Downpour, sluice-rush, spillage and backwash

Come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe

Being played by water, you shake it again lightly

And diminuendo runs through all its scales

Like a gutter stopping trickling. And now here comes

A sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves,

Then subtle little wets off grass and daisies;

Then glitter-drizzle, almost-breaths of air.

Up-end the stick again. What happens next

Is undiminished for having happened once,

Twice, ten, a thousand times before.

Who cares if all the music that transpires

Is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?

You are like a rich man entering heaven

Through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again.

A Sofa in the Forties

All of us on the sofa in a line, kneeling

Behind each other, eldest down to youngest,

Elbows going like pistons, for this was a train

And between the jamb-wall and the bedroom door

Our speed and distance were inestimable.

First we shunted, then we whistled, then

Somebody collected the invisible

For tickets and very gravely punched it

As carriage after carriage under us

Moved faster, chooka-chook, the sofa legs

Went giddy and the unreachable ones

Far out on the kitchen floor began to wave.

*

Ghost-train? Death-gondola? The carved, curved ends,

Black leatherette and ornate gauntness of it

Made it seem the sofa had achieved

Flotation. Its castors on tiptoe,

Its braid and fluent backboard gave it airs

Of superannuated pageantry:

When visitors endured it, straight-backed,

When it stood off in its own remoteness,

When the insufficient toys appeared on it

On Christmas mornings, it held out as itself,

Potentially heavenbound, earthbound for sure,

Among things that might add up or let you down.

*

We entered history and ignorance

Under the wireless shelf. Yippee-i-ay,

Sang ‘The Riders of the Range’. HERE IS THE NEWS,

Said the absolute speaker. Between him and us

A great gulf was fixed where pronunciation

Reigned tyrannically. The aerial wire

Swept from a treetop down in through a hole

Bored in the windowframe. When it moved in wind,

The sway of language and its furtherings

Swept and swayed in us like nets in water

Or the abstract, lonely curve of distant trains

As we entered history and ignorance.

*

We occupied our seats with all our might,

Fit for the uncomfortableness.

Constancy was its own reward already.

Out in front, on the big upholstered arm,

Somebody craned to the side, driver or

Fireman, wiping his dry brow with the air

Of one who had run the gauntlet. We were

The last thing on his mind, it seemed; we sensed

A tunnel coming up where we’d pour through

Like unlit carriages through fields at night,

Our only job to sit, eyes straight ahead,

And be transported and make engine noise.

Keeping Going

for Hugh