whispering compassion To the addicts shaking and the homeless Waking and those who have come apart […]...
11. PLEA FOR A HISTORY OF WORKING-CLASS LEEDS I want a true history of my city FUCK THE DE LACY FAMILY AND DOUBLE FUCK JOHN OF GAUNT ESPECIALLY And all his descendants With their particular vilenesses – I met one in the sixties Who had all the coldness of Himmler So svelte and adored by the cognoscenti. I want a history responsive To […]...
12. THE DREAMER, THE SLEEP L’orage qui s’attarde, le lit dйfait Yves Bonnefoy Here am I, lying lacklustre in an unmade bed A Sunday in December while all Leeds lies in around me In the silent streets, frost on roof slates, gas fires And kettles whistle as I read Bonnefoy on the eternal. Too tired to fantasize, unsummoned images float […]...
13. SMILE, YOU ARE ON CCTV Even the charity shops boast of the surveillance Mr Average is caught on camera a hundred times a day To provide unending footage for reality TV But in a decade where will we all be? Big Brother’s eye will see our every step, The blink of every eye, the tears we cry....
14. Letter To Kizer From Seattle Dear Condor: Much thanks for that telephonic support From North Carolina when I suddenly went ape In the Iowa tulips. Lord, but I’m ashamed. I was afraid, it seemed, according to the doctor Of impending success, winning some poetry prizes Or getting a wet kiss. The more popular I got, The softer the soft cry […]...
15. From A Letter From Lesbia … So, praise the gods, Catullus is away! And let me tend you this advice, my dear: Take any lover that you will, or may, Except a poet. All of them are queer. It’s just the same – a quarrel or a kiss Is but a tune to play upon his pipe. He’s always hymning […]...
16. Letter Home New Orleans, November 1910 Four weeks have passed since I left, and still I must write to you of no work. I’ve worn down The soles and walked through the tightness Of my new shoes calling upon the merchants, Their offices bustling. All the while I kept thinking My plain English and good writing would […]...
17. Going to Him! Happy letter! Going to Him! Happy letter! Tell Him Tell Him the page I didn’t write Tell Him I only said the Syntax And left the Verb and the pronoun out Tell Him just how the fingers hurried Then how they waded slow slow And then you wished you had eyes in your pages So you could […]...
18. A Tribute to Dr. Murison Success to the good and skilful Dr Murison, For golden opinions he has won From his patients one and all, And from myself, McGonagall. He is very skilful and void of pride; He was so to me when at my bedside, When I turned badly on the 25th of July, And was ill with inflammation, […]...
19. Her Letter “I’m taking pen in hand this night, and hard it is for me; My poor old fingers tremble so, my hand is stiff and slow, And even with my glasses on I’m troubled sore to see. . . . You’d little know your mother, boy; you’d little, little know. You mind how brisk and bright […]...
20. THE DAYS GO BY for Daniel Weissbort Some poems meant only for my eyes About a grief I can’t let go But I want to, want to throw It away like an old worn-out cloak Or screw up like a ball of over-written Trash and toss into the corner bin. I said it must come up or out I […]...
21. THREE SONGS FOR MAYDAY MORNING ( I ) For ‘JC’ of the TLS Nightmare of metropolitan amalgam Grand Hotel and myself as a guest there Lost with my room rifled, my belongings scattered, Purse, diary and vital list of numbers gone – Vague sad memories of mam n’dad Leeds 1942 back-to-back with shared outside lav. Hosannas of sweet May mornings […]...
22. The House Of Dust: Part 03: 10: Letter From time to time, lifting his eyes, he sees The soft blue starlight through the one small window, The moon above black trees, and clouds, and Venus,- And turns to write. . . The clock, behind ticks softly. It is so long, indeed, since I have written,- Two years, almost, your last is turning yellow,- […]...
23. The Pobble Who Has No Toes The Pobble who has no toes Had once as many as we; When they said “Some day you may lose them all;” He replied “Fish, fiddle-de-dee!” And his Aunt Jobiska made him drink Lavender water tinged with pink, For she said “The World in general knows There’s nothing so good for a Pobble’s toes!” The […]...
24. Immortality Full well I trow that when I die Down drops the curtain; Another show is all my eye And Betty Martin. I know the score, and with a smile Of rueful rating, I reckon I am not worth while Perpetuating. I hope that God, if God there be Of love and glory, Will let me […]...
25. The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter After Li Po While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead I played at the front gate, pulling flowers. You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse, You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums. And we went on living in the village of Chokan: Two small people, without dislike or suspicion. […]...
26. POEM TO BE PLACED IN A BOTTLE AND CAST OUT TO SEA for Ken Kesey and his merry pranksters in a bus called ‘Further…’ Dear and here’s where the problem begins For who shall I address this letter to? Friends are few and very special, muses in the main I must confess, the first I lost just fifty years ago. Perhaps the best. I searched for years […]...
27. THE DEATH OF ART “Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.” -critic Harold Bloom, who first called slam poetry “the death of art.” I am not a poet. I want to be rich and buy things for my family. Besides, I am sort of popular and can honestly say I’ve had a great […]...
28. Lobster For Lunch His face was like a lobster red, His legs were white as mayonnaise: “I’ve had a jolly lunch,” he said, That Englishman of pleasant ways. “Thy do us well at our hotel: In England food is dull these days.” “We had a big langouste for lunch. I almost ate the whole of it. And now […]...
29. Little Ballads Of Timely Warning; II: On Malicious Cruelty To Harmless Creatures The cruelty of P. L. Brown- (He had ten toes as good as mine) Was known to every one in town, And, if he never harmed a noun, He loved to make verbs shriek and whine. The “To be” family’s just complaints- (Brown had ten toes as good as mine) Made Brown cast off the […]...
30. Letter You can see it already: chalks and ochers; Country crossed with a thousand furrow-lines; Ground-level rooftops hidden by the shrubbery; Sporadic haystacks standing on the grass; Smoky old rooftops tarnishing the landscape; A river (not Cayster or Ganges, though: A feeble Norman salt-infested watercourse); On the right, to the north, bizarre terrain All angular you’d […]...
31. The Letter What is she writing? Watch her now, How fast her fingers move! How eagerly her youthful brow Is bent in thought above! Her long curls, drooping, shade the light, She puts them quick aside, Nor knows, that band of crystals bright, Her hasty touch untied. It slips adown her silken dress, Falls glittering at her […]...
32. Verses Observe this Piece, which to our Sight does bring The fittest Posture for the Swedish King; (Encompass’d, as we think, with Armies round, Tho’ not express’d within this narrow Bound) Who, whilst his warlike and extended Hand Directs the foremost Ranks to Charge or Stand, Reverts his Face, lest That, so Fair and Young, Should […]...
33. LETTER FROM KIRKHEATON I have no camera but imagination’s tinted glass I cannot pass this crumbling dry stone wall Without a break to catch the vistas of the chain of Pennine hills That splash their shades of colour like mercury in the rising glass. The June sun focuses upon the vivid grass, The elder’s pale amber, the Victoria […]...
34. FIRST LETTER We crossed to the other side, the burgee of the boat Ceased flapping and lagged behind like a dead wing. The visible air seemed neither cold nor hot, The violet clouds flew past us, scurrying. The plain was dark, and the mountain was tall, And the echo swallowed the boatman’s call. The atmosphere was dense […]...
35. A Letter From Li Po Fanfare of northwest wind, a bluejay wind Announces autumn, and the equinox Rolls back blue bays to a far afternoon. Somewhere beyond the Gorge Li Po is gone, Looking for friendship or an old love’s sleeve Or writing letters to his children, lost, And to his children’s children, and to us. What was his light? […]...
36. Letter to S. S. from Mametz Wood I never dreamed we’d meet that day In our old haunts down Fricourt way, Plotting such marvellous journeys there For jolly old “Aprиs-la-guerre.” Well, when it’s over, first we’ll meet At Gweithdy Bach, my country seat In Wales, a curious little shop With two rooms and a roof on top, A sort of Morlancourt-ish billet […]...
37. OPEN LETTER TO ANDY C Sorry, Writer in Residence on the Great North Run The last thing I’d ever do is listen to your spin “You risk losing potential allies in your war against the philistines, Astley, Armitage, Duffy, Sansom, unashamedly provincial, Defiantly Un-Oxbridge, not the enemy!” Sorry, Andy, arse-licking’s not to my taste. I always thought it wasn’t yours, […]...
38. A Letter Home (To Robert Graves) I Here I’m sitting in the gloom Of my quiet attic room. France goes rolling all around, Fledged with forest May has crowned. And I puff my pipe, calm-hearted, Thinking how the fighting started, Wondering when we’ll ever end it, Back to hell with Kaiser sent it, Gag the noise, pack up […]...
39. A Familiar Letter YES, write, if you want to, there’s nothing like trying; Who knows what a treasure your casket may hold? I’ll show you that rhyming’s as easy as lying, If you’ll listen to me while the art I unfold. Here’s a book full of words; one can choose as he fancies, As a painter his tint, […]...
40. The Argument Of His Book I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers, Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers. I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes. I write of youth, of love, and have access By these to sing of cleanly wantonness. I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by […]...