Seven things I like (Part 6)

7. My father's poetry

It’s no coincidence at all that this series of posts comes to an end on Father’s Day.

I’m not going to write a glowing tribute to mine today for a number of reasons, not least of which being that he really wouldn’t thank me for it. He’s not that kind of father and just as significantly I have discovered, relatively recently and very much to my surprise, that I’m not that kind of son either.

Instead I thought I would pay tribute with his own words, by including a couple of poems of his which are reproduced with his kind and only slightly grudging permission. He worried that it might reinforce the impression that the blame for some of my occasional angst could be laid at his door. Since that’s almost certainly true, I think that’s a risk he’s going to have to take.

My dad has gone through a number of fads and phases, and I remember them all. There was the passing interest in Tarot readings, around the time that my parents split up. He had dozens of different packs, read all of the different books on what cards meant what and distilled them all into his own. Taking such a scientific approach to something supposed to be so mystical is just him all over. I don’t think it helped him to find the answers he wanted. But hot on the heels of that was his obsession with badminton, one I’m sure he doesn’t regret since he met my stepmother that way.

More recently, it’s become an abiding passion for tango. I still remember him and my stepmother at the party for my fifth wedding anniversary smoothly gliding round the dance floor to music from Flight of the Conchords when most of the rest of us were too drunk to stand, putting us all to shame. His yen for collecting is undimmed too, he’s now working on a collection of fountain pens which makes me a little green with envy on every new visit.

But his writing is the passion of his I best remember and most love. When I was a teenager he wrote two thirds of the funniest novel you never read in your life; every few weeks a printout of the next chapter would come my way and I would devour it in next to no time. But then he just lost interest and stopped, much to my frustration. Years later he would say “that bastard Terry Pratchett came along and did it all so much better” and I know he believed it, but I wasn’t so sure.

When he started writing poetry I was a bit taken by surprise. Generally speaking, he would sooner die than express most emotions in conversation, or indeed out loud. So when I read poetry of his, I couldn’t help wondering if it had been written by somebody else masquerading as my dad. Now I am a little older, I think I understand better that we say different things in different ways and can be all sorts of complicated contradictions.

In any case I loved his writing, always have, and was always prepared to endure all sorts of poetry readings for the five minute slot when he would make his way to the microphone. He was invariably in a different league to most of the people there, a feeling I think he has always rather enjoyed. Even at the time I was very conscious that it should have been the other way round and I ought to have been doing something to make him proud of me, but I think I still have plenty of time. Besides, he still owes me for one evening when he performed a poem in a style which sounded dangerously close to rap.

These are two of my favourite poems by him, about his own parents, and they seemed especially appropriate today of all days.

Ghost To Ghost

I wasn’t prepared for an outbuilding,
a squat-blocked, concrete afterthought.
It felt more like intensive indifference
in that whispered foot-fall space
between the unmade graves,
the rows of shallow breathing beds,
each waiting to shed its burden
with a discreet fanfare of drawn screens.

You were as I expected, from the call,
an instrumented bundle, wired and tubed
from nose and arm and side,
tied to a bleeping box,
its phosphorescent trace
your only acknowledgement.
A shelved grey puppet, fragile,
effortlessly pinned by the thin coverlet

What could I find to say to you, sleeping,
drifting in drugged, slow decision?
Do not go gentle seemed pretentious,
obvious, and anyway you, a knocked-down,
dragged-up boy of the iron valleys,
would have had no time for Dylan’s
brass-belled vowels.

We were never for talking or touching,
you and I, and so I was surprised
when my hand took yours.
I squeezed and waited
but no Hollywood miracle occurred,
the well was too deep,
too deep for any echo.

No, we never talked, man to boy
or man to man but if echoes do survive
that long returning and if,
after all these years you read,
over my shoulder,
the memories in this mirror
then at least we have talked
ghost to ghost and now you know.
Once, I held your hand.

Pictures

Twice a week sometimes, the six of us
went to the Kingsway Picture House.
The queue would wrap itself around
the building for Clark Gable but we
were always toward the front,
a strategically aligned phalanx
of two by three.

Gran and Auntie Mabel in the lead,
old lady with elbows like stilettos
partnered with a slow monolith
who could, on Gran’s command,
stun a bulldozer. Two kids safely
in the middle, with you and Dad
bringing up the rear.

You were young then and happy,
often for no good reason. I remember
watching Gone With The Wind
in overcoats and afterwards,
ignoring the cold, you played Scarlett
on the way home, even though
our South had snow.

Now, the Kingsway is a car park,
Gran is long gone, Dad too and big
Auntie Mabel lives with another sister
and probably growls at the postman
and chases cats from the garden
and you, like your world, have shrunk
from pictures to TV.

I can’t quite remember when your life
went from wide-angle to close up. It’s as if
that stunning shot of Atlanta’s stockyards,
filled with the broken future of the South,
had suddenly zoomed in to focus,
oh so sharply, on a single wound.

* * * * *

That brings this meme to a close, so thanks for enduring it all the way to the end. Now, as promised, I’m going to pass it on to seven blogs and I’ve tried to pick some new blogs I haven’t mentioned before.

The View From This End - I love Moannie’s blog which is so gracefully written on such a wide range of topics. I particularly recommend her longer posts about her past which are beautifully put. A good example of Moannie at her best is this post.

The Eternal Worrier - Gorgeous, affecting writing and some genuinely funny portraits of working life. His most recent post is a good example of what he does so well, and I think he has even better writing ahead of him.

The Domesticated Bohemian is another of my very favourite blogs lately. He too is going through a phase of mining his past and telling fantastic stories which are word perfect. I loved this post with a passion verging on the evangelical.

Happy Frog and I - A fellow Reading blogger who I can just about forgive for regularly trouncing me in the pub quiz, Happy Frog’s blog is an uplifting mixture of poetry, nostalgia, lists and all manner of other nicely done posts. I especially enjoyed this one about Prague.

El Corte a la Inglesa is a great blog by an Englishwoman in Spain who has a criminally small following. Among many of her posts that I’d highly recommend, this one is a good place to start.

Living Shallow, Living Well is a blog about which I know virtually nothing but every time a post comes up on it I read it and really enjoy it. The most recent post, It was particularly good.

Knightley or Elton, last but not least, is one of those fantastic blogs that has a voice so distinctive that you just want to pull up a chair and listen to them talking about pretty much anything for as long as they can spare. Again, all his posts are superb but to get the gist read this one first.

They don’t have to do it, and if they do they certainly don’t have to do it at length the way I have if they don‘t want to. They don’t even have to write about seven things they like, but I’d love to read some kind of list of seven things from them. I don’t mind if they don’t though, if they simply want to take this as me telling them that I really enjoy their blogs, that’s fine too. And if you want to take this as a recommendation to go and check their blogs out, go ahead.

There, all done. By my reckoning I should be due another meme in about six months’ time.