Selected Poems by Tony Harrison Read Free Book Online

standing and at one
    God’s irritating carrillon
    brings you to me; I feel like the hunch-
    back taking you for lunch;
    then bed. All afternoon two church-
    high prison helicopters search
    for escapees down by the Wear
    and seem as though they’re coming here.
    Listen! Their choppers guillotine
    all the enemies there’ve ever been
    of Church and State, including me
    for taking this small liberty.
    Liberal, lover, communist,
    Czechoslovakia, Cuba, grist,
    grist for the power-driven mill
    weltering in overkill.
    And England? Quiet Durham? Threat
    smokes off our lives like steam off wet
    subsidences when summer rain
    drenches the workings. You complain
    that the machinery of sudden death,
    Fascism, the hot bad breath
    of Powers down small countries’ necks
    shouldn’t interfere with sex.
    They
are
sex, love, we must include
    all these in love’s beatitude.
    Bad weather and the public mess
    drive us to private tenderness,
    though I wonder if together we,
    alone two hours, can ever be
    love’s anti-bodies in the sick,
    sick body politic.
    At best we’re medieval masons, skilled
    but anonymous within our guild,
    at worst defendants hooded in a car
    charged with something sinister.
    On the
status quo’s
huge edifice
    we’re just excrescences that kiss,
    cathedral gargoyles that obtrude
    their acts of ‘moral turpitude’.
    But turpitude still keeps me warm
    in foul weather as I head for home
    down New Elvet, through the town,
    past the butcher closing down,
    hearing the belfry jumble time
    out over Durham. As I climb
    rain blankets the pithills, mist
    the chalkings of the anarchist.
    I wait for the six-five Plymouth train
    glowering at Durham. First rain,
    then hail, like teeth spit from a skull,
    then fog obliterate it. As we pull
    out of the station through the dusk and fog,
    there, lighting up, is Durham, dog
    chasing its own cropped tail,
    University, Cathedral, Gaol.

Ghosts: Some Words Before Breakfast
    for Jane
    ‘These rooms have been furnished by the League of Friends
    For your comfort and rest while illness portends.
    Take care of the things which from us you borrow
    For others are certain to need them tomorrow.’
    (Inscribed in the League of Friends rest room, Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle-upon-Tyne)

    ‘C’est mon unique soutien au monde, à présent!’
    (Arthur Rimbaud, 2 July 1891,
Oeuvres
, p. 528)
    A
Scottish & Newcastle
clops
    past the RVI and traffic stops
    to let the anachronistic dray
    turn right into the brewery.
    Victoria, now that daylight’s gone,
    whitens, and a Park lake swan
    loops its pliant neck to scoff
    the bits of sandwich floating off
    the boathouse jetty. Empress, Queen,
    here slender, beddable, your clean-
    living family image drove
    my mother venomously anti love,
    and made her think the stillbirth just
    retribution for our filthy lust;
    our first (the one we married for)
    red splashes on a LADIES floor …
    inter urinam et faeces nasc-
    imur
… issues of blood. You ask,
    as brought to bed you blench and bleed,
    then scream, insisting that I read,
    as blood comes out in spurts like piss,
    a bit of
Pride & Prejudice
.
    I will her breaths. Again! Again!
    my daughter heaves in oxygen
    and lives, each heaved breath
    another lurch away from death,
    each exhalation like death throes,
    a posser squelched down on wet clothes,
    and the only sign of life I see
    is a spitting tracheotomy.
    When you’re conscious, Jane, we’ll read
    how that caparisoned, white steed
    helped the younger son get past
    leafage clinging like
Elastoplast
    and win through to bestow the kiss
    that works the metamorphosis.
    But frogs stay frogs, the briar grows
    thicker and thicker round the rose.
    I stoop to kiss away your pain
    through stuff like florist’s cellophane,
    but my kiss can’t make you less
    the helpless prey of Nothingness –
    ring-a-ring-a-roses
… love
    goes gravewards but does move.
    Love’s not something you can hoard
    against the geriatric ward.
    Mother, all,
all
, of us in