Nijinsky’s role in this remains mysterious –

We know he knitted cardigans for both

The Spanish twins and, while he was delirious,

Composed an ode to economic growth –

And yet one wonders if Chagall was serious

About the cigarette or merely loath

To recognize that others took for granted

The yellow birdbath he had always wanted.

God and The Jolly Bored Bog-Mouse

Strugnell’s entry for the Arvon/Observer
Poetry Competition 1980. The competition
was judged by Ted Hughes, Philip Larkin,
Seamus Heaney and Charles Causley.

God tried to teach Mouse how to sing.

‘Piss off! I’m not the sort.’

Mouse squelched away across the bog.

‘It’s jolly cold,’ he thought.

Stone-numb, Mouse watched the ice-bright stars,

Decided they were boring.

Cradled in roots and sodden turf,

Soon he was jolly snoring.

Mouse dreamed a Universe of Blood,

He dreamed a shabby room,

He dreamed a dank hole in the earth,

(Back to the jolly womb).

Mouse tried to vomit up his guts

Then got up for a pee.

A comet pulsed across the sky –

He didn’t jolly see.

From Strugnell’s Sonnets

for D. M. Thomas

(i) The expense of spirits,

The expense of spirits is a crying shame,

So is the cost of wine. What bard today

Can live like old Khayyám? It’s not the same –

A loaf and Thou and Tesco’s Beaujolais.

I had this bird called Sharon, fond of gin –

Could knock back six or seven. At the price

I paid a high wage for each hour of sin

And that was why I only had her twice.

Then there was Tracey, who drank rum and Coke,

So beautiful I didn’t mind at first

But love grows colder. Now some other bloke

Is subsidizing Tracy and her thirst.

I need a woman, honest and sincere,

Who’ll come across on half a pint of beer.

(ii) Not from the stars,

Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck,

Although I often read my horoscope.

Today The Standard promises me luck

With money and with girls. One can but hope.

Astrologers may not know if you’ll win

The football pools or when you’ll get a screw,

But one thing’s clearer than this glass of gin –

Their character analyses are true.

Cancerians are sympathetic, kind,

Intuitive, creative, sentimental,

Exceptionally shrewd and, you will find,

They make fantastic lovers, warm and gentle.

Amazing, really, that you fail to see

How very well all this applies to me.

(iii) My glass shall not,

My glass shall not persuade me I’m senescent,

Nor that it’s time to curb my virile hunger.

I’m still as randy as an adolescent

And didn’t have much fun when I was younger.

Pursuing girls was hopeless with my looks

(I used to pick my spots and make them worse)

So I consoled myself by reading books –

Philosophy, pornography and verse.

For years I poured my unfulfilled desire

Into sad songs – and now, to my delight,

Find women love a bard, however dire,