Mr & Mrs Harry Place & James Ryan
Coney Island, New York, February, 1901
‘Raindrops keep falling on my head’
Just as the door to Mr Place’s room
begins to close, you glimpse a pistol in
its holster, sort of thing they use out West.
But mindful of his tip, you think no more
of it, until a few days’ later, when
you read how Pinkertons have chanced upon
a photograph of members of the Wild
Bunch outlaw gang. And there he is, him with
the classy broad in tow, the Sundance Kid
no less. You recognise the piercing eyes
from the adjacent suite, Butch Cassidy,
would you believe? You dine on him for weeks.
They leave next day, the Argentine, some say.
Whatever, they are never seen again.
Parliament of Rooks
Conceive a ring of black birds in a field;
an act of faith, like UFOs or ghosts.
Inside this henge, three prisoners face trial,
mid winter, dusk – his story, sold to buy
your proxy vote – fear in their gaze, doom in
their stance; gothic, apocryphal, remote.
When he returns the circle’s broken up.
Seduced to take a closer look, he finds
feather haloes; corpses, blinded, half plucked.
Brings back Big Brother love, the guillotine,
stoning to death, neighbourhood bullying
in public view, a signal to the rest,
the righteous punishment for breaking some
unspeakable sectarian taboo.
Rook Pie
“Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye,
Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.”
Told how he scaled, on wing and prayer,
swayed in frail rigging, like a midshipman,
green besoms clenched in either fist the glue
that bound, singled him out from Icarus.
Graveside, silent, words spent, I view Red Hill,
across the river, how it used to be.
A massive beech stand screens old town and new,
Ten Fields as was, house proud, scrambling behind,
and in its topmast reach, ink blemishes,
x rays of bleeds that fetched him here today.
Though young birds fresh from nest were treats way back,
that strident KAAH’s more reprimand than curse,
trace elements of open steppe, big skies,
nomads on horseback, scent of drying dung.
And can you hear the drum of fashioned stone
on living wood, echoes of funeral pyre
and death lament? They follow, spring flood tide,
pasture, ploughed field, church spire and passing bell,
to waddle like stout matrons, long lace drawers,
starched petticoats; plump golfers in plus fours.
These bolshie petty pilferers, who police
their high-rise homes behind invisible
stone walls, are sociable right through to core.
“Been round for centuries and long before
those bells” – his words. You hear him now. “They seem
to sense a tree has passed its prime, move on.
That’s how we know the time has come to fell.”
Black birds, close to they’re oil-on-water sheen,
soft purples, blues and greens, like dragonflies.
Opaque as bleached whale bone, sheer porcelain,
that wizened patch beneath the chin’s a hint
of dinosaur. Strutting their stuff against
clear autumn skies for the sheer hell of it,
these twisting tumbling acrobats form in
dense shoals at dusk, like mating galaxies,
cavort and kiss, one consciousness, one will.
Ghosts
Those silent films you knew through childhood on
TV were speeded up, like Benny Hill.
You never doubted they were meant to be
that way, so when, eventually, you viewed
them as they should be seen, you found they weren’t
as funny. Actually. you much prefer
the slapstick Tom ‘n’ Jerry stuff; can’t help
but laugh. Though scripts are clichés, acting black
and white, the close ups over-dramatised,
more suited to the stage, these zombies cut
too near the bone at times. We switch them on:
they flicker, pass like wraiths between two worlds
across the silver stream, real people, said
and done, with fears and dreams, the living dead.
Death and the Lady
Outside, herself again, effects of kill
and cure alleviated by the news,
she’s dancing early morning Braille grace notes
along the woodland ride. She pauses, high
on her consultant’s view, “Not visible,”
charmed by a ring-of-feathers fairy sign
against the broken stile. “Yon sparrow hawk,”
he answers to the question on her mind
as yet unasked; “her feeding post.” She knows
him from the local, captain’s chair, beer mug
above the bar; old gamekeeper, skin like
gnarled bark, wax jacket, corduroy, retired.
“Whole different world,” to poison, trap or shoot
all compromises to his grand design:
“I’d bide nest-side for hours, stock still. One day
she lighted on my gun, dark mantle, wing,
locked feet, mere inches from my gaze.” He peers
behind her fear-crazed eye and reads her pain,
admires her pulsing breast, life force within.
“I let her be that spring. Next year? Lord knows!”
Mummy’s Boy
These days, the widow’s mite, a perfect son:
no dirty clothing, tissues, mugs and plates
laid down to clutter up his room, lad rags;
no bother at the school – “out of control!”,
or with the police, “Glue sniffing”, “Theft”, “Assault”;
no flying furniture or angry doors;
no mad binge drinking, pills, gang fights. Best thing
that ever happened, changed him overnight.
It’s all on show: iconic photographs;
Dress uniform, fresh pressed, back of the door;
“Day the whole town turned out” the headline news.
In pride of place, with words like “bravery,
freedom, duty beyond the call, hard blow”,
handwritten letter, framed, from his CO.
The Boat House
London Rowing Club, Putney
This is the season for it, not when fields
are iced iron-rut or frayed brown corduroy
or loud with corn; rather when bells are pitched
to tune with living things, the rising sap,
white blossom, throstle, lark, hormonal rooks.
These days the stallion’s bolted, door distressed -
I’m speaking generally of course – and yet
it’s not died out nor been replaced. Young folk
don’t change that much, still feel the need to pledge
their troth in front of family and friends,
the world to judge. So what of this bright pair
who’ve pulled us here today, twin oars – one boat?
They’ve chosen well I think, each other, this,
the food and drink, the company, the view.
On the Old Bog Road
County Galway, Ireland
His face adds texture to the ground he cuts.
Cured by the wind and rain and written on
like pages from long-faded paperbacks,
he’s tenure here. Recall to mind those men
you laboured with, who mocked your eagerness
through smiling eyes, fond summer days on roads
and building sites. The air is dozy with
the sense of drying peat. You watch him turn
new-sheening turves to cook, then try his spine,
lean on his crook to craic the time. “I worked
the motorways for years. This called me back.”
He’s shaman-wise, stacks visionary truths,
old as these hills, we burn unwittingly,
like youth’s fair-mindedness, to smoke and dust.
Resistance
Wicklow, October 1920
Home from the hills, like wraiths in starless night,
the Boys make tracks, cross old turf working, gorse
and heather moor. Broad daylight, pistols tucked
inside your knickers, you’re the gunslinger.
Crude hardness bruising chaste white thigh, each sign-
post one more Station-of-the-Cross, you’re bound
for town. Mouth parched, loose talk or treachery
bad news, sweat beads anointing brow and nape
like rosaries, you draw more secular
responses from the Black an’ Tans who guard
the bridge. At Mass, the Lads make furtive craic,
like émigrés, outside the high church door.
Such scant observance male preserve, you kneel
within, amenable, head veiled and bowed.
With the Fairies
“Off with the fairies” mime his stock response,
next thing you know she’s wandering the streets
the worse for wear, nudge – wink, in underclothes.
Well that’s the storyboard they consummate.
What price the matriarch you call to mind:
wallpaper, curtains, furniture replaced
near spanking new; a paint brush close to hand
and pot of brilliant white for touching up
her spotless widowhood? The son is blunt
with rage: “End of the day she doesn’t know
my bloody name.” Soon she is diagnosed,
concealed from view. He never visits, come
what may. Alive or dead, house sold to pay
her dues, she’s with the fairies either way.