Waiting for the Nightingales  

In Dewar’s Himalayan and Kashmiri Birds
Songs of different species are set down clearly:
Soft, mellow pee-ho (Indian oriole)
A loud pleasant call of three notes: think of me (grey headed flycatcher)
Loud, plaintive pee-you pee-you (Great Himalayan barbet)
Melodious wherefore-wherefore (Indian cuckoo)
Crescendo brain-fever, brain-fever, BRAIN-FEVER (large hawk-cuckoo)
A loud, shrill did he do it? Pity to do it! (red wattled lapwing).

And we can imagine the wandering major in the foothills
Mapping out the shifting frontier posts
Disguised perhaps as a fakir with a goatherd’s crook
Concealing measuring tape and theodolite
And no doubt thinking as brain fever descends on him,
About his own wife back in Hazelmere
With that awful car-salesman type.

Meanwhile little is known about nightingales.
What do they do in daytime? Do they sleep?
Whatever we may think of John Keats
He is of little use to the birdwatcher in the field.



The Gate of Rain

Your letter is brief and to the point.
I don’t think you should go into a convent.
But anyway that’s your own decision.
I don’t think I should try to influence you.
Today I am going to read all the books in the library.
It’s going to be a full time job. (It’s six floors.)
But someone has to do it or they’ll be wasted.
I will start in the alcove of Polish music.
The sky is blue now. They are opening the library –
The birds still quiet, having missed the half-light.
I have got as far as Transcendentalism
And it’s still not coffee time yet.
I don’t understand the Dewey system.
But make a tiny mark on the books I’ve read so I don’t read them twice.
A book no-one’s read before... footsteps in snow!
Scott in the Antarctic, wondering if you will ever get back.
People find only a half-eaten dog,
A half-empty jar of Cooper’s marmalade.
Some of these alcoves-you could be turning into a tributary of the Amazon
In your pirogue
And wondering if you will ever disembogue
And there are problems about getting hold of Vogue.
(In Rare Books a man comes out with a monocle
For looking at very small handwriting.
He lists towards me unsteadily, looking astounded
As Patrick Moore discovering a new planet.)



Problems with Theatre of Memory: FAQs

Thank you Gareth for your question.
The problem was
The house was infested
By people who had never been your girlfriends
And never would be.
Like Alessandra’s elder sister Consuela
A tall doe-eyed girl from Italy
Who said Open the waters
As if she was a Handel oratorio
When she meant Turn on the tap.
They are all there living their own lives,
Not paying any rent,
Scorning housework
Just standing around
In the Millington Road area
Draping themselves against brooms in doorways like models
What should you do?
Thank you for that Gareth.
But we’re running out of time.



End of Life Plan

Preparing for my end of life plan
I have an appointment at 9:40
With a travel agent. On Thursday.
No, Friday, Friday. I’m booked
With Bronwen Calllaghan, GP. I could have had anyone.
The man behind the bar
Asked who I’d like. I said anyone. I wasn’t in a hurry.
I wasn’t looking for an assassin. And even if I was
I’d prefer someone I didn’t know.
It’s Thursday already. I don’t think up
Last words, better to improvise.
I’m dying in the school play
As Romeo in Leichner’s 5 and 9
Tony McTulloch Captain of Boxing
Is Juliet, in a wig, seeing me apparently dead
And collapsing on top of me
So I feel his bristly chin against my cheek
In the sarcophagus
My parents in the front row (Mum in the ocelot),
And I’m not even dead.

2. Backup plan

Borkstein pokes his head round the curtain (it’s charades)
And puts Campari into my veins so
I feel the iron in the bedstead melting
I gasp Get the doctor into a paper bag
And by the time the girl wakes from her beauty sleep
I’m in love with the way she takes my blood
And the iron in the bedstead’s melting.
They don’t have death now, only end of life.
John Donne was right, though he’d say anything.
Dad said his heart attack was a sprained ankle.