Ballad of a man with ears

 

When I had caught up with today

I set off on a walk,

to learn if it were possible

to listen and to talk.

 

And straightaway an object,

a human shape, a man

walked up and halted by me,

as if he knew my plan.

 

In no time I sized up his head

from which two ears stood proud,

whose beauty instantaneously

drew me to speak aloud.

 

‘I compliment those ears,’ I said,

‘but tell me, if you can

alert the organs of response,

are you a listening man?

 

Do sounds and words writhe down the whorls,

and, switching mode and form,

skip through your brain into your mind,

and there by some unstated norm

 

are ticked as understood,

or crossed as not, or marked unknown,

arrayed, enjoyed, disdained, broke up,

reworked or left alone?’

 

The man with ears looked down, then poked

a finger at the sky,

as if he’d heard some speaking

to which he might reply.

 

‘Does breath,’ I asked, ‘rise from your lungs,

and strum your vocal chords,

then rigged by tongue and teeth and lips

sail outwards bearing words?

 

And does this happen when your mind

gets busy on your brain

and makes a thought from this and that

for those words to contain?

 

Or is it feeling speaking –

an urge, a joy, a pain, a need,

an asking to be answered

that skin and skull impede?’

 

I guessed the well-eared man was voiced,

for now his finger spun,

and breath blew strongly in and out,

as if speech had begun.

 

‘And yet,’ I said, ‘questions like these

I fear could be misplaced,

for not one spoken word is seen

or visually traced,

 

not where it started from, not how

it passed from thee to me,

and what it carries in its grip

is not for us to see

 

with eyes like these two in our heads

that only work by light,

while minds and brains are more like bats

that flutter out of sight.’

 

At this the man pulled on his ears,

and stared at me wide-eyed.

Then, as his fingers loosened,

he haltingly replied,

 

‘It’s oblious,’ then stopped.

So then I had to add,

‘That sounds a sort of English,

and, since I was a lad,

 

I’ve also spoken English,

and English wrote and heard.

Yet do you think my English

is yours in every word?

 

And can it be I follow

where your English aims to wend?

Or is each one of us pursuing

a contradictory end?

 

Or are we carried on a stream

that flows on who knows where,

two burblers in two voices

in which we have no share?’

 

At this he wrung his fingers

and I heard the knuckles crack

and then his arms flew sideways

as if I’d smacked his back.

 

At once my hands pounced on his head

and prised his jaws agape,

so that the channel came in view

which words use to escape.

 

‘O let,’ I shouted in his mouth,

‘communication thrive,

let none proclaim we failed the task

of everyone alive.

 

Uncork the bottled tongue and teeth,

spring shackles from the lips,

let shafts of language to and fro

fly on their mystery trips.’

 

At this his teeth clamped on my nose,

but when I screamed let go.

‘My throat’s no place’, he shouted,

‘for windy wit to blow.

 

People like you, you fa-di-dar,

disgruntle where you will,

do dawdle better far behind

with all your pipes stood still.

 

We cuddle and then sing our way

up futures we have lost

through turncoat dreads of history

which sneer at extra cost.

 

The silencer is on the gun,

for the sky is breaking red,

and humans slump when they should wail,

and sirens wail instead.

 

Strike off, count on, the ding is sick,

and spatters fads and fright

for twelve shoots always twice times six

and hits the target right.’

 

The magic lurking in his words

was like a teddy bear

that poked from his front pocket,

and winked to see me there.

 

‘Let’s stretch, let’s shrink,’ I mumbled,

‘but leave the fa-di-dee;

I am still prone to following,

whatever follows me,

 

along the dreadsome fissures,

past where the cock sings higher,

than those unhallowed cannon

that cannot hold their fire,

 

and singaloos are what we’ve left

to play for with this hand,

now six is close on half the twelve

that no one can expand,

 

although we keep on raking

the torches of our dreams,

round the entrancing exits

that meet at their extremes.’

 

A quiet moment followed this,

as if each thought or knew

that what he or the other said

risked being partly true.

 

And then we shook each other’s hand.

Words must be poor and few,

but let them twinge and ripple,

and warmth and light shine through.

 

Speaking you can learn something,

spoken you can learn too,

as if the spooky speaky

unpicks your frozen glue.

 

So smiling each of us set off

for where we later went,

though neither felt the need to say

that such was his intent.

 

But I’ve been glad to spread some words

for you who cross my way

of how I spoke to one with ears

who spoke to me today.

 

 

 

 

Ballad of night theatricals

 

The sky has dropped its blazing hat,

and the moon shines bald and bright

on trees as dark as scriptures

and twisting paths of white.

 

Two wend from two directions

each muffled in his skin,

and one seems spare and stringy,

and the other hunched and thin.

 

I see them stop and peer like cats

into each other’s face,

before they turn and side by side

stand staring into space.

 

At last the hunched one jerks sharp right

and, having checked it’s clear,

puts three unanswered questions

in the other’s nearer ear.

 

‘Did we not meet in Birmingham

on the station concourse there?

And your train sang loud with a football crowd,

and mine was old and bare.

 

And weren’t you once in Edinburgh

out towards Arthur’s Seat?

You were walking fast with eyes downcast

and noticed my grubby feet.

 

And stuck in thought by Charing Cross,

did I glimpse you across the Strand?

You were trying to push through the Christmas crush,

and you paused and waved a hand.’

 

The questions put, he turns once more,

and minutes make their way;

the other looks round for a voice,

finds one and turns to say,

 

‘I aimed to be a solid man

averse to muscled charm,

who flicked the whip of reason

to scatter doubt and harm.

 

I walked around and up and down;

to those I met I showed

a smile, a coin or a remark

and then resumed the road.’

 

Wild moon-beams hunt his words to ground,

and he turns to the fore.

They wait, and then the hunched one turns

and puts three questions more.

 

‘Did we not meet in Preston

by a market baker’s stall?

And you saw me run with a currant bun

which I ate against a wall.

 

‘And weren’t you once in Manchester

on a tram to Salford Quays,

when I pulled the purse off a haggard nurse,

and kicked her in the knees?

 

‘And drunk and drugged in Islington

did I puke when you came by

and still reached out to give you a clout

and fell and had to cry?’

 

He stops as if he’s heard the moon

start counting up its rays,

and both stand looking as they did,

till the spare one turns and says,

 

‘I aimed to flow from time to time

and leave each wave behind,

that rose and carried me along,

then left me and declined.

 

I walked along and round and on,

and carried an old pack,

that afternoons went missing

and nights brought bigger back.’

 

His voice turns off, he turns about,

and both look at their shoes

in case one of the four might hold

encouragement or clues.

 

‘Go on!’ I shout ‘Let’s have this out,

The dawn shall not curtail

the path to conversation

and resolution fail.’

 

But dark is leeching from the east

the moon looks frail and high,

and each a moment nods a head

towards the blankening sky.

 

‘Did I not see…?’ the hunched one starts,

and stops, as if he’s seen

a rock become a rabbit,

a black branch turn to green.

 

They stand and look and listen,

both quiet now and wan.

An old blue camper-van drives up.

They climb in and are gone.

 

 

 

 

The Hands of Time

 

When the hands of time are shaking

and the feet they measured run

with a younger generation

and the still athletic sun,

 

when my eyes are dowsed in pewter,

and my teeth sleep at my side,

and my gender’s set on neuter,

and my trumpet’s calcified,

 

when my broken story scatters

its beads around the bed,

beneath which lie in tatters

the friends on whom I fed,

 

then let fumes waft in from heaven

that I sniffed when I could walk

(say petrol on hot tarmac,

or a bruised tomato stalk),

 

and I’ll gladly take the corridor

that winds back from my nose,

and smile to see the private door

through which the whole world goes.

 

 

 

 

Lamentation

 

When dolour’s duck is heading

for you across the pond,

it brings no featherbedding

for the prickles of despond.

Sad quack quack quack

which there’s no turning back.

 

And then the griefs come jumping

like frogs into your hair

and woes and doles sit thumping

the bottom of despair,

while wretchednesses fart

from the deflating heart.

 

The smile has been inverted,

the eyes are blackened rings,

the banjo’s broke and dirtied,

but the minstrel ups and sings

a song you cannot skive

while you remain alive:

 

‘What wrecker runs in wreaking

the deleterious act

that gets the dickheads creaking

and leaves the eggheads cracked?

Don’t scratch the arid pate:

death’s the sole candidate.

 

Death is the big unbeing

whose panoply of nil

unfastens the fast fleeing

and stops the standing still,

always and every day,

taking the breath away.

 

Death drops off his agenda

before your frightened eyes,

or shoves them in his blender

too quickly for surprise.

Whether you fade or splatter,

he finishes your matter.

 

Let me flop into weeping,

let me writhe and roll,

let burping and beeping

be the sounds of my soul,

let me be glued-up glum,

and my tongue be dumb.’

 

The minstrel lets his singing

drop like an empty plate

to which no crumb is clinging

that a beggar might have ate.

A gormless gloom descends,

and another ending ends.

 

 

 

 

Show Time

The shows are happening all the time

and time’s not happening to stop.

I didn’t see a curtain rise,

but I can see one’s going to drop.

You were not here but always there.

Now your bit of my stage is bare,

and I act on to my surprise.

 

We are not simply clots that time

clogs with its discarded hair,

before it loads its whirling mop

and swills us down its own despair.

For we can soar contrariwise

for all the tatters of disguise,

and riddles of success and flop.

 

You flew in your immortal time,

and deathlessly my own time flies,

too fast for eyeballs anywhere,

and for the flash of inner eyes,

But net the bird upon the hop,

and let the scenery go pop;

you can play death out if you dare.