Selected Poems by Tony Harrison Read Free Book Online Page A

this
    brave trophallaxis of a kiss
    that short-circuits generations scent
    mortality’s rich nutriment.
    The waiting room’s an airless place
    littered with comics:
Spectre
;
Space
;
    Adventure
; love and hate
    in AD 3068:
    interplanetary affairs
    policed by
Superlegionaires
:
    STONE BOY of the planet Zwen
    who turns to stone and back again,
    and BRAINIAC , space-genius,
    who finds Earth’s labs ridiculous,
    and MATTER-EATER-LAD resist
    the mad, moon-exiled scientist –
    Dr MANTIS MORLO ! Will he smash
    our heroes into lunar ash?
    Air! Air! There’s not enough
    air in this small world. I’ll suf-
    focate. Air! Air! – In each black
    PVC disposal sack,
    I see two of my dimensions gone
    into a flat oblivion.
    Weightless, like a stranger caught
    loosely flapping on my mother’s grate,
    down corridors, a shadow man,
    I almost sleepwalk, float past
An-
    aesthesia
,
X-Ray, Speech
    Therapy
and, come full circle, reach
    again the apparatus where you lie
    between the armless and the eyeless boy.
    I sicken. Jane! I could cut off
    your breathing with a last wet cough,
    break the connections, save you from
    almost a lifetime’s crippledom,
    legs splayed outwards, the crushed bones
    like the godfish Olokun’s.
    The black spot crossing; on both sides
    a blank male silhouette still strides
    off the caution and just keeps
    on striding, while Newcastle sleeps,
    between the Deaf School and the Park,
    into his element, the dark.
    The Scottish drivers have begun
    the last stretch of the homeward run;
    another hundred and they’ll pull
    into the brightening capital,
    each lashed, tarpaulined hulk
    groaning borderwards:
Blue Circle Bulk
    Cement; Bulk Earthmoving; Bulk Grain;
    Edinburgh and back again.
    And up the Great North Road in twos
    great tankers of Newcastle booze,
    returning empty, leaving full,
    swashing with comfort for John Bull
    and John Bull’s bouncing babes who slug
    their English anguish at the bottle’s dug.
    O caravanserais! I too could drown
    this newest sorrow in
Newcastle Brown
.
    I thrash round desperately. I flail
    my arms at sharks in seas of ale.
    Organs. Head/-lights/-lines. Black. White.
    The on/off sirening blue light;
    heart/lungs like a grappled squid;
    BLIND PARAPLEGIC’S CHANNEL BID .
    Blood; piss; oceans; taste of salt.
    Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt!
    I surface and the Tynemouth Queen,
    that death’s door study streaked with green,
    is sitting dwarfish, slumped, alone
    on her seawind-eroded throne,
    scowling at a glimpse of sea
    and wrecked, Dane-harried priory.
    Above the grounded RVI
    a few wind-driven seagulls cry
    like grizzling kids. Out there; out there
    where everything is sea and air,
    at Tynemouth and at Seaton Sluice,
    the sea works bits of England loose,
    and redeposits on the land
    the concrete tanktraps as blown sand.
    Blood transfusion, saline drip,
    ‘this fiddle’ and ‘stiff upper lip’
    have seen us so far.
    You’ll live,
    like your father, a contemplative.
    Daylight, but a pale
Blue Star
    still just glimmers on the nearest bar.
    An orderly brings tea and toast.
    Mother, wife and daughter, ghost –
    I’ve laid, laid, laid, laid
    you, but I’m still afraid,
    though now Newcastle’s washed with light,
    about the next descent of night.

Sentences
1. Brazil
    Even the lone man
    in his wattle lean-to,
    the half-mad women
    in their hive of leaves,
    pitched at the roadside
    by a low shared fire
    so near the shoulder
    that their tethered goat
    crops only half-circles
    of tough, scorched turf,
    and occasional tremors
    shake ash from the charcoal,
    live for something more
    than the manioc and curds
    they’re preparing,
    barely attentive to speech
    as they strain
    through the oppressive mid-day drowse,
    or, at night, through the noise
    of the insects drilling into them
    the lessons of loneliness
    or failed pioneering
    over miles of savannah,
    for the punctual Bahia-Rio
    coaches as they come
    to the village of Milagres
    they are outcasts from
    for a quick
cafezinho
,
    a quick piss,
    edible