A man plays bagpipes on Fifth Avenue.
Gaelic-wail stabbing at passersby
Who wish its pliant beckoning
Would draw them through their fence of discontent
To a field of freedom they can die in.
They stand, and then walk on.
A man with thick grey beard
Goes wild between traffic,
Arms wagging semaphore;
Raves warnings clear and loud
To those ignoring him.
A blind man rattles a money-can,
Dog flat between his legs
Listens to the demanding
Tin that has so little in
Both ears register
Each bit that falls.
An ambulance on a corner:
They put a man on a stretcher
Who wants air. A woman says:
‘Is it a heart-attack?
Is the poor guy dead?’
She worries for him:
Dying is important when it comes.
‘I suppose it is,’ I guess,
‘I hope it’s not too late’ –
She had one last year:
‘Fell in the street, just like that.’
Her lips move with fear.
The man is slid into the van.
Just like that.
Hard to come and harder go
For the bagpipe player in the snow
The wild man with his traffic sport
The old man with his dog
And the young who hurry:
Dying, a lot of it goes on.
THE LADY OF BAPAUME
There was a lady of Bapaume
Whose eyes were colourless and dead –
Until the falling sun turned red;
Her lovers from across the foam
Walked at dawn towards her bed:
Fell in fields and sunken lanes
Died in chalk-dust far from home.
A rash of scattered poppy-stains:
Nowadays they pass her wide –
That mistress of chevaux-de-frise
Is still alive and can’t conceal
Her mournful and erotic zeaclass="underline"
The lady of Bapaume had charms –
Bosom large, but minus arms.
No soldiers rise these days and go
Towards the bloodshot indigo.
Motorways veer by the place
On which, with neither love nor grace,
They drive to holidays in Spain.
There was a lady of Bapaume
Whose lovers ate the wind and rain.
STONES IN PICARDY
Names fade,
Suave air of Picardy erodes
The regimental badge
Or cross
Or David’s Star
Of gunner this and private that.
The chosen captains and their bombardiers
And those known but as nothing unto God
Who brought them out of slime and clay
Are taken back again.
God knew each before they knew themselves
If ever they did
Before mothers lips sang
Brothers showed
Sisters taught
Fathers put them out to school or work.
But only God may know them when the stones are gone
If any can –
If God remembers what God once had done.
AUGUST
Birth, the first attack, begins at dawn.
It’s also the last, whistle at sky-fall,
Illogical, unsynchronized, inept.
Children, pushed over the top
And kettledrummed across churned furrows
Kitted out with dreams and instinct,
Hope to learn before reaching the horizon.
Those in front call back advice:
‘Going to advance, send reinforcements.’
But who trust the old, when they as young
Spurned cautionary wisdom
That never harmonized with youth?
‘Going to a dance, send three-and-fourpence.’
Some fall quietly under each rabid burst of shell
Love of life unnoticed
In willingness to give it
Or the feckless letting-go.
Leaves drop in the zero-hour of spring
Young heat mangled by car or motorbike.
Broken sight looks in, no view beyond
Though terror rocks the heart to sleep
The signal-sky gives bad advice:
Get up, look outside, day again.
Insight warped by energy, blinded by ignorance.
The battlefield too wide,
Bullets rage at friends and parents
Strangers stunned in the lime-pits of oblivion.
Who blame for this sublime attack?
Did Brigadier-General God in his safe bunker plan?
He horsebacks by, devoted cheers.
Choleric face knows too much to tell –
It’s dangerous for any smile to show.
Whoever is cursed must be believed in
For Baal is dead. Get up. Push on.
Want to live forever?
Go through. No psychic wound can split
Or leg be lost at that onrushing slope.
Halfway, more craven, sometimes too clever,
Old campaigners want a hole to flatten in
Before rot of the brain encircles
Or Death’s concealed artillery
Plucks fingers from the final parapet.
Silence kills as quickly, you can bet.
Live on. Death pulls others in
Not you, or me, or us (not yet).
Earth underfoot is kind but waiting,
Green sea flows on the right flank,
Black rain foils the leftward sun,
Poppy clouds and mustard fields
Tricked out with dead ground, full woods,
Lateral valleys flecked with cornflowers.
Roses flake their fleshy petals down.
Time falls away. Battle deceptively recedes,
Peace lulls to the final killing ground,
Familiar voices coming up behind.
TERRORIST
The protest against Death
Is a raised fist, the face
Of corruption bewails its declining
Gift of life. I go when chosen for taking.
The sky bruises the aching fist. Air mellows
The corroded face. You did not choose me.
I parted myself long ago when I sat
On a branch overlooking boathouse
And bulrushes, and the lake water
On which nothing moved
Except the breath of words
Saying no seven times all told.
I didn’t stay to hear the answer
Turned blind in Death’s donkey-circle
Till the rag around my fist
Was bloodsoaked from hitting the trees.
RABBIT
A busy rabbit young and small
Cornered our vegetable plot,
Chewing green treasure,
Tail upright from line to line
In rabbit-fashion,
An all-providing God set out
Row on row of grub,
Scarpered back to thistles
Till heavy-treading vengeance went away.