They had a scheme to plant an apple there again

beginning with a pip, but he rejected it.

I SAY I SAY I SAY

Anyone here had a go at themselves

for a laugh? Anyone opened their wrists

with a blade in the bath? Those in the dark

at the back, listen hard. Those at the front

in the know, those of us who have, hands up,

let’s show that inch of lacerated skin

between the forearm and the fist. Let’s tell it

like it is: strong drink, a crimson tidemark

round the tub, a yard of lint, white towels

washed a dozen times, still pink. Tough luck.

A passion then for watches, bangles, cuffs.

A likely story: you were lashed by brambles

picking berries from the woods. Come clean, come good,

repeat with me the punch line “Just like blood”

when those at the back rush forward to say

how a little love goes a long long long way.

WHITE CHRISTMAS

For once it is a white Christmas,

so white the roads are impassable

and my wife is snowbound

in a town untroubled by tractor or snowplough.

In bed, awake, alone. She calls

and we pass on our presents by telephone.

Mine is a watch, the very one

I would have chosen. Hers is a song,

the one with the line Here come the hills of time

and it sits in its sleeve,

unsung and unopened. But the dog downstairs

is worrying, gnawing, howling,

so I walk her through clean snow

along the tow-path to the boat-house at a steady pace,

then to my parents’ place

where my mother is Marie Curie, in the kitchen

discovering radium, and my father is Fred Flintstone,

and a guest from the past has a look on her face meaning

lie and I’ll have your teeth for a necklace, boy,

your eyeballs for earrings,

your bullshit for breakfast,

and my two-year-old niece is baby Jesus,

passing between us with the fruit of the earth

and the light of the world—Christingle—a blood orange

spiked with a burning candle.

We eat, but the dog begs at the table,

drinks from the toilet, sings in the cellar.

Only baby Jesus wanders with me down the stairs

with a shank of meat to see her, to feed her.

Later, when I stand to leave

my father wants to shake me by the hand

but my arms are heavy, made of a base metal,

and the dog wants to take me down the black lane, back

to an empty house again. A car goes by

with my sister inside

and to wave goodnight

she lifts the arm of the sleeping infant Christ,

but I turn my wrist to notice the time. There and then

I’m the man in the joke, the man in a world of friends

where all the clocks are stopped,

synchronising his own watch.

BEFORE YOU CUT LOOSE,

put dogs on the list

of difficult things to lose. Those dogs ditched

on the North York Moors or the Sussex Downs