Collected Poems by Alan; Sillitoe Read Free Book Online

them but they wouldn’t believe me.
    Ride out this beast who won’t let me sleep,
    Drags me up great Gorki Street
    And into Pushkin Square,
    Leningrad a rose on the horizon
    Ringed by blood and water –
    Pull up the blankets
    And be small for a few hours of the night.

THE POET
    The poet sings his poems on a bridge
    A bridge open to horizontal rain
    And the steely nudge of lightning,
    Or icy moths that bring slow death
    Croon him to sleep by snow-wings touching his eyes.
    Through this he sings
    No people coming close to watch when the snow
    Melts and elemental water forces smash
    Between cliff and rock under his swaying bridge.
    When the water thins, his sweat-drops burst
    On scorching rocks like sparks from a flower pod;
    Through all this he sits and sings his poems
    To those vague crowds on either bank
    He cannot make out or consider
    With such short sight, for after the first applauded
    Poem he let his glasses smash into the rocks below.
    The bridge belongs to him, his only property,
    Grows no food, supports no houses –
    Cheap to buy with the first mediocre poems.
    It spans a river that divides two territories –
    He knew it and made no mistake:
    Today he faces one and tomorrow the other
    But from blurred eyes they look the same to him:
    Green fields and red-roofed houses
    Rising to mountains where wars can be fought
    Without a bitter end being reached –
    The same on either side.
    He does not write a poem every day
    But each pet territory takes its turn
    To hear his words in one set language burn
    And drive them back from each other.
    In any rash attack they cannot cross his bridge
    But broach the river and ravine
    Down at the estuary or far upstream.
    He listens to the stunning bloodrush of their arms
    And shakes his head, never grows older
    As he bends to his paper which one side or the other
    Contrives to set, with food, by his hands’ reach.
    Sometimes sly messengers approach at night
    Suggesting he writes and then recites
    Upon some momentary theme
    To suit one side and damn the other,
    At which he nods, tells jokes and riddles
    Agrees to everything and promises
    That for them he’ll tear the world apart
    With his great reading.
    He stays young, ignoring all requests and prophecies,
    But his bridge grows old, the beams and ropes brittle,
    And some night alien figures
    In a half-circle at each dim bridgehead
    Brandish knives and axes. Lanterns flash,
    Blades and points spark like spinning moons
    Gathering as he puts away pens and parchment,
    Closes his eyes, and does not wake for a week,
    Knowing he will once more dream
    The familiar childhood dream
    Of falling down the sheer side of the world
    And never wake up.
    But he owns and dominates his bridge.
    It is his bread and soul and only song –
    And if the people do not like it, they can cut him free.

LEFT AS A DESERT
    Left as a desert:
    Deserted by one great experience
    That pulled its teeth and shackles out
    And left me as a desert
    Under which bones are buried
    Over which the sand drifts.
    Seven years gone like laden camels:
    The gravel and the wind
    Is piling this vast desert up
    To one sky and one colour
    And sky reflecting desert shapes.
    The solitary heart lurks on the off-chance
    That rain clouds will come and fertilize
    The great experience that made this desert.

LOVE IN THE ENVIRONS OF VORONEZH
    Love in the environs of Voronezh
    It’s far away, a handsome town
    But what has it to do with love?
    Guns and bombers smashed it down.
    Yet love rebuilt it street by street
    The dead would hardly know it now
    And those who lived forgot retreat.
    There’s no returning to the heart:
    The dead to the environs go
    Away from resurrected stone.
    Reducible to soil and snow
    They hem the town in hard as bone:
    The outer zones of Voronezh.

GOODBYE KURSK
    The thin moon sliced the heart out as it fell,
    Then effortlessly made its way
    To the earth’s true middle:
    The only cure is to fall in love.
    The moon gives back what it