MEMORIES OF THE FIFTIES

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1. Bridge Over The Aire Book 5 MOORING POSTS 1 The mooring posts marked on the South Leeds map Of 1908 still line the Aire’s side, huge, red With rust, they stand by the Council’s Transpennine Trail opposite the bricked and boarded up Hunslet Mills with trees growing from its top storey, roofless, Open to the enormous skies of our childhood. The […]...
2. TO BRENDA WILLIAMS ON HER FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY The years become you as Oxford becomes you, As you became Oxford through the protest years; From Magdalen’s grey gargoyles to its bridge in May, From the cement buttresses of Wellington Square To Balliol, Balliol in the rain. The years become you as the Abbey Road becomes you, As you became that road through silent […]...
3. Memories of West Street and Lepke Only teaching on Tuesdays, book-worming In pajamas fresh from the washer each morning, I hog a whole house on Boston’s “hardly passionate Marlborough Street,” Where even the man Scavenging filth in the back alley trash cans, Has two children, a beach wagon, a helpmate, And is “a young Republican.” I have a nine months’ daughter, […]...
4. Snow Day Today we woke up to a revolution of snow, Its white flag waving over everything, The landscape vanished, Not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness, And beyond these windows The government buildings smothered, Schools and libraries buried, the post office lost Under the noiseless drift, The paths of trains softly blocked, The world fallen […]...
5. Drunken Memories Of Anne Sexton The first and last time I met My ex-lover Anne Sexton was at A protest poetry reading against Some anti-constitutional war in Asia When some academic son of a bitch, To test her reputation as a drunk, Gave her a beer glass full of wine After our reading. She drank It all down while staring […]...
6. Memories Oft I remember those I have known In other days, to whom my heart was lead As by a magnet, and who are not dead, But absent, and their memories overgrown With other thoughts and troubles of my own, As graves with grasses are, and at their head The stone with moss and lichens so […]...
7. Blue Bridge Praise the good-tempered summer And the red cardinal That jumps Like a hot coal off the track. Praise the heavy leaves, Heroines of green, frosted With silver. Praise the litter Of torn paper, mulch And sticks, the spiny holly, Its scarlet land mines. Praise the black snake that whips And shudders its way across my […]...
8. Monte Carlo Memories We took turns Watching seagulls there Walking on A tilted shore Of ancient waves And modern ships Sparkling in a Merchant’s breeze- Holding hands And getting wet In Monte Carlo Memories: You and I washing In a crystal sunset....
9. A Man Young And Old: VI. His Memories We should be hidden from their eyes, Being but holy shows And bodies broken like a thorn Whereon the bleak north blows, To think of buried Hector And that none living knows. The women take so little stock In what I do or say They’d sooner leave their cosseting To hear a jackass bray; My […]...
10. Vocation When the gong sounds ten in the morning and I walk to school by our Lane. Every day I meet the hawker crying, “Bangles, crystal Bangles!” There is nothing to hurry him on, there is no road he must Take, no place he must go to, no time when he must come home. I wish […]...
11. Confessions What is he buzzing in my ears? “Now that I come to die, Do I view the world as a vale of tears?” Ah, reverend sir, not I! What I viewed there once, what I view again Where the physic bottles stand On the table’s edge,-is a suburb lane, With a wall to my bedside […]...
12. Indignation Jones You would not believe, would you That I came from good Welsh stock? That I was purer blooded than the white trash here? And of more direct lineage than the New Englanders And Virginians of Spoon River? You would not believe that I had been to school And read some books. You saw me only […]...
13. HYMN How I love the working-class girls of Leeds, Their mile-wide smiles, eyes bright as beads, Their young breasts bobbing as they run, Hands quick as darting fish, lithe legs Bare as they scramble over the Hollows With brown-soled feet and dimpled bums Half-covered with knickers, and short frocks Full of flowers and their delicate ears, […]...
14. Pity THE TWINKLING mists of green and gold Afloat in the abyss of air, From out the window high and old We watched together there. The monstrous fabric of the town Lay black below; the cries of pain Came to our ears from up and down The dimly-lighted lane. Olive, your eyes were turned to me, […]...
15. THE INNOCENT EYE I struggled through streets of Bricked-up, boarded-up houses, Mostly burned-out, keeping To the middle of the road, Watching the abandoned gardens With here and there a house Still lived in, curtained Against the daylight and distantly I saw the iron railings of the school I’d taught in thirty years before. The same brick buildings, hop […]...
16. On the Way LITTLE one, you have been buzzing in the books, Flittering in the newspapers and drinking beer with Lawyers And amid the educated men of the clubs you have been Getting an earful of speech from trained tongues. Take an earful from me once, go with me on a hike Along sand stretches on the great […]...
17. The Red Dance There was a girl Who danced in the city that night, That April 22nd, All along the Charles River. It was as if one hundred men were watching Or do I mean the one hundred eyes of God? The yellow patches in the sycamores Glowed like miniature flashlights. The shadows, the skin of them Were […]...
18. I Come Home Wanting To Touch Everyone The dogs greet me, I descend Into their world of fur and tongues And then my wife and I embrace As if we’d just closed the door In a motel, our two girls slip in Between us and we’re all saying Each other’s names and the dogs Buster and Sundown are on their hind legs, […]...
19. Two Schools I put my heart to school In the world, where men grow wise, “Go out,” I said, “and learn the rule; Come back when you win a prize.” My heart came back again: “Now where is the prize?” I cried. “The rule was false, and the prize was pain, And the teacher’s name was Pride.” […]...
20. On Prayer You ask me how to pray to someone who is not. All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard, Above landscapes the color of ripe gold Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun. That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal Where […]...
21. The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay! With your numerous arches and pillars in so grand array And your central girders, which seem to the eye To be almost towering to the sky. The greatest wonder of the day, And a great beautification to the River Tay, Most beautiful to be seen, Near by Dundee […]...
22. Bridge Over The Aire Book 2 STANDING IN EDEN 1 Poetry claimed me young on Skegness beach Before I was born I answered her cry For a lost child still in the womb still As the seawave journeying green upon green Swollen in my mother’s side lashed and Tongue-tied on a raft of premonition Trying to survive my birth as the […]...
23. The Heavenly Hills of Holland The heavenly hills of Holland, How wondrously they rise Above the smooth green pastures Into the azure skies! With blue and purple hollows, With peaks of dazzling snow, Along the far horizon The clouds are marching slow. No mortal foot has trodden The summits of that range, Nor walked those mystic valleys Whose colors ever […]...
24. Ghost There is a jaggle of masonry here, on a small hill Above the gray-mouthed Pacific, cottages and a thick-walled tower, all made of rough sea rock And Portland cement. I imagine, fifty years from now, A mist-gray figure moping about this place in mad moonlight, examining the mortar-joints, pawing the Parasite ivy: “Does the place […]...
25. The Lane Some day, I think, there will be people enough In Froxfield to pick all the blackberries Out of the hedges of Green Lane, the straight Broad lane where now September hides herself In bracken and blackberry, harebell and dwarf gorse. To-day, where yesterday a hundred sheep Were nibbling, halcyon bells shake to the sway Of […]...
26. Bob's Lane Women he liked, did shovel-bearded Bob, Old Farmer Hayward of the Heath, but he Loved horses. He himself was like a cob And leather-coloured. Also he loved a tree. For the life in them he loved most living things, But a tree chiefly. All along the lane He planted elms where now the stormcock sings […]...
27. On the Universality and Other Attributes of the God of Nature ALL that we see, about, abroad, What is it all, but nature’s God? In meaner works discovered here No less than in the starry sphere. In seas, on earth, this God is seen; All that exist, upon Him lean; He lives in all, and never strayed A moment from the works He made: His system […]...
28. The Bridge In his travels he comes to a bridge made entirely of bones. Before crossing he writes a letter to his mother: Dear mother, Guess what? the ape accidentally bit off one of his hands while Eating a banana. Just now I am at the foot of a bone bridge. I Shall be crossing it shortly. […]...
29. Metaphors Of A Magnifico Twenty men crossing a bridge, Into a village, Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges, Into twenty villages, Or one man Crossing a single bridge into a village. This is old song That will not declare itself. . . Twenty men crossing a bridge, Into a village, Are Twenty men crossing a bridge Into a village. […]...
30. Think No More, Lad Think no more, lad; laugh, be jolly: Why should men make haste to die? Empty heads and tongues a-talking Make the rough road easy walking, And the feather pate of folly Bears the falling sky. Oh, ’tis jesting, dancing, drinking Spins the heavy world around. If young hearts were not so clever, Oh, they would […]...
31. Pigs Us all on sore cement was we. Not warmed then with glares. Not glutting mush Under that pole the lightning’s tied to. No farrow-shit in milk to make us randy. Us back in cool god-shit. We ate crisp. We nosed up good rank in the tunnelled bush. Us all fuckers then. And Big, huh? Tusked […]...
32. Bridge Over The Aire Book 6 THE WALK TO THE PARADISE GARDENS 1 Bonfire Night beckoned us to the bridge By Saint Hilda’s where we started down Knostrop to chump but I trailed behind With Margaret when it was late September The song of summer ceased and fires in Blackleaded grates began and we were Hidden from the others by the […]...
33. On The Murder Of Lieutenant Jose Del Castillo By The Falangist Bravo Martinez, July 12, 1936 When the Lieutenant of the Guardia de Asalto Heard the automatic go off, he turned And took the second shot just above The sternum, the third tore away The right shoulder of his uniform, The fourth perforated his cheek. As he Slid out of his comrade’s hold Toward the gray cement of the Ramblas He […]...
34. Patches Mother focused with a frown The part of me where I sit down. Said she: “Your pants are wearing through; Let me sew on a patch for you.” And so she did, of azure blue. My britches were of sober grey, And when I went to school next day, The fellows said: “Excuse our smile: […]...
35. When a people reach the top of a hill When a people reach the top of a hill, Then does God lean toward them, Shortens tongues and lengthens arms. A vision of their dead comes to the weak. The moon shall not be too old Before the new battalions rise, Blue battalions. The moon shall not be too old When the children of change […]...
36. The Hawthorn Tree Not much to me is yonder lane Where I go every day; But when there’s been a shower of rain And hedge-birds whistle gay, I know my lad that’s out in France With fearsome things to see Would give his eyes for just one glance At our white hawthorn tree. . . . . Not […]...
37. A Week Later A week later, I said to a friend: I don’t Think I could ever write about it. Maybe in a year I could write something. There is something in me maybe someday To be written; now it is folded, and folded, And folded, like a note in school. And in my dream Someone was playing […]...
38. Jazz Chick Music from her breast, vibrating Soundseared into burnished velvet. Silent hips deceiving fools. Rivulets of trickling ecstacy From the alabaster pools of Jazz Where music cools hot souls. Eyes more articulately silent Than Medusa’s thousand tongues. A bridge of eyes, consenting smiles Reveal her presence singing Of cool remembrance, happy balls Wrapped in swinging Jazz […]...
39. Mack The Knife Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear And he shows them pearly white. Just a jack knife has Macheath, dear And he keeps it out of sight. When the shark bites with his teeth, dear Scarlet billows start to spread. Fancy gloves, though, wears Macheath, dear So there’s not a trace of red. On the […]...
40. Old Sweethearts Oh Maggie, do you mind the day We went to school together, And as we stoppit by the way I rolled you in the heather? My! but you were the bonny lass And we were awfu’ late for class. Your locks are now as white as snow, And you are ripe and wrinkled, A grandmother […]...