Strange Fruits Read online

like painting by numbers

  with only one number.

  At the Shrine of St Jude, Faversham

  A kneeling bar, cushioned,

  before a metal grille that shields

  a statue; tealight candles, ten pence

  a prayer; a pinboard of photos

  of those for whom supplications

  are offered - the sick, the dying -

  and yellowed newspaper cuttings

  of missing persons;

  rosaries in plastic pots

  like pill jars topped with figures

  of St Jude, the near-forgotten apostle,

  the patron saint of hopeless cases;

  a poster for the visit of the relics

  of a saint - Teresa’s thigh and foot bones

  in a jacaranda casket, cased in Perspex -

  like Snow White’s coffin - capable of healing.

  St Teresa is on sale in the foyer,

  cloak and halo iridescent on a card,

  holy medal pinned above her prayer:

  grant me the simplicity of a child.

  Ghost writer

  in memory of John Trelawny

  You were slimmer, yes, and smaller

  and your guttural growl restored

  to before the cancer stole

  the plums from your voice.

  But then you were dead, in this dream,

  returned to work on a piece of writing,

  leaving its completion

  to Nick Hornby and me.

  I wouldn’t have been your choice,

  and Nick Hornby unlikely -

  you would choose a writer of seafaring yarns,

  smugglers’ stories - but dreams have their own rules.

  You were once told by our tutor

  that you were a writer of popular

  fiction, whilst I aspire to the literary,

  working and reworking.

  You wrote reams each week,

  self-published, marketed,

  sold and moved on. But now

  you want me to edit your oeuvre.

  Nick Hornby sits silently

  throughout your visitation,

  then half-smiles and stretches his arms,

  his hands spaced the length,

  breadth and depth of a box,

  not visible, substantial,

  and he lays the gift at my feet:

  the secrets to completing

  another man’s work;

  the secrets, in fact,

  of writing.

  Nick Hornby nods,

  leaves, and you dissolve,

  John. I am left with the box.

  It’s hard, the writing,

  the rewriting,

  the carrying on.

  Remembrance

  ‘Men marched on asleep. Many had lost their boots

  But limped on, bloodshod.’ Wilfrid Owen

  A face freezes by the porthole glass,

  barred entry for two minutes,

  while we, who have chanced

  on the scene, are forced into the service.

  Head bowed, attempting reverence

  I contemplate my shoelace,

  and ponder the meaning of silence -

  of how it never is - and think of John Cage

  and his four minutes however many seconds.

  A song dances in my head.

  I cannot remember the dead,

  distracted by the cut of women’s skirts,

  the design of a man’s glasses,

  the leaflets in the lobby

  and the fact that the priest

  read ‘et’ in the poem incorrectly,

  the French way. Then I remember ‘blood-shod’,

  and think of following the wagon with the dead,

  and know the folly of the words, however read,

  Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

  Slipping down

  Boxing Day, and when asked what you ate

  for Christmas dinner you say,

  ‘I should remember’.

  You are slumped in a high-backed chair,

  covered with a name-labelled blanket:

  someone else’s.

  We are told that at the Christmas party

  you boomed out the unerasable hymns,

  rallied the others to sing.

  Today you remember your daughter’s face,

  not her name; and of your son you inquire,

  ‘Have we met?’

  You search my face much longer than you

  would have thought proper if you were not

  as you are.

  I am introduced, again, as ‘Rob’s friend.’

  You scan from son to daughter,

  and back again,

  the half-formed thought refusing to set

  like jelly made with too much water,

  and you shout, ‘I’ll have to think about that.’

  You’ve slipped further in your seat,

  as your grandson does when watching TV.

  Now it’s Roger Moore as James Bond and

  the woman in the red sweater wanders

  in front of the screen and demands,

  ‘Does anyone know what’s supposed to happen?’

  Your hands are bony thin; your thumbnail

  thickened like a split hoof; and as you slip further

  your shirt breaks free from belted trousers.

  I have seen old photos, tie and jacket,

  dapper. A care worker says

  ‘We do put a tie on him,

  ‘But there’s health and safety to consider.

  Joggers, that’s what they need

  when they get like that.’

  Your skinny bottom changed by day

  from too-loose pyjamas

  to baby rompers.

  Time to sit up for the latest snack: soup,

  two triangles of bread and ham.

  You are lifted by three tabarded women,

  one at each arm, a third at your waist.

  You growl as you are raised.

  You want to be left to slip down.

  Standards

  He had a bee in his bonnet

  about the state of public toilets

  and the spongers on benefits.

  His last words, to the tulips,

  were, ‘mustn’t let my standards slip,’

  concreting a small, important hole in the garden path.

  He would have wanted it that way.

  Blanket

  You only had one pair,

  and the devil makes work,

  so you scrubbed, swept, polished,

  baked in every inch of oven space,

  rustled up stews and soups from scraps,

  ripped stockings into strips, strapped

  beans to poles, fruit to canes,

  and by night you circled the square,

  unravelled remnants of outgrown woollens

  from long-forgotten photos -

  shell-pink, peppermint, red-flecked beige -

  hooked warmth into the holes,

  edged it with a ribbed row of rust.

  The ends still dangle: bitten, burnt,

  sealed with a sliver of soap.

  First supper

  Large onion, tinned tomato,

  add mince, crumble oxo,

  simmer for ten mins or so.

  Serve onto one plate,

  one pyrex flan dish,

  recipe etched on base.

 
Flank plate with knife

  and fork, dish with

  fork and spoon.

  Add boyfriend,

  stained carpet,

  rented room.

  Watch worms swim.

  Read flan recipe

  through mottled gravy.

  Wish it was for mince.

  Tip food in bin.

  House

  A van in the road, a couple shoulder

  their mattress over a new threshold,

  and I’m taken back to a Saturday in ’88:

  the furniture, that had filled our old flat, marooned.

  We stretched into the new house,

  hung the walls with images of ourselves

  to look after the rooms when we were out,

  coated the carpets with flakes of skin.

  What happened between then

  and the time when the bricks closed in?

  Ten years since you left,

  all rooms painted and papered.

  Once in a while you slip through the letterbox.

  The floorboards creak your name.

  Coats

  for Laura

  There are seashells in this pocket,

  trickling through collected silver

  from thirds of pints of morning milk;

  and in the other, a lone pineapple

  chunk, stuck to the corner, and sugar

  to chase with a licked finger.

  Now the gabardine becomes a duffle

  stuffed with bus tickets, folded into stars;

  now, on a torn-off strip, a phone number

  zipped within a denim bomber;

  now an over-sized overcoat wrapped

  around mother and unborn child,

  now around mother and daughter.

  Now she has her own coat.

  Late

  for Bob

  You bustle past the window, strands flying

  from your cap as if it were the only thing

  holding your hair on, laptop bag slung

  like a satchel, minus phone and wallet.

  They are in that place you leave them

  so you won’t forget.

  Your mother would have done this,

  waved you down the road, noticed,

  too late, your homework on the kitchen table.

  Keats’ House

  The room in which we stand

  has nothing to do with Keats,

  built long after his death,

  but within this extension

  is Keats’ front door,

  and just along the corridor -

  see, where the arch is - the divide

  between Keats’ and Fanny Brawne’s

  halves of the house -

  the Brawnes had more

  than half, actually.

  There was a wall,

  once, and a staircase,

  since removed.

  Not sure exactly where.

  The chaise longue? No, it’s not original.

  We don’t know Keats’ taste in decor;

  the themes of his poetry are love,

  death and nature - not wallpaper.

  And now we’re in the Brawnes’ parlour

  where Keats first met Fanny. Possibly.

  The items in the glass case are genuine -

  Fanny’s engagement ring, her scissors,

  an inkstand, and the famous letters.

  The plum tree?

  Yes, that was where he wrote

  Ode to a Nightingale.

  No, not that tree;

  that one’s a facsimile.

  And the garden is themed,

  e.g. a flowerbed on melancholy.

  The audio tour tells all,

  playable as an MP3.

  Don’t forget Keats’ death mask

  in the bedroom, and his bust

  in Fanny’s parlour. He was very short,

  you know, five foot and a quarter.

  You wouldn’t think it, would you?

  For a poet of such stature.

  Lager saga

  Drunk young man on the rail replacement bus

  slugging from your can of Tennant’s lager,

  yes, the bus was late. Why make such a fuss?

  Your shouting does not endear you to us.

  We will listen less as you grow louder,

  drunk young man on the rail replacement bus.

  Okay, we understand: you’re furious.

  (iPod’s are found, volume turned up higher.)

  Yes, the bus was late. Why make such a fuss?

  The lack of trains makes you cantankerous,

  but you will explode if you get redder,

  drunk young man on the rail replacement bus.

  Your railing makes us more impervious

  to your complaints, yet you grow drunker.

  Yes, the bus was late. Why make such a fuss?

  Put your lager down; take several deep breaths;

  relax. Have you thought of trying yoga,

  drunk young man on the rail replacement bus?

  Yes, the bus was late. Why make such a fuss?

  In reply to your note

  after William Carlos Williams

  I don’t keep

  the best fruit

  in the fridge

  the taste of

  the sun on

  a ripe plum’s

  bloom is lost

  when chilled

  Forgive me

  I’ve eaten

  the sweetest

  so warm so delicious

  Shell

  Spiral of pink-rinsed hair,

  candy-striped twist of calcium thread,

  coiled from point to miniature ear.

  Fractal pendant, frilled-edged cameo,

  stitched and quilted ribbon,

  twisted strip of croissant dough.

  Trumpet, horn of plenty, ice-cream cone,

  washed-up shelter for a creature

  long gone.

  Salt and pepper

  I won it at a funfair,

  a salt and pepper set.

  Keep it for your bottom drawer,

  my mother said.

  I was eight.

  No marriage plans as yet.

  Photo

  A beach, Lahinch,

  1974, I think.

  I’m wearing tank top,

  skirt, platforms, tights, no

  smile, head to one side,

  and there’s my father,

  on the same sea wall

  yards away, miles away,

  head turned the other way,

  in suit and tie.

  Mitchelstown - a sequence

  I The road to Mitchelstown

  Suitcases were suitcases then:

  large and square, with plastic grips.

  They could only be carried a few steps -

  one shoulder stooped,

  the other raised -

  then dropped, hands flexed,

  and picked up again

  as on the road to Calvary.

  So many years I’ve held the memory

  of sailing to Dun Laoghaire

  with my mother,

  left with the luggage

  while she searched for something lost.

  Ireland rose in the morning

  after the cold crossing on the open deck

  of the Hibernian: a passage of women

  and children in new clothes,<
br />
  bags for beds, jackets for pillows.

  Once we reached my mother’s home

  each relative, school, old house, gravestone

  was visited and venerated

  like the Stations of the Cross.

  The suitcases were lighter coming back:

  gifts of clothing we’d outgrown

  passed on to younger cousins.

  This year

  I pack four new pairs of knickers,

  four of socks, one for each day,

  as was done for me

  when my clothes were mixed

  with my brothers’ and sisters’.

  Though it’s taken all of my forty-seven years

  to reach my father’s birthplace,

  it’s all too easy now I’m on my way:

  no rise and fall of the ferry,

  no full day’s travel from Euston to Holyhead,

  Holyhead to Dun Laoghaire,

  Dublin to Clare;

  it’s less than an hour by Aer Lingus,

  baggage checked at Heathrow,

  returned on the carousel at Cork.

  It’s like eating Easter eggs

  without living through Lent.

  I wheel my suitcase behind me

  and take a seat on Bus Eirann,

  from the Parnell Place Coach Station,

  Route 8 to Mitchelstown.

  My father found the strength

  to lift his bags off at this stop

  just three times in over fifty years.

  I bear no gifts, only photographs

  to show those who might remember,

  may know what I wish to learn.

  I don’t know yet if my luggage

  will be lighter or heavier

  on my return.

  II My father’s house

  ‘My daddy lived here.’

  I lean towards the boy

  who shelters in his father’s shadow.

  We perform the photographic ritual,

  standing by the door where he once stood,

  the same height as this child.

  Two rooms, turf fire, one oil lamp.

  Water carried in barrels by donkey and cart.

  There are extensions now, bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom.

  ‘I was reared here too,’ says Nelly,

  gripping the hand of the younger man.