{"id":128,"date":"2016-10-13T14:00:01","date_gmt":"2016-10-13T13:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mikebarlow.org.uk\/?page_id=128"},"modified":"2023-04-12T09:58:56","modified_gmt":"2023-04-12T08:58:56","slug":"poems","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.mikebarlow.org.uk\/?page_id=128","title":{"rendered":"Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"

My Uncle Ivan
\nNonesuch<\/span>
\nHotel Anonymous<\/span>
\nThe Nouns of This Place<\/a>
\nI explain to my long dead father how poetry is less authentic than dreaming<\/a>
\nShadrack<\/a>
\nRosie<\/a>
\nThe Third Wife<\/a>
\nJune Bug<\/a>
\nA Hunger<\/a>
\nAbstinence<\/a>
\nFrom the Cabinet of Idioms<\/a><\/p>\n

All poems \u00a9 Mike Barlow<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

My Uncle Ivan
\n<\/strong>(after One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)<\/em><\/p>\n

If you take a walk into a book be sure to keep the cover open
\nadvised my uncle who once failed to do just that<\/p>\n

and spent years trapped in his own private Gulag.
\nYou could always sense he was cold, soul-cold.<\/p>\n

He wore gloves in summer and a scarf, refused
\nto take his shirt off even in a heatwave.<\/p>\n

Of a generation who disdained talk of the personal,
\nhe\u2019d sometimes confide to whoever happened by<\/p>\n

some private thought on comrade Denisovich, a man
\nwho\u2019d never betray a confidence nor risk one himself,<\/p>\n

a man you could rely on to survive with you
\nor without you \u2013 stale crust sewn into his mattress,<\/p>\n

spoon tucked down his boot \u2013 while citizen guard,
\nenjoying the warmth of his circumstantial lot,<\/p>\n

mustered and abused the cold and stricken. I like to think
\nit was Ivan himself who finally recognised my uncle.<\/p>\n

I see them sharing top bunks, reflecting one another\u2019s
\nexhaustion, comrade Denisovich with two years left<\/p>\n

and no faith in release, my uncle inhabiting his dread.
\nIvan looks Ivan in the eye. There\u2019s no end to this, he says,<\/p>\n

you should go back to your own world. It will admit
\nnothing \u2013 but keep the book open for those of us inside.<\/p>\n

(commended, National Poetry Competition 2022)<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Nonesuch<\/strong><\/p>\n

My grandmother scurries through the dawdling crowds
\npushing before her a pram full of scrap, chipped Wedgewood
\nand bundles of any old tat she\u2019s decided to swaddle me in
\nas she heads for the god-knows-where of the High Street.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a Greenline bus on its way to the god-knows-where
\nof elsewhere and a butcher\u2019s shop short of fresh meat
\nand under striped awnings a fishmonger\u2019s row of dead eyes
\nstare out from a bed of samphire while children peer in.<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s a posh dame in a foxfur stole and a jaunty hat
\nhailing a taxi for god-knows-where and she looks down her nose
\nat my grandmother\u2019s pramful of nonesuch booty
\nweaving its way towards god-knows-where.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a war on you know, my grandmother says, her mind
\na rationbook shape full of coupons and cautions, smashed windows
\nand doodlebugged neighbours and I\u2019m just a scrappit shoved
\nunder the stairs when the sirens sing their banshee song.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s off to do business with rough men in yards who\u2019ll pay
\nunder the odds for anything loose and likely of use
\nin the world again. They pick at the china and tin, old dresses
\nand recipe books. Throw in the pram as well, they insist.<\/p>\n

So she shoves me under her arm as she scurries back home
\nwith a bob or two for the cocoa tin on the shelf grandpa raids
\nfor fags and a fling at the bookies where Lady Luck
\ngallops off gallops off on a donkey to god-knows-where.<\/p>\n

(First Prize, Kent and Sussex Competition 2023)<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Hotel Anonymous<\/strong><\/p>\n

Someone in the room next door
\nis practising the oboe, those clear
\nwoody notes going over and over
\nthe same bars, never finding perfection,
\nnever satisfied but reminding me
\nof one particular passage from Tchaikovsky
\nI recall first listening to in the attic
\nI shared as a teenager with the water tank
\nand its constantly dripping cistern
\nand where the dormer window let in
\nstreetsounds from two storeys down,
\nwhile in my head this oboe passage
\nmade me want the world to stop
\nso I could sit there forever.
\nBut inevitably the strings and horns
\nreturned, the symphony proceeded,
\nmy attention frayed and wandered.<\/p>\n

And now the musician has finished.
\nI imagine the instrument dismantled,
\nits reed fitted back in its case, the stem
\nand bell laid snugly in their velvet forms
\nSoon a door will bang, musician
\nand oboe make their way down
\nto the street, hail a cab perhaps
\nand make it in time for the rehearsal,
\nleaving me up here with memory
\nand absence and the counterpoint
\nof traffic in the street below, the to-ing
\nand fro-ing of this city of ultimate freedom
\nwhere you can be whatever you want
\namong the passing languages, unmarked
\ncrime scenes, random acts of charity,
\nno way to tell a local from a tourist,
\nmusician from asylum seeker.<\/p>\n

(<\/em> Hotel Anonymous, Pindrop 2021)<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

<\/a>The Nouns of This Place<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wherever the land\u2019s not used, we plant nouns:
\nstrips of ancient woodland, old bell-pit workings,
\nwhin-choked slopes too steep for the tractor.<\/p>\n

Stonewall. Gutter. Dyke.
\nThwaite. Intake. Stoop.
\nWhemmel. Crowbar. Axe.<\/p>\n

In the old wood by the river, among ramsons
\nand bluebells, along the verge with mouse-ear, mustard
\nand vetch, we fling them, like bulbs, dig them in.<\/p>\n

Charcoal. Myrtle. Cop.
\nSett. Scar. Clough.
\nTrod. Garth. Moss.<\/p>\n

Nouns are plentiful, naming and calling words,
\nroot words, thing words. They take over the mind\u2019s garden
\nso everywhere we think, they make theirs.<\/p>\n

Bracken. Sinkhole. Syke.
\nClint. Geb. Ligger.
\nGryke. Foss. Beck.<\/p>\n

And where nouns take root, may earth take heart,
\nverbs grow, great reclaiming species,
\ndoers and changers, movers and breakers.<\/p>\n

Push. Bend. Breathe.
\nHeave. Thrust. Rive.
\nDig. Scrape. Join.<\/p>\n

Transitive as spirit, intransitive as wilderness,
\nmay they possess us, these verbs of ours, work us
\nlike thought horses, earth\u2019s mutable subjects.<\/p>\n

Hide. Lift. Drag.
\nPlough. Thresh. Trace.
\nBless. Bury. Enfold.<\/p>\n

(From The Folded Moment<\/em>)<\/p>\n

\n

<\/a>I explain to my long dead father how poetry is less authentic than dreaming<\/strong><\/p>\n

at which point he comes to a halt on our brisk
\nwalk home through back streets, turns to me
\nand quotes, word perfect as if it were his own,
\nthe elegy I’d struggled with for years.
\nNever a poetry man, he was more a reader
\nof maintenance manuals, so hearing my words
\nin his voice renders them methodical, didactic.
\nI stand there, dispossessed. He seems embarrassed
\nto have put me at a disadvantage and making
\nas if he’s just remembered something, ducks
\ninto a corner shop to emerge with a packet
\nof firelighters and an evening paper.
\nIn the sort of silence only family can brew,
\nwe proceed home, though in fact we’re lost.<\/p>\n

(First published in Poetry Review<\/em>)<\/p>\n

\n

<\/a>Shadrack<\/strong><\/p>\n

The old cemetery \u2013 history\u2019s bed unmade, its jumble
\nof stones leaning this way and that, tipped-over vases,
\nwaist-high kesh, the humps and ditches of disturbed land,
\nall the dead turned in their sleep together,
\nsome terrible dream of mortality calling them back.<\/p>\n

Shadrack Benbow<\/em> leans sideways at fifty degrees,
\ntilts forward like an old gate stoop, lichened and weathered.
\nShadrack. Perhaps his father was a furnaceman, his mother
\nmuch taken with The Lord in this steel-works town
\nof edgeless skies and unquenched thirsts.<\/p>\n

Once beloved husband & father<\/em>, no longer
\nreckoned by the living, nor greeted by the recent dead
\nbut a soul tipped abroad now by the ground\u2019s slow quake
\nas if, despite its relentless lust for our bones,
\nthe earth offers no haven for the true believer.<\/p>\n

(First published in Agenda<\/em>)<\/p>\n

\n

<\/a>Rosie<\/strong><\/p>\n

There’s a stirk fallen from the cliff
\nto the shelf of bedrock by the river.
\nThe smashed contraption of its body
\nbleeds a little, one eye stares at the sky
\nwith a look of almost surprise.
\nAlready it stinks.<\/p>\n

The land’s too steep for a tractor,
\nthe carcass too heavy for the few of us,
\nso you bring down Rosie from the luxury
\nof easy grazing. Your pleasure
\nat finding her work seems matched
\nby something in her gait,
\nthe shiver of her flanks, the bob and shake
\nof her head as you fix the collar.<\/p>\n

We tie the rope-ends to the beast’s legs
\nand Rosie pulls, hooves gouging
\nsteep peaty ground, an eagerness
\nyou have to check so the deadweight
\ncomes up evenly, doesn’t snag
\non an overhanging branch or swing
\nlop-sided under a rocky sill,
\nbut eases gently over the cliff’s lip.<\/p>\n

You let her have her way then
\nand I’m that close I can recall even now
\nthe piss and oatmeal smell,
\nthose sweating buttocks, the pistons of her legs,
\nthe startling energy of life at work,
\npulling its counterweight uphill.<\/p>\n

\n

<\/a>The Third Wife<\/strong><\/p>\n

My first wife knew no more than me, no telling
\nwhere her needs ended, mine began. One day though
\nI turned the hill to find the boat moored in the field,
\nthe house out in the bay, adrift, door open wide.
\nI rowed out to a message on the mat: gone
\nto my cousin’s place in Valparaiso .<\/p>\n

My second wife blew ashore in a force ten
\nleading a shipload of apprentices astray
\nwith her white dress, her turned-up Nordic nose,
\nher precious bible clutched in a manicured hand.
\nNo matter how I pumped, the organ of her heart played flat,
\nher painted smile as wooden as a figurehead’s.<\/p>\n

My third wife won’t say where she lives.
\nShe comes to me when the tides are right,
\nstays longer if a wind’s got up or fog’s come down.
\nI stroke the warm loaves of her biceps, kiss
\ndimpled elbows, listen for the souch
\nour breathing makes when we’re together.<\/p>\n

She has cousins everywhere. They post her money
\nin denominations the local shop won’t take
\nor drop by uninvited while we’re having tea. They push me
\ninto corners, whisper her address. I turn a deaf ear.
\nThis is my third wife I explain, who’s known
\nmany husbands, some worse some better than me.<\/p>\n

(First Prize, 2006 National Poetry Competition)
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

<\/a>June Bug<\/strong><\/p>\n

It must have been drawn to the reading light.
\nI was with Captain Cook in Poverty Bay , a place
\nso fertile and well settled the Maori wouldn’t yield
\nan inch to the diplomacy of small arms fire
\nor beads. As the first warrior fell I heard a thump
\nin the room like a cupboard shutting or a book
\nfalling to the floor. When I finally gave up
\non the Captain, his misgivings, his ill spirits
\nmisnaming a land, and forsook Endeavour
\n<\/em>for my own berth, something slight and hard
\ndropped from the dark to scrape my cheek.
\nOn my outstretched arm a scarab the size
\nof a finger joint, like a brooch of beaten copper
\nwith a green armoured face. Still seized
\nby the zeal of the ship’s quota of draughtsmen
\nand philosophers, I knew I should draw it
\nor take a photograph at least. But it was late.
\nI put it out, closed the window. Sleep
\ncarried me up a creek where tattooed warriors
\npulled faces, inedible fruit dropped from the trees
\nand for the first but not the last time, home
\nwas an idea so remote I doubted it was real.<\/p>\n

(from Another Place<\/em>)<\/p>\n

\n

<\/a>A Hunger<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s as if some truth’s been missed, hidden
\nin particles of gabbro or the black plug of basalt;
\nor there’s a thought I can’t find, an absence
\nlike deer beyond the next hill,
\ntracks in the peat the only clue.<\/p>\n

It leaves me hungry, eager to dig down,
\nbury my face in soil, rub grit in my brain
\ntill it bleeds insight. Old penitents
\nwould flog themselves, the sugars
\nin the blood inducing trance.
\nI want to come back from a new idea
\nchanged, the balance tipped
\nand equilibrium found again but this time
\nwith a slight quiver as if some
\naftershock still rumbled on,
\nas if there were no time left and it didn’t matter.<\/p>\n

The sea moves, rock weathers, flowers \u2013
\ntormentil, orchid, eyebright \u2013
\nshake in the wind whether or not we name them.<\/p>\n

(from Another Place<\/em>)<\/p>\n

\n

<\/a>Abstinence<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sex and death: I’ve done with those
\nnarcotic urges sprung at birth:
\na particular skin smell, the way
\na tiny muscle in someone’s face
\nmoves; a crumbling disc encoded
\nin the genome, hearing loss or a heart
\ntriggered to self-harm at 54.<\/p>\n

Given a chance I’d kick the habit,
\nrenounce flesh for the rough weave
\nof vows. Whichever deity it is looks down
\nI’d be there, cross-legged in the street,
\nnot begging alms but dishing out
\nspells and charms: a traffic-stopping
\namulet for jay-walkers, a mantra
\nfor revolving doors, or a small
\nbadge of the Virgin, bodged
\nand soldered from recycled tin.<\/p>\n

I’d scrutinise the crowd, make a sign
\nI hope you’d recognise and you,
\nbeing mortal still, you’d have the edge,
\nhumour me in passing, pass
\nthe time of day as if we’d never lost
\nthat way with language lovers share
\ntrading their fear for their desire.<\/p>\n

(from Amicable Numbers<\/em>)<\/p>\n

\n

<\/a>From the Cabinet of Idioms<\/strong><\/p>\n

Up here in the word museum, language’s revolving doors
\npropel me to the cabinet of idioms, four square in my way,
\nthe glint and rust of well-worn tropes hugger mugger on their shelves.<\/p>\n

The fig my father couldn’t give turns out to be an ear of dried fruit
\nhardening in its skin, though the cuss the tinker threw my uncle’s way
\nstill shines like a brassy blade you’d cut your tongue on if you spoke it.<\/p>\n

And they may be rare, my grandmother’s hen’s teeth, but someone
\nmust have sown a flock’s worth and brought them on with slurry
\ntill they sprouted like tin soldiers, pikes and cudgels ready
\nfor dragons, cockerels and anything that moved before first light.<\/p>\n

There’s a wax stub, pillared with candle sperm, reminding me of hours
\nholding a light to what I never could, like the brother I didn’t have.
\nAnd a pale stone wears a coat of dried blood
\nwhere my mother wore the mounts of her palms to blisters.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Two poems from ‘The Promise Boat’ read by Mikehttps:\/\/youtu.be\/Bb6uWnpY1Fw<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My Uncle Ivan Nonesuch Hotel Anonymous The Nouns of This Place I explain to my long dead father how poetry is less authentic than dreaming Shadrack Rosie The Third Wife June Bug A Hunger Abstinence From the Cabinet of Idioms All poems \u00a9 Mike Barlow My Uncle Ivan (after One Day in the Life of […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-128","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":false,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P7ZDQx-24","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikebarlow.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikebarlow.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikebarlow.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikebarlow.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikebarlow.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=128"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikebarlow.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1343,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikebarlow.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/128\/revisions\/1343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikebarlow.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}