Cover

The Other Country

CAROL ANN DUFFY

PICADOR

Originally

We came from our own country in a red room

which fell through the fields, our mother singing

our father’s name to the turn of the wheels.

My brothers cried, one of them bawling Home,

Home, as the miles rushed back to the city,

the street, the house, the vacant rooms

where we didn’t live any more. I stared

at the eyes of a blind toy, holding its paw.

All childhood is an emigration. Some are slow,

leaving you standing, resigned, up an avenue

where no one you know stays. Others are sudden.

Your accent wrong. Corners, which seem familiar,

leading to unimagined, pebble-dashed estates, big boys

eating worms and shouting words you don’t understand.

My parents’ anxiety stirred like a loose tooth

in my head. I want our own country, I said.

But then you forget, or don’t recall, or change,

and, seeing your brother swallow a slug, feel only

a skelf of shame. I remember my tongue

shedding its skin like a snake, my voice

in the classroom sounding just like the rest. Do I only think

I lost a river, culture, speech, sense of first space

and the right place? Now, Where do you come from?

strangers ask. Originally? And I hesitate.

In Mrs Tilscher’s Class

You could travel up the Blue Nile

with your finger, tracing the route

while Mrs Tilscher chanted the scenery.

Tana. Ethiopia. Khartoum. Aswân.

That for an hour, then a skittle of milk

and the chalky Pyramids rubbed into dust.

A window opened with a long pole.

The laugh of a bell swung by a running child.

This was better than home. Enthralling books.

The classroom glowed like a sweet shop.

Sugar paper. Coloured shapes. Brady and Hindley

faded, like the faint, uneasy smudge of a mistake.

Mrs Tilscher loved you. Some mornings, you found

she’d left a good gold star by your name.

The scent of a pencil slowly, carefully, shaved.

A xylophone’s nonsense heard from another form.

Over the Easter term, the inky tadpoles changed

from commas into exclamation marks. Three frogs

hopped in the playground, freed by a dunce,

followed by a line of kids, jumping and croaking

away from the lunch queue. A rough boy

told you how you were born. You kicked him, but stared

at your parents, appalled, when you got back home.

That feverish July, the air tasted of electricity.

A tangible alarm made you always untidy, hot,

fractious under the heavy, sexy sky. You asked her

how you were born and Mrs Tilscher smiled,

then turned away. Reports were handed out.

You ran through the gates, impatient to be grown,

as the sky split open into a thunderstorm.

Sit at Peace

When they gave you them to shell and you sat

on the back-doorstep, opening the small green envelopes

with your thumb, minding the queues of peas, you were

sitting at peace. Sit at peace, sit at peace, all summer.

When Muriel Purdy, embryonic cop, thwacked the back

of your knees with a bamboo-cane, mouth open, soundless

in a cave of pain, you ran to your house,

a greeting wain, to be kept in and told once again.

Nip was a dog. Fluff was a cat. They sat at peace

on a coloured-in mat, so why couldn’t you? Sometimes

your questions were stray snipes over no-man’s-land,

bringing sharp hands and the order you had to obey. Sit –

At – Peace! Jigsaws you couldn’t do or dull stamps

you didn’t want to collect arrived with the frost.

You would rather stand with your nose to the window, clouding

the strange blue view with your restless breath.

But the day you fell from the Parachute Tree, they came

from nowhere running, carried you in to a quiet room

you were glad of. A long still afternoon, dreamlike.

A voice saying peace, sit at peace, sit at peace.

Hometown

In that town there was a different time,

a handful of years like old-fashioned sweets

you can’t find anymore. I lived there.

What am I wearing as I pine for the future,

alone, down by the river by the Brine Baths

longing to get out? But I only threw a stone

at the face in the water and went home,

while behind me my features vanished,

trembled, reappeared, though I could not see.

Those streets, the gloomy shortcut by the church,

the triangle from school to home to the high field –

below which all roads sped away and led away –

and back again. Wherever I went then, I was

still there; fretting for something else, someone else,

somewhere else. Or else, I thought, I shall die.

And so I shall. Decades ahead of this, both of me,

then and now, pass each other like ghosts

in the empty market-place, where I imagine myself

to be older and away, or remember myself

younger, not loving this tuneless, flat bell

marking the time. Or moved to tears by its same sound.

Translating the English, 1989

‘. . . and much of the poetry, alas, is lost in translation . . .’

Welcome to my country! We have here Edwina Currie

and The Sun newspaper. Much excitement.

Also the weather has been most improving

even in February. Daffodils. (Wordsworth. Up North.) If you like

Shakespeare or even Opera we have too the Black Market.

For two hundred quids we are talking Les Miserables,

nods being as good as winks. Don’t eat the eggs.

Wheel-clamp. Dogs. Vagrants. A tour of our wonderful

capital city is not to be missed. The Fergie,

The Princess Di and the football hooligan, truly you will

like it here, Squire. Also we can be talking crack, smack

and Carling Black Label if we are so inclined. Don’t

drink the H2O. All very proud we now have

a green Prime Minister. What colour yours? Binbags.

You will be knowing of Charles Dickens and Terry Wogan

and Scotland. All this can be arranged for cash no questions.

Ireland not on. Fish and chips and the Official Secrets Act

second to none. Here we go. We are liking

a smashing good time like estate agents and Neighbours,

also Brookside for we are allowed four Channels.

How many you have? Last night of Proms. Andrew

Lloyd-Webber. Jeffrey Archer. Plenty culture you will be agreeing.

Also history and buildings. The Houses of Lords. Docklands.

Many thrills and high interest rates for own good. Muggers.

Much lead in petrol. Filth. Rule Britannia and child abuse.

Electronic tagging, Boss, ten pints and plenty rape. Queen Mum.

Channel Tunnel. You get here fast no problem to my country

my country my country welcome welcome welcome.

Mrs Skinner, North Street

Milk bottles. Light through net. No post. Cat,

come here by the window, settle down. Morning

in this street awakes unwashed; a stale wind

breathing litter, last night’s godlessness. This place

is hellbound in a handcart, Cat, you mark

her words. Strumpet. Slut. A different man

for every child; a byword for disgrace.

Her dentures grin at her, gargling water

on the mantelpiece. The days are gone

for smiling, wearing them to chatter down the road.

Good morning. Morning. Lovely day. Over the years

she’s suffered loss, bereavement, loneliness.

A terrace of strangers. An old ghost

mouthing curses behind a cloudy, nylon veil.

Scrounger. Workshy. Cat, where is the world

she married, was carried into up a scrubbed stone step?

The young louts roam the neighbourhood.

Breaking of glass. Chants. Sour abuse of aerosols.

That social worker called her xenophobic. When he left

she looked the word up. Fear, morbid dislike, of strangers.

Outside, the rain pours down relentlessly.

People scurry for shelter. How many hours

has she sat here, Cat, filled with bitterness

and knowing they’ll none of them come?

Not till the day the smell is noticed.

Not till the day you’re starving, Cat, and begin

to lick at the corpse. She twitches the curtain

as the Asian man next door runs through the rain.

Too Bad

It was winter. Wilson had just said

we should have one in The Dog. So we did,

running through the blue wet streets

with our heads down, laughing, to get there,

down doubles in front of our drenched reflections.

The barmaid caught my eye in the mirror. Beautiful.

We had a job to do, but not till closing-time,

hard men knocking back the brandy, each of us

wearing revenge like a badge on his heart. Hatred

dresses in cheap anonymous suits, the kind

with an inside pocket for a small gun. Good Health.

I smiled at her. Warm rain, like blood, ran down my back.

I remembered my first time, my trembling hand

and Big Frank Connell hissing Get a grip.

Tonight, professional, I walked with the boys

along a filthy alley to the other pub, the one

where it happened, the one where the man

was putting on his coat, ready for home.

Home. Two weeks in a safe house and I’d be there,

glad of familiar accents and my dull wife.

He came out of a side door, clutching a carry-out.

Simple. Afterwards, Wilson was singing dada da da

Tom Someone, hang down your head and cry.

Too bad. I fancied that barmaid all right.

Weasel Words

It was explained to Sir Robert Armstrong that

‘weasel words’ are ‘words empty of meaning, like an

egg which has had its contents sucked out by a weasel’.

Let me repeat that we Weasels mean no harm.

You may have read that we are vicious hunters,

but this is absolutely not the case. Pure bias

on the part of your Natural History Book. Hear, hear.

We are long, slim-bodied carnivores with exceptionally

short legs and we have never denied this.

Furthermore, anyone here today could put a Weasel

down his trouser-leg and nothing would happen. Weasel laughter.

Which is more than can be said for the Ferrets opposite.

You can trust a Weasel, let me continue, a Weasel

does not break the spinal cord of its victim with one bite.

Weasel cheers. Our brown fur coats turn white in winter.

And as for eggs, here is a whole egg. It looks like an egg.

It is an egg. Slurp. An egg. Slurp. A whole egg. Slurp . . . Slurp . . .

Poet for Our Times

I write the headlines for a Daily Paper.

It’s just a knack one’s born with all-right-Squire.

You do not have to be an educator,

just bang the words down like they’re screaming Fire!

CECIL-KEAYS ROW SHOCK TELLS EYETIE WAITER.

ENGLAND FAN CALLS WHINGEING FROG A LIAR.

Cheers. Thing is, you’ve got to grab attention

with just one phrase as punters rush on by.

I’ve made mistakes too numerous to mention,

so now we print the buggers inches high.

TOP MP PANTIE ROMP INCREASES TENSION.

RENT BOY: ROCK STAR PAID ME WELL TO LIE.

I like to think that I’m a sort of poet

for our times. My shout. Know what I mean?

I’ve got a special talent and I show it

in punchy haikus featuring the Queen.

DIPLOMAT IN BED WITH SERBO-CROAT.

EASTENDERS’ BONKING SHOCK IS WELL-OBSCENE.

Of course, these days, there’s not the sense of panic

you got a few years back. What with the box

et cet. I wish I’d been around when the Titanic

sank. To headline that, mate, would’ve been the tops.

SEE PAGE 3 TODAY GENTS THEY’RE GIGANTIC.

KINNOCK-BASHER MAGGIE PULLS OUT STOPS.

And, yes, I have a dream – make that a scotch, ta –

that kids will know my headlines off by heart.

IMMIGRANTS FLOOD IN CLAIMS HEATHROW WATCHER.

GREEN PARTY WOMAN IS A NIGHTCLUB TART.

The poems of the decade . . . Stuff ’em! Gotcha!

The instant tits and bottom line of art.

Job Creation

for Ian McMillan

They have shipped Gulliver up north.

He lies at the edge of the town,

sleeping.

His snores are thunder in the night.

Round here, we reckon they have drugged him

or we dream he is a landscape

which might drag itself up and walk.

Here are ropes, they said.

Tie him down.

We will pay you.

Tie Gulliver down with these ropes.

I slaved all day at his left knee,

until the sun went down

behind it

and clouds gathered on his eyes

and darkness settled on his shoulders

like a job.

Making Money

Turnover. Profit. Readies. Cash. Loot. Dough. Income. Stash.

Dosh. Bread. Finance. Brass. I give my tongue over

to money; the taste of warm rust in a chipped mug

of tap-water. Drink some yourself. Consider

an Indian man in Delhi, Salaamat the niyariwallah,

who squats by an open drain for hours, sifting shit

for the price of a chapati. More than that. His hands

in crumbling gloves of crap pray at the drains

for the pearls in slime his grandfather swore he found.

Megabucks. Wages. Interest. Wealth. I sniff and snuffle

for a whiff of pelf; the stench of an abattoir blown

by a stale wind over the fields. Roll up a fiver,

snort. Meet Kim. Kim will give you the works,

her own worst enema, suck you, lick you, squeal

red weals to your whip, be nun, nurse, nanny,

nymph on a credit card. Don’t worry.

Kim’s only in it for the money. Lucre. Tin. Dibs.

I put my ear to brass lips; a small fire’s whisper

close to a forest. Listen. His cellular telephone

rings in the Bull’s car. Golden hello. Big deal. Now get this

straight. Making a living is making a killing these days.

Jobbers and brokers buzz. He paints out a landscape

by number. The Bull. Seriously rich. Nasty. One of us.

Salary. Boodle. Oof. Blunt. Shekels. Lolly. Gelt. Funds.

I wallow in coin, naked; the scary caress of a fake hand

on my flesh. Get stuck in. Bergama. The boys from the bazaar

hide on the target-range, watching the soldiers fire. Between bursts,

they rush for the spent shells, cart them away for scrap.

Here is the catch. Some shells don’t explode. Ahmat

runs over grass, lucky for six months, so far. So

bomb-collectors die young. But the money’s good.

Palmgrease. Smackers. Greenbacks. Wads. I widen my eyes

at a fortune; a set of knives on black cloth, shining,

utterly beautiful. Weep. The economy booms

like cannon, far out at sea on a lone ship. We leave

our places of work, tired, in the shortening hours, in the time

of night our town could be anywhere, and some of us pause

in the square, where a clown makes money swallowing fire.

Talent Contest

At the end of the pier, an open-air theatre, a crowd

who have paid to come in, wooden slats, the sea slopping out

like beer in a cracked plastic cup, one scrunched cloud

like a boarding-house towel, grey. You’re a contestant.

Take my advice, leave now. Head for the Gaiety Bar

or the rifle-range. Better still, slink to a seat, knot your handkerchief

over your head and watch. The spoon-player has no chance.

Farmyard Noises takes out his teeth. Ambitious. In for the lot.

Why do you sneer? A cheap song sung badly

pleases the crowd. The tap-dancer spreads out his arms

and grins, a man tortured. Beware the ventriloquist,

the dark horse, whose thrown voice juggles the truth.

You don’t want to hear this. Poweran moneyan fame you say to yourself

like a blessing, then you’re into the act. Make ’em laugh. A seagull

shrieks at you out of the blue. Make ’em cry. A baby

sobs and sobs in a pram at the end of a row.

Applause. A show of hands from plonkers with day-jobs. Cheers.

You’re kind to the yodeller later, sneaky and modest, not letting on

you thought it a piece of piss. Talent. A doubt like faraway thunder

threatens to ruin the day, that it’s squandered on this.

Ape

There is a male silverback on the calendar.

Behind him the jungle is defocused,

except in one corner, where trees gargle the sun.

After you have numbered the days, you tear off

the page. His eyes hold your eyes

as you crumple a forest in your fist.

The Legend

Some say it was seven tons of meat in a thick black hide

you could build a boat from, stayed close to the river

on the flipside of the sun where the giant forests were.

Had shy, old eyes. You’d need both those hands for one.

Maybe. Walked in placid herds under a jungly, sweating roof

just breathing; a dry electric wind you could hear a mile off.

Huge feet. Some say if it rained you could fish in a footprint,

fruit fell when it passed. It moved, food happened, simple.

You think of a warm, inky cave and you got its mouth all right.

You dream up a yard of sandpaper, damp, you’re talking tongue.

Eat? Its own weight in a week. And water. Some say

the sweat steamed from its back in small grey clouds.

But big. Enormous. Spine like the mast on a galleon.

Ears like sails gasping for a wind. You picture

a rope you could hang a man from, you’re seeing its tail.

Tusks like bannisters. I almost believe myself. Can you

drum up a roar as wide as a continent, a deep hot note

that bellowed out and belonged to the melting air? You got it.

But people have always lied! You know some say it had a trunk

like a soft telescope, that it looked up along it at the sky

and balanced a bright, gone star on the end, and it died.

Descendants

Most of us worked the Lancashire vineyards all year and a few freak redheads died.

We were well-nuked. Knackered. The gaffers gave us a bonus

in Burgdy and Claray. Big fucking deal, we thought, we’d been robbing them blind

for months. Drink enough of it, you can juggle with snakes, no sweat.

Some nights, me and Sarah went down to the ocean with a few flasks

and a groundsheet and we’d have it off three or four times in a night

that barely got dark. For hours, you could hear the dolphins rearing up

as if they were after something. Strange bastards. I like dolphins.

Anyway. She’s soft, Sarah. She can read. Big green moon and her with a book

of poetry her Gran had. Nuke me. Nice words, right enough, and I love the girl,

but I’d had plenty. Winter, I goes, Spring, Autumn, Summer, don’t give me

that crap, Sarah, and I flung the book over the white sand, into the waves,

beyond the dolphins. Click-click. Sad. I hate the bastard past, see,

I’d piss on an ancestor as soon as trace one. What fucking seasons

I says to her, just look at us now. So we looked. At each other.

At the trembling unsafe sky. And she started, didn’t she, to cry.

Tears over her lovely blotchy purple face. It got to me.

We Remember Your Childhood Well

Nobody hurt you. Nobody turned off the light and argued

with somebody else all night. The bad man on the moors

was only a movie you saw. Nobody locked the door.

Your questions were answered fully. No. That didn’t occur.

You couldn’t sing anyway, cared less. The moment’s a blur, a Film Fun

laughing itself to death in the coal fire. Anyone’s guess.

Nobody forced you. You wanted to go that day. Begged. You chose

the dress. Here are the pictures, look at you. Look at us all,

smiling and waving, younger. The whole thing is inside your head.

What you recall are impressions; we have the facts. We called the tune.

The secret police of your childhood were older and wiser than you, bigger

than you. Call back the sound of their voices. Boom. Boom. Boom.

Nobody sent you away. That was an extra holiday, with people

you seemed to like. They were firm, there was nothing to fear.

There was none but yourself to blame if it ended in tears.

What does it matter now? No, no, nobody left the skidmarks of sin

on your soul and laid you wide open for Hell. You were loved.

Always. We did what was best. We remember your childhood well.

The Act of Imagination

Under the Act, the following things may be
prosecuted for appalling the Imagination.

Ten More Years.

A dog playing Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’.

President Quayle.

The pyjamas of Tax Inspectors.

The Beef Tapeworm (Taenia Saginata).

British Rail.

Picking someone else’s nose.

The Repatriation Charter.

Gaol.

The men. The Crucifix. The nails.

The sound of the neighbours having sex.

The Hanging Lobby.

The Bomb.

Glow-in-the-dark Durex.

A Hubby.

Bedtime with Nancy and Ron.

The sweet smell of success.

A camel’s jobby.

On

and on. And on. And on.

Eating the weakest survivor.

A small hard lump.

Drinking meths.

Going as Lady Godiva.

A parachute jump.

One breast.

Homeless and down to a fiver.

A hump.

Bad breath.

Here is a space to fill in things you suggest.

Death.

Somewhere Someone’s Eyes

What if there had been a painter – he was drunk – equal

to Picasso, who filled his canvases for years,

destroyed them all, and died? It was the old one

about the tree, the empty wood, the unheard moan

of a great oak falling unobserved. We thought

we’d humour him. Or a composer, whose scores

were never played — who also died — nor ever found?

Because I remember this, a cool room flares

with the heat of a winter’s fire, briefly. His face

glowed red-brown when he spoke to the flames.

I recollect it more than well, smell malt. What

happens to the lost? The shadow his mind made legless

lurched against the wall, glass raised. He cursed,

demanded an answer from the dog. All night it snowed.

Somewhere . . . he said, but we’d had enough, began

to joke and get half-screwed ourselves. Somewhere someone’s . . .

Outside, the trees shifted under their soft burdens,

or I imagine so. Our footsteps disappeared. It was easy

to laugh in that snug house, talk nonsense

half the night, drink. Across the white fields somewhere

someone’s eyes blazed as they burned words in their mouth.

Liar

She made things up: for example, that she was really

a man. After she’d taken off her cotton floral

day-frock she was him alright, in her head,

dressed in that heavy herringbone from Oxfam.

He was called Susan actually. The eyes in the mirror

knew that, but she could stare them out.

Of course, a job; of course, a humdrum city flat;

of course, the usual friends. Lover? Sometimes.

She lived like you do, a dozen slack rope-ends

in each dream hand, tugging uselessly on memory

or hope. Frayed. She told stories. I lived

in Moscow once . . . I nearly drowned . . . Rotten.

Lightning struck me and I’m here to tell . . . Liar.

Hyperbole, falsehood, fiction, fib were pebbles tossed

at the evening’s flat pool; her bright eyes

fixed on the ripples. No one believed her.

Our secret films are private affairs, watched

behind the eyes. She spoke in subtitles. Not on.

From bad to worse. The ambulance whinged all the way

to the park where she played with the stolen child.

You know the rest. The man in the long white wig

who found her sadly confused. The top psychiatrist

who studied her in gaol, then went back home and did

what he does every night to the Princess of Wales.

Boy

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