Read Online Selected Poems by Tony Harrison - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Tony Harrison
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Folk’s Flats.
Since mi mam dropped dead mi dad’s took fright.
His dicky ticker beats its quick retreat:
It won’t be long before Ah’m t’only white!
Or t’Town Hall’s thick red line sweeps through t’whole street.
II
Their front garden (8 × 5) was one of those
the lazier could write off as ‘la-di-dah’.
Her brother pipesmoked greenfly off each rose
in summer linen coat and Panama.
Hard-faced traders tore her rooms apart.
Litter and lavender in ransacked drawers,
the yearly programmes for the D’Oyly Carte.
‘Three Little Maids’ she’d marked with ‘4 encores!’
Encore! No more. A distant relative
roared up on a loud bike and poked around.
Mi mam cried when he’d gone, and spat out:
Spiv!
I got Tennyson and Milton leather-bound.
The Sharpes came next. He beat her, blacked her eye.
Through walls I heard each blow, each
Cunt! Cunt! Cunt!
The Jowetts’ dahlias were left to die.
Now mi dad’s the only one keeps up his front.
III
Also the only one who shifts his snow
and him long past his three score years and ten.
You
try
to understand:
Their sort don’t know
.
They’re from the sun. But wait till they’re old men.
But if some from out that ‘old lot’ still survive
and, shopping for essentials, shuffle past,
they’ll know by your three clear flags that you’re alive
and, though you’ll never speak, they’re not the last.
Outside your clearing your goloshes slip.
The danger starts the moment you’re next door –
the fall, the dreaded ‘dislocated hip’,
the body’s final freeze-up with no thaw.
If you weren’t scared you’d never use the phone!
The winter’s got all England in its vice.
All night I hear a spade that scrapes on stone
and see our street one skidding slide of ice.
IV
All turbans round here now, forget flat caps!
They’ve taken over everything bar t’
CO-OP.
Pork’s gone west, chitt’lins, trotters, dripping baps!
And booze an’ all, if it’s a Moslem owns t’new shop.
Ay, t’
Off Licence,
that’s gone Paki in t’same way!
(You took your jug and bought your bitter draught)
Ah can’t get over it
, mi dad’ll say,
smelling curry in a pop shop. Seems all daft.
Next door but one this side ’s front room wi t’
Singers
hell for leather all day long ’s
some sort o’ sweatshop bi the looks on it
running up them dresses … them … sarongs!
Last of the ‘old lot’ still left in your block.
Those times, they’re gone. The ‘old lot’ can’t come back.
Both doors I notice now you double lock –
he’s already in your shoes, your next-door black.
Long Distance
I
Your bed’s got two wrong sides. Your life’s all grouse.
I let your phone-call take its dismal course:
Ah can’t stand it no more, this empty house!
Carrots choke us wi’out your mam’s white sauce!
Them sweets you brought me, you can have ’em back.
Ah’m diabetic now. Got all the facts.
(The diabetes comes hard on the track
of two coronaries and cataracts.)
Ah’ve allus liked things sweet! But now ah push
food down mi throat! Ah’d sooner do wi’out.
And t’only reason now for beer ’s to flush
(so t’dietician said) mi kidneys out.
When I come round, they’ll be laid out, the sweets,
Lifesavers
, my father’s New World treats,
still in the big brown bag, and only bought
rushing through JFK as a last thought.
II
Though my mother was already two years dead
Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas,
put hot water bottles her side of the bed
and still went to renew her transport pass.
You couldn’t just drop in. You had to phone.
He’d put you off an hour to give him time
to clear away her things and look alone
as though his still raw love were such a crime.
He couldn’t risk my blight of disbelief
though sure that very soon he’d hear her key
scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief.
He
knew
she’d just popped out to get the tea.
I believe life ends with death, and that is all.
You haven’t both
Since mi mam dropped dead mi dad’s took fright.
His dicky ticker beats its quick retreat:
It won’t be long before Ah’m t’only white!
Or t’Town Hall’s thick red line sweeps through t’whole street.
II
Their front garden (8 × 5) was one of those
the lazier could write off as ‘la-di-dah’.
Her brother pipesmoked greenfly off each rose
in summer linen coat and Panama.
Hard-faced traders tore her rooms apart.
Litter and lavender in ransacked drawers,
the yearly programmes for the D’Oyly Carte.
‘Three Little Maids’ she’d marked with ‘4 encores!’
Encore! No more. A distant relative
roared up on a loud bike and poked around.
Mi mam cried when he’d gone, and spat out:
Spiv!
I got Tennyson and Milton leather-bound.
The Sharpes came next. He beat her, blacked her eye.
Through walls I heard each blow, each
Cunt! Cunt! Cunt!
The Jowetts’ dahlias were left to die.
Now mi dad’s the only one keeps up his front.
III
Also the only one who shifts his snow
and him long past his three score years and ten.
You
try
to understand:
Their sort don’t know
.
They’re from the sun. But wait till they’re old men.
But if some from out that ‘old lot’ still survive
and, shopping for essentials, shuffle past,
they’ll know by your three clear flags that you’re alive
and, though you’ll never speak, they’re not the last.
Outside your clearing your goloshes slip.
The danger starts the moment you’re next door –
the fall, the dreaded ‘dislocated hip’,
the body’s final freeze-up with no thaw.
If you weren’t scared you’d never use the phone!
The winter’s got all England in its vice.
All night I hear a spade that scrapes on stone
and see our street one skidding slide of ice.
IV
All turbans round here now, forget flat caps!
They’ve taken over everything bar t’
CO-OP.
Pork’s gone west, chitt’lins, trotters, dripping baps!
And booze an’ all, if it’s a Moslem owns t’new shop.
Ay, t’
Off Licence,
that’s gone Paki in t’same way!
(You took your jug and bought your bitter draught)
Ah can’t get over it
, mi dad’ll say,
smelling curry in a pop shop. Seems all daft.
Next door but one this side ’s front room wi t’
Singers
hell for leather all day long ’s
some sort o’ sweatshop bi the looks on it
running up them dresses … them … sarongs!
Last of the ‘old lot’ still left in your block.
Those times, they’re gone. The ‘old lot’ can’t come back.
Both doors I notice now you double lock –
he’s already in your shoes, your next-door black.
Long Distance
I
Your bed’s got two wrong sides. Your life’s all grouse.
I let your phone-call take its dismal course:
Ah can’t stand it no more, this empty house!
Carrots choke us wi’out your mam’s white sauce!
Them sweets you brought me, you can have ’em back.
Ah’m diabetic now. Got all the facts.
(The diabetes comes hard on the track
of two coronaries and cataracts.)
Ah’ve allus liked things sweet! But now ah push
food down mi throat! Ah’d sooner do wi’out.
And t’only reason now for beer ’s to flush
(so t’dietician said) mi kidneys out.
When I come round, they’ll be laid out, the sweets,
Lifesavers
, my father’s New World treats,
still in the big brown bag, and only bought
rushing through JFK as a last thought.
II
Though my mother was already two years dead
Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas,
put hot water bottles her side of the bed
and still went to renew her transport pass.
You couldn’t just drop in. You had to phone.
He’d put you off an hour to give him time
to clear away her things and look alone
as though his still raw love were such a crime.
He couldn’t risk my blight of disbelief
though sure that very soon he’d hear her key
scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief.
He
knew
she’d just popped out to get the tea.
I believe life ends with death, and that is all.
You haven’t both
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