The Bees

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I Gillian Clarke,

Bardd Cenedlaethol Cymru,

Mam-gu anrhydeddus ac arbennig Ella

a’m ffrind annwyl i.

Bees

Here are my bees,

brazen, blurs on paper,

besotted; buzzwords, dancing

their flawless, airy maps.

Been deep, my poet bees,

in the parts of flowers,

in daffodil, thistle, rose, even

the golden lotus; so glide,

gilded, glad, golden, thus –

wise – and know of us:

how your scent pervades

my shadowed, busy heart,

and honey is art.

Last Post

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If poetry could tell it backwards, true, begin

that moment shrapnel scythed you to the stinking mud …

but you get up, amazed, watch bled bad blood

run upwards from the slime into its wounds;

see lines and lines of British boys rewind

back to their trenches, kiss the photographs from home –

mothers, sweethearts, sisters, younger brothers

not entering the story now

to die and die and die.

Dulce – No – Decorum – No – Pro patria mori.

You walk away.

You walk away; drop your gun (fixed bayonet)

like all your mates do too –

Harry, Tommy, Wilfred, Edward, Bert –

and light a cigarette.

There’s coffee in the square,

warm French bread,

and all those thousands dead

are shaking dried mud from their hair

and queueing up for home. Freshly alive,

a lad plays Tipperary to the crowd, released

from History; the glistening, healthy horses fit for heroes, kings.

You lean against a wall,

your several million lives still possible

and crammed with love, work, children, talent, English beer, good food.

You see the poet tuck away his pocket-book and smile.

If poetry could truly tell it backwards,

then it would.

Echo

I think I was searching for treasures or stones

in the clearest of pools

when your face …

when your face,

like the moon in a well

where I might wish …

might well wish

for the iced fire of your kiss;

only on water my lips, where your face …

where your face was reflected, lovely,

not really there when I turned

to look behind at the emptying air …

the emptying air.

Scheherazade

Dumb was as good as dead;

better to utter.

Inside a bottle, a genie.

Abracadabra.

Words were a silver thread

stitching the night.

The first story I said

led to the light.

Fact was in black and white;

fiction was colour.

Inside a dragon, a jewel.

Abracadabra.

A magic carpet took flight,

bearing a girl.

The hand of a Queen shut tight

over a pearl.

Imagination was world;

clever to chatter.

Inside a she-mule, a princess.

Abracadabra.

A golden sword was hurled

into a cloud.

A dead woman unfurled

out of a shroud.

A fable spoken aloud

kindled another.

Inside a virgin, a lover.

Abracadabra.

Forty thieves in a crowd,

bearded and bold.

A lamp rubbed by a lad

turning to gold.

Talking lips don’t grow cold;

babble and jabber.

Inside a beehive, a fortune.

Abracadabra.

What was lost was held

inside a tale.

The tall stories I told

utterly real.

Inside a marriage, a gaol;

better to vanish.

Inside a mirror, an ogre;

better to banish.

A thousand and one tales;

weeping and laughter.

Only the silent fail.

Abracadabra.

Big Ask

What was it Sisyphus pushed up the hill?

I wouldn’t call it a rock.

Will you solemnly swear on the Bible?

I couldn’t swear on a book.

With which piece did you capture the castle?

I shouldn’t hazard a rook.

When did the President give you the date?

Nothing to do with Barack!

Were 1200 targets marked on a chart?

Nothing was circled in black.

On what was the prisoner stripped and stretched?

Nothing resembling a rack.

Guantánamo Bay – how many detained?

How many grains in a sack?

Extraordinary Rendition – give me some names.

How many cards in a pack?

Sexing the Dossier – name of the game?

Poker. Gin Rummy. Blackjack.

Who planned the deployment of shock and awe?

I didn’t back the attack.

Inside the Mosque, please describe what you saw.

I couldn’t see through the smoke.

Your estimate of the cost of the War?

I had no brief to keep track.

Where was Saddam when they found him at last?

Maybe holed under a shack.

What happened to him once they’d kicked his ass?

Maybe he swung from the neck.

The WMD … you found the stash?

Well, maybe not in Iraq.

Ariel

Where the bee sucks,

neonicotinoid insecticides

in a cowslip’s bell lie,

in fields purple with lavender,

yellow with rape,

and on the sunflower’s upturned face;

on land monotonous with cereals and grain,

merrily,

merrily;

sour in the soil,

sheathing the seed, systemic

in the plants and crops,

the million acres to be ploughed,

seething in the orchards now,

under the blossom

that hangs

on the bough.

Politics

How it makes your face a stone

that aches to weep, your heart a fist,

clenched or thumping, your tongue

an iron latch with no door; your right hand

a gauntlet, a glove-puppet the left, your laugh

a dry leaf twitching in the wind, your desert island discs

hiss hiss hiss, the words on your lips dice

that throw no six.

How it takes the breath

away, the piss, your kiss a dropped pound coin,

your promises latin, feedback, static, gibberish,

your hair a wig, your gait a plankwalk. How it says

politics – to your education, fairness, health; shouts

Politics! – to your industry, investment, wealth; roars, to your

conscience, moral compass, truth, POLITICS POLITICS.

The Falling Soldier

after the photograph by Robert Capa

A flop back for a kip in the sun,

dropping the gun,

or a trip on a stone to send you

arse over tip

with a yelp and a curse?

No; worse. The shadow you cast

as you fall

is the start of a shallow grave.

They give medals, though,

to the grieving partners, mothers, daughters,

sons of the brave.

A breakdance to amuse your mates,

give them a laugh,

a rock’n’roll mime, Elvis time,

pretending the rifle’s

just a guitar?

Worse by far. The shadow you shed

as you fall

is, brother, your soul.

They wrap you up in the flag, though,

blow a tune on a bugle before they lower you

into the hole.

A slide down a hill, your head thrown back,

daft as a boy,

and the rifle chucked away to the side

in a moment of joy,

an outburst?

Much worse. The shadow you throw

as you fall

is the shadow of death.

The camera, though,

has caught you forever and captured forever

your final breath.

Mrs Schofield’s GCSE

You must prepare your bosom for his knife,

said Portia to Antonio in which

of Shakespeare’s Comedies? Who killed his wife,

insane with jealousy? And which Scots witch

knew Something wicked this way comes? Who said

Is this a dagger which I see? Which Tragedy?

Whose blade was drawn which led to Tybalt’s death?

To whom did dying Caesar say Et tu? And why?

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark – do you

know what this means? Explain how poetry

pursues the human like the smitten moon

above the weeping, laughing earth; how we

make prayers of it. Nothing will come of nothing:

speak again. Said by which King? You may begin.

Poetry

I couldn’t see Guinness

and not envisage a nun;

a gun, a finger and thumb;

midges, blether, scribble, scrum.

A crescent moon, boomerang, smirk,

bone; or full, a shield, a stalker,

a stone. I couldn’t see woods

for the names of trees – sycamore,

yew, birch, beech –

or bees

without imagining music scored

on the air – nor pass a nun

without calling to mind a pint of one, stout,

untouched, on a bar at the Angelus.

Achilles

Myth’s river – where his mother dipped him,

fished him, a slippery golden boy –

flowed on, his name on its lips.

Without him, it was prophesied,

they would not take Troy.

Women hid him, concealed him in girls’ sarongs;

days of sweetmeats, spices, silver song …

but when Odysseus came,

with an athlete’s build, a sword and a shield,

he followed him to the battlefield,

the crowd’s roar,

and it was sport, not war,

his charmed foot on the ball …

but then his heel, his heel, his heel …

The Shirt

Afterwards, I found him alone at the bar

and asked him what went wrong. It’s the shirt,

he said. When I pull it on it hangs on my back

like a shroud, or a poisoned jerkin from Grimm

seeping its curse onto my skin, the worst tattoo.

I shower and shave before I shrug on the shirt,

smell like a dream; but the shirt sours my scent

with the sweat and stink of fear. It’s got my number.

I poured him another shot. Speak on, my son. He did.

I’ve wanted to sport the shirt since I was a kid,

but now when I do it makes me sick, weak, paranoid.

All night above the team hotel, the moon is the ball

in a penalty kick. Tens of thousands of fierce stars

are booing me. A screech owl is the referee.

The wind’s a crowd, forty years long, bawling a filthy song

about my Wag. It’s the bloody shirt! He started to blub

like a big girl’s blouse and I felt a fleeting pity.

Don’t cry, I said, at the end of the day you’ll be stiff

in a shirt of solid gold, shining for City.

Oxfam

A silvery, pale-blue satin tie, freshwater in sunlight, 50p.

Charlotte Rhead, hand-painted oval bowl, circa 1930, perfect

for apples, pears, oranges a child’s hand takes without

a second thought, £80. Rows of boots marking time, £4.

Shoes like history lessons, £1.99. That jug, 30p, to fill with milk.

That mirror, £5, to look yourself in the eye. A commemoration

plate, 23 July 1986, marriage of HRH Prince Andrew

to Miss Sarah Ferguson, £2.99, size of a landmine.

Rare 1st ed. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, signed

by the author – like magic, a new school – £9000. Pen, 10p.

Pair of spectacles (longsight) £3. P/b Fieldnotes from a Catastrophe:

Report on Climate Change by Elizabeth Kolbert (hindsight) 40p.

Jade earrings and necklace, somewhere a mother, £20, brand new

gentleman’s suit, somewhere a brother, £30. All Fairtrade.

The Female Husband

Having been, in my youth, a pirate

with cutlass and parrot, a gobful of bad words

yelled at the salty air to curse a cur to the end

of a plank; having jumped ship

in a moonstruck port,

opened an evil bar – a silver coin for a full flask,

a gold coin for don’t ask – and boozed and bragged

with losers and hags for a year; having disappeared,

a new lingo’s herby zest on my tongue,

to head South on a mule, where a bandit man

took gringo me to the heart of his gang; having robbed

the bank, the coach, the train, the saloon, outdrawn

the sheriff, the deputy sheriff, the deputy’s deputy, caught

the knife of an enemy chief in my teeth; having crept away

from the camp fire, clipped upstream for a night

and a day on a stolen horse,

till I reached the tip

of the century and the lip of the next – it was nix to me

to start again with a new name, a stranger to fame.

Which was how I came to this small farm,

the love of my life

on my arm, tattooed on my wrist,

where we have cows and sheep and hens and geese

and keep good bees.

Virgil’s Bees

Bless air’s gift of sweetness, honey

from the bees, inspired by clover,

marigold, eucalyptus, thyme,

the hundred perfumes of the wind.

Bless the beekeeper

who chooses for her hives

a site near water, violet beds, no yew,

no echo. Let the light lilt, leak, green

or gold, pigment for queens,

and joy be inexplicable but there

in harmony of willowherb and stream,

of summer heat and breeze,

each bee’s body

at its brilliant flower, lover-stunned,

strumming on fragrance, smitten.

For this,

let gardens grow, where beelines end,

sighing in roses, saffron blooms, buddleia;

where bees pray on their knees, sing, praise

in pear trees, plum trees; bees

are the batteries of orchards, gardens, guard them.

Rings

I might have raised your hand to the sky

to give you the ring surrounding the moon

or looked to twin the rings of your eyes

with mine

or added a ring to the rings of a tree

by forming a handheld circle with you, thee,

or walked with you

where a ring of church-bells

looped the fields,

or kissed a lipstick ring on your cheek,

a pressed flower,

or met with you

in the ring of an hour,

and another hour …

I might

have opened your palm to the weather, turned, turned,

till your fingers were ringed in rain

or held you close,

they were playing our song,

in the ring of a slow dance

or carved our names

in the rough ring of a heart

or heard the ring of an owl’s hoot

as we headed home in the dark

or the ring, first thing,

of chorusing birds

waking the house

or given the ring of a boat, rowing the lake,

or the ring of swans, monogamous, two,

or the watery rings made by the fish

as they leaped and splashed

or the ring of the sun’s reflection there …

I might have tied

a blade of grass,

a green ring for your finger,

or told you the ring of a sonnet by heart

or brought you a lichen ring,

found on a warm wall,

or given a ring of ice in winter

or in the snow

sung with you the five gold rings of a carol

or stolen a ring of your hair

or whispered the word in your ear

that brought us here,

where nothing and no one is wrong,

and therefore I give you this ring.

Invisible Ink

When Anon, no one now,

knew for sure the cu and koo

he spelled from his mouth