My Father and I In The Time of Water

1
The sign on the centre for the homeless
says closed for lack of funds.
People stand in the rain.
Piped music floats out of the supermarket
So Happy Together, And How Is The Weather?

A woman in dressing gown and slippers
shuffles through a puddle,
says good morning, my dear
to a man who lives in a tent
on a footbridge over the river
that works its way to the bay.

If a river is the border between countries
what happens when the river changes course?
Do those who live by the river find themselves
in another country without moving?

The grey, chilly water
spreads further day by day.

The spotted scarf and battered trilby
of the man in the doorway
with the dog at his feet.

I was born in a graveyard,
born in another time,
sings a busker
who will be in the background
of the selfie lovers take
as they laugh by the broken fountain.

And in the square
where invading crows
in their ridiculous tyranny
chase off pigeons
an old man takes off his gloves
to coax notes from the free piano
and a young woman
half-sings, half-weeps
I guess that’s just the way the story goes

2
On the south coast cliff path
we, the laughed-at, the despised,
those who did not vote for this,
stop and look out to sea.
Behind us the mountain, where
already in mid-afternoon
the night readies itself to come down
carrying its tablets of bone.

In the twilight the bridge across the estuary carries what, exactly?
People, machines, water.
Well, yes, but what else?
Ah, I see. Democracy.

Outside the gallery by the harbour
a painter of miniatures,
anxious to be understood,
closing his shutters
for the last time,
tells the coffee shop owner
I risked everything coming here

The shadows of small boats darken as the rising tide quickens.
Gulls gather at the feet of a woman eating chips on a bench.
The smell of diesel masks the salt of the sea.

On the small patch of sand beneath the bandstand
a young woman stands and stares out to sea.
Her black boots sink a little as the tide comes in.
Last night in a bar she told us
how at Hallowe’en she sat on the harbour wall
tossing stones into the water,
at two in the morning
saw a shooting star
and told herself it’s time I grew up.

You and I
wander at our pace
up to the headland and
through the exhausted quarry,
pause to look at the waves lapping
on the cracked, lop-sided stone jetty.
Out on the water, beyond
the black-backed gulls, there are
dolphins.

3
It’s one of those days when you feel old and look older.
Drizzle. Fog.

In the disused, damp factory
where I used to work
I meet the keeper of dreams.
You will always seek me out, she says.
Yes, whichever dream you like.
Go on, pick one.
There are centuries of them here.
Try this one, why don’t you.

The first man springs out of a tree,
dries himself with dust, curses what he sees.

In a house long ago
a girl unclips an ear-ring, smiles, undresses
as I sit in an arm-chair and try to write.

And the night travels to places
we’ll never find (should we have a mind to go)
to ways of being we’ll never know.

Guided by the north star
on the road to whatever wilderness might sustain us
we bury earthen pots filled with water
so that if we pass this way again
we might drink.

In the desert an old man sits on his porch
wearing a necklace made
from the fangs of rattlesnakes.
To disturb no one, he says, is a purpose in itself.
Ask yourself how many lives begin and end within one life.
It’s not a complete chain, it’s a process of shaking things off.
And there’s no coming back without a going.

We listen to the sound of dreams rising and falling.
A girl whose home is the doorway of a closed-down shop
taps me on the shoulder, says Can a dream be forgotten
when we don’t know what we remember?
I say Can we see silence?
Can we hear a spider crossing a web?

In the earth, deep in the soil,
things work on becoming something else.
In the town, the supermarket has opened its doors.
Someone has switched on the music system.
I thought love was only true in fairy tales…
If we don’t know where we’re going, we can’t get lost.
Nothing is ever over.

4
We are encouraged to talk through our problems.
I’m here because the sea knows it’s autumn.
I’m here because my mother’s name is Tanya.
I’m here because I refuse to eat pickled cheese.
We are advised to occupy ourselves.
An occupation is what occupies our time
as a vacation is an emptying, a time for leaving.

We are encouraged to dream.
A woman stands by the side of the road on a sunny day.
When is this? Who is she?
A red headscarf, a calf-length pale blue dress.
A pick-up truck passes, slows, picks up speed again.
The woman hears its engine fade.
Then silence, then birdsong
and soon a mothball moon.

Two women, immaculate and expressionless,
walk along the edge of a new dream.
One says
In the days when gloves were de rigueur
and then they are gone.
And out of nowhere, making coffee early one morning,
I remember the girl in front of me at the interview
whose shirt rode up when she leaned forward
to make a point
and on a rainy day sudden sunlight
showed up fine blonde hairs on the small of her back.

5
I make a mug of tea.
I have always been a stranger, I tell the girl.
I must hurry, she says, picking up her umbrella.
I have a train to catch.

And I think of poor
Al Bowlly, weary, watching the names of stations pass
on the last train home from High Wycombe.
It seems nothing connects, everything’s too late.

By another lake where people row boats in circles
a young couple lay down their bicycles
sit on the grass and talk, shyly at first.

Rain will fall as they walk around the headland
away from all they’ve ever known.

Borders zig-zag around the planet.
Borders should join people together not set them apart.
Wild-fires spread through cities and forests.
A priest leads a line of children past burnt-out cars
blown-out windows of smashed-down houses.

And out there in the past
Marco trains in the mountains
pounds out the miles
where the light falls undisturbed
and rain gathers itself into pools
at the side of the road.
I remember driving up from the airport
to ask questions and found him sitting
cross-legged
on the freezing terrace
like an unmoving, ancient priest
watching night fall.

Later, back again, you, the girl, full of head cold,
lie on the bed and try to sleep.
Somewhere my mother knits and hums as
on the Light Programme
Al Bowlly sings Got A Date With An Angel.
Connections are so difficult to make.

Now children make rice cakes
in kitchens, listen
to the meandering stories
of women perpetually tired.

A time of war, the time of my father,
is never far away.

6
The radio station changes from Bach to the Beach Boys.
It’s one of those days when
the old man can’t think of anything except the nightmare.
The images and sounds won’t go away.
A girl long ago, unclipping an ear-ring, undressing.
And then the terrible interruption:
An explosion, a figure half-running, half-crawling –
and then the boy lies on the front lawn.
His pet rabbit pauses at the line of blood that leaks from his head.

And further back, sent to a war he couldn’t understand,
alone in the windless, sodden night he sees
the thin pin-pricks of light coming down the mountain,
the tiny head-torches of the enemy.
He shrinks into the wet undergrowth and hopes.

Now on the vast lake of his regret
his bony hands shaking, his slowing mind turns its boat to home.
There is no one but himself
and the water streaming down the windows,
dripping through the roof.

7
And the old man crosses a road, weaving between cars waiting at lights.
The girl calls out You could have been killed.
Let’s get you indoors, she says.
I just wanted to go out, he says.

I don’t think you’re mad at all, says the girl,
helping him off with his wet coat,
hanging his wet cap by the fire.
They told me you were mad.
He smiles the echo of a smile and spreads his broken hands.
Please forgive me if my words fall short.

It doesn’t matter, she says, unclipping an ear ring.
I’ll put the kettle on.

8
And here we are, thinks this year’s girl, on the mattress beneath the window
hiding with her boyfriend as the storm turns to sleet, then snow
and on YouTube The Imagined Village play Cold, Haily, Rainy Night.
An old man she vaguely recognises calls to her from his room in the future
Can you see us? There we are
making our one-pot dinner and laughing, we shout
swashbuckling! rip-roaring! kerfuffle!
just to hear the sounds they make,
and we go out to Pete’s Bar
where Sophie’s playing

and back home as the clock outside chimes midnight
huddled under blankets we read
seventeen poems about insects in the magazine
we found in a supermarket trolley
on the path by the river.

9
The river again.
In a bar called Hallelujah Junction which floods every winter
the wild woman offers to bet anyone a pound of ready-rubbed
she can stay awake for a thousand years.

Time. What a time we had. On the game show
the prize is still a holiday for two in Torremolinos,
a portable television and some kitchenware.

Have I said too much?
You never know. They don’t tell you.
It frightens me even to write this down.
And there in the mud bootprints.
A dog barks. Another howls.
The storm troopers are gathering.
I need to leave.
Quietly, through the shadows and alleyways
down to the river.
Wade across.
The damage can’t be undone.

10
Go on then, stop talking about it, start your novel now. I’ll give you the first line. How about It was closing time at Cafe Gijon when I saw him for the first time.
And here’s the end. I stepped in out of the rain. Cafe Gijon seemed just the same. I sat by the window with my coffee. All the perfect people passing by.
Now fill in the gap. Feel free. Write the war out of your head.

Just a stroll, just a stroll, just a stroll in the sun…
Holding hands on the bus and Harry Nilsson singing Without You.
A moment that never fades. When was it? Nearly 50 years ago. More than that.
Time fills itself, pushes its boundaries further and further out
past whatever we think is distance.

A policeman checks out the house where the refugees sheltered and starved.
All he can hear is the buzzing of flies.
And then the smell.
Across the street, just out of the shower a woman brushes her long hair,
ties it back, wraps a towel around herself,
walks to the window to see what the sirens are all about.

There’s no point in saying goodbye.
And there is an art to living in rain.
Another letter and another one after it.
We look forward to hearing from you.
To settle this bill you need take no action.
This is a summary of your charges.

And the songs and the girls and the terror come back again and again.
The Last Train To Clarksville took all those lost boys to Fort Campbell and Vietnam.
Oh no, no, no, and I don’t know if I’m ever coming home.

After the musicians have packed away their instruments
and left the hall
after the caretaker has switched off the lights and locked up
you go on living with
the day the ammunition trucks blew up and killed everyone but you.

11
At what point do you give up
the person you could have been?
When the words escape on to the page?
Something to do with faith, maybe?
The lengths that I would go to
if you came to see me now
out of curiosity, perhaps, or
just to settle memories
into a permanent past.
Would you turn away?
Would you wonder about a perfect moment that can never come again?

Against orders,
you took time to feed the tired and broken, the displaced, the replaced.
They put you on a charge and you gave them back their stripe.
Would I have been so strong?

Rain drips off leaves, pours from a hole in the guttering.

You tell me as we sit on a bench
and watch people with medals marching
War eats you alive.
The roar of the air burning stays, the screams of a child convulsing in the fire. The bloated, blackened bodies that as I drove away I thought were cows.
Don’t let them convince you any of it is worth commemorating.
And don’t wear a poppy.

12
The happy highways where I went…

She walks across the room to get a glass of water,
stands by the window looking at the stars
says why do you always hold something back?

and the letter with the folded newspaper cutting
that tells me she has drowned,
sailing in ‘safe waters’.

There will always be songs unsung, poems unwritten.

13
Somebody has to do it, shrugs the man
just before dawn as the body-boat heads out into the estuary.

You swim in the rain
in the pool of an empty hotel.

The collector of sweet wrappers
has a package coming in of Fry’s Five Boys
(Desperation, Pacification, Expectation, Acclamation, Realization)
complains that he left his umbrella in a taxi
What shall I do? It’s hammering down.

Bend into the downpour, walk on in search of a quiet day
and a person who cares.
In the city you can get married without a wait
and hire witnesses for the price of a drink at the bar.
There were angels dancing in the Blitz
and pigeons sang in Trafalgar Square.

14
I’m in the coffee shop two hours before kick-off.
Mocha Praline, Iced Macchiato, Pumpkin Spice Cappuccino.
To drink in or take out?
How much space do dreams take up?
I see the ghost of my father fumbling for change in his overcoat pocket.
The collection box for the food bank is full with pasta, cereal bars, tins of fish, fruit, veg.
The sign says they need soap, tooth paste, baby milk, nappies, women’s hygiene items, shampoo, toilet paper.
The sign says PLEASE HELP US

Over at the Sizzling Grill queues begin to form for hot dogs, burgers, bacon sandwiches.
Two police officers arrive for take away Americanos.
A workman in blue overalls wanders in past the sign OPEN 7 DAYS DRIVE THRU
A man next to me in an Albion shirt reads a book in Arabic.
Another fiddles with a phone, puts his wallet and sunglasses on the table beside his mug of hot chocolate.
I look out.
Rain clouds sweep in from the west.

15
I remember, I think,
fishing in a cold winter mist.

The old photograph I’ve carried in my wallet?
I don’t have a wallet.

If you find a river, wait and watch.
Set up home, expect nothing.
The coffee’s ready. Keep on fishing if you want.
I’ll bring the sound of your father
and your father’s father down in a flask.

And way back, a young man lies on a single bed in a dim, £3 a week room.
A note is pushed under his door. Sorry, you have to leave today.

It’s not that far to the main road, he could go the other way, away
from the lights and the noise, but he knows his feet will follow the river.
Do you know someone who’s gone away, or someone who’s not come back?
Is your skin thick enough to stand the winter?
I told you There’s no coming back without a going.

16
Wind in the power lines.
On the sea front
a young couple entwined.
Let the last rain of winter
flow into your veins.
Watch the yellow light come,
the crows swooping again.
They chase away a gull.
Make of it what you will.

17
Grief.
I tell myself to think what is gained not lost.
We met long ago, didn’t we.
To everything burn, burn, burn.
And the busker in the square sings
And all that we crave
And all that we see
And all that we dream
And all that we need
Again and again and again and again and…
And those we believe
And those we receive
And those we deceive
And those we shall leave
Again and again and again and again

And my father’s shadow still shuffles
out of the dark corner of the room
and is nobody’s business but mine.

He holds out his bony, shaking hand.
Rain beats on the roof.