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Review William Wantling
Review: Sticky by Andy
Croft
Editorial Issue 27
The Fall
of the Pound
Ambit Appeal
Heigh-ho-on-Wye
Alexis Lykiard's latest bombshell
Dockers & Detectives Relaunched
FOUR POEMS by R.L.
HUGHES
FLY AWAY PETER
HIGHGATE - RICK BROWN
OLD BILL - MARTIN DOMLEO
FROM FORTHCOMING ISSUE 27
REVIEW
ONLY IN THE
SUN and THE FIX
By William Wantling.
Tangerine Press, 27 Khartoum Rd, SW17 OJA
ISBN 978-0-9553402-1-5
William Wantling was
born in 1933 and died in 1974. He came from
small-town Illinois, joined the Marine Corps after a
somewhat troubled youth and was sent to the Korean
War. Though his life had taken a perilous turn
before his time as a soldier, the war seems to have
defined most of what came after. Given morphine for
a wound, once out of the army, he turned to drugs.
Like all addicts, his cravings took precedence, and
he engaged in crime to pay for his narcotics. Not a
life then, which had much in common with the
majority, and inheriting something of la
nostalgie de la boue and the spirit of
the poet as l’ame damnee, Wantling’s work is
firmly embedded in the unpleasant side of life. The
question his work poses is whether from the material
of his experience he was able to create a memorable
and distinctive poetry. I would say so, though he
isn’t a highly original writer. There’s an obvious
debt to Bukowski which is more or less inevitable
for an American exploring this territory in this
kind of language, but even more, there’s a legacy
from Baudelaire and Rimbaud whose relentless kicking
against the pricks of bourgeois life has had
such a deep if often unacknowledged influence on
modern culture.
The technique of
Wantling’s poetry rests on the conviction that
nothing resists subjective expression; the
resolutely subjective voice and perspective will
ultimately tease out all the truths, lies, ironies.
This may be true in poetry, though not for other
forms of knowledge. The strength of this approach is
its elaboration of a down-beat, familiar persona and
the creation of a sense that ultimately we all face
reality with the weak instrument of our own mind. On
the other hand, it tends to resist excursions into
the bracing territory of the impersonal. It may be
that, overwhelmed by experiences which almost
destroyed him, Wantling had to retreat to a “minimal
self” in order to gain any purchase on reality.
Certainly that feeling pervades a little poem like
this:
actually
to sum up 35 years
Billie Holiday
is the only sane person
I ever met
& shooting heroin
the only sane thing
I ever did
It’s deliberately
provocative and leaving aside the romantic
associations of drugs, the pharmacology and
physiological action of heroin detract from its
possibilities both as a means of liberation and a
form of social protest. Wantling’s is the poetry of
keeping going in the face of defeat.
It
looks as if I’m to
spend my life in enemy
camps.
Alienation is his
common experience. He tries to pin it down in
straightforward language, usually successfully. As a
poetic guide to the dead-ends and back alleys of a
sensibility rubbed raw by contact with a prevailing
culture of lies, greed and hypocrisy, this is in
touch with the best of Bukowski. Most poets have
limitations to their vision and technique and
Wantling is no exception, but Michael Curran has
done him excellent service in these beautifully
produced volumes. A true labour of love in a time
when doing anything without asking what can be
earned from it is rare.
* *
* *
STICKY
By Andy Croft
Flambard ISBN 978-1-906601-05-8
£8
Sticky is derived
from the Russian stikhi, meaning poems, and some of
the pieces here are set in Russia where Andy Croft
has been on a reading tour. As an old communist, he
has a nostalgia for the place, which is perhaps
slightly misplaced, like Emma Bovary’s conviction
that certain places on earth are propitious for
happiness. The failure of democratic socialism, or
rather its systematic hobbling, is a constant
undercurrent in Croft’s work; we should never forget
that what undermined socialism more than anything,
was its excessive expectations. Nye Bevan’s warning
remains pertinent: those who want to do everything
at once end up doing nothing at all. Radicalism
needs to be resolutely practical. The way to change
the system holus-bolus is to do it piecemeal, but
that takes courage, diligence and sacrifice. Not the
stuff to appeal to romantic sensibilities. Croft’s
persistent regret at the loss of the promise of more
egalitarian circumstances is that of the principled,
stalwart man in the midst of a culture of trimmers,
time-servers, fribbles, flibbertigibbets and
narcissists. It gives a hint of bewilderment to his
work, the agony of the British left, as you might
say. The old maps no longer show us where to go. My
view is that the right has been far cleverer in
winning the culture war. It grasped very early that
the masses have to be made to identify with their
own exploitation. The Beatles, Madonna, David
Beckham, these are the new capitalists. Pop stars
are capitalists with guitars and the “fans” make a
complete identification. The struggle has moved from
the material to the psychological. The masses
narcissistically adulate the super-rich who
represent the values of capitalism. Even very
intelligent people argue this is fine because they
are choosing to do so. Such psychological naivety is
both touching and distressing. Pop culture didn’t
rise from below, it was manufactured and imposed by
clever and cynical executives. Behind the pop stars,
the film stars, the celebrities of one shade or
another are the CEOs, the shareholders, the boards
of directors, the multi-million-pound tv rights
deals, corporate hospitality, big business.
Convincing people the factory owner was exploiting
them was easy; convincing them they are conspiring
in their own debasement by the adulation they think
gives them esteem, is much harder. The right has won
this battle hands down because the left has failed
to shift onto the new ground. It is the culture war
that must be won and the narcissism of the adoration
of celebrity which must be defeated. David Beckham
isn’t super-rich because he can kick a ball but
because football is corporate business; but the
celebrity culture claims his talent makes him rich
and, by implication, all rich people are talented
and deserve their wealth. This then feeds into the
workplace: the boss is talented and deserves both
big rewards and power.
Croft’s poetry hasn’t
yet moved onto the new territory of the struggle.
He’s still regretting the loss of the simple bosses
versus workers, rich versus poor model. Yet out of
this he has produced a terrific collection. Most of
the poems rhyme or follow a strict form. This ought
to feel anachronistic but it is fresh and cheering.
It stands in such stark opposition to “the modes of
modern writing” it at once makes you realise how so
much contemporary work is trite, exhausted,
rehashing, polite, formulaic. Free verse was once
radical, but as someone said to me recently,
abstract painting has today lost much of its zest
and chutzpah and representational work, in the light
of this, begins to regain its edge. The same may be
true of poetry. Certainly, there is much bland,
repetitive work, a lot of it appearing to have been
written with the specific aim of pleasing
competition judges; and the so-called “leading
poets” seem, for the most part, lost up a dark
snicket. My bet is, if you gave this book enough
publicity, put it in front of enough readers, you’d
find it very popular. It takes us back to the
essence of poetry: rhythm, rhyme, cadence,
parallelism. It re-enchants us. It reconnects us.
And it is expertly written.
There’s a lapse here
and there but Croft’s ability to handle his chosen
forms is superb. His rhymes are inventive and
robust, as good as any in the entire span of English
poetry. The discipline of form drives him from
excessive subjectivism, possibly one of the
prevailing sins of modern poetry, and helps create
the sense of inevitability all authentic writing
needs. He’s always writing about something serious.
Even Either or Eyether, which has fun with
the pronunciation of English place names, touches on
the way class distinctions become embedded in
vowels. There’s a lovely piece entitled A Theory of
Devolution which links the vote against regional
democracy for the north-east to Darwin and the
apparent discovery of a new missing link, Homo
Hyperboreus. It’s clever, funny, perfectly
sustained and uses very subtle ideas in a very clear
way. The book ends with the third part of Croft’s
letter to Randall Swingler, subject, of course, of
the poet’s remarkable biography. Swingler has never
received much critical support and there is reason
to argue that his bending his writing to the
communist cause did harm to his gift. All the same,
Croft devoted years to researching and writing about
him and in this final letter he brings him up to
date with the state of Britain. This neat conceit
allows Croft to poke much bitter fun at the debased
ignorance of popular culture, the elevation of war
to a principle of good government, the emptying of
politics of all serious content and, through the
revelation of the diligent spying on Swingler, the
establishment of a snooping State which sees its
citizens as enemies and their most commonplace
activities as potential subversion. It’s an
excellent end to a thoroughly delightful book.
That’s not to suggest its delight means lightness:
it deals with some of the most harrowing facts of
our time, but, as always, Croft knows how to stay
this side of despair, to remain gently and
convincingly compassionate, friendly and human in
the face of the worst we are capable of. Everything
about this book works at the highest level and it
confirms Croft as a writer everyone with an interest
in poetry should be familiar with. Let’s hope the
queen and the prime minister soon read him. It seems
they need to.
EDITORIAL
FORTHCOMING ISSUE 27
The laureateship,
with its implication of laurels awarded by State and
Crown, is an empty anachronism which, like all such
forms, survives by claiming it can serve ends it
isn’t intended for. So the appointment of a female
laureate is, if you read The Guardian,
good news for women. How can an award bestowed by a
family whose wealth, power and privilege depend on
the hereditary principle, assist gender equality?
How can association with a government which
accepted, to the final detail, the
self-justifications and excuses of the so called
“masters of the universe” as they went about
enriching themselves at the cost of our economic
security, serve any kind of equality ? Most of the
bankers who ruined us were men. Most women remain
poorly paid and in lower level jobs. Feminism, which
once recognised equality as the ground of its
success, has taken on a free market form: so long as
few women achieve success, status and wealth, the
job is done. I would have thought a public
renunciation of the post and of the royals and
time-serving politicians who bestow it, could have
done much more to advance the cause of equality in
general and of women in particular. Yet even more
disappointing is this, from Carol Duffy’s
Guardian acceptance article:
“….poetry……matters deeply to a huge and growing
number of people in this country.”
Out of an adult population of
thirty million, what could be thought of as huge ?
Twenty million or so ? If twenty million Britons
bought contemporary poetry, it would be reasonable
to expect the most popular collections to sell a
hundred thousand. Even Duffy, a set text, will be
lucky to command that. Most collections sell fewer
than five hundred. Most poets are unheard of. Poetry
matters to hardly anyone as a voluntary activity.
Tens of thousands of pupils and students are forced
to read the stuff, but, as everyone knows, often
with the result they never look at it again once
they’ve got the certificate. Editing a little
magazine gives a clear sense of how many people take
a real interest in living poetry: I’d say between
three and five thousand. Not even 0.1 percent of the
population. Poetry, as something taken an interest
in outside the school or the academy is virtually
dead. It matters to a very small group of
enthusiasts. Nor does Adrian Mitchell’s old adage
explain: people don’t ignore poetry because it
ignores them but because it requires effort, is
disturbing and clashes with the anti-imaginative
narcissism of our culture. Later, Duffy descends
simply to the level of an apparatchik:
“..poetry
is vital to the imagining of what Britain has been,
what it is and what it might yet become.”
The kind of statement to the
House you might expect from a newly-appointed poetry
czar.
Duffy is apparently
going to donate the £6,000 she receives to the
Poetry Society for the establishment of a new poetry
prize. She would do better to give a thousand a
piece to six little mags. Gongs, crowns and prizes
are little to do with literary value: they are about
commercialism and winning the culture war. The mass
imagination isn’t formed by poetry, or any kind of
serious literature, but by celebrity veneration and
reality tv. If you went onto Oxford St today and
stopped people at random, how many would have heard
of John Skelton ? How many could name a poem by him
? Skelton lives and works in the imaginations of the
few who take the trouble to read, who see value in
the long-term, who have the courage to resist the
present. This isn’t as it should be but it is as it
is. Ours is a culture of manufactured stupidity,
which is exactly what you need to turn people into
mindless consumers. Poetry should be sceptical,
cynical and oppositional in such a culture.
Conversations with the wind aren’t quite what we
need to win today’s cultural struggle. The forces of
ignorance and reaction are winning. They will
continue to win if we peddle illusions about huge
numbers of people turning to poetry. If literature
is to do its work in fighting the murder of
imagination, we have to begin from where we are:
beleaguered, struggling to survive, ignored by the
majority. But no-one who says so will be poet
laureate nor win prizes.
THE FALL OF THE POUND
after La Baisse du Franc
and La Stabilisation du Franc – Benjamin Péret
From: Je Ne Mange Pas De Ce Pain-la (1936)
(i)
Pound little pound what have you done with your bones
What would you do without poker dice
to hurl these words onto paper
Once paunchy cleric you officiated in the corridors of brothels
distributing the wafer to skinny whores
whose eyes reflected your fat counterfeit
Once your vast piggy cheeks
were a reproach to the skeletal billy-goats
who spreading around their patriotic and Presbyterian stink
followed you like the shadow of a sun
Sun let's say foglamp
because you'll never light more than a road closed
where the cobbles have been replaced by broken bottle bits
But today just an earthworm sectioned by multiple shovels
you struggle in vain to escape the fish
You'd like to be a general of the bankers again
but the bankers died like rats
and out of ther stomachs ooze flabby pounds
and their financial rot fills all the coffers
where the last survivors implore Mammon
to let the pound become a Euro
Alas Christ poor used up pound
cast among the turds of the speculators
Here lies the quid beetroot without sugar
(ii)
If the ears of the cows shiver
it's because people are singing God save the Queen
Let's go children of the toilets
let's drip snot in the ears of Blair and Brown
The fishbones trapped in their teeth
have hardly spoken
It's me the Strong Pound
Down with the old fart who had me boiled
Like a fairground caricature
an eye looking out of a pisspot
Gordon Brown repeats himself
I fully deserved the Order of the Shithouse
Long live the union of dunces
Long live national cow pie
Translated by
John Hartley Williams
December 2008
Now writers like pop stars sell themselves and pose
slick models in the market-place of fame,
and pigeon-minded tv hosts spew inspissated prose
and literature’s a petty, catwalk game,
the not-so-great-and-good assemble every year
among the hills and books of little Hay,
to talk of Akhmatova, Charlotte Bronte and Top Gear
and who might Mariella get to lay;
a fine event for business, for the cameras, for the rich
who eat posh nosh and swill expensive reds,
but those who understand the truth’s persistent, nagging itch
stay desk-bound or sit sharpening their leads;
a president or two, a glib-tongued, car-mad nerd
today can the take the place of Proust or Crabbe,
for who would read, alone, when all the passing herd
assemble here to own what they can grab?
Fran Virgo
UNHOLY EMPIRES, Alexis Lykiard's fiercely
witty collection deals with what he terms "the 3 Rs" that cast
shadow on humanity — rulers, royalists, religionists. In UNHOLY
EMPIRES, rhyme and metre are used artfully and memorably to
focus some angry yet often hilarious satire.
Earlier poetry collections by Lykiard -
including Safe Levels (1990), Skeleton Keys (2003)
and Judging By Disappearances (2007) - tackled issues of
nuclear catastrophe, civil war and collaboration, sexuality and
Aids, feminism versus political correctness, and the current
consumer culture. UNHOLY EMPIRES highlights the Iraq invasion
and its dire consequences; the poisonous evasions and
absurdities of Bush, Blair & Co, alongside late-capitalist
decadence and the troubling rise of assorted forms of
fundamentalism.
Alexis Lykiard, the "uncompromisingly
direct", "mucky bard", also dubbed "the true lineal heir to
Rochester and Swift", has remained an independent, concerned but
provocative voice. The 'controversial' label has led to
censorship or banning of his work in various countries and
contexts. Though resolutely anti-political, Lykiard is pleased
to have been praised by the Morning Star and vilified by
The Sun.
Ted Hughes once described a poetry book by
Lykiard as "sharp, cleaving, carving, piercing - bright, sharp,
clean stabs." UNHOLY EMPIRES is Alexis Lykiard on top form,
hard-hitting as ever.
Available from
Anarchios Press, PO Box 619, Exeter EX1 9JE
Dockers & Detectives - The Relaunch Review
It’s probably fifty years since Ken
Worpole attended a launch in Liverpool. Back then it’d
be a nuclear sub from the dock he was helping to build
at Cammel Laird’s. Last night (March 6th
2008) he was launching his own craft - the re-write of
his classic analysis of prole lit – Dockers and
Detectives which first appeared in 1983. Next to him, on
the top table at the News from Nowhere Bookshop at 96
Bold Street, was screenwriter Jimmy McGovern.
Ken’s thesis is that London and Liverpool
are special sites – port cities with a vital working class
culture energised by immigrants and the strong story telling
tradition of sea-faring men. He remarked how, as a teenager on
his first stay at a men’s hostel near the docks, he was
constantly pestered by yarn spinning sailors. Jimmy grinned.
The great, but now submerged, scribes of
that earlier period were James Hanley, George Garrett and Jim
Phelan. Not realist writers but expressionists (has this got
something to do with their eclipse?). We were reminded by a
member of the audience that Malcolm Lowry was a scouser who
joined the Merchant Navy and whose first book Ultramarine was
influenced by sailors like Melville, Conrad, and Jack London.
The Merch in those days was a quick, cheap way of seeing the
world and an escape route for desperate fathers of illegitimate
kids. Ken mentioned unwanted pregnancy as an important motif in
the novels of the 50s (eg Sillitoe, Barstow et al).
Perhaps west coast ports like Glasgow,
Cardiff and Liverpool had the edge on others being on main
routes to America. We don’t hear much of the school of
Felixstowe or Harwich. New York was a magnet. Ken wistfully
admitted to still treasuring his old Verve jazz records. Rock an
Roll, the Beat poets and Kerouac (another sailor) were
liberating influences from the dominant US popular culture - and
- “the tough guy vernacular style of writing was often adopted
by many British working class male writers as the appropriate
register for writing about their experiences” (D&D p71)
Another strand Ken explored is the
re-writing, and even erasing, of working class history. The
period of World War II was replayed in the aftermath as a
triumph of elite heroes like Guy Gibson, Douglas Bader and
Barnes Wallis rather than the tenacious resilience of docklands
workers. It seems we were fighting to preserve the
quintessentially English rural idyll – a thatched roofed pub in
the Cotswolds – rather than a working class community and its
values.
His most off-the-wall notion is that the
built environment acts as an anchor and definer of
consciousness. That people of different ethnicities or creeds
can feel a common bond in their attachment to place; and that
our destruction of even industrial installations weakens this
social glue. He “reads” these environments as he would a book.
Declining to give a conventional book-launch type recital he did
chose to quote at length one paragraph from Robert Colls Identity of England which he uses on page 10 of D&D.
When the
staple northern industries began to splutter from the 1970s,
very deep meanings choked with them. Buildings that for years
had given habitude to landscape were brought down without a
second glance. Elegant mill chimneys, dramatic colliery
headgear, sun-bright shipyard cranes, all hit the ground in
clouds of masonry, and with them fell a whole visual culture.
Where ships' hulls had once swerved across the skyline, there
was now only sky. Lodges and institutes, formerly places of
association and learning, became derelict. The bands ceased to
march. Banners were furled. Methodist chapels, emotional
heartlands of the Industrial Revolution, became carpet stores.
Pine pews were ripped out and sold as antiques. A landscape was
humiliated, piecemeal.
The event hostess wondered what we’d do
with all these disused mine shaft installations. Wouldn’t the
place start to look like a museum? Ken thought, gnomically, a
proper integration would be “difficult”.
The idea of “reading” environments arose
when he was questioned about the influence of the internet and
the possible decline of book reading. In the future, the
questioner reasoned, we’d be absorbing most of our info from TV
and DVDs via the activities of people like Jimmy. JM looked
puzzled, as well he might, being a writer who still sits at a
keyboard most of the time. But maybe it is possible to produce a
show by simply exhorting actors to say something interesting.
Big Brother eg. Ken guiltily admitted to being a keen reader
still, but thought the academic obsession of 1980s radicals who
believed writing more fat books on theory would usher in the
revolution was now exposed as a dead end. You can come in now
Karl; sorry the position is filled.
As for the internet, personally I prefer Chou
en Lai’s answer when asked if he thought the French revolution
had been a good thing – it’s too soon to tell. Ken is no luddite
on the web and said generous things about this site and the one
on Voices. I sense he sees important synergies in prospect – and
perhaps even the building of an electronic community on the
ruins of the physical wilderness. One thing the web does do is
give everyone, working class included, an ease of access to
literature and art works which would have astonished even Louis
XIV. Ken’s final section, on East End literature mentioned a
writer unknown to me – Dan Billany. Twenty years ago I might
have searched bookshops in vain for this rarity. Now I log on
and immediately find a first edition of The Trap for three quid
in Belfast.
Ken’s encouragement of working class
writers like Jimmy back in the 70s was generously acknowledged.
JM has said elsewhere “it was always a boost to get a story in
Voices”. His connection with his roots has remained strong. Why
do some proletarian writers fade away? They get rich, move out
and wither. Jimmy recommended the Liver Vaults in his home
suburb of Kensington as a top boozer and all purpose prole hub
(no not that Kensington). But even the playing fields in
Kensington have been built over so that the sportsmen of the
Liver Vaults have no pitch. Thanks to the City of Culture cash,
however, one will be created on a reservoir. Christ! These
scousers are so blest they don’t just walk on water the play
footie on it!
Jimmy had some sound advice to the writers
of historical reconstructions. Leave out apostrophes. Your
modern man says “You’re an idiot” but Elizabethan man says “You
are an idiot” I searched frantically for a pen. He might
even say “Verily Sir, thou art an idiot” The possibilities for
an overworked scriptwriter are vast. Jimmy’s TV series could be
played again in doublet, hose and codpieces. They just need
translating. Look out for Ye Street coming soon on channel 97.
Ken, unfortunately, wasn’t booked into the
Liver Vaults but the less salubrious Adelphi (it has improved a
bit recently). At least there he shouldn’t be too bothered by
yarn spinning sailors.
Ken Clay
FOUR POEMS
SPECTATOR
There he stands,
old man with a dry mouth
waiting for his soul to sing,
anything;
conscious that he cannot always
choose the song
and never call the tune.
Spectator
who sees most of the game
but, tongue-tied by despair,
cannot give
a coherent commentary
or find words
of comfort for the losers.
WALKING IN WINTER
Frost has put white flesh
On the bare bones of trees,
Thickened and stiffened the leaves
Of grass and herb that crisp
And crackle underfoot
Mist encloses the mountain.
It's cold enough for snow,
Which will not be slow
To spread from the far peaks
To these wooded slopes below
And sheathe white flesh in
Even whiter skin.
JANUARY FIRES
Smoke is rising from the bay:
men are building bonfires on the beach,
raising pyramids of brush and driftwood:
root and branch and twisted trunk of trees
wrenched up, dismembered, drowned,
picked clean by sea and surf and left
to moulder bone bare on the stony shore;
wrack of the last of last year's storms
cast away by wind and wave and strewn
haphazardly across the beach,
now gathered up and stacked on pyres,
slyly probed by fingers of fire
that flare in sudden breaths of air
and fan out into flaming palms,
sparks flying wildly to expire
in the sunlit January sky,
then die away to smouldering ruins,
where charred remains disintegrate
and ash and embers disappear
among the shingle, shells and shards.
TWO PHOTOS
One black and white, slightly
out of focus, faded
with age; the other
in colour and clearly defined.
In each a fair-haired child in
a white dress turns her head
towards the camera, looks
at me out of the photo.
Each child is two years old.
Thirty six years lie between them.
Looking at the colour print
I found I was afraid,
waiting for the child
to pass the other's age,
never having imagined
that another might come
even this close. (She too would
ask for me in my absence.)
What surprises me is that
it does not seem like betrayal;
rather, something to celebrate.
R.L. Hughes
FLY AWAY PETER
A sticky wicket needs a bat as straight
as C.K.’s whiskey;
a steady nerve, a hunter’s eye, an instinct for what’s
risky;
and Peter was our hero once when he put paid to bowling
by racists from apartheid’s land whose sweet death knell was
tolling;
he rose above corruption’s stench, he stood for all that’s
classy
we watched him on our black and whites and loved him more
than Lassie.
He gave us hope that principle might kick the arse of
grafting
and politicians find more joy in justice than in shafting;
but Peter shinned the greasy pole like any shabby creep
and found that McCord’s tricky case just sent him fast
asleep.
He knew that power must be bought, he preened in front of
mirrors
he thought himself a lofty sir and all the people sirrahs.
Now Peter fights to save his skin and we all find it funny
how young ideals get sucked into the septic tank of money.
HIGHGATE
I might’ve known; in any case,
Katrina’s
nothing but a breath,
a few puddles in the
universe’s playground,
and my daughter ending
her destiny
a less than pettiness
to all but us.
I’d suck the ink back in my pen
sell my
labour as a railway clerk,
touch my cap to
the boss,
to turn that round.
It’s tight in here.
My coffin’s like
yours except
I didn’t build it.
That
tightrope you’re on
as the rock melts
and
frail as houses everything solid’s
nothing
more than kettle vapour,
I walked it in my
head
in a café in the
cinquieme.
I was twenty-nine.
She
was forty-three.
At three she could recite To
be or not to be.
Sigh no more ladies, sigh no
more.
What choice do you have ?
Gravity’s
a law you can’t evade.
Your choices are
inevitable
and your inevitabilities as chosen
as hers.
Rick Brown
FROM THE CURRENT ISSUE 25
Martin Domleo
OLD BILL
The Burton Years
They knew Old Bill at the Red Rose Social
As the bloke who arrived at seven of a night
In his perennial flat cap,
Tall, with a hand on the door’s upright,
Black-suited wispiness stooping slightly,
Two bony fingers supporting a quiet fag.
Years ago, his cigarettes glowed brightly,
Earning him the name of Terminator
But he rarely inhales these days (and the
Tinder that once turned so quickly to red
On his knuckles had long since gone to earth).
At eighty-and-a-half, Bill’s thin right arm
Was the steadiest part of him, as steady
As a Newcomen beam. That practised lever
Was for cocking pints. A sage on racing tips
Picked from the Sun and Mirror, Bill more than
Held his own with four furrowed and whiskered
Ex-brewers twenty years his junior.
Around nine of a night he would slip away
Two quarts heavier, and walk steadily
And mindfully across the road to his crumbling
End-of-terrace more shack than house,
And relieve himself as best he could
In his cold privy – a half-mortared windsock
Some part-time jobber had tacked to the kitchen
Between bouts of drinking and flatulent sleep.
At least this abutment was more accessible
Than the defunct Victorian dumping heap
At the end of his garden strip, sinking
Into piles of bottles, cans, planks, old bricks.
Bill left for good, just as quietly, without fuss
In his chair in front of his portable
As the lottery balls lifted and danced.
The set was still flickering a ghostly light
When they found him, the smell of his last fag
Mingling with burnt carpet, hot plastic, stale beer.
Although he bragged a little, he never won much.
Once he made twenty quid, gave forty away.
Always he bought the first clutch of the night
Before settling into side shadow, shunning
Centre stage, biding time as a good sage ought.
The crematorium was crowded out.
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