The Joke - Karl Dallas

The Joke

Love stories by

Karl Dallas





Interspersed with a

few poems and

songs

October Press, Bradford 2006

Sitting here in the shade, eating

grapes and shortcakes, writing

love poems. Is this what I came

here for? For love? Perhaps it is

exactly what I came here for.

–SMS text message

sent from mobile phone

in Nablus, Palestine,

July 4, 2002

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Contents A dance of death .................................................... 80

Songs of a wanderer ................................................ 4 That woman ........................................................... 80

The haiku lady ......................................................... 6 Cante Hondo .......................................................... 83

The joke ................................................................... 6 The goodbye .......................................................... 85

Song: A blessing .................................................... 19 Song parody: Dolly the Sheep ............................... 94

Tobe not ................................................................. 20 The return .............................................................. 95

Song: The Lady from the West ............................... 22 One Love ............................................................... 98

Songs from the mountains ..................................... 23 Notes .................................................................... 101

Magdala ................................................................. 26 Who is the man who has written

“Why not?” ............................................................ 34 all this stuff? ........................................................ 105

Moonshadow ......................................................... 40

The wedding picture .............................................. 41 Acknowledgements

Obviously, my thanks must go out to all those, past, present and future, who live

Ballad: Fair Annie and Lovely Johnny .................. 48 in these pages, and also many who are not to be found within them. I have been

A Death .................................................................. 50 enriched by them all, even (or perhaps especially) those who have not accepted, or

have turned away from my love. (See Tobe not, p. 20.) I must mention particularly

A sad dance ............................................................ 54 my wife, Gloria, who has been more understanding of my wayward ways, and my

The heart songs ...................................................... 54 sometimes obsessive need to sing the songs of this particular wanderer, than any

man has the right to expect.

Song: On the banks of the moorlands ................... 56

Most of the work has been created on the pocket computer which never leaves my

Magdalene ............................................................. 57 breast pocket, originally a rather bricklike Nokia Communicator (the first of that

The Thirteenth Hour .............................................. 62 ilk), and currently a Handspring Treo 600, bought on eBay.

After uploading to my desktop PC, I have fine-tuned and tweaked the texts within

The wedding at Cana ............................................. 62 Microsoft Word, and assembled the PDF file using Adobe Pagemaker 6.5 and

Into the War Zone .................................................. 64 Adobe Acrobat 8. The sound samples were recorded at various studios, though

mainly at Bradford Community Broadcasting, edited in Sony SoundForge, and

Born to live ............................................................ 66 turned into web-compatible Flash files using the MP3SoundStream program. The

Crushed by a wheel ............................................... 68 eventual web pages were edited using Macromedia Dreamweaver.

A funeral ................................................................ 69 The DVD was created using Ashampoo Burning Studio, and its label created using

Epson Print CD and printed direct on to the media on an Epson Stylus Photo R220

Funeral song .......................................................... 79 printer.

Songs of a wanderer Play entire song





Play first section I

My love’s a warm jewel with flame at the heart We lived through the hard times, the good and the bad,

And laughter as light as the rise of the lark. The pleasure and pain, the happy and sad,

Her presence is pleasing in times grave or gay We raised up our kids to stand straight and strong

At the break of the dawn or the end of the day: But lately our lives have been going wrong:

And I’m glad that my wandering’s all done. And it seems like I’m wandering again.



True love’s like the moon as it shines in a stream:

I found me a new love, more precious than gold,

Dip down for its light and it’s gone like a dream,

To rest my head when I was lonely and cold.

A will o’ the wisp that eludes you and then

Both new love and old have a place in my heart

Confronts you with joy to revive you again:

And no power on earth can drive them apart:

And I’m glad that my wandering’s all done.

And it seems like I’m wandering again.

Yes, I’ve been a wanderer the most of my life

Yes, I’ve been a wanderer the most of my life

And I’ve cut through each day like a new-sharpened knife

And I thought I could end all my trouble and strife

But the noonday’s a time for a rest in the sun

But each new day dawning we start life anew

And to lie in your arms when the day’s work is done:

And work through whatever we’re given to do:

And I’m glad that my wandering’s all done.

And it seems like I’m wandering again.

Play second section II Play third section III

I once had a true love the light of my life

For seventy long years I’ve been seeking for love

We built home together and I made her my wife

Not knowing it comes as a gift from above

For thirty-five years we were lovers and then

But we were not meant to seek heaven alone

Our true love, like all things, has come to an end:

And so take my hand ’til my wandering is done:

And it seems like I’m wandering again.

And I’m glad you were here by my side.

We are but sojourners here on the earth For tomorrow’s a gift from today.

And we start to go wandering on the day of our birth

Play section five V

It’s written that nowhere can we rest our head

Until we find peace in our heart at the end: And now once again there are new ways to wend.

And I’m glad you were here by my side. Old friends become lovers, new lovers are friends.

The road forks and parts as we wave a goodbye,

Who knows why we wander or where we are bound Tomorrow awaits and there’s no time to cry:

But the journey is all as we search the world round On this journey we’re never alone.

The hills and the valleys take the road up and down

High and low, near or far, I trust you’ll be found: We may feel at each parting that something is lost

And I’m glad you were here by my side. But our memories go with us and stay till the last.

We are the summation of all that befell

Play section four

IV And our song is a story that no tongue can tell:

O love of my life, from the start ever new, On this journey we’re never alone.

Wherever I’ve wandered, ever constant and true.

Once again we are lovers, whatever that means The flesh we take with us is but skin and bone,

And we’re working together to rebuild our dreams. A cage for our feelings, until life is done.

For tomorrow’s a gift from today. But flesh is our reason for walking the earth

At the end all we learn is of coming to birth:

I cannot deserve all the love that you give: On this journey we’re never alone.

I wanted to die, but you taught me to live.

You gave me your laughter, your joy and your tears, The hand that we hold never falters or fails

And helped me confront all my hopes and my fears. As we struggle through storms or bend with the gales.

For tomorrow’s a gift from today. Its presence is constant, though we never may know

What is its purpose or where we will go:

Never say never is a rule to live by On this journey we’re never alone.

And also “for ever” is a vow I deny,

But over the years I have wandered with you Human love is a yearning for something more great

The pleasures were many and the sadnesses few. It grows in each heart as we follow our fate.

We can part without rancour, end love without hate, The joke

We can know who is with us, be it early or late:

On this journey we’re never alone.





T

he big man laughed. With scarcely a glance at

the sky, he cried: “It’s a joke of the great God

1964-March 1, 2001, Almighty.”

December 30, 2001,

And he laughed again.

February 16, 2002

Though he was something of an entertainer, being the Lord

Amalric’s official bard, he was not notable for his sense of

humour, though in recent years he had composed one or two

wry reflections upon the implications of growing old. And

The haiku lady when he had shared them with a select group of his peers,

fellow bards and battle-scarred veterans of the old days, they

had raised a few smiles.

But his forte was strictly the historical ballad, tales of past

glories and victories yet to come, and since this was a time of

uneasy truce between the Lord Amalric and his neighbours

over the hills to north and west, there was little enough call

for his verse, nor for the delicate fingering of his 13-stringed

lute, traditional accompaniment of the great epics he had

originally composed for Amalric’s father and uncles.

Today the tastes of the guests at Amalric’s banquets tended

Haiku lady sings towards more raucous lyrics – if that be not too tender a word

rare melodies of passion, – of rape and seduction, bellowed out to the tune of a howling

jewels shining bright. wind band, while dancers contorted themselves lasciviously

upon the dancefloor. The big man wanted none of it.

May 13, 2000 So while his attendance was required at such events, he

tended to sit morosely at the foot of Amalric’s table, his lute up his fires still, it was less of a compulsion for either of

tuned and ready, his voice ready to tell the old tale, his mind them.

on other things. He had never been what you could call a faithful partner, and

It was while he was thus engaged, his ears alert for any while she had never condoned his sudden enthusiasms for the,

request from the high table but his consciousness otherwise to her, most surprising liaisons and brief excursions with

occupied, that he noticed the gaze of the dark-eyed lass upon companions of either sex, she had come to realise that they

him. did not impinge on his relationship with her. But he had long

In truth she was hardly a lass though – he observed later – she since abandoned such errant ways, at about the same time,

looked younger than her forty summers. When he first noticed and not coincidentally, that his long-abused body had forced

her, he’d have given her thirty, at the most, possibly less. He him to abandon his other long-lived love affair, with the

was not good at estimating such things, being as self- black, foam-headed beer of his native land, far across the

obsessed as most of his bardic clan must be, to presume to mountains and seas which he had crossed with his parents so

comment upon the doings of his so-called betters. many long years ago, in search of peace and more settled

times.

Yet he could not imagine her gaze was upon him, surely twice

her age. He had never been considered handsome, even in his Most of his philandering had happened while gazing upon the

youth, though six decades of battle ballads had given him a wine when it was red (or beer when it was black, in his case),

sort of grim authority. He’d had his share of love and tears in though he had tended to ascribe his new-found near-chastity

his younger, more rumbustious days, and he had a good wife to long-delayed maturity rather than (as he suspected was

warming his bed at home for his return, for she had long since more to the point) the approach of his seventh decade.

excused herself from the Lord Amalric’s late-night revelries. Yet he found his glance straying to the dark-eyed lass yet

Their love had begun as a great passion, some thirty years again. He even looked behind him to see which of the young

before, but they were now what he had once described as bucks at the high table might have attracted her gaze, but

“passionate friends”. He still took pleasure in her nakedness surely none of the red-faced, sweaty hooligans toasting each

in the bath or before she slipped on the demure nightgowns other with overflowing flagons could be its cause. True, the

which had always been her preferred night attire, and they mysteries of what women found attractive in mate or garment

slept most nights entwined in each other’s arms like the old had long bewildered him, a confusion he had celebrated many

sweethearts they still were, but it had to be admitted that they times in his more private verse, and it was no more likely that

made love but seldom now, and while she could easily stoke her gaze was fixed on an over the hill veteran like himself

than that she could actually find those laddish oiks interesting As he renewed his seat amid the applause of lordlings and

enough to fix her gaze upon them. Either way, it was a groundlings, he couldn’t help but notice the dark-eyed lass

satisfying conjecture, that there might be something in his old clapping as enthusiastically as the rest. And she looked him

frame to draw her to him, though in truth of small significance full in the face as she did so, as if there were indeed more to it

in the real world. than pleasure at what he felt, in his heart, to be something

His reverie was interrupted by an unexpected (and, these slight and insignificant from the composer of epics which had

days, damn near unprecedented) call by his master for a song. entered into the national traditions, furthermore one with a

He stumbled to his feet and grabbed his lute. strong element, he admitted to himself, of special pleading.



“And none of your gloomy old ballads, see,” said Amalrric. Yet the brightness of her dark eyes, as she looked across the

“Give us a bit of a laugh, please!” And he looked round at his hall directly into his, made the rest of the company disappear,

companions, who roared appreciatively at his wit. a pleasing sensation, accompanied by a surprising swelling at

his groin.

As it happened, he had something in tune with his recent

conjectures, which might well serve the lord’s purpose. Like Though, clearly, there was nothing he could (or should) do

many men past middle age, he had been much concerned about it, nevertheless he found the experience enjoyable. He

about the decline of his sexual powers, and since he had wondered if his Gretchen would be awake with her bedtime

always regarded ballad-making as a branch of sympathetic volume still unfinished.

magic, he had composed an encomium upon the superiority of He had forgotten the dark-eyed lass by the time the feast was

older men as lovers, which depicted a young lass’s over, while Amalric and his entourage were going to their

unfortunate experiences with just such young bucks as beds. The bard was looking forward to his – but then he

Amalric’s coterie, with the repetitive refrain, “take my advice, remembered. Gretchen would not be at home, warming his

never court a young man”. bed for him, since she was up in the north country, visiting her

The high table roared with each successive indignity, mother, had been for a week, not expected back for at least a

concluding with premature ejaculation and the lass’s creeping month.

out of the bed “into the arms of a much older man”, scarce The big man sighed. His sexual fires might have been

recognising their own brewbased impotence as its butt. damped down somewhat, compared with his rumbustious

“Forget all your pretty boys,” it concluded, “they’re just all youth, but he did like a warm body beside him in his bed.

talk and noise.” He was awaiting his turn among the swell of the feasters,

when he was aware of a small figure pushing her way through “You heard my lord. He called for entertainment, not

the crowd towards him. It was the dark lady herself. He enlightenment.”

capitalised the title in his mind, as if she were a character in “Pshaw!” Her look was more eloquent than her exclamation.

an old ballad: the Dark Lady Herself. The conceit raised a

smile on his battered old face as he waited to see what she “You prefer the old songs?”

wanted – or if, indeed, it was he she was pushing through the “One can never hear them, these days. I’ve tried to learn a

press to see. He fully expected her to pass him by, only to few, myself.”

melt into the arms of a much younger man – you see, he did

Now this was surprising. Few under the age of fifty had even

not even believe the words of his own song – but in fact she

heard of the old songs, and even when they’d been sung each

did stop before him, and raised her small face towards him.

night at court, they had been male fare only. It would have

He waited for her to speak, then realised she was waiting on been close to blasphemy, in the days of Amalric’s father, for

him, as befits a younger person before an older, and he an any woman to perform them. Their role was lullabies, and

esteemed bard. He had forgotten such old-style manners, in silly lovesongs.

the days of Amalric’s rule, where tradition and precedent went

“And sing them where?”

for nothing.

“Just to myself, while cooking or washing or caring for my

“You seemed to enjoy the song, young lady,” he said.

four children. I used to sing my young ones to sleep with an

“That I did,” she responded. Her voice was slightly hesitant, old ballad, The Courtship of Margaret and the Earl of

as if she were unsure of her reception, a mannerism he was to Darkness.”

learn to recognise as typical, later. And never cease to wonder

“Aye, I know it well. But surely it gave them nightmares.”

what gave such an apparently assured young person such

uncertainty. “They slept before the dark ones came up out of hell to take

the lady down into their bosom. And anyway, they need to

“I was a little surprised, though.”

learn there are dark forces in the world, as well as good.”

“At what?”

They were moving now, out of the hall, with the press of the

“Well” – again that hesitancy, as if her opinion didn’t really throng about them.

count – “it was unlike the epic ballads for which you’re

“And your husband,” he asked. “Does he sing, too?”

famous.”

“Him! Like a hoodied crow. I’d not let him sully the charm of

the old songs. He never could carry a tune.” “I wonder . . .” For once it was he who was hesitant. He’d be

“You use the past tense. Are you a widow?” dumbfounded if she said him nay to what he was about to ask.

He smiled to himself at his diffidence, like a young page

“Not I! I kicked him out long since, shortly after Clarissa – unskilled in the ways of women.

my youngest – was born, these twelve years since. We had

little in common.” “You wonder what, my lord?” she asked, after a respectable

moment of silence had hung in the air between them for, it

Enough, he thought, to father four children upon her, but he seemed, an age.

did not voice the thought. There was something unique about

this lass, in a world where a single woman in her forties was He shook his head. “No,” he objected,” forget it. A stupid

regarded as fit only for the convent – or the sporting house – thought.”

able to raise and care for four children, with an ear for the old “Nay tell me, please, my lord. I would know your pleasure.”

traditions which would have gainsaid such singularity. He looked down at her, and he felt that swelling at his groin

“I was wondering . . . if you could spare the time . . .” again. Pleasure, was it?

“Time is something I have plenty of, these days,” he replied. “W-e-e-l-l-l.”

“My younglings are grown and flown the coop.” Good Lord, he’d forgotten how to do this.

“Could you hear me sing? And perhaps fill in some of the “If you’re not too tired . . .”

verses I just cannot find.”

Again, he could not find the words. She was, after all, a

He noticed that, though he had mentioned his own children, mother with four children, hadn’t she said – he found it

she had not enquired after whether he had a wife. Perhaps she difficult to remember what she had said with any accuracy, for

preferred not to know. all the spell she seemed to have cast over him. But then that

They were now outside the banqueting hall, and they paused, was perhaps part of her witchcraft.

the throng having thinned around them as they talked, He shook his great head in exasperation. Stuff and nonsense,

walking more slowly than the multitude. A mad idea spells and magic! He’d have to confess it to the priest next

possessed him. Later he was to wonder if this Dark Lady was rest day. Was he a babe, hiding his head under the blankets?

not indeed one of the dark ones out of hell, and she come to

bewitch him. But that was a time yet to come. This time she made no reply, letting his words go unanswered,

so that he had to do something to fill the silence.

“Sing to me now!” he cried, with more force than he had She was good, yes, very good. Oh, untutored, of course,

intended. unskilled in the techniques they taught in the great ballad

“Where, lord?” schools (which few, if any, attended in this acculturated,

decadent age). But the way she abandoned herself into herself

“Why, here.” to find the spaces in the song, her head and shoulders circling

She looked around them, and saw that they were indeed alone, around like some dervish, was something the freshers took

in an antechamber to the main banqueting hall, whose great several semesters of hard schooling to learn. And most never

doors had been pulled shut while they dallied there. did.

“If that be your will, of course, my lord. But will not your Her voice was strong and powerful, with a hard edge to it

wife . . . ?” he’d heard in the singers from the north country, but never

before in a woman. He was particularly pleased that she did

“My Gretchen’s away in the north country, visiting her

not over-dramatise the story of the great old tragedy, but let

mother. But you, no doubt, will have to get up early for your

the words make their own, direct impression. There was no

bairns. It was a foolish thought.”

feminine artifice at work to capitalise upon her beauty (albeit,

“Nay, my lord. They are no bairns. Clarissa may be twelve with an audience of one, this would hardly have been

only, but she’s well able to dress and break her fast without necessary, but he’d experienced many another woman singer

my urging at her elbow all the while. And there’ll be no all fluttering eyelashes and coy simpering, when the words of

school tomorrow – or today, I think it be – since the lord her lovesong said it all, and this one played none of those

declared a holiday. And the three lads will lie abed till noon, if mindgames).

I let them. I’ll sing for you, and glad to.”

She ended the song, and looked up at him, like someone

So she did sing. And he had the experience of feeling the hairs emerging from a dream, as indeed she was, if, as he

rise on the back of his neck as she did so. He had felt it suspected, she had what the old singers of the west coast

before, but he could not remember when last something had called the “nyah”, that elusive quality which he suspected was

stirred him so. Yes, in the old days, when the ballad-makers bred in the bone, and unteachable.

had swapped their latest and greatest creations, and the muse

He was silent after she had drawn the tale to its terrible

moved in them. But these had been the inheritors of a great

conclusion, saying nothing, for what could be said? Like the

tradition, raised in the magic of the craft. Whereas this woman

“how was it for you?” anxious chatter of inexperienced

was coming totally afresh to the tale she was telling.

lovers, anything he said could only diminish the magic she

had left hanging in the air. But she was not so constrained. terror and been worked on by its magic, we can no longer

“Was it . . .” – again that hesitation, with which he was stand on ceremony.”

already beginning to become familiar – “ . . . all right?” “Well,” she hesitated, as if astonished at her temerity, “. . . Sir

He grunted, unsure of what he could say to express how Adam, my name is Rosella.”

profoundly she had moved him. Her face fell, misreading his “A fair – a fine name, and beautiful as its owner.” God! He

reaction. This would not do. She was not, after all, a schooled was bad at this. Move on to more familiar ground.

bard, among whose company a simple “Not bad” would be “I haven’t sung that ballad for many a long year.”

high praise indeed. She deserved some sort of answer.

“I was a child, sitting on my father’s knee when the Lord

“Young woman . . . “ – where were his manners? he was quite Amalric’s father still lived.”

put out at his own surprise, but clearly she deserved respect

for her bardic talent, unschooled though it be – “My lady,” he “Oh, those were great days. The old man loved the big

corrected. “You are truly a magnificent singer. You took me songs.”

there. I was a little nonplussed, that was all, to hear such a big “And my father, too. But he forbade me to sing them. He

tale in the mouth of one so young and fair.” Another blunder. chastised me severely the one time . . . “

“Fair” was one thing she decidedly was not.

He did not like to accept the image her words gave him, both

“Where, tell me, did you learn the song? Not at a ladies’ attractive and repellent, reminding him she’d been a babe in

sewing circle, that I’m sure.” arms when Gretchen and he . . .

“Pshaw!” she exclaimed again. “They’ll only hear silly “He did right,” he said hurriedly, for fear she might go into

lovesongs.” embarrassing detail. “But times change. That was then, and

“And love,” he could not resist saying, “is that also silly?” now is now. If no one else will carry them on, then you must

And cursed himself for playing such wordgames, unworthy of do so, even if it means they pass to the distaff side.”

a callow youth. She did not dignify his retort with an answer, “And you liked it?”

though her look away spoke volumes.

“Madam, you enriched it. Truly. From now on, I will always

“I learnt the song from you, my lord.” hear your voice in my head, every time I sing it.

“Please, you know my given name. Let us not be so formal. “That’s if the Lord Amalric tire of bawdry.”

When we have been into a big ballad together, experienced its

A pause hung in the air like a closed door, barely ajar. He “And you need to clear up from the banquet. Forgive us. We

waited to see how she would push it open. were thoughtless.”

“My Lord.” “Bid you goodnight, my lord,” she said.

“Madam?” “But your song?”

“May I, perhaps . . .” “Another time, my lord.”

“Ask on, lady.” And she stood on tiptoe to kiss him briefly on the lips, almost

“No, it was nothing.” chastely, though her mouth opened slightly and he could taste

her breath, before she vanished through the portal like a

This was getting a bit irritating. “Please, madam, how may I wraith of woodsmoke.

serve you?”

He slept badly, that night. He slept badly most nights, to be

“W-e-l-l . . .” Still she hesitated. truthful, but usually because age did not require him so much

Then: “May I sing you one of my own?” rest. But this night he could hardly sleep, so troubled was he

in mind.

“You are a Makar?” This was truly astonishing. To recreate

the old was one thing, and while creation of the new was but a Eventually, he embraced himself and brought himself to

step beyond, it was a step even some experienced bards failed climax, hoping that would fill his body and soul with the

to take. fatigue of satisfaction. But he was far from satisfied.

“Not really. But I scribble down verses now and then.” And when he did sleep, his dreams were filled with ghostly

images, that were like the woodsmoke she had vanished into,

Wonder upon wonder. Did this young women know just how

when he awoke.

many traditions she was violating, in striving to keep the old

traditions alive? And using writing in her composition. It was The day passed as poorly as the night, and the days and nights

said, in the bardic school, if you cannot remember your like heavy hands upon his breast, until the time came for

verses without imprisoning them in spider-scratchings, then another feast. And he found himself hurrying early to the

they were not worth the singing. banqueting house, cursing his adolescent fantasy of finding

the dark Rosella there before him.

A head poked itself round the great door.

And lightly did his heart rise, and his groin with it, to see her

“My lord, my lady,” said its owner. “Time grows late.”

already at table, sipping a glass prepriandially. “And when shall that be, my lord?”

By rights, he should have sat himself directly before the lord’s Damn the woman! She was as importunate as a young buck.

table, in the bard’s place of honour, but the young Amalric’s He’d challenge her in a like fashion.

company had not arrived, nor just a few of the guests, come to “Why, on the morrow, if it please you, my lady.”

that. Servants were still setting out the silver.

“The morning will do well, for my boys will be back at school

He glanced at her, and she raised her glass in a silent toast. He and we shall have no one to intrude upon us.”

inclined his head, for he had nothing with which to toast her

in return. He set himself to tuning his lute, as if he hadn’t “And will you sing for me?”

already set in true temper before leaving his home, and for “Aye, my lord, if that be your pleasure.”

some moments that occupied him, for his twelfth string really

And what other pleasures might there be on offer? He was

needed replacing, and was hard to keep true. There was

tempted to give her a like bawdy reply, but restrained himself

nothing for it: it must be changed.

in time.

“Is your instrument causing you difficulty, my lord?”

The hall was beginning to fill.

Oh that voice, liquid like the ice-melt from the high hills! He

“I’d best be back at my table, for fear someone will take my

jumped like a startled rabbit, despite himself.

seat in my absence.”

“’Tis my twelfth string,” he explained, gruffly. “I should have

And she was gone.

changed it before leaving home this night.”

It was only when he was in his bed again, restless with

“Shall we hear you?”

thoughts of her, that he realised he had no knowledge of

“If my Lord Amalric wishes.” where she lived.

“And if I wish?” For someone close to the Lord Amalric, he could no doubt ask

He looked up from his instrument to see if she were jesting a flunky of her and learn her whereabouts from those who

with him. But he eyes were serious. issued the banquet invitations, but he was reluctant to do so.

“Nay, my lady,” he said after a pause, “tonight I am my lord’s He asked himself: Why? He was reluctant to give the court

bard only. If I would sing for you, it must be on another gossips fuel for their chattering. But why should he care?

night.” Gretchen, if the news of his enquiries came to her ears on her

return, would no doubt dismiss it as an inconsequential “Is that your husband’s?” he demanded to know, for surely no

adventure, and it was barely that, so far. Why, then, did it lute-maker would serve a woman.

seem to be so much more than that? “No, my lord,” she answered demurely, “I . . . I crafted it

He shook his great head as if to shake out such adolescent myself. My husband has no more music in him than a marsh

fancies, as he washed, trimmed his beard and plaited it in the toad. Would you see it?”

twin forks which were his badge of office, and dressed. Without waiting for an answer, she pulled open the cords that

He smiled at a thought. No wonder there were no women fastened the case and extracted what seemed to be a

bards, for bearded women were few and far between. handsome instrument indeed, its belly inlaid with redwood

Occasionally, a carnival would come to town for the and what looked like mother of pearl. Where had she obtained

groundlings to gawp and jeer at, and while he’d never seen such rich materials?

them himself, he’d heard they’d shown women as hirsute as Of course, such cosmetic finery meant nothing if the lute

hairy bears. He found hairy women quite stimulating, as a didn’t play well, and some craftsmen whose decorative skills

matter of fact, but he’d probably draw the line at beards. exceeded their Pythagorean knowledge had prejudiced him

His quasi-erotic fantasies were interrupted by a great noise. against such embellishments.



Who was that, tirling at the pin on his front door, as if some She held it out to him, hesitantly.

great fire were threatening the city? “I don’t expect it’s any good, but if my lord would . . . “

A servant appeared. He took it from her and ran his fingers across the strings in his

“A lady to see you, my Lord Bard. She says she knows you, favourite Aeolian mode arpeggio. He nearly dropped the

but would not give her name.” instrument in astonishment.



It had to be . . . surely it couldn’t be? . . . she was an “By God!” he exclaimed, forgetting his long disenchantment

importunate wench, but even she wouldn’t outrage all with religion in any shape or form. “This is very fine. Where

decency? . . . learnt you such skills?”



“Show her in,” he grumbled with an impatient gesture, and in “My father was a lute-maker.”

a moment she stood before him. And even more amazing, she “But surely . . .”

carried a lute-case in her hand. She laughed.

“No, my lord. He would not teach me his craft. I was his fast.

forbidden even the entrance of his workshop. But I observed “Forgive me, lady. I forget my manners. Would you take

the way he would test out each new product of his skills, refreshment?”

curse at what seemed to me perfection itself, go away and

work more upon it, and then try and try again until it satisfied “I have eaten, my lord, but please, if you are hungry . . . “

him. “And while I eat, perhaps you can sing for me.”

“Thus were my ears trained.” He handed her back the lute, and clapped his hands for

“And your hands?” service.

“Self-taught,” she shrugged. “My first instrument was wire She ran her fingers over the strings, lifted up her head, and

strung across a frying pan. When he died . . . “ sang a story, the like of which he had never before heard.

She paused, as if it were too painful a memory. He had expected some sort of pastiche, an invented tale of

lordly passion and lady loves. There were some Makars who

“. . . I stole some essential tools before the Guild came to produced such ephemeral guff, and he could hardly expect a

collect them, and started working in earnest.” battle epic to come from a female hearth.

“Your husband, what thought he of this?” But this was a tale of the present day, a question and answer

“We were barely speaking at that point. He chose one time to between a mother and her child, set in the poisoned lands by

threaten to expose me to the Guild when I had a one-inch the edge of the sea, the child wishing to play on the beach, the

chisel in my hand. I thrust it in his face with barely an inch of mother unable to explain the invisible death that lay in the

marking him for life, and he troubled me no more. very grains of sand.

“And very soon he was gone with some young flibbertigibbet It had an air of a nursery ballad to it, the sort of tale mothers

half my age, never sending so much as copper pence for the sang their babes to sleep with. And there was also the age-old

support of me and my children. Still, I managed, and good conflict between the old “you must not” command and the

riddance to him!” young “why must I not?” rebellion.

This last she spoke with that left her breathless, her dark eyes So much was almost traditional, though recast in a very new

flashing and her breasts heaving in remembered anger. mode that set his fingers tingling to explore it himself on his

His stomach grumbled, and he remembered he had not broken own instrument.

But to compose something so real, so rooted in the now, a He paused, summoning his thoughts. She waited on him,

flower blooming like new branch grafted on to old stock, was expectantly, saying nothing, her long face receptive, the eyes

quite unprecedented, in his own long experience of the art of sparkling above the prominent cheekbones like dark pools

ballad-making. highlit by a dawning sun, her lips parted slightly, bringing to

Yes, new songs were made every day, poor things most of his mind the chaste kiss they had shared at their last parting.

them. He still tried his hand himself, but would be first to His groin swelled at the thought.

agree they bore no comparison with the big old epics sung so But this was not what she wanted from him. (Was it not? He

rarely these days. Perhaps it was because these were no longer could not be sure. Again he shook his head. It was a long

epic times. time, it felt like centuries, since he last experienced such

But this, this was like new wine in an old bottle. Scripture confusion.)

taught that this was unwise, and he had always wondered Hurriedly, he tried to cast himself into tutor mode, as if

why. For was not the Good News like a fresh vintage within counselling some would-be bard, something he did but rarely.

the old brought down from Sinai? There had been a young man, his breast as flat and hard as her

Vintners told of the plague that had almost wiped out the bosom looked round and soft, whom he had tutored thus. But

vineyards, and how their craft was saved only by grafting in that had an ugly end. The young man had sung no more. He

new stock from the western lands across the great waters. must not make the same mistake again!



Perhaps this young woman was such a vintner. “I find myself asking: What is this song for? When will you

sing it? Where? And to whom?

He sat silent, considering all these things.

“To the rowdy, bawdy crowd at the Lord Amalric’s table? In

“You . . . you do not like it. I feared as much.” the tavern? I do not think you would get through one verse.”

He roused himself from his reverie and forked a portion of “I sang it to you.”

egg into his mouth. It was cold.

“Yes, and it was good for me to hear it. You have opened new

He shook himself awake with a movement of his great head doors in my soul.”

like a dog fresh out of the river.

And into my heart, he wanted to say, for it was true. The

“Nay, nay my lady. ’Tis not that. ’Tis very fine, very fine simple artistry of her song had touched him deeply. Not since

indeed. It’s just . . .” he first gazed upon the woman now his wife Gretchen, had

body, mind and spirit united in one flesh. It was an almost called it out in his mind’s ear, but she was never there to hear

religious ecstasy. Perhaps he had stayed away from the sacred him.

love feast too long. His body was substituting for it – what? Each feast day, he went there in hopes that he’d see her sitting

Carnal love? in that place, but another had taken it. He awoke each

“My lord?” morning, telling himself that this was the day when she would

“Forgive me, lass. You have awakened such thoughts in me I return, lute case in hand, ready to sing to him again.

have not received for decades.” His woman returned to him from the north, and they fell into

So lass she was, now, not “My Lady”. How he wished it could each other’s arms with renewed, almost unexpected passion.

be “My love”. But as he and Gretchen roused each other to ecstasy, it was

another, a rounder, younger bosom he imagined crushing

“And you in me. When a great artist hears my song . . .” beneath him, her name he wanted to cry out loud, growling

“Pshaw! I have some skill with versifying. But if I could the tiger of the tropics.

make such a lyric . . .” ’Twill pass, he told himself, as all things must. But it did not.

But he knew he could not. This was a woman’s song, though He tried composing a lovesong, but the results were tawdry, in

one such as he could not imagine any woman singing it. And comparison with the depth of loss he felt. He cast the lute

she had sung herself into his heart, more surely than if she had down in disgust.

performed some silly lovesong.

“Let us go again to church, my lord,” said his woman. “We

This must be put a stop now, and suddenly! have much to give thanks for.”

“Forgive me, lady. I have much to do this morn.” Her reaction Thanks? For this pain?

was immediate, and immediately perceptible. It was if a dark

blind came down, hooding her eyes. He did not perceive the It was then he lifted his fist to the sky and laughed.

momentary flash of pain that came and went in her face, like “It’s a joke of the great God Almighty.”

summer lightning. “Joke, my lord?”

“No, my lord, it is you who must forgive me. And I must go to But he gave no answer. And laughed again.

market.” And she was going.

September 1, 1999-February 11, 2005

He wanted to cry out: Wait! The next day and every day, he

A blessing

Tune: The blacksmith (English traditional folk tune)

He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love. –The Song of Songs which is Solomon’s, 2: 4



Play song Some say marriages are made in heaven

While others all their lives for love have striven;

But you have found in each the joy supremely human:

Long may our several lives its light illumine.



Though rains may tumble down and storms dismay you

This love will bear you up, will not betray you,

Whatever perils may rise up to bar you,

For hand-in-hand your way is strait and narrow.



Of all the blessings planned on you bestowing

Your children all around in fullness growing.

Young life springs up anew each new day dawning

Like flowers in the dew of a spring morning.



Whom God has joined as one let no one sunder,

The still small voice of love drowns out the thunder.

This day lives in us all and we will treasure

Its memory long since, our hearts to pleasure.



So blessings on you both, this great step taking,

Vows, you remind us all, we should be taking.

Like Solomon of old, the love we give each other

Reflects the love of God, there is no other. September 3, 1994

9. Tobe not

Your no empowers me. Click to hear text It is a hard word, sharp as the teeth that frame

It is a kind of yes. Not to deny your naysaying, its beginning, open as its end, for nothing is

but to be defined by it, those teeth unbiting, final, all changes, tomorrow is another day.

your tongue touching the palate to expel this Dawn follows night, given for sleep as well as

soft negative, the warm-breathed vowel thrust love.

from your lips a hole in the air, never to be And if you love my meness enough to bar me,

possessed but mine still, making me I because as much as or even more than to let me in,

it makes a she of her. then this is just to say that doors may be

A you. unlocked if they stand closed, but a broken

It must be heard, for to deny it is to commit gate admits no one, since all may enter,

violence on this she and I, this being two who without discrimination.

have the choice to be one, for without minus But there are many doors, gates, windows,

there is no plus, without separation there can more keys than this manmaker, more touches

be no joining, to choose yes requires the no than flesh on flesh, for we clothe ourselves

option, or we are puppets. not only to hide, but to uncover, the hand that

One greater gave it to us, this right, this duty, grips must can release, or its grasp is

this great gift, and if we freewill ourselves out counterfeit.

of Eden, then that is his gift, sobeit. It is another growing, this joy of being apart, for

This too is choice, given in love, and how may I in thrusting this void between us, the air

grant you less than this right to refuse, not in bridges all humanity, man on man and woman

my gift but encoded in the very flesh we are also, separate, yet one people.

clothed in? Yes, there is wounding in this negative, the

Click to read entire prose poem (no audio)





child screams for the breast that needs time is nothing lost, each moment making its own

to regrow milky, and not all nipples are there new way, branching and branching, twigs to

for the sucking, not all gaps stand in vacant buds to leaves to flowers to fruit, whether

wait for me to fulfil them, a tough lesson to sweet or acid-biting sour, wholesome or not,

learn, but gain in the pain, written by this for even black poison plays its part in this

hole in air, this no, this love of being great circle, for there is no death, only birth

expressed by choosing not to love. after birth, as each moment makes new, and

We stand apart, and flesh cries for flesh, yet old is a word without meaning.

touch can push as well as pull, the forced Let your no be no, and no oath shall gainsay it,

door stands broken, and when the wall is the yes that bid us stand, the otherness

fallen, there is no place to enter. defined, made concrete, as we walk away,

The child is all mouth, all pleasuring, a great united, liberated, gloriously alone.

hammer to beat on the world, or lips to 10. Notend

engulf it. The first cry is the om of the breast

So. This earth whirling, now populated, stands

denied, and it is that same hole sound, closed

fast beneath my stumbling feet, and what was

at each end, the mother’s name, answered not

once my world has its own meaning, which I

with words but the milktit’s return.

can only know in part, tentatively.

So word and flesh become one, in the losing

Yet this more certain lack is where I am, not

and the finding, the yes in this no.

lost, not left, one in many, this caged mind

To part, if even never again to meet, is to join

freed, to fly dovelike into the sky at end of

in the great dance of all, bobbing and

time.

circling, linking and releasing, embracing

In eternity there is no tomorrow.

and failing to embrace, for the non-coupling October 26, 1995 (edited July 20, 1996)

The Lady from the West

Play first section Tune: A variant of John Barleycorn And see the snows are melting and the barns with grain are

There came a lady out of the west but her folk were from the stored.

east. So we can sing a reaping song and the fiddler rosin the

She rode into a barren land like a guest come to a feast. bow.

The people said: You’re welcome, but it’s not the festive time. And song birds fly in the cloudless sky and the girls to

Our king lies sick and unto death and the funeral bell does the harvest go.

chime.

So silence the music of your mouth and break the When the king awoke he said to his folk: Who was it lay with

fiddlers’ bow. me?

Crowbirds fly in the leaden sky and the fields are white For she has set my heart aflame and I’m no longer free.

with snow. The lady said: You have your queen and duties to your land

While I must travel down the road that lies at my right hand.

This lady said: In the darkest night the dawn is not far off So forget the music of my mouth and the tune of the

And though your king be sick to death yet can he be cured by fiddlers’ bow.

love. For the sun is high into the sky and onward I must go.

She stripped the clothes from off his back till he lay like a

naked boy The king he swore a mighty oath, said: That shall never be

And she lay down beside him and she filled his heart with joy. For I shall leave my native land and go along with thee.

And warm was the music of her mouth and the sky wore But if you will not have me it were better I should die.

a ribboned bow. Sweet chains have bound and made us one, and none shall

The mourning birds sang dawning words and the corn say me nay .

grew under the snow. For I live by the music of your mouth and we’ll dance to

the fiddlers’ bow.

Now the queen she swore a mighty oath and she swore it like And free as the birds up in the sky you and I shall

a man: onward go.

No other shall lie in my lord’s bed and I’ll kill you if I can. Now the queen she was a wise woman and none so wise as

But the lady said: Be not afraid, your lord is still your lord, she:

Come into my arms my own true lord and listen unto me. It lives in the music of your mouth and the tune of the

This lady gave you healing love and the healing work is done. fiddlers’ bow.

Now you and I shall live till we die in the blessings of the sun. And the skylark’s rise into the sky and the cornfields here

We’ll make new music with our mouth and dance to the below.

February 10, 2002

fiddlers’ bow.

Last verse: February 11, 2002

As birds fly high up in the sky and streams with waters

Penultimate verse: February 12, 2002

flow.

Small revisions February 19, 2002



No tongue can say how she felt that day as she rode away Songs from the mountains





M

from the town. RS Mary Sands shifted uncomfortably in her

Did she go to join her own true love or roam the whole world truckle bed. She was heavily pregnant, near her

round? time, with another wee one to join the nine already

Or was a part of that lady’s heart for ever in that land sleeping together in a big box bed nearby. She thought of the

As the sunshine bright put paid to night and the hills were a two strangers who’d come to the village over the hills from

golden band? Marshall, the frail, beak-nosed Englishman and his maidenly

You may sing with the music of your mouth and dance to companion, Maud she called herself. A strange pair. No

the fiddler’s bow wonder some folk wondered if they were German spies,

You can see the smile on the face of love but not what lies wandering around the mountains with their notebooks.

below. But that Mister Sharp was so educating, his speech so old-

fashioned and all, that Maud with her big hat to keep off the

True love is a gift comes from above and it moves like the sun. She’d had to go into Marshall to buy some new things,

winds of spring. her old ones being stolen on the train and all. Wicked people

It obeys the command of no man’s hand nor the cold winds there were in the world.

wintering.

Like dragonflies in the summer skies it glows and then it’s How many lovesongs had she given him? Must be nigh a

gone score. He’d liked her Lord Lovel. It was a wonderful thing, to

But the memory sweet is still complete and never can be gone. be able to catch the old airs on paper like that. It looked more

like spider scratchings to her when he showed her the

notebook, but then he’d sung it over, and she could hear the

old song, almost as if she was singing it herself, though his you could hardly hear yourself think for the two-note piping

voice was not so rough as hers, being a city-bred man and all. of the red cardinals during the day. Must be past midnight.

He’d given her five dollars for the children, which was kind That Mrs Sands was a fine young woman. Well, forty-five I

of him. He made a point of saying it weren’t payment for the think she said, but not so worn out as some of these mountain

songs. Said they were beyond price, which was true. girls, with a fine crop of songs. She’d promised three more for

Mrs Gosnell come over this day to sing as well. No, check: this day. That old fiddler was a bad singer, though I got four

the moon is nearly down, must be yesterday now. Gave him from him. It was hard to make head nor tail of his fiddling,

two songs. She don’t know as many as me, but she’s good though, the battered old instrument held low on his chest, the

enough, the way she do them. And that fiddler, Mister bow scraping away over the metal strings ringing out like

Mitchell Wallin, he played him some tunes, but I think they cracked churchbells, the unstopped ones droning along like

were a bit wild for Mister Sharp, he were shaking his head bagpipes.

and cursing to himself, seemed like, scribbling in his book A far cry from the English Morris.

and then crossing it all out and starting over. And a long way, here in Appalachia, from the Western Front,

He’s no singer, that Mitch, but he has a few good ’uns, and where most of his dancers were while he stood on a southern

Mister Sharp noted them down all the same. Think my Broken verandah, taking the night air before turning in. People said it

Token’s better nor his, though, a lovely lovesong, the two was dangerous, up here in the mountains, but it must be far

parted lovers joined together by a silver dollar split and shared worse to be on the Somme, like Butterworth and Lucas,

between ‘em. His ain’t a patch on mine, though I do say it huddling in a trench with the German shells coming over,

myself. fighting hand-to-hand for a yard of land. And the North

Wonder if he’s asleep yet, over to Miss Fish’s at the school Carolina hills might be raw and rough, but the people were

settlement house? He’ll be jolting over the hill in the two- gentle, raising their hats and extending a friendly hand when

mule buggy to White Rock tomorrow, a hard journey for a your paths crossed, pleased to share their old lovesongs with

man as frail as he, needs a good night’s sleep. But city folk you: “But surely you will tarry with us for the night.”

don’t keep God’s time like country people, to bed at dusk and The youngsters enjoy the old songs as much as the older

up with the dawn. Most like he’d be still waking. people, which is different from England, where the youngsters

He was. Cecil Sharp was on Miss Fish’s verandah, smoking scorn their parents’ culture. They’ve been cut off from the

his pipe before turning in. The night was quiet, here where world here for several centuries, and the railroads and

wireless haven’t got here yet. It’ll happen, soon enough. He winced again. Still, it was better than the gout, just a bit of

And the missionaries have a lot to answer for, the way they a strain, when he turned his ankle on the rocky part of the

are imprisoning their voices in those dull, Presbyterian road. He’d walked fourteen miles on it, that day, which can’t

Yankee hymn tunes. They’ve invited us to join with them have done it much good.

Sunday night, but we’ll try to excuse ourselves. Still, it would Another hot night, though there was a touch of thunder in the

be hard to do this work without their help. air. It was the same all over America, apparently, a real

That Miss Edith Fish is a nice enough old dear, not half so heatwave. Some rain might cool it down a bit, and Maud can

prim and proper as she looks, a hard old thing. It’s good she’s get out her oilskins. She’d had to buy them in Marshall, but

teaching them to read and write. But their theology is hard to they didn’t sell umbrellas. Didn’t seem to understand what

take. A pity they can’t leave them to their country ways, they were for.

which have endured for centuries. No fear of floods, up here in the mountains, but it had been

You can’t separate out the songs from their lives. They’re not bad down in the valley, apparently. Six people drowned when

entertainment, something more central. That old lady, shaking the river broke its banks.

her head when she forgot the words: “Oh, if only I were That woman poling her punt across the waters, still muddy

driving the cows home I could sing it at once.” from the floods. Gaunt features, though handsome, probably

That boy, creeping in to listen when I was noting them down, in her thirties, but looked older.

and then launching into the song when the old lady fumbled The bed creaked as he got into it. In hers, the other side of the

over the words. And appreciating them: “I always like to go curtain that veiled them from each other, Maud heard him

where there is sweet music.” How old was he? Fifteen? No, settle down to sleep. He should take better care of himself,

less. she thought, as she turned on to her side.

He moved back to the bedroom Miss Fish had set up for him, It seemed scarcely seconds before she was woken by the

wincing as he put his weight on his foot. Doctor Packhard was rooster crowing nearby, the sun burning down bright and

coming to look at it, which was just as well, since there’d be hard, from a sky like burnished sapphire.

some walking later, when the mountain tracks got too much

An extract from an uncompleted novel

for the jolt-waggon, and we had to follow behind as the two

mules struggled in the mud. Aptly named.

Magdala

a song cycle with readings



Prologue

SPEAKER:

When pride cometh, then cometh shame: but with the lowly

is wisdom. She crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming

The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth; by in at the doors.

understanding hath he established the heavens. She standeth in the top of high places, by the way in the

For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth places of the paths.

in pain together until now. Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand

Incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to riches and honour.

understanding; Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are

She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her: and peace.

happy is every one that retaineth her. SINGER:

If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid Listen

treasures; and

Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find learn.

the knowledge of God. Can

Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets: you

She crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the openings not

of the gates: in the city she uttereth her words, saying, hear?

Unto you, O men, I call; and my voice is to the sons of man. Can

Hear; for I will speak of excellent things; and the opening you

of my lips shall be right things. not

Doth not wisdom cry? and understanding put forth her understand?

voice? She has been given you

a helpmeet

a counsellor taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst,

a friend They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in

a companion. adultery, in the very act.

Yet you will not hear. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be

stoned: but what sayest thou?

You have sacrificed us upon your altars This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse

and defiled us in your beds. him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote

You have elevated us on to pedestals on the ground, as though he heard them not.

the better to enslave us. So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself,

and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let

I sing you my sister him first cast a stone at her.

who arose from her enslavement And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.

a sister you despised And they which heard it, being convicted by their own

and still refuse to see as she is conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest,

even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the

Yet not all men are so blind. woman standing in the midst.

There was one who saw When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the

who lifted her up woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine

out of the slime you had plunged her into accusers? hath no man condemned thee?

who accepted what she had to give. She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do

He took the punishment for her I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

and for all of us SINGER:

to show what it meant to be human Who will throw

the first stone?

And on our way to heaven. Is it me, Lord?

1. The stoning Is it I

SPEAKER: here in the dust

And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman judging the judges

condemned condemning is no magic trick

waiting for death but simply love

my killing thoughts the counterfeit I traded

like claws within made true coin.

gnawing gnawing

knowing Bought with a price indeed

sowing thorns where flowers you planted wither. to make me whore of God:

yours for the long night

I who loved mine for the long day

so many ours for all time.

cannot love enough Judge and criminal

to strip my own breast for the stone victim and executioner

as you will stone and broken bruise

to make it fertile antagonists made one.

for your seed to grow in me.

Come

You love me like no other throw your stones.

you never touched me 2. The jar of ointment

Yet I’ll be touched

SPEAKER:

forgiveness come to me

turn back the stone And it came to pass afterward, that he went throughout

into a rose every city and village, preaching and shewing the glad

its one thorn bleeding. tidings of the kingdom of God: and the twelve were with

him,

Like Lazarus I died And certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits

and rose again and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom

my brother death went seven devils,

dancing out of the tomb Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany,

Resurrection where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised

from the dead. scorn

There they made him a supper; and Martha served: but the way I live?

Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him. The gift I give?

Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very Who made you made me

costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet and what I give

with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of to those I love.

the ointment. I pour it out on all

And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to like sweet perfume

wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs and all I ask is dross,

of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with nothing but your coin

the ointment. a nothing

Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, soiled like me with the grasp of many hands.

which should betray him,

Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, This man asked more.

and given to the poor? He wanted me

This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he this central I

was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put I give to no man.

therein.

Then said Jesus, Let her alone: against the day of my He took me without asking

burying hath she kept this. with a look

For the poor always ye have with you; but me ye have not a word

always. acceptance.

Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be By taking all

preached throughout the whole world, this also that she he left it all to me

hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her. so I could be

SINGER: the who I am

How not what you think me.

dare

you I am not a what

I am a me And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints

not the whore reflected in your eyes which slept arose,

but the lovely shape I saw in his. And many women were there beholding afar off, which

followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto him:

And so I pour out Among which was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother

upon his head of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee’s children.

what none has had from me. SINGER:

Whores never kiss Tell me how did my comrade die

but I have bathed his feet alone and abandoned?

with my tears Hands he had reached for turned into fists

and dried them with my hair. and beat him down to the ground.

Can you give more?

Can you give less? They took him out

Your twice my all to the killing field

is less than mine where a scaffold waited

growing as I give the hanging tree

Living as I love for the lowest and worst

I in him than those he befriended.

loving him in you

How could it be so

Learning to forgive. that none stayed by his side

3. The women at the Cross

to suffer with him.

They all ran away

SPEAKER:

for all their macho boasting

Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded and only the women

up the ghost. and the one man he loved

And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from stayed constant beside him.

the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the

rocks rent; How dark was the sky

the earth moved and heaved And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She

like a woman in labour. saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord,

And something was born and I know not where they have laid him.

that day in the dark And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not

no power can take from us. ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified.

He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the

He has gone place where the Lord lay.

yet he is with me always. And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from

Now the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee;

I shall be no longer alone there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you.

and no one can take him from me. And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and

great joy; and did run to bring his disciples word.

4. To whom Jesus is revealed

And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met

SPEAKER: them, saying, All hail.

In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom

first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the seekest thou? She supposing him to be the gardener, saith

other Mary to see the sepulchre. unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me

And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.

the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith

back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master.

His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white And they came and held him by the feet, and worshipped

as snow: him.

And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as Then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid: go tell my

dead men. brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see

But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as me.

she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the And they remembered his words,

sepulchre, And returned from the sepulchre, and told all these things

And seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, unto the eleven, and to all the rest.

and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. It was Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother

of James, and other women that were with them, which and we will lay you out at the end

told these things unto the apostles. but in between you laugh your laddish disbelief

And their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they and we’re invisible.

believed them not.

SINGER: Listen

Why we have something to tell you.

do you laugh Come see

to scorn what we have seen.

what we have seen Live

what we have done what we have lived through.

what we have felt? Learn.

Your world of figures

Epilogue

does not count

when life and death SPEAKER:

are traded on the crosses you erect Another parable spake he unto them; The kingdom of

piercing like stakes into our hearts. heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid

in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.

You would make us And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the

hearts of stone kingdom of God should come, he answered them and

that cannot bleed said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:

even as the rose thorn pierces our flesh Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the

but still they beat. kingdom of God is within you.

And they answered and said unto him, Where, Lord? And

We are only stupid women. he said unto them, Wheresoever the body is, thither will

Our words fly away the eagles be gathered together.

where you cannot catch them When they therefore were come together, they asked of

and turn them into dogma. him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the

kingdom to Israel?

We gave you birth And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times

or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own even when gravebands

power. mask its mouth.

But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is

come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Grief is knotted here

Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the like a swollen gut

uttermost part of the earth. and must be heard

And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, even if others must be paid

he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their to do our weeping for us.

sight.

And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went Despite my sobbing

up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; there’s no grave or angel can rob away

Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up the peace he gave me

into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you even as he left

into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen so that, returning,

him go into heaven. he can live in me for ever.

SINGER:

Heaven He went to make a place

is and here it is:

with

in. With.

You men look up In.

as if the dead are flying

over our heads

like vultures preying on the already walking dead



But life grows inside

eternity is now

and the child’s birthcry

is loud

“Why not?”

“Pourquoi pas?” He had spent a satisfactory hour or so, walking along the

The question almost stopped him in his tracks, en route for the Promenade des Anglais, dodging the young rollerbladers and

pissoir. cyclists, holding on to his straw hat in the strong easterly

wind, watching young parents coaching their offspring on

The elderly lady had followed him down the steps into the their first skating excursion, young bucks weaving through

seafront toilette, and when he had offered his 35 cents in the crowds on some strictly personal slalom.

payment, the attendant had presumed they were together, both

of them being, shall we say, of a certain age. His admiration of these young people was purely academic.

Even as an adolescent himself, he had never been attracted to

“Soixante-dix cents,” he requested. the nubile young, preferring women twice his age for their

“We are not together,” he replied in his broken French. “Nous maturity and concentration on the matter in hand, with

ne sommes pas ensembles.” nothing to prove except their mutual need.

And she asked: “Pourquoi pas?” Now, fifty years on, his interest in their young bodies was

He glanced at her then, for the first time. She was not mainly aesthetic, almost chaste. He viewed the passing breasts

unattractive; “as I suppose I am not unattractive”, he thought and buttocks with something of the same detachment that

to himself a moment later as he looked at his wind-burnt face might engage his tour of an art gallery or a visit to the ballet

in the mirror over the urinal, or (the same thing, to his mind) to the circus, enjoying the

flexing of calf and thigh as a celebration of the physical, with

It was a face, people were always telling him, that looked nothing tumescent in his gaze. He could no more imagine any

younger than his seventy-four years. The wrinkles were kind of sexual congress with any of these children than with

laughter lines, mainly turning up at the ends of his mouth like the dogs some had trotting behind them on leads.

dormant smiles. His eyes had been baggy since his teens,

when in those days he’d always tried to pass for older. And besides, he had not come to Nice seeking sex. He had

work to do. The book was not going well. Oh, he knew he

“Pourquoi pas?” he murmured to himself with a self-satisfied could string together publishable texts practically in his sleep,

smile as he rubbed his hands together ineffectually in the roar but it was that very facility which he distrusted. What he was

of the electric drier, rubbing them down the sides of his writing seemed to him superficial, merely facile. He had

button-fly shorts as he mounted the steps into the watery April something more important to say.

sun.

He had always been a political writer, and he expected that his wither on the vine when the cold wind of separation blew

readers would look askance at the semi-autobiographical tale between the lover and the beloved.

of unrequited love he was struggling to put down on paper. Yet here he was, thoughts of her still uppermost in his mind

It had been in his head for years, even before the affair had while he waited on the Promenade des Anglais for a woman

come to such a messy end. Indeed, the story had begun, in his to climb the steps up from the toilet so he could explore the

head, as a celebration of what he felt was probably his last meaning of her “pourquoi pas”.

love. It had taken him completely by surprise, this forty-year- He might well ask himself his own “pourquoi moi”. Why was

old woman’s surrender to his approach, as, indeed, had his he doing this? And what did it say about this undying love he

own growing obsession with her which had led to that first, had sworn and refused to foreswear?

hesitant kiss, which she had returned with such surprising

enthusiasm. Here she came. A short, trim figure, fashionably dressed in a

black trouser suit that just shrieked an up-market brand name,

For a while it had seemed like a love made in heaven, until Armani or Versace or something similar. Dark hair (probably

she ran off with a fiddle player and he was left feeling foolish. dyed, but he had no prejudice against cosmetic adornment)

However, while this love had been a life-changing experience cut short into black petals about a round, friendly face.

in what he refused to consider as the autumn of his years, it Sandals on bare feet, with dark red nail varnish. A patterned

was the time that followed her defection which he had scarf at her throat which might be Hermes. A patent leather

resolved to communicate to his readers, for the persistence of shoulder bag which she was fastening as she came to the top

his love for a woman who he felt had treated him shabbily had of the steps, so she did not see him standing there.

caused him to re-evaluate everything he had always believed She almost bumped into him, then jumped and stopped dead

about human love and affection. in her tracks.

He had had many loves, all of which had ended fairly “Pourquois pas, même,” he said.

peacefully, often no more traumatic than a mutual

acknowledgement of the parting of the ways. But just as this She paused, looked at him quizzically, and then linked her

love had been different in its three years of life, three years arm in his.

more on she still occupied all his waking thoughts. “No raison,” she said, in a franglais mixture acknowledging

Fidelity, he had come to believe, was not the bourgeois his foreignness.

illusion he’d always thought, and the fruits of love did not And there they were, walking down the Promenade like old

friends. them,” she laughed, in unconscious paraphrase of Woody

“My name’s George – ,” he began, but she interrupted him: Guthrie.

“No last names, please. I’m Joyce, but my friends call me “Actually, it’s a fifth floor studio.”

Marie for some reason.” “Does the elevator work?”

“Hail Marie, full o’ Grace,” he quipped. “Oh yes.”

She stopped and turned to him. “Well some time, perhaps, you may take me there and boil up

“You are perhaps a sceptic.” some coffee on the solitary gas ring.”

It was not a question. “It’s a two-ring electric hob,” he began to object.

“I’m not an atheist, if that’s what you mean.” “No matter,” she said. “We shall go to my place in a taxi,

“But you feel free to satirise religion.” which I shall pay for,” (when he was going to object), “and I

shall percolate us some coffee in my English Rose kitchen.”

“I feel free to satirise anything,” he said, thinking this was a

weird chat-up line. But it got weirder. In the taxi, he put his arm around her, but she disengaged

herself.

“Good,” she said. “Let us go into this hotel and talk in the

coffee shop.” “Not too fast, Monsieur La Poète. I am jung and easily

freudened.”

It looked like an expensive place, the Meridien.

A joke from Joyce yet! Then he smiled at his own double pun.

“I think I should tell you . . . “

“You are amused?” she asked. “Will you not share the cause?”

“You want me to pay, because you are a gigolo?”

“It was a passing thought. A joke from Joyce – James Joyce –

Then she laughed. and also from you, Joyce known as Marie.”

“No,” he protested. “I’m a writer.” “Oh, that terrible Irishman! If there had been no James Joyce

“Un écrivain.” we would never have been afflicted by his awful secretary.”

“Actually, I’m a poet.” “Samuel Becket? But Godot is a great work of comedy.”

“And you will take me back to your garret, where we will “The comedy is that anyone takes such charlatans seriously.

shiver under blankets so thin you can read a magazine through But see, we have come.”

George was not familiar with the geography of Nice but “Moi aussi,” he responded, but she was gone.

clearly this apartment building was in one of the better parts. “Little minx,” exclaimed Joyce. “She always does that.”

The lobby had the hush of an oil company reception area and

the elevator – it could not be called anything as anglophone as “Does what?”

a lift – whispered its way to the fifth floor, its brass baroque “Tries to seduce my men. Tomorrow, no doubt she will entice

gates disclosing views of brass door-knockered mahogany you to go to a museum or art gallery with her to admire

front doors. meaningless daubs by someone like that charlatan, Matisse.

Joyce’s apartment was a variation on that theme. A small “And of course, you will go.”

dachshund came running to greet them. Joyce dismissed it

He pondered how he should respond to all this, but it was

with a vicious kick.

difficult to know where to start: “my” men? And why would

“I hate that bloody sausage-dog.” she said. “It belongs to my she assume that he could be seduced by a younger, more

daughter, the beautiful intellectual Caroline, who is what I conventionally pretty simulacrum of herself?

think you English call a blue-stocking.”

“Well,” she said, after a short pause while he was gathering

The beautiful intellectual Caroline then appeared, greeting her his thoughts, “shall we make the café I promised you? Or

mother with triple air-kisses, extending cool fingers to shall we make jig-jig?”

George, and scooping up the dachshund and cradling him, all

And without waiting for his reply, she took hold of his hand

in one seamless motion.

and led him into the bedroom.

“I have asked you times without number not to kick little

“Me,” she said, as she kicked off her sandals and began

Klaus, mother,” she said in impeccable English. “It makes

unzipping her little black dress, “I prefer the coffee after the

him frightened and he makes ca-ca behind the curtains in the

love. Or perhaps you are pederast, like most poets today?

sitting room.”

“How do you like this old woman’s body? Is it not well kept

She went to a hall closet and shrugged into a camouflaged

for a woman of my age?”

cagoule, transferring the dachshund first to her right hand,

then to the left, as she pushed her arms into the sleeves. By now she was lying on her back, naked, on the huge bed,

and he noticed that even so she had folded her clothes and laid

“Ciao, maman,” she said, pulling open the heavy door. “I will

them neatly over a small gilt chair.

see you again, monsieur, I hope.”

In another life, before he abandoned well paid hack

journalism for unpaid “creative” writing, he had sat upon such by the dryness of the vagina, so I keep remedies by my

chairs at fashion shows organised by the Paris Chambre bedside.

Syndicale, and he had a sense of déja vu, as if he were “And you, my dear, have hands and fingers on those hands,

observing a catwalk, where the merchandise on show was and a tongue also. Do not worry, for I also have a mouth to

clothed in naked flesh, rather than silks and satins. arise your manhood.”

He sat on the bed and traced a line across her belly with his She pulled him down on to the bed and took between her lips,

forefinger, crossing the stretchmarks of a body that had lived, her heavy breasts caressing his belly.

had been used, had given birth.

“Oh,” she said, “you taste of the sea. Are you not afraid of the

“I think you are very beautiful,” he said. turds that float in our Mediterranée? Perhaps we should take a

“Pshaw!” she exclaimed. “What kind of a poet are you, if you shower together?”

cannot think up prettier lies than that? And she jumped up from the bed and ran out of the bed with

“Come, mon cher. Actions speak louder than words. Let us the lithe athleticism he might have expected of her daughter.

divest you of these ridiculous teenage gear.” Suddenly, his bowels reminded him that he needed the toilet.

And she pulled his T-shirt over his head and started to tug at He left the bedroom and walked in the direction of the shower

his shorts, trying to find a zip. noise. Joyce was already under the water, her hair matted

“But you have the button-fly,” she exclaimed. “So perhaps close to her head, and her groin, droplets sparkling on her

you are as reactionary as I, despite your liking for the tedious dark, sensuously long nipples. In the bathroom was a jacuzzi,

Godot.” a bidet, a washbasin, and a WC.



He stood up and stepped out of his boxer shorts, wondering “Is there another toilet?” he asked.

how he was going to cross the chasm between the bedside rug “Of course,” she said. “But do not be so petit bourgeois. As a

on which he stood and the bed on which she lay, eyeing him poet, you should celebrate all your bodily functions. Come!”

up and down. And she indicated the WC. “Sit. Or would you prefer to stand

“M’m,” she said. “You are even better preserved than I. But and piss?”

your poor cock is not very excited to see me. It is not He sat on the toilet, but despite the urging of his bowels, he

unexpected, at our age. I, for instance, am sometimes afflicted was not yet ready to void them in front of a comparative

stranger.

“I see you are shy,” she said. “No matter. I shall join you. The “We are going well,” she said as she dried him and led him

shower always makes me want to make water.” back into the bedroom. “Normally I do not piss on my lovers

She sat on his knees, facing away from him. He reached until the third or fourth time, sometimes never. And most

round and grasped her breasts. Suddenly, the feel of her long Englishmen are too tight-assed to take a shit, even in the

nipples in his palms reminded him of Lorca’s lines, toilette with the door locked, because they are ashamed of the

comparing them with hawthorn buds. smell.



A warm trickle flowed over his penis and down to his “What did your William Blake say? All that lives is holy?”

scrotum, and he felt himself reacting to what was, for him, a He put his hand over her mouth.

totally new experience. So this was what a golden shower felt “Enough talk,” he said. “Let’s just fuck.”

like. He hoped she would not want to piss in his mouth.

And he ran his tongue down between her breasts, over her

“Come,” she said, wiping herself with a tissue. “I have remarkably neat navel, through the black bush of her pubis,

washed off the Mediterranean moi-même. Or do you still need probing for her clitoris. Besides the anchovy taste of her

to shit?” juices, he could smell the traces of urine still clinging to her

Suddenly, his bowels opened, and the bathroom was filled hairs.

with his stink. She clapped her hands. She grabbed at his head.

“Oh, now you are no longer English,” she said. “Sit on this “Oh, why not?” she cried, in English. “Why not? Why not!”

bidet and I will enjoy to prepare you for the love.”

Nice – Bradford – St Leonards, 2005-2006

Her fingers around his scrotum and his anus were firm and

efficient, yet still erotic. He remembered then how, as a

fourteen-year-old in hospital, encased in plaster from his hips

to his ankles, nurses used to extract the bedpan from under his

bum and clean him with the same not quite so impersonal

effectiveness. It had never seemed so erotic as this at the time,

though he had entered puberty in hospital and had his love

affair there – with a nurse who offended him by going off to

marry a flight-lieutenant in the RAF.

Moonshadow

They said it would get darker as the moon consumed jumped out into stereoscopic clarity.

the sun,

but it didn’t. It was very cold

The light was pellucid, and a wind chilled my skin.

a sort of silvery-grey twilight, All four of us hugged in glee.

like the cusp between darkness and dawn. These were special moments,

No birds sang, special like the carpet of trees across the valley,

but somewhere in the distance like each leaf of grass embossed by shadow,

a dog kept barking. like wandering away for a snatched moment in the lee

Children gazed at the sky through darkened of a big rock,

eyeglasses and pinholed cereal cartons like coffee and toasted teacakes in the glen cafe,

and chattered loudly about the progress of the totality. like the after-image of the gobbling moon burned into

our brains.

The Bible teaches that as Moses grew close to the

brightness that is God Later, the TV images of a blazing wedding ring

he moved into darkness. had nothing in common

So, as I am consumed by your darkness with the magic

my soul is filled with light, banishing the black terrors of those long two minutes of the eclipse.

of the past The moonshadow passed,

and their uncertain cousins from the future. as must all things.

And as the moonshadow ate its way across the sun But your dark brilliance in my soul

the clouds cleared, does not pass.

the air grew light, Infinity minus one

and the trees, hills and rocks still equals infinity. September 1, 1999

The wedding picture

edding picture

wed “A foot-soldier.”

“What does it mean?”

I

“Doing what must be done.”

He was a foot-soldier, she was The Princess.

“You had coffee,” said The Boss. It was not a question.

“Killing?”



“A latte,” she said. He ordered a four-shot espresso for him- “Anything.”

self. A bad idea, he knew, but it was frightening, being here “I suppose she approached you first. She shall be spoken to. About

with her. that.”



“You paid. That is not permitted. You should have run a tab.” He stood in the lobby, dressed in Tommy Hilfiger, anony-

mously logoed. Lurking, it was called. Unseen, unseeable.

“I will pay,” he said. The tab would be more than he earned in

a week, but what the hell. Alert.

“It is a permissible expense,” said The Boss. “Sign and you shall Especially when she swept through, her and her minders, was

be reimbursed.” Sliding a chit across his huge desk. He looked at what he called them. She dressed in haute couture so elegant

it. Did not sign. it looked like something a little woman round the corner

“How did you become . . . ?” might have run up on a foot-treadle Singer. Under it a body,

the black crepe revealing as much as it concealed. He tried not

Sipping the latte, which left an arousing trace of brown along

to look.

her faintly moustached upper lip. He wondered if she shaved

under her arms, knowing he would never know. “Is that how it was? She spoke first? I do not think you would

dare . . .”

“Do you defy me, sir?” Not raising his voice. Almost as if asking

the time of day. But his eyes were cold. He knew what was forbidden, and this – she – was at the top

of the list.

“A foot-soldier?”

“You,” she said, dismissing the minders with a wave of her

“Is that what they call you?”

arm. “He will take me to the coffee shop.”

“It’s what I am.”

The foot-soldiers bought burgers and do-nuts from a stall in

The chit lay there, unsigned. Disregarded. the street. Ate in the basement, among the boilers and duct

“You know you may not address her directly, you.” tape. The coffee shop was out of his league.

“I will pay,” he told the waiter, who looked his Tommy up and “Yes, sir.”

down with a curl of his lip. Why he did it, paid, that contempt. “Some cream a little off the top. But not you.”

“You will sign.” “And now you pay out the bribes.” Her eyes danced. “You

He sighed. There would be no end until he did so. pervert justice. You, the incorruptible ex-lawman.”

“I was a lawman,” he told her. “Internal affairs said I took “I am not a thief.”

bribes.” “You wear my clothes and you drink coffee with my daughter

when you should be minding the store. Is not that to steal your

“But you did not.”

time from me, time that I have paid you for?”

“How long have you worked for me?”

“Could I disobey her if she required me to drink coffee with her?”

It was said The Boss knew everything about everyone, even

Paying the tab had emptied his wallet. And it was not even

their social security number. That kind of mind. He knew the

very good coffee.

answer to this question. To all questions.

The minders were there as soon as they left the coffee shop.

She, too. “You had not taken bribes. From my father.”

He suspected that they had never really left. Their conversa-

Her dad. He turned the words over in his mind, imagining this tion was probably being uploaded to some storage facility

young woman’s creation. even now, his vocabulary being scanned for evidence.

Pleasure he could imagine, dancing girls he had taken up in Of what? He had only answered her questions.

the personal elevator, stopping only at the penthouse floor. “You talked of refusing to take bribes. It is not something to be

But nothing as common as procreation, gestation. He imag- proud of. I shall expect to see small discrepancies.”

ined a delivery room all white melamine and stainless steel. Suddenly, The Boss fed the chit into the shredder.

No blood. No cries of distress.

“Fiddling is a better way,” he said. “My daughter will wish to

A baby howling? Surely not. take coffee again. You will continue to pay cash. She will not be

impressed since she has no concept of money. You will reimburse

“Not from him directly, of course.”

yourself in the traditional manner.”

“Foot-soldiers.”

“Let’s do this again,” she said. “It’s been fun.”

“Yes.”

And kissed him chastely on the cheek.

“Your accounts always balance. Answer me!”

“You’ll need smarter clothes.” Handing him the address of an thought about them and her it had been as a sort of sexless

uptown clothing store. sex, leaving her still inviolate, virginal, spiritually intacta.

The Boss’s words shocked him. The prohibition was admis-

II

sion of a possibility that had been so impossible until now it

He did not like who he became in his new clothes. They were had not even been forbidden. Now it was like juices flooding

less like him than the Hilfigers. He looked like a minder his mouth outside a sweetshop window when a kid. Sweets he

though he was still a foot-soldier. He found himself demand- would never have the money to enjoy. The stuff of dreams.

ing more from his clients. Keeping more off the top.

So he began to dream about her.

He needed it. They had taken to eating cakes with their coffee,

each cake a month’s wages rather than a week’s. And his dreams became flesh. Under the severely cut dress

breasts, thighs, buttocks walking away after that dismissive

She said she preferred the new look. But then he was someone chaste kiss, occasionally nipples winking in and out under the

different with her than he’d been before. He talked. silk.

She called him Tommy, after the outfit he’d worn when she Of course he would not. Could not. But what if.

first led the way into the coffee shop. He hadn’t had a name

since his father had been killed. In The Home they gave him a She took to driving with him to shops, restaurants. She would

number. As a lawman, too. A barcode tattooed across his vanish and reappear, twirling, her feet bare.

wrist, then lasered away. Now he was his thumbprint, retinal “What do you think?”

scan, DNA. The system knew him and clicked him through to

And carrying the packages back to the limo, clothes she never

permitted areas, to the penthouse floor when he was sum-

again wore, her display a reverse strip-tease, who she could

moned.

become. Only for him. If only for a moment.

“You will not fuck her.”

She said to call her Eve. Did not say that was her name. If,

He had never even fantasised such a thing. In the locker-room unlike him, she had one. He wondered if she was cultivating a

a single ribald entendre had tailed off into an apology when tree in her Eden, bearing a single, forbidden fruit.

he had stared the joker down.

By forbidding him, The Boss had indicated a Pandora’s box,

He had clicked her lovers through. Handsome, anonymous not yet opened. He could hear its interior, like honey bees

faces. Unchanging, serial, allowed, disallowed. If he ever buzzing.

She said little. “Tell me about the hood,” she might say. He She had never spoken of The Boss so intimately till then.

dredged up memories, long forgotten. Doing so now made him also somehow part of the family.

She tempted him to drive through them, places the limo was Another link, like the hitherto unconsidered prohibition.

programmed to avoid, despite its armour-plating. “You will need clothes for the wedding.”



“How wonderful,” she said, “to be up on the roof, lying naked Oh no. He was just getting used to the Brooks Brothers suit,

in the sun.” the Gucci shoes, the Turnbull & Asser shirt and tie.

“That’s just a song,” he said. But he could not explain about He’d seen society weddings on the box. The shade-eyed

the stink from the stench-pipe, the biting flies, the no-go graf- minders morning-suited, muttering into their Bluetooths. He

fiti demarcating where and nowhere. She only knew smells of could not play that role.

Chanel, Dior, artificially floral. The one time they had driven “You may not refuse.”

out to the country she had wrinkled her nose, sneezed. The

“You must come,” she said. “I’ll need you there.”

open spaces made him uneasy. He was glad to be back among

buildings. So once again the tailor’s measure, the inside leg, the quick

slashing chalk, the big tacked stitches, the tightness under the

“She is to marry.”

arms, at the crotch.

Of course.

He had an image of the groom, though he had never clicked

It would not be one of the facelessly handsome. A corporate him through. He drove them together sometimes, though then

merger. Damaged goods would sour the deal. He drove her to he sat upfront, with the driver. He looked to see some happi-

the clinic, a brass plate on an automatic gate. ness on their faces.

She shuddered when she rejoined him behind the armour In vain.

glass plate between them and the driver. “Ugly.”

When he shopped with her without the groom, now, she was

He tried not to imagine the stirrups, the speculum, the latex if anything more provocative, more borderline between the

fingers. Probing. Damaging her innocence. compulsory and the forbidden. Linking her arm through his,

“They should use MRI,” he said. almost dancing him through the swish of automatic doors.

Twirling.

“It is the church,” she said. “They do not trust technology.

Daddy too.” He drew the line at lingerie departments, and she danced away

from him, laughing. Her breasts more real to him after, though He applied for a transfer. Denied.

actually he could see no discernible difference. “This job is not about feelings,” said The Boss. “Feelings will let

you down.

He tried to imagine them that first night together but he could

not. For all her Barbie-doll prettiness she was real flesh. “So you have bonded. That’s good. You can keep an eye on my

Though he could not detect it under the Chanel, there would investment.

be the perfume of sweat, feminine juices. Her groom-to-be “And don’t look at me like that.”

was a shop-window dummy, a front for corporate ambition. He had learned what The Boss was reminding him of, back in

He was too clean-shaven, talcummed. Probably shaved his the hood. And it had lost him his lawman’s shield. Knowing

pubis. that, why had he been picked up, dusted down, dressed in

“You can go with her if you wish. She has asked that.” Hilfiger, set on this course that could have only one end?

Become her minder? And his? Manage their diaries? Diary? He wasn’t jealous of the groom. He even felt a little bit sorry

He shook his head. for the poor bastard. Under those shellac nails would be

claws, he knew. She was her father’s daughter, after all.

“Don’t decide now. Plenty of time.”

Though she had never unsheathed them to him.

She behaved as if it were already decided. Now, they shopped

He imagined them raking down his cheek. Tried to think what

for furniture. Art galleries. Kitchen equipment he knew she

would provoke such an attack. Failed.

would never use. A circular king-size, gadget-controlled.

Probably she didn’t care enough. Unless he refused to follow

He wondered why the groom did not come on these expedi-

her into this loveless marriage.

tions. But did not ask. She made it seem such a question

would be an irrelevance. But what then did he know of marriage? His old man had beat

up on his mother. Then afterwards he’d hear them grunting

They – she and him – were the couple. The Boss still picked

and groaning in the alcove above the big old stove. He’d

up the tab. Would do so in future, he imagined.

sworn to kill him one day when he was big enough. Instead of

Locker-room said the marriage was buying in which the old man had died in a hail of bullets, her too, in a

nanotechnology, the groom the junior partner in the deal. A supermarket hold-up, not even on duty, so there was no fancy

new apartment was being grown for them tectonically on the funeral, bullets fired over the coffin, no pension. Just The

penthouse floor. He would join her there. But he would still Home, for him and his rat of a brother. Who he put away for

need to be clicked through. ten to life, to die in the joint, stabbed with a sharpened screw-

driver in the woodworking class. Because she said that.

He had an image of what a marriage should be, and it was a He was finding it hard to pay for coffee now, spending so

feeling in his gut. Like how she danced away gaily looking at much time with her, others taking over his clients. So not

brassieres. Which she didn’t hardly need. Or perhaps they much top to cream off.

were so skilfully made they looked like nothing at all. “You’re on salary now. I don’t want you on the streets. It endan-

What did he know? The whores he went to all had silicone gers her. Run a tab. It will be debited from your salary so don’t get

proud.”

implants, their tits impossibly huge and elevated like hot-air

balloons. But he’d stopped visiting the cat-house after that He felt as if he was being enclosed in a warm cocoon he

first coffee-house drink. didn’t know how to get out of. A job for life, they had told

“You seem to have gone off sex.” The Boss knew, of course, every- him when they picked him up on Skid Row, and they meant it.

thing he did. Or did not do. You couldn’t resign.

“You could have entry now to a higher-class establishment.” He didn’t know if he would, even if he could. He didn’t want

Pushed a neat little, business-like business card across the desk. to be her minder. But how else could he protect her?

“Check it out.”

From what? From the shop-window dummy? Herself?

An instruction. Not an invitation.

Although he’d refused, he realised he would accept it. No one

So he went. They were very skilful. High class indeed. His

else seemed ever to have doubted it.

suit was steamed and pressed for him when he was done, his

Gucci’s polished to the sort of high gloss workers of a certain Jammy bastard, was the locker-room verdict.

age preferred. He scuffed them up as he walked back, dis- The tectonics were done, and she took him up and showed

missing the limo. He showered as hot as he could stand as him his rooms, his own kitchen and shower, bedroom, even a

soon as he reached his pad, though he’d been soaped and living room.

sponged all over after.

No furniture, apart from the hob, washing machine and

Because he’d been soaped and sponged all over after. fridge-freezer, the wall plasma in the living room.

He felt uncomfortable next time in the coffee house. But her “I thought we could choose the rest together.” Her eyes wide,

natural innocence soon dispelled his discomfort. And he never guileless, laughing, knowing he knew the game she was play-

went back to the high-class brothel. Even though the madam ing. Powerless to do anything but play along.

had said the tab was covered. And always would be.

He had minimalist tastes. She did not interfere, except to buy Then, inviting him in. Twirling.

him a big, disturbing abstract for the wall over the single bed. Not a Princess any more. A Goddess.

“Get to be a tight fit if you’re entertaining a guest,” she said. The seamstresses exchanging complicit smiles, this twirling

“Or – “ for a foot-soldier, the unconcealed devotion in his eyes.

“Or?” He couldn’t resist rising to the bait. But she was al- The cathedral was huge, full of worrying nooks and crannies.

ready leaving the gallery. Ahead of him, which was contrain- Not his problem. It had been swept and double-swept. Then

dicated by his training. She was a very valuable property, swept again.

especially now. Not everyone was happy about this marriage.

There had been other shop-window dummies before this one. But still he worried.

He moved into the apartment before the wedding. He confiscated a toy raygun from a kid in the VVIP section.

Mods were possible, turning toys into lethal weapons. Invita-

And placed at the bedside a photo of her he’d dumped from tions had been explicit: no handguns or replicas.

the CCTV footage. Blurry, but he didn’t mind that.

He crushed the toy into a tangle of pink and green plastic.

How he thought of her, when he closed his eyes that night. Handed it to a startled parent, who would no doubt complain.

Imprecise. Uncertain. Dangerous. Who gave a shit?

Like her dancing eyes. He was in place for the wedding march, as close as possible to

being by her side as she glided down the aisle.

III

Locker-room said he should have been best man, but that was

He was a very small cog in a very large wheel on the wedding

impossible. One of the top lieutenants would be there, the two

day. Planned and co-ordinated from the very top. His moves

rings in his vest pocket.

controlled by his Bluetooth.

By the side of her, The Boss. He realised this was the first

Except she was a loose cannon, and he had to stick close to

time he had ever seen them together. He walked like a man

her. Even when she went to the can. He couldn’t go in with

with a not too favourite mistress. Arm candy.

her, but he cleared it for her. Even a duchess would have to

quit whatever she was doing, then. Their eyes touched for a nanosecond, then both looked away.

In the older man’s, something akin to boredom. A story al-

When she was dressing, too. Outside the door, checking seam-

ready printed and published, headlines yellowing with age.

stresses in and out. So many sharps. Made him nervous.

Done and dusted. was still standing.

Most of the time his eyes were ranging the hall. Choir: sorted. All he had done with his flechette was to give the gunsel a

Military band: OK, no weaponry. Bridesmaids, matron of clearer target. He threw himself in front of her, trusting that

honour: more Barbies, checked and triple-checked. Again, not the kevlar armour under his shirt would protect him, and her.

his problem. But still a worry. As he felt the armour-piercing shells stitch across his chest he

He didn’t look at her. Her veil covered her eyes anyway. What realised this was no longer an option.

the fuck was he doing here? What had to be done. Like al- “You fool,” hissed The Boss in his ear, “didn’t you realise this

ways: his father rutting away in the alcove, protecting his butt was planned? Why did you have to get in the way?”

in The Home, staying out of the line of fire, drinking coffee.

Necessity. He was lying in her lap and he worried that his blood would

be ruining her gown. There were tears in her eyes. She stroked

The archbishop was intoning the ritual words. One of the altar his cheek.

boys made a strange move and everything dropped into that

slow-motion speeded-up reality he remembered from the Her face morphed into the stolen screen-dump by his bedside.

street. It was the last thing he saw.

Most of the minders didn’t pack, but there were sharp-shoot- Blurry.

ers with telescopics in the gallery. He had a flechette sewn

27/3/06 15:03

into the right arm of his jacket, activated by his forefinger, The ballad of Fair Annie and Lovely

pointing. Its darts would shred its target into beefsteak tartare

if he could get a clear shot. If necessary, he would take out

Johnny Play song

innocent bystanders at the same time if he had no other op- Music: Rahel Guzelian (recorded live)

tion. Of all the fair maids in this town,

And I have lain with many,

The ugly little handgun in the boy’s hand seemed to close all There’s none that sets my heart afire

other doors. If only he could get past the archbishop, who was Like the golden eyes of Annie.

waving his arms, pushing away from the line of fire.

The gun went plop, and the best man went down. He triggered There’s many a young man in this town

the darts, and a mist of blood clouded his vision. The altar boy And they be blithe and bonnie

But only one resists her charm: How may this be? I’ll see him die,

They call him lovely Johnnie. If any slight my bonnie.

Tell me his name and he shall hang

For Johnnie’s fair, his eyes are blue, For hurting my dear Annie.

He’s caught so many’s fancy

But none is so enchanted as Nay, nay my father dear, she said,

The soul of golden Annie. Your anger comes but rarely.

’Tis not the man but his true love,

There’s some will say that Annie’s cold, Her name is devilish Mary.

Her heart is hard and stony,

But those who love her know that she’s I know not if she be a witch

Consumed by love for Johnnie. It has been said of many

But she has stole his heart away,

But Mary is his own true love Away from his fair Annie.

Though he could choose from many.

He loves and lives only for her He sent a troop throughout the town,

And never thinks of Annie. They searched the streets for Mary,

They found her by her lover dear

Fair Annie’s father rules the town, In the tavern making merry.

He’s just as she is bonnie,

But he would turn it upside down Fair Annie’s father tried the maid,

To please his daughter Annie. Her heart was dark and heavy,

A guilty verdict was declared,

She came to him one dismal day, And so condemned was Mary.

Her eye was dark and stormy,

She said: There lives within this town So Johnnie searched throughout the town

A man who’s slighted Annie. Until he found Fair Annie,

Saying what dreadful deed that you have done,

For they would burn my Mary.

Fair Annie ran to the old court house, For though she doesn’t care for me

Repenting of her folly. To me she’s still my bonnie

But her father cried: You are too late, I’d wait until the sun go cold

For she’s condemned already. For a kind word from my Annie.

December 1, 1999

In vain she cried for mercy mild, A Death





T

To hear they would not tarry, he dead man smiled. Which made him smile all the

They dragged her through the city streets more, because obviously he no longer had the physical

And took the life of Mary. means to smile, but nevertheless he could sense the

non-existent muscles of his non-existent face tighten up into

What kind of love, fair Annie cried, that strange human rictus which would have been more like a

Is this, so dark and heavy? snarl than a friendly greeting in any other animal species.

False witness was the death of her, What made him smile was the irony of it, the way he’d been

Who once was blithe and merry. praying all the time for it all to end, but with no response from

whoever he thought he was praying to; it just went on and on,

Too late, too late, young Johnnie cried, the pain, and so he’d taken over, volunteering to go into the

Your tears shall never move me, war zone, hoping an Uzi bullet’d work the way prayer hadn’t.

For you have slain my own true love, And he’d come back in a body bag and everyone’d be sorry.

And never shall have Johnnie.

But then the prayer had kicked in, the way it will, and he’d

Nevermore, this fair maid cried, been walking along a country lane on the wrong side, a road

Shall any young man have me. he’d walked along with the woman many’s the happy time,

For the innocent I’ve done to death and it was making him happy not sad.

And I have lost my Johnnie. And the car had caught him in the back, flipped him in the air

like a broken doll, tossing him down on to the asphalt,

Full forty years a single maid slamming his face down on to the ground so the skull

Lamented my fair Annie, fractured into a million shards of bone and this essence of

And forty more I’d wait as well himself, what people called his soul as if it was something he

Till cold clay grave should claim me. owned rather than something he just was, this soul-thing that

he was had escaped from the skin and bone thing lying frame his death-tossed limbs and the cells began to break

sprawled in the road. down and decay into the stench of their constituent chemicals,

And as he could still hear the car engine revving dangerously he had a sense of this shattered shell as only one node in a

in low gear, the teenage driver’s voice high in a keen of continuum, stretching back through the moment of conception

triumph as it vanished round the bend, he offered up a prayer into the tumid blood of his father, and back through the

of thanks to whoever had answered his plea, and he wondered millions of generations to the very creation out of chaos itself,

what next. and forwards, too, through the irrelevance of the burial

service, through the disassembling work of worms and bacilli,

He looked down – down wasn’t really the right word, because leading entropically into the end of time’s illusion and the

since this being that he was had no physical location in human return to chaos.

space-time, all directions were the same to him, yet even as he

began to perceive the reality all those scientific book He began to perceive something of the beauty of eternity, the

equations had been hinting at, he still retained some human total past and future as a continual now.

perceptions and chose to accept the fiction he’d once called And he became aware of the body as part of a dance with all

down – so he looked down at the broken thing he once was, its surroundings.

and he was startled to observe that it wasn’t really dead. Yes, Somehow, whenever he had thought but rarely of life after

the gestalt of his collective identity no longer functioned, so it death, he had expected it to be a monotone grey, drained of all

could no longer be considered to be himself, and the constant life. He was astonished by the vibrancy within which all

concourse of protein along its neural pathways had ceased, the things sang a sort of heterophony together. He thought of the

scarlet and blue flood of his arteries and veins no longer harmony of the spheres, but he knew this was just another

flowing as it leaked out to puddle beneath his ruined face, the metaphor, that his memories of his departed physical

heart had ceased pumping, the lungs no longer rising and boundaries were translating the transcendence he was

falling. experiencing into terms his old consciousness could have

But it was still alive, teeming with microbes and bacteria comprehended.

going about their microscopic business, antibodies And so at the same time as he became aware of the road as a

surrounding and subduing foreign invaders entering by the convenient fiction, of its history as once a footpath, now a

broken gateways of his flesh, the melanin of toe and lane, one day to become an electronic pathway for modes of

fingernails and body hair still multiplying and laying down transportation unknown to him, then to be abandoned as

layer upon layer. And even as rigor of death began to freeze-

channelled travel became a myth of pre-history, nevertheless into noxious gases flying up to girdle the stratosphere, walls

it pleased him to travel along it in space, observing the lives falling down, roofs falling in, lovers creating new life on

of its hedgerows and the fields on each side as a symphony of hidden beds of straw, life that would live as he had lived, die

greens and browns, a hymn of colours and inter-penetrating as he had died, only to discover as he was discovering that all

beings who were more aware of themselves and each other was fiction, that all lies were truth somewhere, somewhen, in

than he and his kin had ever been, a bird’s tiny mind warning a universe of infinite possibilities.

all others not to encroach as it rose, shouting its displeasure And he saw a couple passing by, hand in hand, and he felt the

into the sky, the steaming dung still linked back through time tears of memory start to pull at what would have been the

with the sad-eyed horses which had dropped it. ducts of his eyes when he realised that he was the man who

And he was astonished to discover that the horses, the worms led the woman over a stile, and she the woman no longer his

hurrying up through the topsoil to feed on and be fed upon by woman, at the moment of his death with another love, the old

the horse-shit, all were aware of him, not only of the physical pain of loss welling up within him as red as the blood still

presence of the body he had left behind him – as if behind seeping from his broken veins.

meant anything at all – but also of this being that he now was, For a moment a scarlet rage blurred his vision, a murderous

had always been and ever would be, unchained to the quanta anger at the loss of what might have been, but it was

of time passing as he had been. They were of flesh as he had submerged almost immediately with a sense of peace, of the

been, but their perceptions had not been blunted as his had meaninglessness of anger and hate, and of love too, when it

been. attempted to possess the loved one.

And he saw that the old distinctions of organic and inorganic And he saw the woman anew in her beautiful totality, not just

were as meaningless as past, present and future, even as life the love that there’d once been between them but also the

and death itself, for he saw the farm buildings and things in each which had driven them apart.

implements, the tractors and ploughs and harrows part of the

same elemental dance, singing their parts in the same And he saw her curled up and a round her new love, as and

soundless song, lying in ore beneath the ground to be quarried unlike once he and she had lain together, and he longed to

up and smelted down into mechanical shapes, the hungry rust reach out and touch this otherness in her, to embrace the

beginning to gnaw at them even when they were still bright things that had given him pain, so that they, too, could be part

and shining, the oil lying in the earth, laid down through of his love, and he saw that this was impossible, that in trying

aeons of destroyed life, refined into fuel, soon to be exploded to make the other not-other he could only destroy what made

it other, thus diminishing who she was and robbing himself of not consume him, but would give him the unity with others he

what had once been so precious in their love. had sought throughout his life.

She stirred and turned over in the bed where she lay, and And he laughed, thinking that if only he still had a face his

scratched irritably at a lesion below her breast. He recalled cheeks would be wet with tears.

how, so many times, he had tried to bring her peace, and he As he approached the white light, he had visions of all the

reached out to her once again, wishing he could touch and images of godhead through which human beings had sought

bring healing to her flesh. She sighed and turned into her to picture the ineffable, whether Krishna, Buddha, or Christ in

lover’s arms, and he was aware that her spirit was descending Majesty, or Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or Mao. And

into a lower level of consciousness where there are no he saw them all as approximations of this single,

dreams. unimaginable truth, and the edges of all the images

He longed to be united with her in those depths, but he saw blackening and curling into fire, not lost in it but blazing with

that while all lovers sought such a union, it was impossible. a new intensity within it, as he himself was drawn into the

And he saw the integrity of her unpossessable being as heart of the fiery maelstrom, and felt his identity affirmed as

something precious, a jewel in the silent place at the heart of the very sense of his separatedness became subsumed into the

her, the source of his love, and its objective. He saw this flames.

silence within all those struggling with life, and found it also He was spinning, spinning, and the flames did not consume

within himself, and expanding like a silver flame to consume him.

all his petty griefs and pleasures. And, suddenly, he had passed through it and beyond, and he

As he became that fire, he saw the fires of all his fellows found himself on a country lane, walking in the warmth of an

burning also, not only his love and her lover, but all the loves early summer’s day. He heard a car’s engine, protesting at its

of his life, stretching back through his tortured parents into high revolutions in a dangerously low gear, and he pulled

the wombs and loins of all those gone before, and stretching himself into the hedgerow as the car roared past him, the

out laterally to engulf all humanity, and through it to all teenage driver whooping and hollering as he went, leaving the

creation. And while each flame was a discrete identity, he saw stink of burnt petro-carbons behind him in his wake.

that they were all contained within a single fire, white hot and In the silence that followed, he heard a skylark singing as it

incandescent, to which all the individual flames were drawn, climbed a bright-blue pathway into the sky.

like moths to a candle. Yet he knew this greater flame would

May 20-23, 2002

A sad dance

It’s a sad dance Click to hear poem When the music changes

It’s a sad dance That means we’ve got to change too

It’s a sad dance

But I’m dancing all the same The dance never ends

The dance never ends

Won’t you dance with me The dance never ends

Won’t you dance with me And I’m still here learning the steps

Won’t you dance with me

See I’m holding out my arms We all take hands

We all take hands

I can see you dancing We all take hands

I can see you dancing And make a circle round the sun

I can see you dancing

But you’re dancing with someone else It’s a sad dance

It’s a sad dance

We’ve changed partners It’s a sad dance

We’ve changed partners But I’m dancing all the same

We’ve changed partners October 22, 2002

But I’m learning that everything changes The heart songs





I

T looked like he’d have to cancel the funeral.

When the music changes

When the music changes The heart had been beating erratically within him for

When the music changes nearly a year now, though he had first been aware of its

The walls of the city shake beating some two years earlier than that. Sometimes it would

beat so fast he thought it might escape from his breast like a

When the music changes sky-rocket and explode into a fountain of stardust. Other

When the music changes times it slowed so that he could barely feel its beating. And

his other, the heart he’d lived with all those years before he

came to realise he had two of them, twisted around each other space left within him by its removal.

like a double helix, beating in concert for so short a time, his He made it a small coffin, and sang it a song as he hammered

other beat steadily on, rather manic at times, it’s true, but loud the lid down with silver nails:

enough for two.

Beat the drum slowly and lower him down,

People had looked askance at him when he disclosed the Here lies a dead lover but now love is gone.

complex polyrhythms within his bosom. It was weird to them, He loved well and unwisely but it wasn’t enough

a freak, at best immoral, certainly unnatural, and possibly One of the wounded in the madness of love

illegal, a kind of bigamy. He did not know where the words had come from. They

Still, for a while, his two hearts had beat on, the one steadily, sounded like an old funeral dirge. The melody was tuneless,

the other quite clearly erratic, and for a while he enjoyed the something he hummed to himself, hardly realising he was

crossed tempo of their beating, like an African drum choir. singing.

But now that second heart had stopped. He had heard it, one And then he heard a small noise, a faint scratching like an ant

taking home a grain of stolen sugar to its nest on the other

morning, stuttering, hesitating, quieting, like a groan heard

side of the hill. He stayed his hammer. There it was again.

from another room, so low it was almost below the range of Like tiny hands touching wood. He bent his head down to the

hearing, so that when finally it did stagger to a stop it was coffin. The sound came from within.

difficult to tell the silence from the faint sounds that had gone

immediately before. Quickly, he levered up the lid. The wrinkled heart lay there,

still as death, but the sound was louder now. Then he saw the

He took it from his breast and looked upon it. Its shape was faintest possible quiver stir its surface, like a morning breeze

withered, like an old walnut, cold in his hand like a cat-killed moving the waters on ancient depths. The heart was beating.

bird. It was clearly dead. He picked it up in his hands, and he could feel its life, gentle

His first response was one of relief. Most people managed still, but increasing in volume, a small breath from memory.

with one heart, and this unnecessary supplement to his blood He cradled it there a full moment, feeling it strengthen, the

had caused him nothing but grief. It would be hard to get used sound louder now, a steadier rhythm, growing in confidence.

to, this silence, this emptiness within his breast, but he The empty space in his breast called to him in agony for its

resolved not to mourn it, but to bury it quietly, leaving no vacancy to be fulfilled, and gently he replaced the organ in its

headstone to remind anyone of the great joys it had brought home.

him, at the best, nor the pain he could still recall, deep in the Suddenly, he was wracked with remembered pain, suffusing

his whole being with a longing almost too great to bear. This On the banks of the moorlands

is what it had been like, to have a heart within him that called Tune: On the banks of the roses (Irish traditional)

out to union with another, and that other no longer there, that

other now another’s love. On the banks of the moorlands, my love and I sat down,

And I took out my whistle and I laid it in her hand.

He fell to the ground, quivering like a shot deer, his limbs She put it to her lips and she played me such a tune:

thrashing about like the legs of a spider caught in its own I sang: Darling, lovely darling, don’t you leave me!

web, keeping time with the beating within him. He tore at his

breast, trying to get at the heart, but it had already healed But now my love has left me, for better or for worse.

over. Though his nails made the blood flow, the rib cage had She’s got a lot of whistles and she keeps them in her purse,

closed back over his two hearts, which were now beating And when I see her play them, well, it makes me want to

strongly, as if he had never removed anything from within. curse,

Gradually, the pain receded, so that it became no more than an As I remember how she played upon my whistle.

undertone to his body’s song. He became calm, turned on his

side, and slept. My love still has my whistle, lying ready to her hand,

When he woke, he remembered a dream when he had denied It can play the sweetest lovesong ever since the world began,

what grew and beat within himself, and had sought to remove If she don’t want to play it then I know a one who can

and bury it, deep where its telltale reminders could not trouble ’Cos I need to keep in practice with my whistle.

him. And he rose to go about the business of living, singing as

he did a new song, wordless, whose rhythm was of the two So if you need a whistle and you want to learn the tune

hearts beating, the one in the day, the other in remembered Just leave your window open at the rising of the moon

night. But I’ll stick it in my pocket, when the playing has been done

Just in case my love returns to play my whistle.

November 12, 2002 October 11, 2002

Magdalene





T

he coldest nights are the worst, and believe me this strictly intentional.

was the coldest I’ve ever known, cold as charity – and

Instead, it was a street corner designed by Robert Adam or

there was precious little of that to be found in the big

someone especially for the north wind to howl round, and

city in midwinter, when you’re cruising round looking for

freezing the balls off me, pardon my French.

some old queen ready to take you back to his hotel room for a

quick leg over. You may have guessed that street corners are not my natural

habitat, and you’d be right. Gimme a good club any night,

I had the sharp threads on, all dressed up for pulling, the

good and dark so it gets the punters thinking of having a quick

crushed velvet strides cut so close you could tell my religion

grope – though I soon put them straight on that score, I can

by scrutinising my crotch, and there were plenty who couldn’t

tell you, no pay no stray – the bubbly pricey enough to make

take their eyes off it, I make no charge for looking at the

them feel just a bit wicked but not over the top so there’s no

merchandise, the chiffon shirt open nearly to the navel with

dosh left for anything else.

the little gold medallion bouncing on my chest, the bum-

freezer jacket of black glove leather that really lived up to its Only this night they’d closed them up at eleven, didn’t they,

name that night, Cuban-heeled winkle-picker pumps that were all to do with the season of the year, which is a bad joke,

killing me and the lisle socks with clocks up the sides, but because I just laugh and laugh and laugh like little Audrey

they were built for style not comfort, and the wind is no when they call it festive: about as joyous as a Swedish black-

respecter of fashion. and-white movie with a suicide in the last reel, I call it, and

the peace and goodwill more like the grave than anything

I like nice things, me, but in my business you need to put your

worth celebrating.

money on your back, since that’s the way I earn my crust, so

to speak, and sometimes I had dreams of naffing around at There was me on my street corner, and the dossers in their

home in baggy tweeds or curling up alone in a nice warm bed cardboard boxes outside the social security waiting a first shot

in wincyette pyjamas and the hell with them all, but it’ll never at the jobs next day – hope springs eternal in the human

happen. I have to wear silk, or the johns get the hump. Or I’d trouserleg, I always say, but no one in their right minds’d give

like to get a good auto, something with a nice long bonnet and

them any kind of work, especially in the catering trade which

a sexy roar to the exhaust that’ll get the macho crowd going,

with a nice powerful heater blowing up my legs like the kiss is this job centre’s specialty. Have you seen the colour of their

of a lover, while I waited for him to come, double entendre fingers? Do me a favour, please.

All we had in common was the wind, and the black mood that politicians doing after they’ve provided their particular

comes down on all of us just before midnight, when you know service for their not too particular masters. Not that I’m into

the next day’s going to be just as bad as the last, with no politics myself, you understand, can’t afford that kind of self-

pumpkin coach to take you home after the ball, and no glass deception, but people talk in bed, you know, the smoke and a

slipper either, just the fading chance of some sweaty minutes chat to stave off the inevitable depression and guilt after the

with an old codger too far gone in booze to get it up, most event, and I’ve had some prominent people in my time.

times. I could make my fortune with the gutter press, naming names,

I have this dream of someone really nice, not too old, with but I’ve got my respect, and even if I’m a whore, I’m a clean

gentle hands, who wants to set me up in a place where I can one, not like some who’d sell their grandmothers down the

forget all about clubs and street corners both, take him a nice Street of Shame, thank you very much.

cup of tea every morning, cook a moussaka for when he gets Anyway, back on my street corner I was just about to call it a

home from the office, Martini in his glass and slippers by the wasted night when all the dossers started getting excited,

fire, the whole domesticated bit, but it’s just another dream. jumping up and down and pointing at the sky, making enough

I’ve got my regulars, of course, some of them quite kind, but fuss to attract the attention of the law, I shouldn’t wonder,

most of them are married and the others aren’t into settled which is one additional problem I don’t need. I steer clear of

relationships. If they were they wouldn’t be cruising the bars, the dossers most of the time, they smell rather choice you

they’d be . . . God knows where, because I don’t, but it’s know, and while I expect they need to get their end away like

surely somewhere I’d never be seen dead in, so there goes that all the rest of us, I hope I never sink that low.

dream up the spout.

I looked up at where they were pointing, sort of instinctively,

People have this funny idea about whores, of either sex, they not really curious, and blow me if it wasn’t something more

swing between thinking we’re barely human, like some kind than a wino’s imaginings: a multitude of coloured lights in the

of fleshy garbage can for those who can’t control themselves sky, all clustered round the Tower, or rather behind it, plus a

to dump into, the other is the whore with the heart of gold, pure white beam shining straight down.

who has a nice little house in Surbiton and a nanny looking

after the kids while they’re out on business. Everyone started running, you know the way it is, we’re just

rabbits or sheep at heart aren’t we, under the skin, so I joined

Me, I’m just obeying market forces, like the premier says, one in the general rush, the dossers, me, some soldiers who

of the service industries. At least I can wash my mouth out appeared from nowhere so I wondered if my luck was

and feel good and clean after, which I can’t see many

changing after all, a bit of rough with a hand job in a There was a kind of a hush, like you get in church, you know,

doorway’d be better than nothing, and I had to pay the milk before the service starts and everyone’s half-kneeling with

bill in the morning or it was black coffee for now on and I like their heads in their hands, before the real out-loud prayers

my cream. start, and though we came in chattering excitedly, the hush

There was even a vicar, God knows what he was doing on the took us over and we quieted down pretty damn quick, craning

streets at that hour, dog-collar and all; I gave him a kind of a our necks and trying to see what on earth was it all about.

sideways glance to check out was he your classic cleric with Being fairly tall, I had a better view than most, but I wasn’t

his hand on the choirboy’s knee but nothing, so I just let any wiser. The girl was quite pretty, though her face was

myself be swept along with the crowd, past the Tower, where grubby the way all street people are, when soap and water’s

some of the security guards joined us in their comic-opera hard to find, but there was a sort of glow about her which

uniforms, gold braid and darned socks, and into the car park turned her street-urchin scruffiness into something a painter

behind the big pub on the corner. might fall in love with.

I don’t like that place. Barred me once they did, and me just The baby, oh he was something else. I looked into his eyes

nursing a G-and-T in the corner causing no harm to nobody, and if I tried to put a name to what I saw there, it’d be

but the bouncer came over and said I was lowering the tone, acceptance. People were on their knees by now and praying

which was a laugh, all that poncey red velvet and fake horse and carrying on, but I just stood there, sort of transfixed,

brasses had done that already, but I went nice and peaceful, because it really seemed as if, young as he was, he knew me,

you’ve got to watch your Ps and Qs when you sail as close to like real deep down, and he didn’t care, because all there was

the law as I do. in his eyes was love.

Turned out it wasn’t the pub we were heading for, just as well, I’ve noticed that in kids lots of times, before parents and

but a kind of a shed out in the carpark, a wretched little place school and church have filled their minds with shit, they just

packed with people, and all of them goggling at a young turn to you and take you as you are, just so long as you’re

woman and her child like they’d never seen the like before. prepared to do the same, no judgements and no last names.

We crammed in, and at least it was nice and warm with all This kid was like that, but in spades, like if the rest of

that crushed humanity contributing their sweaty kilowatts, kiddiedom were gurus then he was the supreme master, and

even if I was a bit close to the dossers for my personal there wasn’t no one going to turn him around. He wrote the

comfort. book on that one, and inside the love and acceptance there

was this incredible strength, not macho, and neither that everyone who preaches at me, they don’t draw a distinction

beautiful maternal presence you get from some women, which between what I am and what I do, any more than the rest of

I could sense in his mum, the serenity, and personally I’ll take the world does. A whore is what I do, not what I am. The

that in preference to your average male power trip. world says what I am is shit, only fit to be a whore, and in my

Look, I know about male and female created he them, because book that’s not so different from the preachers who tell me

I got them both inside of me, here, and it gets me very I’m abomination, that I’ve got to deny this bit of me that

confused sometimes, but in him there was no confusion. He looks at my own sex the way we’re supposed to look at

was male, I mean really masculine, know what I mean, with others, that finds tenderness and affection in the hard muscled

no need to prove anything, and what I think of as the woman arms of ones like me, which doesn’t draw the hard-and-fast

side in me was there too, natural and peaceful, not struggling line between male and female that makes straight people feel

for supremacy like it is in me, so what you might call the male secure in their straightness.

and the female in him was at peace within him. And yet not OK, when I was a teenage kid I used to pray, I mean really

peaceful like what we mean by peace, sort of dead apathy, or pray, to whoever there is out there, to make me different, so I

just the absence of aggro like when the big superpowers agree could be turned on by the silly little girls in the youth club and

not to throw rockets at each other for the next year or two. not the other fellows flicking the towels at each other in the

More like I imagine a nuclear furnace might be, like a gentle showers after the five-a-side. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the

glow, banked down, but ready to give out energy like a sun girls OK, and in fact my other prayer was to be made exactly

exploding if need be. like them, but neither prayer came true, and here I am, your

average screwed-up herbert of our time, not exactly sure what

All this is words, trying to tell you how I felt when I looked in he is and what he should be.

his eyes, and I’m taking longer to tell it than the split-second

recognition I felt there. Looking into that baby’s eyes, though, it was if he was sure,

quite sure about me, and it was OK, so I was sure too. And I

I don’t like my life and I’d change it if I could ever see felt the essence of myself separating out from all the shit

something better, as long as it didn’t mean turning my back on things I’ve done, some to others but mostly to myself, like

me. I’ve heard the vicar preaching change, standing on the warm hands inside me straightening out the tangles and

street corner by the underground station, and I wouldn’t mind caressing me the way my mum used to do before she died,

some of that if it didn’t mean embracing the nuclear family crooning a lullaby.

male-female and one-and-two-thirds kids concept. But

I mean, why the hell did I remember the lullabye, of all babies either. I can tell you anything you want to know about

things, at this exact moment in time, bringing the tears to my vulnerability, though I have to play it so hard and brittle-

eyes so the image of the mother and child blurred and just for surfaced to make it on the streets, I bleed internally when I

a moment I was scared someone would see me, point the hear snide remarks or someone kicks me in the teeth.

finger: Look, the little queer’s blubbering. But the image But, compared with him, I was hard as iron. Looking into

cleared, and he was still looking at me, and suddenly I didn’t those so gentle eyes, so understanding and accepting, I

give a damn who could see, like the tears were washing the realised with a kind of chill that at this time of birth there was

filth out of my life, and I didn’t know what I had to do, but I already a promise of death, not just the inevitability of decay

knew he was going to help me find a way of doing it that and decline we all carry within us, though that, too, but

didn’t contradict everything I thought I knew about me. something more horrible, more glorious. Within the sad lovely

You’re going to say all this just from looking in the eyes of a eyes I sensed a sacrifice that wasn’t just a turning away from

new-born baby and, yes, I know it sounds crazy, but no more the bad stuff like he inspired in me, because that, too, is a kind

crazy than the way I’ve been living lately, and there’s got to of death, and a welcome one, too, but a surrender I wasn’t

even capable of thinking about, of his very essence, a

be a better way than that. A guy I went with once, a bit of an

willingness quite literally to go through hell for me and my

intellectual he was, trained to be a priest but couldn’t make it

kind.

on the celibacy trail, he said that all religion’s just a

projection, what’s really happening is inside you, so perhaps And since I saw something of myself in him, and felt him in

that baby just helped me to realise something I already knew, me, a kind of terror struck me, a fear that I would be offered

deep down. to sip from the same bitter cup, and I would not be able to

stomach it. And I prayed it might not be so.

Or perhaps he really was a power, the guru of gurus, the

essence of all we were meant to be and could be, not just the Suddenly this prayer made me realise I was the only one in

golden-haired white middle-class WASP kid you see on the the shed not on his knees.

greeting cards but a dirty little Third-World child, like the The child looked deep into my eyes, and the fear vanished, as

ones you see starving in the refugee camps, rejected, if it had never been, but I never forgot that premonition. Then

homeless, someone who found me within him, and found it he looked away, as if his work with me was done for the

worthy of love. moment, and I suppose it was. I got down on my knees with

Because all that power was wrapped up in this baby’s body, the rest of them and it seemed like the place I should have

incredibly frail and vulnerable, like babies are, and not only been, all my life.

The Thirteenth Hour its chimes strike as we enter the thirteenth hour.

A clock strikes at the edge of the dawning day: May 29, 1999

its hands stand at the thirteenth hour.

The wedding at Cana

We spend this time in the arms of God. And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee;

Alone he knows where we are going through this zone of and the mother of Jesus was there:

silence. And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the mar-

riage.

It is a place of quiet memories And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto

whose voice is loud with grieving for what’s been: him, They have no wine.

moon shining through deerforest, Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee?

cobblestones tumbling down from the hills, mine hour is not yet come.

unnamed grey roofs across the valley, His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith

spoken words and unspoken meanings, unto you, do it.

eyes glancing sideways across strange rooms, And there were set there six waterpots of stone, after the

the rush to orgasm of a steamtrain on the viaduct manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or

leading to who knows where, three firkins apiece.

the whir of windmills, white against the sky. Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And

they filled them up to the brim.

These images flash across the chimes, And he saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the

collaging like found objects turning into art. governor of the feast. And they bare it.

Breaking if we grip them too tight to our hearts, When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was

shards of what was then, splintering in our hands, made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants

broken and bloody: which drew the water knew;) the governor of the feast

let them float, unbidden, called the bridegroom,

linked with their unknown tomorrows, And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set

like unborn brothers to this time. forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then

that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine

A clock stands at the edge of the dawning day: until now.

The Bridegroom pole had cracked with the blast. I could see splashes of red on

the canvas roof, where it hung down, looked like fresh paint.



I

NEVER was a brave man. In fact, my father said water

ran in my veins, not blood. So when the rockets hit that But I knew what it was.

morning, just as we were exchanging our vows, I was I looked round, to see if anyone was paying attention, but they

under the table in a flash. were all like me, their hands over their ears, kissing the dust.

My bride was still with her people, and her brother flung Even her family, tough as they are. Surely someone had to do

himself across her. I felt that should have been me, but if I’d something.

have done it, and her not yet mine, it could have been a cause I found myself praying: Not me, Lord. Please, not me. I’m the

of bad blood between us. devout coward in the family, remember?

They’re a tough lot, her family. Veterans of the intifada, some It was a woman crying, my bride’s mum, I think.

of them. A cousin was a suicide bomber. I couldn’t do that,

I crawled over to her, and it was. She looked really bad. Her

myself.

leg stuck out at a wrong angle, and there was blood at her ears

Be fair, not just because I haven’t got the bottle. I mean, what and the corner of her mouth. She needed help, and fast.

good does it do, blowing up a school bus, shooting down

I shouted out: Get a medic, someone.

shoppers?

Nobody answered. There was lots of people weeping, more

But I lay there, my hands over my ears, trying to shut out the

out of fear, or relief that they were still in one piece, it

noise of the rockets, swooshing down out of the sky, and

sounded like. My bride’s brother looked up, looked me

blowing up our little homes.

straight in the eyes, and sort of shook his head.

I’m too young to remember the old place, before they ex-

Then I heard the jets making a new sweep. It wasn’t going to

pelled us, but we’ve got a picture on our wall. Doesn’t mean a

get any better.

lot to me, I confess. Can’t live in the past, can you? But what

we’ve got here, that means something to me, small as it is. I I stood up and went to the door of the tent. The dust outside

can’t understand what good it does, rocketing it to rubble. Not was beginning to settle. I could see as far as the hospital, well

a lot to choose between that and blowing up a school bus, to it’s more of a sort of clinic, really. Not many facilities, but it’s

my mind. better than nothing. The roof was damaged, and I could see

people running about, with stretchers.

Someone started crying, in the corner of the tent, where the

I looked back into the tent, and the next wave of rockets hit. because one alone is but a fractal fragment of the whole

because so many have gone before

I was thrown to the ground, and the whole tent collapsed on

because I live

top of us. The woman in the corner began to scream. Others because I love

were shouting and praying and carrying on. I just felt cold, because I carry all these lives and loves into an unknown territory

like ice was in my veins. I thought: OK, you bastards, you can because love is indivisible

kill me, but you can’t kill us all. because all my life has led up to the moment of my death

And I ran, half crouching, to the ruined hospital to get some because one day there must be an end to all these endings

help. because there is no such thing as an ending

Into the War Zone because even if I return from the war zone the man I am will be left

I behind me in the dirt

Because of love because perhaps in the wilderness I may drive out my demons

because of hate because the crossroads have left me nowhere else to go

because of cowardice because a tiny candle gutters in my soul and the darkness has not

because a life may not be defined only by its ending overcome it

because each sadness is part of the happiness of being alive because the words of my explanation are not the meaning of the

because there are so many meaningless deaths it is good to give act

one life a meaning because of what is, what does, and what is done

because life is a gift we may not refuse because if everything I have ever done is wrong then this final

because love for each is a love for all wrongness may make all things right

because the red flower of blood in the sand must bear the fruit of because I do not know

forgiveness because I must seek what I have never known

because we shall water the barren ruins with our tears

because the child crying in the rubble is all our childhoods because none may know the will of God but they who do it

because the bereaved mother is sister to the whore on my street Palestine, June 16, 2002

II

corner

because the bread of fear must be swallowed down dry It concentrates the mind wonderfully,

because my going and my returning are a single act returning to the war zone.

because the young man who kills me is brother to my own kin The condemned man realises,

because my death is a movement from one room to another in my despite all the masks and guises

father’s house he may wear

to hide him from himself, this human ant heap

he still stands bare; only as a means to keep our separate lives together,

however much he feels alone, not mindless workers and drones in hives

webs of connections link him, only swarming into sunshine in fair weather,

his life is not his own; robbed daily of our sweetest nectar,

though you may think it doesn’t matter, the parabolic vector joining cradle to grave

we mustn’t forget nothing but

that even yet the bottom line in a sterile ledger.

no bomb or missile made can shatter what makes us human. Each time we pledge a love, devotion to something better than

ourselves,

That goes for you, man, we open our eyes

and you too, my sister, to catch a glimpse of paradise.

however disconnected you may feel This puts back into proportion the stupidity of petty hatreds

from what in childhood you expected and broken friendships.

from your fellow mistress or mister.

Your needs are real When death comes calling,

and may not be rejected. we suddenly discover autumn leaves already falling.

Life is a terminal disease,

The danger each remission too precious to be wasted.

of death dropped from on high It must be tasted,

by someone pretending they’re a stranger its flavours savoured,

tells us nothing we don’t already know. the sweet and the sour,

It makes more relevant the seemingly irrelevant, the dark and the light,

more significant the insignificant concerns of life and love, the day and the night.

requires we nurture the struggling plant of joy in sadness,

pain in ecstasy; And what is life?

all else is madness. Is it only the big picture, the grand design,

the “till death us do part” part?

Once more we see Is it the uneven beating of an astonished heart,

the sudden smile of a complete stranger on a bus, what Eve and Adam learned in Eden:

the joining of you and you and me in us, freedom is learning to be

a telephone call from an almost forgotten friend, unfree of each other,

a promise good to last up to the bitter end, to discover

and beyond, in each soul and body the sweet lover,

a fond realisation that this is all there is that we can do? whose arms embrace us all.

Many or few, And help us rise if (or rather, when)

a hand unheld we fall.

has rebelled against our deepest need.

A kiss unshared All else would lead us to the Tower of Babel,

is a lonely cry: through the murderous brotherhood of Cain and Abel.

better to die On the road to Baghdad, 2003

than sigh alone.

Born to live

In truth My name is Sawan Abu Turki. I am aged 17. I live in

each life is a war zone Ramallah. It is just three years since I was placed in an Israeli

but wearing body armour prison for threatening an Israeli soldier with a knife.

is no protection against harm. A On May 7, 2001, I had visited my sister and her new baby in

proof of our humanity the Alia Hospital and was on my way home. I passed through

is simply this: one checkpoint without difficulty, then another. At the third, at

a kiss, Bab-al-Zawia, a soldier told me I could not pass. I told him I

a risk of bliss, must go home. He hit me with his gun, first on the shoulder,

a journey to the rising sun. then on the head.

When day is done

we lie alone A bystander took me in his car to Al-Ahli hospital, where I

but still reach out to touch recovered consciousness. I stayed there for a week. They

reality that’s far too much treated me for my injured shoulder, for concussion, and for

for a single person to outreach. blurred vision.

Each life should teach On June 6, 2001, I was walking with my 9-year-old cousin,

Obeid, through the market. It was Shabbat, the Jewish called the old man dad, but they were not deceived and they

holiday. Settlers with dogs surrounded us, got the dogs to took me away.

attack us. My cousin ran away but I was paralysed with fear. I was taken to Kiryat Arba. Female soldiers undressed me,

A Palestinian told me to escape through the cemetery. tied my hands and feet. They hooded me and I was made to

They often attack us like this, the settlers. Their children stand in the sun for a long time. My head hurt, because of the

throw eggs and garbage at us, even pee on us. Who is raising concussion but also because of the sun. My nose was

these children? Who teaches them to do these things? What bleeding. I was very thirsty. Also, my hearing was affected,

kind of society do they come from? and it was as if I was deaf. I asked for water and also a tissue

A week before I was due to go back to school, the soldiers for my nose but no one heard.

started firing their guns at my house. The electricity was I was interrogated. The interrogator was very angry and I

turned off. We hid in one room in the dark, waiting for the became afraid when he smashed a glass to the floor in his

gunfire to stop. A few days later, a 9-year-old girl from my anger. I was taken to Abu Kabir and put into a cell with 20

youth club was shot and killed by the soldiers. I saw one of women, I think they were Russian prostitutes. They were

the soldiers had written “Born to kill” on his helmet. dressed immodestly and made all sorts of rude gestures to me.

When school started, the soldiers came every day. They threw Some of them burned me with cigarettes. I still have my shirt,

teargas grenades into the classroom. My sister fainted once. I with the holes from the cigarettes.

carried perfume, bandages, adhesive tape and iodine in my During interrogation, I was slapped and given a confession to

schoolbag. I’d sprinkle the perfume on a kerchief and hold it sign. It was in Hebrew, which I cannot understand, but I

to my nose and mouth when the teargas came. Going to signed anyway, because I wanted my ordeal to have an end.

school was becoming a nightmare. I didn’t want to go. I had no contact with my family. I went on hunger strike, and

On Thursday, June 9, 2001, I bought presents for all my after four days I was allowed to phone home. On the twenty-

family. I also bought a sharp knife. It cost me 15 shekels. I first day of my imprisonment I was transferred to the Neve

was determined to have revenge. Tirzah woman’s prison and placed in solitary confinement. I

I went to the checkpoint. Two soldiers were there, one male, went on hunger strike again and demanded to be placed with

one female. I drew the knife. They started shooting and I ran the political prisoners. I also threatened to commit suicide, but

away into the old city, dropping the knife as I ran. I came to a though I had hidden five paracetamol capsules on my person,

house and asked them to hide me. When the soldiers came, I this was not serious, since it is against the rule of Allah. When

they agreed to my demand, they tried to recruit me as Crushed by a wheel Hear poem

informer, but I refused. Our sweetest flower has been crushed in the dust of Rafah,

One interrogator said to me I was a 14-year-old girl with the on the West Bank,

mind of a 24-year-old woman. He was wrong. My mind is trampled beneath the heels of a steel wheel.

now 56 years old. I am as old as the nakba, the catastrophe of Her blood is a broken blossom blowing on the wind of anger

1948, though my calendar age is 17. keening through the world.

After four-and-a-half months they sentenced me to that time She stands tapping at the window of every home,

of imprisonment, so I was free to go. They also fined my her voice a guilty verdict on machine-made death,

family 15,000 shekels, which is nearly £2000 sterling, or her name a synonym for love triumphant,

$3500, which has put us seriously into debt. her eyes a vision of hope seen in the darkest midnight of

today,

I have had two operations on my leg, because of injuries her memory a reminder that death may not triumph,

received during the beatings, and the leg-irons which cut into must not triumph.

me. I still have a bad limp.

I no longer seek revenge. What is the purpose of all this Oh, you leader of women,

killing? I am working to protect children in detention. I also you bell-wether of a brighter future for all the world’s

want to be a journalist, to reveal the depth of our suffering, or oppressed,

perhaps become a nurse to help relieve the suffering of the you breath of God inspiring all those chained in torment

injured. in the seventh deep of deepest hell,

your name shall never die.

If I wore a helmet, I would not write upon it “Born to kill”. I

would write “Born to live”. As are all God’s children,

How shall we remember you?

Christian, Muslim, and Jew, yes even the soldier who beat me

Not with cold marble

to the ground and began this terrible story. How it will end is

nor the wailing walls of mourning.

up to all of us.

Not with the empty words of my broken song.

Jerusalem, August 22, 2004, 13:10, Not with the tears of the victimed and disempowered.



Your life empowers all who sing your name.

It is scrawled upon the bombed bunker of the Al Ameriya Our sweetest flower cannot be crushed,

shelter, for even as the steel wheel rolls on,

etched in the bloody shadows of those burnt to death in that see, how even in the tracks of the behemoth rolling over her,

place. the bright petals flutter like a butterfly escaping the cocoon of

It is the dying breath of the Colombian campesino, tomorrow’s new harvesting,

laughing in the face of the cruel mockery of the death-squad the birthing that grows out of even death,

torturers. which only the light of her life can penetrate.

It is the song of the oud ringing back to a time when life We will always remember her name,

erupted out of Bethlehem and Medina, but the name and race of her murderer has already been

and the dark ages’ end in the renaissance of surrender to the forgotten.

reality of a world founded on a compass-arc, March 21, 2003 14:42,

the mandolin calligraphy of a woman ululating into the night, on flight RJ111 from Amman to London Heathrow,

the deep cry of whale to far-swum whale, on the first day of the Anglo-American aggression

music of spheres revolving, globe on orbiting globe, against Iraq

flinging pathways the stars and comets know. A funeral

Two chapters from an unpublished novel

Oh Rachel, our love, our delight, our truest floret on the





I

rising greenspring of tomorrow’s life, HATE funerals. I know, I can hear you saying, ‘doesn’t

your murderers sought to silence your voice, everyone?’ But how many have you been to, in your life

even as they dung up the open mouths of children born to die time? One? Two? Three, top whack? Me, I’ve been to

in the ruins of Baghdad and Basra. dozens, in the line of duty back in my days as a cub reporter,

But they cannot kill it. when I was doing the hatches, matches and despatches round

of the churches and the nicks, producing the local rag

Your death lives in our hearts like a scarlet dagger pointing equivalent of Sweeney Agonistes’ birth, copulation and death

towards the dawn, routine.

a planted seed that sprouts like dragons’ teeth, The real pits was the time the widow tried to jump down in

armed with love and joy, the grave with her dear departed. I kid you not. Into the

not hatred or death. fucking grave. And she wasn’t kidding, either. The

desperation on her red, tear-stained face at the idea of life

without her old man is something I’ll probably remember on It wasn’t as if either of us believed in it, but she wanted a

that far off day when I finally snuff it, myself. fairytale wedding, like something dreamed up by Disney or

The whole thing always struck me as barbaric. I mean, why Busby Berkeley, and she held out until I arranged for us to be

don’t we go the whole hog and do the suttee bit, the widow hitched at Caxton Hall, a few blocks down from Westminster

and kids on top of the funeral pyre? Abbey, which was still a civil ceremony but sufficiently

glamorous to be almost as good as the real candyfloss.

Then back to the widow’s parlour for ham sandwiches and

sherry. At least the Irish had a decent wake, but I never got to Her newn man, Robert, was still in Vegas or wherever, and

one of those, like in the song, with the dead ’un lying there anyway I don’t expect he felt it too much, Adam being

stretched out while everyone pranced round legless, ready to virtually nothing to do with him, not having lived at home for

join in the fun and games if anyone spilt as much as a single several years even, so he played no part in the discussions, if

drop of the craytur on to his cadavar. that’s what they were, about how we’d have his step-son

planted. Of course, he was paying for the whole thing, but that

Funerals, for me, were nothing like that. They were grey, was his privilege, being a well-heeled attorney.

tedious, hypocritical affairs, where people tried to think of

good things to say about someone they’d never really liked, As a matter of fact, I’d stuck out for cremation, but Kay

and a stranger in a dog collar intoned meaningless words insisted on a plot, with the whole headstone dearly beloved

about not taking it with you. son bit, so I thought what the hell? I wouldn’t be paying the

rent and if it was a shameful waste of our land space, that was

Me, I’m donating my body for spare parts surgery. I hope no skin off my nose, and rather less of a burden on our

there’ll be some life left in the bits by the time I’ve finished ecology than nuclear power and acid rain, so I agreed to

with them. compromise on that, ie she got her way.

Of course, Kay and me rowed about it, just like we did about But that was as far as I went. No vicar. No sermon. No

our wedding, which she’d wanted to be white, and in church. I hymns. Especially no prayers. No way.

conceded the white bit, even if she was long past being a

virgin, since we’d been screwing since we were 15, but no She wept a bit, she pleaded. How about if someone said a few

way was I going to march down the aisle with Mendelssohn’s words, she wanted to know? OK, not a vicar. What about a

awful tune thundering away on the organ, setting a dishonest friend? And couldn’t we have a nice tape on the chapel sound

seal on our union with promises no human being can system, something from the Sixties perhaps, Carole King or

guarantee to keep. James Taylor?

What friend? Sebastian, with his I’n’I Jah gibberish, smokin’ and Kay and a remote cousin of mine and someone from her

a nice big spliff so we could remember how it all happened? side of the family, the two relatives like seconds at a dawn

Sergeant Baker, telling us he’d get his man in the end, pity it duel with pistols rather than supporters of our grief, Kay and I

wasn’t in time to stop them putting a spike in Adam’s arm? barely on speaking terms. The three women were in tasteful

Me, a short lecture on how to be a model dad? No. black; I’d blown the last few coppers of my two hundred quid

What in hell was wrong with some respectful silence? We on a black knitted tie, a number I knew I’d never wear again.

might even learn something, communing with our thoughts It felt like it was strangling me, so I could join him on his way

and our individual and several guilts. And I wanted no peace to that last great fix in the sky, or wherever.

and love anodynes from any clapped-out ageing hippies. That I gazed out at the passing scenery, the Jewish enclaves of

was where we started, how we got in this particular here and Golders Green and Hendon passing the windows in a rain-

now, the toke on the collective joint had become the shared soaked morning, the leafing trees whipping around in a

needle in the tower block car park. restless wind. Why couldn’t it be colourful, like in Ulysses,

I’d stop the game and take my ball home, if I could, but it was with Irish repartee lightening the load? Why couldn’t we have

only in science fiction stories you could flip over to some fantastic accident, so the coffin went flying out of the

alternative universes. This was the only one we’ve got, stink hearse and careering down the road on its own, ending up in

as it may, and there are no off-loading points on this particular some baboushka’s garden in this garden suburb? Why

Big Dipper, to change the metaphor. couldn’t it never have happened?



All this last stuff I thought, Kay not being in a state to The cemetery was vast, the trees presenting no serious barrier

appreciate a discussion on our existential dilemma, so she to the wind which swept across the rather badly tended acres

clamped her lips and appeared to cave in. like some kind of avenging dervish. Most of the headstones

were small, neat, discreet, screaming testimonies to our

Actually, later I found she’d organised some kind of memorial attempts to put death in its place, but an occasional Victorian

service independent of me, to take place the following day. I monstrosity, an angel reading from the Good Book or an

was fucking furious when someone told me, said they’d been ornate cast-curlicued iron cross, introducing a hint of

surprised not to see me there, but then I thought again: what humanity in its horrific kitsch. The bureaucrats wouldn’t

the hell? If it gave her comfort, why not? So long as I didn’t allow anything like that for our lad, even if we could have

have to go along with the sugary sentimentality of the idea. afforded it. He wasn’t Karl Marx, after all.

So here we were, sitting in the undertaker’s black limo, me Rattle his bones, over the stones, he’s only a junkie nobody

owns. they didn’t umderstand how they’d know when to go on to the

We straggled into the chapel and the professionally mournful actual interment, and there were no doubt other hearses

bearers did their paid duty and carried the box into its position queueing up outside for their turn.

of honour. I nodded, and we resumed our places in the limo, cruising at a

They’d asked me if I wanted to see him at the Chapel of Rest snail’s pace to a plot on the opposite side, next to a roaring

before they screwed the lid down, but I shook my head. I motorway.

wanted nothing of their technicolor glamorisation of death, We stood round the grave, our heads bowed. My cousin

with their formaldehyde embalming skills and touch of the appeared to be praying silently. OK, if that was her pleasure.

Leichner pencil. I wanted to remember his dandelion head in Kay’s relative had her arm round her. I stood to one side,

front of me in the push chair, and that damn Taiwanese toy, looking down into the maw that was going to swallow up the

spinning and spinning, the sparks flying off like dying hopes. last vestiges of my life with her, and it was if some invisible

I don’t know whether Kay took a last look. That’d be like her, presence was billowing out of the ground, surrounding me,

blurring the image of reality with some funeral director’s filling my lungs with gravesmell, surrounding me in a lonely

comfortable fantasy of what the dead should look like, as if bubble that was a kind of living death, as if it wasn’t Adam

make-up could delay the decay already at work inside the being laid away here, but me.

corpse, turning it back into compost. But not to rest. I should be so lucky. This stone in my chest

The silence grew oppressive. was the way it was going to be, for ever and ever amen, and

Kay sobbed into her screwed-up hankie and a lump grew in when they opened me up like in some Edgar Allen Poe story,

my throat like a cancer. I thought I was going to choke but I they’d find it beating its cold rhythm, centuries into the future.

managed to get rid of the phlegm by swallowing over and The flunky wanted to know was this it, should they lower the

over. An acid taste like heartburn rose, but I’d had no coffin, now? Again I nodded. Wild horses couldn’t have

breakfast worth a light, just a quick black instant. Perhaps that dragged a word out of me, or it would have come in a single,

was why I was feeling sick. The condemned man should’ve sky-shattering scream, and I was determined to be cool.

eaten more heartily. They stood on either side of the opened earth, letting the

One of those black-clad flunkies was asking me something. hawsers go like the skilled craftsmen they were, seamen

The lack of any recognisable structure had thrown them casting off, carpenters hammering the nails into the cross true

somewhat, which gave me a momentary pang of pleasure, and and square so that it wouldn’t shame them before the alien

invaders who were paying their wages, and the varnished “Yeah, well I’m not a believer, and nor was Adam. Kay talks

wood vanished into the soil. about God sometimes, but she doesn’t really believe, either

In spite of myself, a great sob came vomiting up from my ...”

lungs but I held it down, so all that happened was the “I don’t know how you can be so certain there’s nothing else

paroxysm of its suppression, and I closed my eyes tight so I but this world, Jack,” she interrupted. “Don’t you feel that

wouldn’t let the tears course down my face the way they were there must be something else?”

with Kay. I held tight to the push chair image, but it was “Not if it stops me from putting right all the things that are

already fading. I was no longer remembering how it had been, wrong with life down here. I never was one for pie in the

I was remembering a photo I had of him in the chair with his sky.”

toy, so in the end all I was going to have was bits of paper: a

marriage certificate, an adoption document, a decree nisi, a “So, you’re quite satisfied with the way it went?”

death certificate. I ignored the question.

Birth, copulation and death all right. What could I say? I’d been thinking all the way back from the

graveyard, all the different ways it could have been done, to

... make it less of a trial: some decent music at the chapel, and a

“HUMPH,” SAID my cousin as she munched on a pressed few words before they lowered him into the grave, like Kay

ham sandwich, an oblong slice of pink meat out of a can, had wanted. But it was too late now, so what was the point in

between two slices of Hovis. “Personally, I think the mulling it all over?

Christians do these things better than the atheists.” Kay was pouring out sherry, and she offered me a glass.

Whose side was she supposed to be on? “No,” I said. “I’m off it.”

I’d heard, via the rather shaky family grapevine, that she’d got “Oh Jack, she said, “just a little sip won’t hurt you. For Adam.

religion of late, but I’d invited her because she was my sole Don’t you want to toast his memory?”

surviving relative in London, and I needed a bit of moral

I grabbed the silly little glass from her. She was probably

support, not a stab in the back.

right. After all, she’d been right about the funeral. And at least

“That was the way Jack wanted it,” said Kay. Her voice was a raising a glass in his memory would be some kind of a

little shaky, but it seemed free of the bitterness that so often ceremony, with no hint of religion in it.

soured our talks.

“To Adam,” she said, her voice more quavery now. We all but I’d abandoned them when everyone else started getting so

murmured the words and I took a sip. much better at it than me, and concentrated upon criticism.

Sherry’s always seemed to me a stupid, rather liverish drink, Like Bernard Shaw might have said: those who can, do; those

stronger than it seems to be, OK as an aperitif I suppose, but who can’t, become critics.

really just an excuse for old maids to get tiddley without the I shook my head. I’d hocked my guitar over a year before, and

opprobrium of being secret drinkers. After I’d finished the the muse seemed to have abandoned me.

glass, my mouth felt dry and yet rather sticky. I needed The lager went down fast, like it didn’t touch the sides of my

something to clean it out. throat, as the saying goes, and I held the glass out for a refill.

I suppose a glass of water would have done me fine, but That went down too, and pretty soon I was on to my third. Or

instead I took a lager. It was warm – these women had no idea was it my fourth? I was losing count, but what the hell.

how to treat beer – and was brewed in Britain rather than Kay had begun loosening up a little bit and we got talking

Pilsen, but the hops left my mouth tasting better, and the fizz about old times.

made it seem more like an alcoholic lemonade, which is why I

suppose it’s the young’s preferred tipple these days. “Do you remember when we used to go to camp together,

Jack,” she said, “and the camp stewards used to come round

Someone had asked Kay about her ever-loving, which was the the tents and make sure the boys and girls slept apart?”

soul of tact, in view of my presence.

Didn’t I just? That was the first time we had really got it

She began explaining how he was so busy in America these together, out there in the pines, where the sun never shines,

days, she hardly saw him. He’d sent a floral tribute, of course like it says in the song, and the stewards couldn’t find us.

– the only flowers there’d been, as a matter of fact. She’d been my first girl, not the first one to touch, but the first

“And how about you, Jack?” one who revealed to me the astonishing secret that girls

It was Kay’s relative, some kind of a sister-in-law or actually liked being touched – there, as she always used to

something, her cousin’s wife, I think, a nice, rather buxom say, touch me there, without naming it or even pointing my

woman who was big in co-op youth clubs, or something like hand in the right direction, but I always knew.

that. We sometimes met on demonstrations. She’d let me into her bra pretty easy, and that was nice, much

“D’you still play?” nicer than the previous girl, the first one who’d ever let me,

who’d had very little up there to feel, but Kay was like some

I’d once had ambitions to be Britain’s answer to Bob Dylan, sort of wet dream come true, well shaped, and her nipples

opening up to me like hawthorn buds, as Lorca says. me for walks on the common when it was safer to walk across

Out there in the woods, we’d huddled together because it got than it is now. When she got out, I slid back into the front seat

quite cold, even in midsummer, with the wind blowing in over beside Kay and we drove silently across the Thames, me

the coast and the dunes. I’d opened up my pyjama trousers wondering if she’d really been remembering that first time

and put her hand in there and she’d got hold of me back in the pines, as she poured the weak lager into my glass,

awkwardly. She didn’t act as if she had any idea of what she and reminisced about old times, and if she had, what that

was supposed to do with it, but it got me going, just the same, really meant.

and I was all over her, lifting up her nightdress and parting her I looked at my watch. There was an hour and a half to closing

legs to put it in. time. Kay had got the day off from her job for the funeral and

She wouldn’t let me do it, because I’d brought no precautions I had nothing but time. Also, no money.

out with me. I’d left them in my washing bag, like a fool, so I “Fancy a drink before I drop you?” she said.

had to creep back and into the tent, feeling around in the dark “Well, I’m a bit . . . ,” I began.

while my fellow campers murmured and protested in their

sleep. “Broke as usual? Don’t worry,” she said. “Let me pay. We

owe it to Adam.”

She filled up my glass again, saying that was the last, and as I

looked in her eyes I could see she was thinking of that time in I really failed to see what our late son had to do with the way

the woods, herself. things appeared to be going, but if we got paralytic together, it

might be as good a way of waving him farewell as anything

We all stood up, going home time. It hadn’t been a riotous else.

wake but I felt better, somehow, about the way we’d put

Adam away. Kay saw me to the door, told me to take good It was an unfamiliar boozer, a hundred yards or so before we

care of myself, and my cousin was walking off down the path got to Blackfriars Bridge, and I chose it purely because it sold

when Kay suddenly shouted: “Hey, let me run you both Young’s, about the only drinkable beer they make south of

home.” Burton-on-Trent. We found a seat by the window and she

went to get the pints.

So then we sat together in the back of the little Morris Mini as

we detoured to Clapham to drop my cousin in the big old flat It was weird, the way she was taking over. It was almost as if

she’d lived for years with her mother, my auntie, who’d let I was being seduced, as if she was in charge of the whole

me borrow her H.G. Wells books when I was a kid, and take operation, whether I liked it or not. It was she who had

suggested she run me home, she who suggested a drink, she ways.” The trouble was, as the old compositor put it to me

who was getting them, while I sat waiting. when I was just 16, that I’d confused the wonder we’d been

“It’s a pity,” she said, looking at me over the rim of the beer exploring together with love, though he’d put it less

mug, “we had to fall out. Wasn’t it good, sometimes, Jack?” poetically. “You’re not in love,” he’d pronounced. “You’re

just cunt-struck.” I couldn’t say he was wrong.

What do you say? Of course it hadn’t always been bad, the

way it ended. We’d had some good times, some laughs, and “So where did we go wrong? Was it the drink, Jack?”

then there’d been the exploding mystery of the way our What was this? Any moment now and she’d be waltzing me

bodies worked together. We never really did get that right, into AA.

though we’d tried hard enough. “Nah,” I said. “We were just too young, too inexperienced,

It was only later it went really wrong, with me drinking till too passionate. I dunno. I’ll always love you, Kay, but we

closing time and catching the last train home, and staggering always end up fighting.”

along the country lanes to our little two up two down, and the “We don’t have to.” Her voice was low. Shit, she really meant

inevitable row that destroyed what bonhomie there’d been left it. “We’re not fighting now. We’re talking like real friends, the

in me by the dregs of the beer. One night I fell asleep on the way we used to.”

train and didn’t wake up until almost Portsmouth. The taxi

home cost me twenty quid. I tried to lose it in my exes, but the Always the sentimentalist, that’s my girl. Yes, we had been

firm I was working for wouldn’t wear it. Hardly surprising. friends, and in many ways the sweat and the body fluids had

been an intrusion, but when they didn’t work as we hoped,

Another night I was in one of Matthew’s clubs when the they’d come between us more and more, instead of bringing

police raided it, and I missed the last train and had to get into us together. And then our biggest mistake, thinking Adam

Surrey by whichever means I could: night bus to Wimbledon, could succeed where fucking had failed.

a lift down the Kingston By-Pass, and a long, long walk from

Tolworth Roundabout to Addlestone, where we lived. That “I keep thinking of Adam in his pushchair,” she said, “with

was the night Joseph shopped Matthew and things went sour that whirly toy thing you bought him in Habitat.”

between them. Ending up with the little rat-faced runt dead in Bloody hell, it still worked, this telepathic thing we had

a Soho gutter. between us. Sometimes when I’d rung her late at night, she’d

“Penny for ’em, Jack.” picked up the phone and said “Hello, Jack, what kept you this

time?” without even letting me say anything. She said she

“I was thinking about your question. Yes, it was good in many

always knew it was me on the line, even before she picked it we didn’t make love one whole month, and it wasn’t another

up. I dismissed it as typical superstition, the way she’d woman, it was that I didn’t know who the fuck I was, queer or

murmur a rhyme every time she saw an ambulance, some what. I used to shake my fist at the sky, metaphorically, at the

Cockney amulet about “never foller, never swaller fever” or fate or whatever it was that had made me such a passionate

whatever the damn thing was, the way she always said “God young fucker, but unable to have kids, and unable to be at

keep you safe” every night before we slept, though in her peace with a woman. Jane set me right on all that, and I

heart of hearts she was as irreligious as I was, which made her realised what it was I was just a bit bi-sexual, like most

insistence on things like white church weddings and religious people, and the gays who went on about me coming out were

funerals all the harder to accept. After we parted, the first just as wrong as the heteros who thought that anything that

Christmas, I decided to send a Christmas card to all our wasn’t the missionary position between men and women was

friends, signed with only my name, so they’d get the point. some kind of perversion. I’d learnt I could fancy a guy and be

Only thing was, she had the same idea, and sent exactly the quite happy about it, though now I’d accepted it I rarely had

same damn card, which confused everyone utterly, including to do anything about it, unless fate threw us into something,

the ones who knew we’d separated. And here she was again, like sharing a hotel bedroom together, which had happened

picking up on my train of thought, the image I’d had of Adam once. Most of the time I was queer for girls, as the saying

playing with that Taiwanese sparkly rubbish, over and over goes.

and over. “I don’t think anyone’s to blame,” I said. I didn’t want to go

“Do you think it was our fault, Jack?” into all that hate that Kay had stored up for the mythical

Damn right it was our fault, or rather mine, agreeing to the women in my life, who most of the time were just female

adoption when I knew it wasn’t the answer, but so damn friends who liked me for something or other, nothing sexual,

determined to have a kid even though I couldn’t father one or at least nothing sexual in practical terms. Sometimes her

myself, as sentimental in my ideas of fatherhood as she was, insane jealousy had opened my eyes to an attraction I’d

when you came down to it. And he did bring us together for a inspired in some innocent chick without even realising it, and

while. Until I met Jane. after the inevitable row, I’d had to steer well clear of the

unoffending party to avoid it happening again. Ironically,

“Things were going so well until you met that woman.” she’d never been jealous of Jane until it was too late, arguing

There she was, doing it again, reading my mind, though she no doubt that with her skinny shape and ungainly walk she

was wrong there. She forgot the time she’d complained when constituted no possible threat to someone as shapely and slim

as Kay. “OK,” she said, “I can take a hint. You don’t want to talk

She came back from the bar bearing two pints as well as a about it. As a matter of fact, I’m not so sure I’d want to hear

couple of shot glasses containing an amber liquid that could the answer, anyway. I was never really sure you loved me,

only be whisky – malt, I found myself hoping. I sniffed mine you know.”

delicately. A Glen Grant, I guessed. That did it.

“I thought you might like a short,” she explained, “so I “For Christ sake, Kay,” I exploded. “I was crazy about you.

thought I’d join you.” Matter of fact, I still am.” Now, that was a mistake, but the

“Can a duck swim?” I asked rhetorically, and sipped it, hell with it, I knew it was true. A day didn’t pass that I didn’t

feeling the fire of it on my tongue and the dark fumes swirl up think of her with some kind of affection. The fact that the

my nasal cavity and into my lungs. Glen Grant is not the same was true of Jane, my moptop, and virtually every other

finest malt in the Highlands, but it’s a damn sight better than woman I’d felt anything for, including my dear departed

the cooking liquor they sell to the world as blended whisky, mum, didn’t diminish the place my marriage to Kay still left

all of it tasting more or less like all the rest, with the sole carved in my heart. The scars might have healed a bit, but

exceptions of Chivas Regal, John Walker Black and a few they were still there.

other quality brands, Dimple Haig, for instance. Her eyes were moist.

“It’s not Glenfiddich,” she apologised. “Why’d you have to wait this long before you tell me that?”

“I know,” I said, pleased that she’d remembered my favourite she wanted to know.

brand, though I’d moved on from that now to one more “Jesus, Kay, I told you all the time, but you just didn’t want to

esoteric. “It’s OK.” I hoped it didn’t sound too begrudging. believe it. You were always so busy eying the competition up

“So what was it, if it wasn’t that woman?” she insisted. and down. But the truth was, you had no competition.”



Oh God. Getting her into bed might not be worth of it if we Until I discovered I was sterile, and started wondering what

had to have this trial by error as a preamble. In fact, if this sort of sexual freak that made me, and I took to hanging round

was the way it was going to be I’d as lief split here and now, the Soho haunts to bolster my sexual self-esteem with so-

and shank it over the Thames and into darkest North London. called ladies of easy virtue, coming home drunk all hours,

I shrugged, hoping this would stop her inquisition. with the insides of my Y-fronts all sticky.



Strangely enough, it did. She swallowed the last of her pint, and stood up, trying to

brush the creases out of her skirt the way women do, but it has more poke.”

regardless of how uncreased it really is. She’d turned into a “Surprised he doesn’t give you a Porsche, you know, what’s

braw little drinker in the years we’d been apart. “If I’m going ’is name?” His name escaped me for a moment, it truly did.

to get you home without spilling you into the gutter,” she said, She didn’t enlighten me. I gathered from her general mien that

leading the way to the door. I was feeling a little under the she felt a long way from Vegas.

weather, but there was no apparent sway in her stride. No

doubt a breathalyser would tell different, but she looked There was a faint squeal from the tires as she pulled up

unlikely to invite suspicion. outside my pad.

Apart from the way she gunned away from the curb like “Here we are, Jack,” she said. “Real to-your-door service.”

Nicky Lauder, that is. “I appreciate it.”

We crossed Blackfriar’s Bridge, zoomed up Farringdon Road There was an awkward pause, that lasted only a split second,

past the neon-signed head office of the People’s Daily, past but seemed to be an eternity.

the Mount Pleasant sorting office and the old doss-house

“You gonna ask me up, Joe?” she said.

they’ve turned into a mid-price hotel, down into Kings Cross

and up Pentonville Road, past the nick and across to Camden “I’m not sure I’ve got any coffee.”

Town, swinging northwards to my own manor. “I don’t want coffee,” she said.

She was a good driver, I’ll give her that, drink or no drink. Funeral song

That was something else that had happened since I left: before

then, it had been me who’d done all the driving, and she’d Follow my coffin

navigated. Now I didn’t even have a car, just my rusty old With laughter and song

bike. ’Cos our time on this earth

May not be long

“Nice little motor,” I said. “I didn’t know a Mini could be this Don’t waste your time weeping

nippy.” As you follow my pall

“It’s a Cooper,” she said, whipping into the space between a ’Cos you know that you gave me

petrol tanker and a 134 bus with a panache that almost had me The best love of all.

shitting myself. “A bit more expensive in petrol consumption, March 12, 2002

A dance of death That woman

I dreamed I saw my true loves dancing



T

hat woman, she said, never naming her by name, just

over the purple moors looking down on Haworth. that woman, like a finger pointing, that woman never

There was joy on their faces oughta tooken him, who was already tooken, near

and I was nowhere to be seen. thirty-five years or more, but having took, ’twasn’t right to

drop him like an old rag, when someone younger and more

They joined hands in a circle dance handy about the house come along.

beneath a silver moon

I told that woman straight I did, when they’d started

and their feet kicked showers of stars from the frozen heather

canoodling in public but before I says it’s her or me, so he

beneath their feet.

moved out and got himself a nice little flat round the corner

from where she lives with her four kids, I helped him lay the

In the valley

carpet, but that came later.

a tombstone with my name on it

testified to their joy: I told her straight, I did, that woman, I says to her, find

that my life and death had freed them yourself a man of your own, I says, don’t take mine, just cos

to release me from their grasp we’re going through a rough patch like what happens in even

and look upon each other’s faces with love. the happiest marriages, but she just looked at me with those

hooded black eyes of hers, and anyway I’ll never find out

And as they laughed what she was going to say or even if she had anything at all to

my spirit echoed their song say for herself, that woman, cos he comes storming over in

and tuned itself to the dance they danced. her defence, didn’t he, so it turns into a row between him and

me, didn’t it, about how dare I shout at the woman he loved,

And we were joined, all three, as if that hadn’t been my title up till then, so he refused to talk

in the steps that link life and death to me all the way home in the car and all that night, and I

as my flesh melted into the shapes of new-budded could see he was fixing to move out, and not a week later, so

spring daffodils. he did, wouldn’t take anything that wasn’t strictly his, like his

Resurrection Day, March 31, 2001 LPs and videos, though of course I kept the brass bedstead

he’d bought before we got together, and we slept together for

the first time.

He left the rest of the furniture he’d bought for that other the grief she gave him when they were supposed to be

woman who wouldn’t leave her husband for him, we made together, I know that still rankles.

love in that bed and thirteen days later I moved in and brought He’d be a fool to ever have her back, I know, but then all men

my son too, and though he’s grown up and three of his own are fools, and all women also, cos why would she throw over

kids now, when he wanted to take the bed, my man I’m best man was ever born, though him sometimes hard to live

talking about, I said no way, so we still sleep in it together with, when he gets one of his black moods; all I can do then is

when he comes to stay, which is mostly every other night, stand aside and let him get on with it, though not so far away

now she’s taken her claws out of his hair. that he can’t see me ready and waiting to take him into my

People say I’m stupid, having him back when he’s done the arms again, as so would she have, if her so-called love had

dirty with that woman, especially when he followed up with meant anything more than romantic hogwash, that woman

that Jewish bird from up north, nearly drove him crazy, didn’t telling everyone he was the love she’d waited for all her life,

she, never would have worked so he come back again, though now for ever and always, and that always was falling down to

I really thought I’d lost him for good that time. an end before three short years were up. I took him for better

People say I’m stupid, he’s made his bed let him lie in it sort or worse, and so surely did she, even though no marriage

of thing, but I couldn’t see him suffering when that woman vows were exchanged, and anyway didn’t she have her own

chucked him over, so I comforted him and let him talk out his moods, I bet she did, still does when I see her sitting beside

pain until one day I said I was fed up with this cracked this new man of hers in the pub like two suet dumplings,

gramophone record, repeating over and over, and could he never a smile or a holding hands and not anything that looks

please find another tune so he took the hint, bless him, and like love between them, except she’s let whatever this new

sometimes he can go a whole day without mentioning her man has that my man hasn’t come between my man and his

name once, so I’m glad I took him back. happiness.



He lies awake of a night sometimes, and I lay there too, cos I That’s why I would never stand aside and let him go if she

know he’s thinking of her, albeit it’s three years or more since changed her mind and wanted him back again, but it’ll never

she gave him the push. You might think it’s hard, to be lying happen, mark my words.

alongside your man and him dreaming of another woman, and I’ve tried telling him this, but there’s no reasoning with a man

it was at first, but I’m determined she shouldn’t come between in love. He says their love was ordained by God, as if He

my man and me like she did three years before that, and all would be leading men to cheat on their wives.

Still and all, it is said that He moves in a mysterious way His woman was doing God’s work in his life, bringing him sexual

wonders to perform, and in the end we are better off, to be healing. More than that, he reckons the work’s not done, and

honest. All marriages go through sticky patches, I expect, and she’ll be back when God’s good and ready.

before that woman came along, things were going from bad to Fat chance, says I, cos she’s a stubborn, hard-faced bitch, and

worse. even if Jesus came down from His Cross to beg her on bended

Worse for him it was, I expect, cos he was getting on in years knee, she’s not ever going to admit she done wrong by giving

and no longer the more-than-at-least-once-a-night he’d been the elbow to the best man was ever born. She’ll swap this new

when first we met. When she came along, suddenly the old one for an even newer one when the gilt wears off the

fire burst into flame again, and I could have been fine, if he gingerbread – that’s always if anyone else’d want her as

wasn’t always sneaking off to be with her, yes, even the hasn’t got stardust in his eyes, like my man, and her fast

morning after a night spent naked in my arms. approaching fifty and not getting any younger.

He said he loved us both and in different ways, but how could He calls her beautiful, but I can’t see it meself, try as I might.

that be? It’s against nature. Bible says King Solomon had a Of course, I know I’m biased, but folk always say I’ve a good

thousand wives, not to mention concubines, but how’d he eye, for curtains and that, and I do admit she’s striking in her

share his attentions between them all? That’s what I want way, with those high cheekbones and dark, hooded eyes,

know. That’d be about once every three years for every wife never let you know what she’s thinking in that black head of

(not counting the concubines) and how’d that work? Have a hers.

timetable on the harem wall? But as she gets older, that skull beneath the skin’ll get more

When Sarai couldn’t give Abram a child, she told him to lie and more prominent, just mark my words, and no man but

with her slave, who did the business with him. mine’d look twice at her, lessen she learns to smile a bit more

Well, Solomon was a king and Abram was a prophet, and no than she does, these days.

doubt used to such goings on. But for ordinary folk like him Happen this new man’s not turned out quite as fancy as she

and me, Bible also says Eve was a helpmeet for Adam. imagined he’d be, and she’s making the best of it, which

Nothing about others on the side. would account for their glum faces every time they’re seen

And isn’t there a commandment against adultery? together.



Well, he knows all this, and admits it, but he still reckons that She pays court to him naitheless, she who was well-known for

not taking any shit from any man, so while they don’t unwanted.

canoodle in public like my man an’ me used to and still do As it happened, though, it’s all worked out OK. We’re back

today, no doubt she loves him in her fashion. together, and cuddling all night like he never went away.

But he won’t have it, my man won’t, and so he lays awake a She’s got her new man, and long may it be so. My man seems

nights, no doubt projecting the great reconciliation on to his to be grieving less, and at least he’s no longer on about her all

dreaming eye, when the one thing everybody knows about the the time.

future is that it never turns out the way you plan, and even if If she decides she wants him back – well, we’ll cross that

does, the reality likely as not don’t come up to expectations, bridge when we come to it, shall we? One thing’s for sure, no

like. way I’m going to drive him back into her arms. It won’t be

And what if it does, what if she does call on that phone he easy, I know that, every minute he chooses to be with her

always keeps at his bedside in case anyone might call, and rather than me’ll be like a spear through my heart. But if love

who else would call but her, him having said she always can, is eternal, like he’s always saying, then I know we can

any hour of the day or night, though me being by his side weather the storm.

again most nights? Like I say, it’ll never happen, but what if it Until that stupid bitch tires of him again, bad luck to her

does, and he’s up and out of our bed at the midnight hour the cheating heart.

very first time she beckons, what will I do? Cante Hondo

I

Well, I don’t know, but I tell you what, I know what I won’t

do. There’s no woman on earth can give him what I can, and She sings:

that includes this lady-love he’s been mooning over these past In the street at midnight

three years, and he’ll soon discover what’s what, if I don’t do A white stallion gallops through pools of silver.

what I did last time round, kicking him out so she was all he The stable door is broken.

had, and me lying alone all night, rueing the day I ever told His hoofs strike steel fire from the cobblestones.

him it was either her or me, he had to choose.

I mean, how stupid can a woman be? Either way, I was bound If I had a silver arrow

to lose. If he chose me, he’d be grieving for her, worse than I would shoot it into the heart of the woman who has

he is now, and it’d be all my fault. Choose her – which he did bewitched my lover.

– then I might have lost him for good, if she hadn’t lost the I would scatter her blood

sense she was born with so she threw him away, used up and Like roses in the heather.

I went into the church Rising like a kestrel into the clouds,

And I prayed to the Holy Virgin. Hovering, with eyes ever seeking.

I asked her to bring him back to me

So she answered my prayer. True love is sweeter than honey

But betrayal is sour as wormwood.

His lips are cold fire A maggot has entered my soul

In the night upon my breast. And her face is growing dim in the darkness.

He drinks from my mouth

But it does not quench his thirst. She is no longer anything to me.

I placed a ring upon her finger

He stands upon the high hill As a token of our love.

Dappled in shadows like the night. But it lies in the dusts of the desert

He turns in my arms And perhaps another will find it for his beloved.

And rests his head upon my shoulder.

The love of the woman who loves me is faithful and

The past flies like an eagle true.

But it crows like a raven. Faithful like a mountain.

Outside my window True like a tree in the forest.

A wood pigeon lies slaughtered.

I am waking from a dream

I will saddle his horse And the memory is bitter as well as sweet.

And ride out after him. A grey rain is falling outside the window.

Anywhere he goes I shall water the roses with my tears.

I shall be at his side.

II Tell me, how does it feel,

He sings: Young man in the arms of my once true love?

My memories are smoke from a dying fire. Knowing that just as her promises to me proved

From dead weeds burning where new flowers will false,

bloom, One day you, too, may be cast aside for another.

I wish you more years of her love than she gave to The goodbye

me.



“T

HERE’S someone here to see you,” said the nurse

III

) to the old man.

The woman sings: Damn the woman! Couldn’t she see he was

I am not to blame! working?

Blame the wind No, of course she couldn’t. How could she? As far as she was

For coming and going its own sweet way. concerned, he might just be day-dreaming, remembering a full

In the end, we do what we must. and tempestuous life. Ever since he sent his paints away,

because his hand had lost its old sureness and what he saw in

Have you forgotten how empty my bed was, his head never translated itself on to canvas, he’d done all his

When you lay beside me looking out into the night? painting in his head.

I watched the sun come up

And the birdsong drowned my tears. Right now, he was changing the light through the window,

and the tree-foliage patterns on the window blind, into an

I shall not for ever wander the moors arrangement of planes, and he’d almost got it right. But now,

Seeking the dying embers of our love. he’d lost it.

How long must I listen in vain for the song of the Women could always do that to him, but he thought that when

skylark, they removed his balls, it would stop happening. They’d lose

For the mournful cry of a distant train? their lifelong power over him. Instead, here he was, stuck in a

hospice, his every bodily function dictated by women, and

Sometimes I climb alone to the top of the hill their slavish adherence to the tyranny of the clock.

So no one can find or bother me.

So what now?

I love to run before the wind like clouds,

Like seabirds driven inland from the coast. A head poked round the door.

The hair was silver, the face lined and cragged, the lips

Tomorrow is an unknown country where old maps surrounded by the hairlines of age. But the eyes, the eyes!

mean nothing. Undoubtedly, it was her.

I ask nothing more of you, not even your blessing.

“I don’t expect you recognise me, William?” she said, with

First draft 30/6/03. Amended version 18/08/03

that familiar tentative manner which cloaked the steel she’d sat for him, when he had lifted her from the dais and

backbone beneath. kissed her at the end, wept tears of invisible blood every

“Um,” he said. He needed time to think. How long had it January since that black New Year when she’d found him in

been, twenty years? Yes, he was nearly ninety now, which bed with – God, he couldn’t even remember the hussy’s

made her what? Sixty-something. So what did she want from name! – and there she was, gone.

him now, two decades on? “You quit painting when you left me,” he mumbled.

He quartered the familiar bone structure in his mind’s eye “And hello to you, too,” she smiled. “Is that all you’ve got to

while he took time to assemble his thoughts. say to me after twenty years?”

Yes, it was still there, under the lines and crags. His favourite “Twenty-two years, five months . . .”

model. His favourite lover, till she’d up and left. “. . . and ten days,” she finished. “You see, I remember things,

“But I always fuck my models,” he’d protested to her too.”

retreating back. “Did you remember how great we were, how great you could

“And I always leave a man who fucks anyone else but me,” have been, if you hadn’t taken up with that nonentity, that

she’d retorted through the closing door without looking back. ...”

Not once. Not once! “Tom?”

Of course, he’d seen her occasionally at private views, usually “Whatever. You could have done better than that, you know.”

with that man she married, that nonentity who didn’t know

one end of a brush from the other, though he presumed to “I did do better than that, Willie, but you wanted to fuck

write as if he knew it all. Bloody critics! She, on the other everyone who sat for you, the boys as well as the girls, so I

hand, had been showing promise when they split up. Promise settled for safety. Tom thought I was wonderful.”

never fulfilled. The nonentity had gone, the way of all flesh, “I thought you were wonderful, ‘Tild. I knew you were

but she’d become a rich man’s mistress. Not bad at the age of wonderful, we were wonderful, why did you have to smash it

forty-something. all up?”

He corrected himself. What’s with this vagueness? He knew “Who knows, my love? We did what we did. You fucked

her age, almost to the second. He’d celebrated her birthday young Millie . . .”

every May, remembered every November the very first time

Yes, that was her name. He always preferred to call her

Millicent. It sounded so like a girl’s school story. “Millicent two-ton lumps of marble and cast-iron in a Notting Hill

gets it off,” he called her for full. bedsit. I didn’t want to sell them, and anyway Oscar’s wife

“. . . and I didn’t think I could allow that, so I took off, and wouldn’t let me have the time to have a show. I mean, who

settled for a settled life with Tom.” was I? The left-over lover of a once-famous painter?”



“I could have changed, of you’d stayed, ’Tild.” “What d’you mean, ‘once-famous’? The Guardian did a

retrospective just last week.”

“No you couldn’t, Willie, and frankly I wouldn’t have wanted

you any way different.” “Only because they know you’re dying.”



“My painting improved after you left me.” “I’m not . . . !”



“Yes, that’s true.” “Oh yes, I know you always said you’d live for ever, Willie,

but you knew and I knew that was bullshit. Now you’re

“And yours stopped.” raging against the dying of the light.”

“No, that is not true.” “Bloody Dylan Thomas. I could drink him under the table any

“You mean, you kept on painting?” day.”

“No, sculpture.” “No doubt you could, Willie. D’you remember that’s where

we met?”

“Really? But that takes acres of space. Where was your

studio?” “The George? How could I not? You were sitting there

nursing some poncey drink, port-and-lemon.”

“Oscar set me up with a loft in Hammersmith.” That would be

her millionaire. “No, that was a previous generation, Willie. Mine was rum ’n’

coke in those days.”

“He died.”

“Bloody Bacardi.”

“Yes. His wife got it all, even the studio.”

“Yes, you refused to buy me one in solidarity with Che

“And the work.”

Guevara. Since they didn’t sell what you called proper Cuban

“I put it on the tip.” rum, you insisted I drink Boddington’s like a real drinker,

“But that’s criminal!” which I recall was your tipple of choice right then.”

“Yes, Willie, I’m afraid it was. But there’s not much room for “I thought I’d given it up by then.”

“No, you went on to the orange juice the following year, when columns?”

you got that perforated ulcer.” “Yes, they were a bit graphical. Testicular cancer, wasn’t it.

“Bloody acid, all those non-alcoholic drinks. Gave me But they didn’t castrate your brain, did they? I bet you can

heartburn. Think the booze would have done me more good.” still dream, can’t you?”

“The booze would have killed you, Willie. It already was “Only of bloody paint. Never stops, the light and the shapes.

killing you.” The planes. Look at that window.”

“A short life and a merry one.” She looked, not particularly keenly.

“Not so short and not so merry, Willie. Don’t forget, I married “Yes, pretty. But you never did pretty paintings, Willie.”

an alkie.” “Pretty? Pretty!? It’s abso-fucking-lutely marvellous. Look at

“Tom?” the way those leaves move about. Like waves in the sea.”

“No, before I met you. The kid’s dad.” “Oh come on, Willie. You were never good with landscapes.

She never used his name. You mean you haven’t painted any of these nurses nude in

that head of yours?”

“He drank himself to death. Not pretty, Willie. You wouldn’t

have enjoyed it.” He grunted again.



“Think I’m enjoying this?” He waved his hand around the “You never stopped painting me. Oscar hated it.”

room. “Whereas Tom just grinned and bore it, I suppose.”

“Yes, I’ll bet you’re lapping it up. A bunch of pretty young “Tom didn’t pay much attention. He was more of a do-it-

women standing round ready to do everything but wipe your yourself man.”

bum for you. And I expect you’d like them to do that for you, “Masturbated, did he?”

too.”

“You know what I mean. Built me a grand conservatory.”

He grunted.

“So why didn’t you return there after your sugar-daddy died?”

“You’re not telling me you’ve put all that behind you, are you

Willie?” “Couldn’t. We sold it, part of the divorce settlement. Or at

least, I sold my half to him. He’s still there, far as I know.”

“I’ve been castrated, haven’t you read that in the gossip

“He still writes that garbage in the posh Sundays.” what I said.”

“Didn’t know you read critics.” “Yes, well I believed you when I saw you fucking young

“Now, I do. Try to keep in touch. But he likes all that Millie. That told me the truth about you and me.”

conceptual bullshit.” “She was the only one. And that was the only time.”

“‘All art is conceptual’, I remember you said to me one time, “What about after?”

Willie.” “Well, I ditched Millie. Every time I saw her, she reminded

“I said a lot of stuff. But not all of it was bullshit.” me of how I’d lost you. And anyway, I was doing my brothel

“Conceptual art?” series.”



“No, stuff I said. About loving you for ever.” “Yes, very flattering that was, seeing all those canvases with

me in a salon, waiting for my clients. Over and over again.”

“Yes, you kept sending me emails.”

“No one could recognise you.”

“Well, I assumed your Tom didn’t read emails. I didn’t want

him reading what I wrote.” “Yes, thank God for cubism. But I knew, and you knew I

knew.”

“I printed them out for him.”

“You went to see them.”

“I always said you were a bitch, at heart.”

“Tom took me.”

“You only called me a bitch once, and I told you if you said it

again I’d leave you.” “Yeah, he likened them to the Demoiselles d’Avignon. As if

no one could paint whores like Picasso.”

“And I didn’t. But you still left me.”

“You could have done them like Toulouse Lautrec.”

“Yes, well, that was then.”

“Now I know you’re joking.”

“And now is now. I remember you said that in one of your

few email replies.” “Yes, well . . . “



“Well, I distrust words. You loved them, even though you said A pause hung in the air.

the only truth was in paint on canvas.” “Could you pull up the blind, ’Tild? The sun appears to have

“And fucking, ’Tild, and fucking. You’ve left out the rest of gone in.”

Another pause while she did so. A nurse popped her head bullshit. No Geordies south of the Tyne. Anyway, it was you,

round the door and then retracted, like a tortoise tasting the I’d swear . . . “

air. “No, Willie. I’d remember the mile castle. I remember

“So you’re only painting in your head?” Derbyshire. We went there to stay with that jazz guy.”

“Not even that, a lot of the time. I do a lot of thinking.” “Neil.”

“What of?” “Remember, you wanted to be a jazz composer. You painted

“Mostly of you, believe it or not.” him a score.”



“Very flattering.” “They bloody performed it, too. Bloody ’orrible row.”



“You don’t know what I think.” “And we all walked up on the Peaks.”



“You never asked me to come back.” “Yes, and we ran away and I stripped you naked. We both got

bitten to death by red ants, there in the bracken. You didn’t

“Not in so many words. But I did believe you would, one day, seem to care, the ants or anyone seeing us, Neil or a complete

when you realised what a mistake you made. And here you stranger. It was all the same to you.”

are.”

“I enjoyed those ants. It felt like the whole of nature was

“A bit late in the day.” giving me lovebites.”

“But better late than never.” “And everyone wondered why my nudes had all those red

“Hey,” he said, after another pause. “Remember the time I blotches all over them after. I always thought you must be a

took you up on the Roman Wall?” bit of an exhibitionist, on the quiet.”

“No, that must have been someone else.” “I was an artist’s model, Willie. Taking my clothes off is what

I do.”

“You must remember. I fucked you in the mile castle.”

“Not in the Derbyshire Peaks and not with my cock between

“No, honestly, Willie, you’re mixing me up with someone

your legs, you don’t.

else. You were always talking about taking me up to

Northumberland, but you never did.” “But I did take you up there and I painted you.”

“Bloody Tyne and Wear they call it now. Bureaucratic “And yourself like some kind of masked demon.”

“I’m always a masked demon in my paintings. It’s like to talk. It was very painful, what you did.”

Picasso’s minotaur.” “Not so bloody painful as you leaving me in the lurch. I had a

“At least you never gave yourself that sort of huge member.” canvas half-finished.”

“Well, given that I’m not all that well-endowed . . .” “What happened to that famous memory of yours?”

“You’re reasonably well built.” “It wasn’t that. I vowed I’d leave it until you came back.”

“. . . I didn’t want to give you cause to scoff.” “And I never did.”

“Would I ever scoff?” “Not till now.”

“No, be fair, you never did.” “And you’ve stopped painting.”

“Well, I never thought sex was all that important, really.” “Not really. Take your clothes off and I’ll send home for my

“No, ’Tild, you’ve got that wrong. It’s size that’s not all that palette.”

important. You loved sex. Couldn’t get enough of it.” “You wouldn’t want to. I’ve had a mastectomy. These are

“That’s because it was sex with you. It was never the same falsies.”

with anyone else.” “Wild! Come over on to the bed and let’s feel them.”

“You’re just saying that because you think it makes me happy. “Willie!”

But you’re wrong. It just makes me sad.” “No, I mean it. I always wondered if I could tell Stork from

“Why sad?” butter.”

“Cos you fucked off and left me, you bitch.” She sits on the bed, gingerly, barely within reach. He sits up

She stood up. and grabs her, pulling her body across him.



“No, don’t go. I take back the bitch. At least, don’t go without “Willie, someone might come.”

saying why you’ve come to see me, after all these years.” “You never worried about it in Northumberland.”

“I don’t know, really. I suppose it might be to say goodbye.” “Derbyshire, you mean.”

“You never did. Not really.” “Wherever.”

“No. I don’t mean like that. That was because I couldn’t bear “So what d’you think?”

“About what?” “And I still kept taking it.”

“My prosthetics, stupid.” “Stubborn b–, I mean woman. So it’s all there, down here.”

“I can’t believe they’re not butter.” “Willie! I thought you said you’d been castrated.”

“No, really.” “But they can’t castrate my brain. You said that, and it’s true.”

“Let’s get inside them.” “Ouch, I’m a bit dry.”

“There’s nothing at all inside them.” “Must be those hormone pills.”

“Not at all. It’s you. I can feel your ribs. You’re like a young “I’d be a damn-sight drier, without them, believe you me.”

boy.” “How if I spit on my fingers, like this.”

“I thought you might like that.” “Oh, Willie!”

“Is that scar tissue?” There was silence, apart from the rhythmic squeaking of the

“Yes, it’s a bit tender.” bed.

“Oh, sorry.” “Funny,” he said eventually, “didn’t know this bed squeaked.

“It’s OK. You always were a bit rough.” I’ll have to get it fixed, if you’re going to come round very

often.”

“Which you liked, if I remember right. Anything else you’ve

had removed while I’ve not been looking?” “It seems terrible, not being able to help you enjoy yourself.”



“Like what?” “But I enjoy your enjoyment. Don’t you remember?”



“Like a hysterectomy?” “Yes, I remember. I always wondered how much you meant

it.”

“No, but I’m on HRT.”

“Didn’t you know I meant it?”

“Don’t believe in it, meself, mucking about with your

hormone balance.” “Yes, I suppose I did. Well, I think I’d better be going.”



“Yes, you didn’t like me being on the pill, I recall.” “Wham-bam! Thank you man, eh? Now you’ve had your will

of me.”

“I forbade it, what I did.”

“No, it’s not like that. I’ll stay a while longer, if you like. Why

don’t you close your eyes and have a bit sleep, after all that Text messages from Palestine

exercise?”

June 26, 2002 Click here for complete audio sequence

“I’m only glad I can still do it.” Waking

“Oh, you can still do it, all right.” All night your words: a look, a smile, a handclasp, an

“So lie here still with me, and perhaps we can both doze off.” embrace, a kiss. Simple, saying more than they say,

across oceans, through skies, wrapped round my sleep.

Slowly, his breathing eased, and as it did so, she drifted off to

sleep, as she had so many times before, feeling his arms Sunday June 30, 2002

around her naked shoulders. Midnight

The room was dark when she woke. Before you go to bed, she said, you must wash your feet. Here

is a towel. I lay in bed, listening to the quiet breathing

“Oh,” said the nurse, “sorry to disturb you, but he needs his of 2 strong women. Change in adversity.

night shots. He can’t sleep without them.”

She sat up, startled, surprised to find she was fully dressed. July 4, 2002

When did that happen? 7.55am, Crystal Motel

In naked sheets my body loves the night. Proper food and

“Mr Jimpson,” said the nurse. “Mr Jimpson. Time for your comfort restores me. But no relief for those outside,

night shots.” oppressed by curfew. Rested, refueled, returned.

She shook his shoulder. Gently at first, then more vigorously.

10.30am

“Mr Jimpson. Mr Jimpson! Oh my God!”

Erotic dreams’ affirmation where identity is compromised.

She pressed an alarm bell and ran out of the room. Body wakens, will not be denied. Bowels move, hunger

The woman looked at the man. He was not breathing. stirs. Children play in the street. Life goes on.

There was a faint smile on his face.

July 5, 2002

His hands were clutching air, as if holding a paint brush. 10.15am, to Lisa

The woman leant over and smoothed his brow. Then she got A dove surrounded by cheeky Arab sparrows. Undismayed by

up and left the room. touch, invasions of her space. A light in darkness. A

June 5, 2004 dream. A pleasure to meet, to know, & understand.

Dolly the Sheep So take my word, the idea is quite absurd,

Tune: Nellie the Elephant Putting an end to sex my friend is really for the birds.

The sterile lab will never be quite as fab

Scientists say they’ve found a better way As good old fashioned snogging as the method much

Than smelly old sex and love to put girls in the family way. preferred.

They made a leap and now they’ve cloned a sheep ’Cos

But they’ve hit a snag and now they nag and worry night and Dolly the sheep was born a clone

day. And now she’s got arthritis

Her chromosomes unlike our whole biomes Off she goes with a clumpety clump,

Are six years older than they should be, so send for Sherlock Clump clump clump.

Holmes! Dolly the sheep has chromosomes

Her back legs are stiff as wooden pegs That are aging faster than normal

And all of them standing puzzled like a bunch of garden Off she goes with a clumpety clump,

gnomes. Clump clump clump.

’Cos January 6-10, 2001

Dolly the sheep was born a clone

And now she’s got arthritis

Off she goes with a clumpety clump,

. . . the creature itself also

Clump clump clump.

Dolly the sheep has chromosomes

shall be delivered from

That are aging faster than normal

Off she goes with a clumpety clump, the bondage of

Clump clump clump.

corruption into the

Their plan is blown, it’s knocked them off their throne

If they try to clone the human genome the effects are quite glorious liberty of the

unknown.

We’ll all be born, old aged and outworn

Like Dolly the sheep with pain we’ll weep and we’ll be quite

children of God.

Romans 2: 21

forlorn.

The return

riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to since many lie with many, childbirth being a matter that does

bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of not concern them.

recirculation back . . .

The longhouse is women’s territory, to which they are

–James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

admitted at our bidding, and women have skills of which men

The dissolution of society bids fair to become the know nothing, not only of child-bearing but of potions and

termination of a career of which property is the end and lotions made from herbs brought back from our gathering.

aim; because such a career contains the elements of self- Those of us who have special skills are well regarded, but

destruction. Democracy in government, brotherhood (sic) none rules over the rest, for each is special in her own way,

in society, equality in rights and privileges and universal united with all in the way our bodies’ seasons echo the

education, foreshadow the next higher plane of society to coming and going of spring upgrowth and winter down-

which experience, intelligence and knowledge are coming, a body of all bodies, each with her own rhythm, each

steadily tending. It will be a revival, in a higher form, of in asynchronicity with the whole.

the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes.

– Lewis Henry Morgan, Ancient Society (1877) The men have no such seasons to their living, though to be

sure there are times for their hunting, when the great herds





I

t’s good when the men are away, hunting. But it’s better mass on the plains, and times also when they have moved

when we’re out, wandering, gathering. away, to return again, and move away, and return, as if bidden

The hunt doesn’t always bring food for us. As a species by the length of days.

we’re not as fast as deer, we don’t have claws like the tiger. But the men have no time or tide in their own lives, willing to

But I guess the men have learned from the wolf, hunting in a take us whenever we will, but in times we decide, not they, for

pack. They come back whooping and shouting, dancing; then they would be forever at us if we did not set limits to their

they come to us, the women. To be fair, we’re glad to have rutting.

them back, however the hunt went.

There are times we may not be touched, whether they be back

Children come from that celebration, more to run around as from hunting or no, and times when our blood flows like the

we travel, picking for food, each of us women knowing who coming and going of the moon, a white lady looking down on

are whose, the men nothing to do with it, except those her journeyings, much as we come and go gathering, without

moments of pleasure, not knowing anything of fatherhood, fuss and bother. It’s more like a walk in the woods, the kids

running around, though not too far from us, because the berries are shunned, because they’re poison, but what’s good

jungle can be a dangerous place. Nevertheless, it’s rare for is just natural, there to be gathered by any who see them,

any of us to be carried back, like the men with limbs torn by passing by, seeds to be scattered.

savage jaws. The worst happens to us, most times, are thorns They spring up around the midden place, and such as they are

in the feet, scratches from fruit bushes, stings from honey fatter and juicier than many we find out on the trails. We need

bees. to go out less and less, seeking, because the fruits have come

Berries are more dependable than raw meat. They are always to us, within easy reach of our cooking pots.

there, if we ramble far enough. And if the woods are gathered Now we gather to plant, and the men see us planting,

out, then we up sticks all of us, women and children and men, watching, considering, planning.

and together we find a place where no one’s stripped the trees

of all their fruit. It is good what they plan, but it changes everything.

Of course, there are seasons to our gathering, lean months Yes, they still go out and hunt while we tend the garden, but

when the wind whistles through the trees, and what we find in the heat of summer the ground bakes hard. It takes more

are hard, dried by sun and storm, almost uneatable. Or fire than a pointed stick to break it up. A spear can be made into a

may rage through the trees, or the rains fail, and we must hoe, a man’s tool.

search farther and farther, bringing back scant fare for the We were content to let the plants spring up wherever they

whole body of all. Fortunately, such thin times are rare, but may, not worrying if birds from the air come down to take

they cannot be planned for. Like birth and death, they have some of them, for the earth provides enough for all, human

reasons beyond our knowing. and fowl alike.

Sometimes we meet others, gathering, but we live and let live. But they teach us to plant in rows, nets over to prevent our

The earth has enough for all, and if her fruits are scarce, we winged brothers from swooping down to carry off the seeds,

can point each other to greener places where more may be walling the plantings round with fences to keep out animals,

found. or others.

The men shout and wave their spears in the air if any stranger Something new to be considered: the land, once created one

dare to approach their hunt. for all, now property.

The animals are sacred to them, whatever that means, Now they do not come to the longhouse but take us on the

forbidden to others. It is not our way of thinking. Some tilled ground, willing their seed to make sprout up the seeds

they have planted. And we, too, have become property. whose wombs quicken and whose breasts give suck. We are to

They forbid us to wander abroad any more, gathering, and them unclean, sinks of iniquity.

truly there is no need, since the plantings provide enough for So they teach in the place where they say their god lives.

all. More than enough indeed, and a man’s worth is valued by Yet womanly times are not forgotten. Suns shall revolve about

what he has in store when winter winds rattle the husks of the round earth a thousandfold, a thousand thousandfold, yet

what has died down. the madness they try to trap us into shall not prevail.

Those whose planting has been less fruitful must work for If only because the serfs of these times are not only we, who

those whose granaries are full. Or they starve. labour and spin, but they also, imprisoned behind their own

Our children are numbered by their fathers, for our old created prison bars, rules erected when first our great mother

freedom of choice has been lost. There are now rules which earth was fenced and walled off, made property. The owners

say whose we are, and whose we may not be. There are are owned, the walls surround their own hearts, denying their

penalties for those who break the rules, even unto death, own flesh, which would be one with us and our ancient ways,

though we who are the taken are the ones punished, most and so one with all.

times, while the men who take another’s are often forgiven So the circling seasons, the rotating suns, universes and

their trespass, for it is given out that women’s wiles led the galaxies, turn time back, return us to the need for all to live in

men astray, they being governed by their ungovernable harmony with the green earth, woman and man. In liberating

passions. ourselves we shall also set them free.

Sometimes we are whore, sometimes goddess, also virgin; April 4, 2006, 23:48

It shall be an act of love.

many times something of all three. They have carved

themselves figurines, idealised representations of what they

would wish us to be, great tits and bums on them, tiny heads, As it was in the beginning, is

no faces. We must try to live up – or down – to these images.

Once, we were people. But now we are things, and when they now, and ever shall be :

come to us and penetrate us their eyes are closed, we just the

stuff of their fantasies; we know it is these headless, brainless

simulacra they are fucking in their heads, not the women

world without end. Amen.

– Book of Common Prayer

One Love Play audio



For all my loves For the whores and the strippers and the porn stars

past, present, and future. who have populated my lonely days,

for the wet dreams

For the living and the dead, who left me stranded like a drownded fish

for those who have gone to a greater love, upon the barnacled rocks of the morning.

still living in my heart,

a slim girl walking through broken glass, For trim buttocks winking away down a railway platform,

a fat woman opening up like a sliced peach; the breastless, slim-hipped as boys,

for those still living for whom I’m dead, and women enormous in silk blouses,

whose lives go on without me. legs like treestumps,

ankles like differential gears,

For those who went on to new loves, eyes dark and light as sandstone,

whose loving I embrace noses hawklike and snub-buttoned,

even as we now refrain from embracing. lips wide and skinny,

teeth savage in their perfection

For those present and not present, and scroggled one upon another in a jumbled mouth

for the pain of being together which opens to take me,

and the joy of separation, warm and generous,

for absences and new meetings, light as sudden laughter,

for those who said yes wet as long-expected tears,

and even more for those who said no, lips unexpectedly dry,

and those who said they wanted to say yes closed, welcoming,

but still refused me. unready, fulfilling hoped-for promise,

silent,

For the one boy I could be a man with howling at the scarlet sky

and all the women who sought out within my eyelids.

the woman in me.

For those I have exploited for golden darkling,

and those, unknowingly, and black greyness of rain-wet dawns,

whom I have been exploited by. snow blown cold into our faces,

and sun reflecting off blue-lapped beaches,

For the known and unknown, the birth of hedgerows

the distant and by my side and the death of corn,

(and the one becoming the other), the hollow mountain

for the totally me and the valley rising to the green horizon,

and the totally not mine, for treefall and larkrise,

for the always ready for chimney tower

and those needing time to prepare themselves, and burnt-out factory,

for the silent, for railway sleepers

for those whose chatter staves off the night, and broken bridges,

for the body language, for tower blocks tenanted like prisoners,

for the flash of eye and twist of mouth, and thatch-haired villages

for the wordy and the unworded, we drive through,

the articulate and the incoherent cry of happiness, anxious to reach destinations

for the chaste and the voluptuous, which are always the same,

the virgin mother of god, yet never where we expected to go.

and the mother of all,

the condemned and the forbidden, For jets stinking their paraffin into the sky,

the permitted and compulsory, travelling to download their shit

the now and the then on to the upturned innocents

and tomorrow a world away.

which never comes.

For the man with the gun

For the light and the dark, standing guard at the frontier,

the moon by day for the millions waiting silently,

and the sun at night, outside,

afraid of where they’ve been huddling together to keep out the night.

and where they might be sent back to,

for those whose lives have been shattered, For the chink-chink of the gravedigger’s spade just yesterday,

for the green shoots of new life for the angry howl of the new-born tomorrow,

between the broken flags of the way things were, the milk-sweet satisfaction of being named a child,

for those who are trying to remember, the hard bite of the chisel carving the gravestone,

for those who can never forget, for the beginning which has no ending,

for memories of the way things ought to be, the end which is a new beginning,

for the abuser and the abused. the circle and the harmony of the spheres,

the music of revolution,

For Cain mourning at the grave of Abel, rounding the singularity where it all began

for Lucifer remembering the morning star, and soon shall end,

for David recalling the love of Jonathan, the water boiled off as steam,

for Herod putting the murderers to the sword, the ice first contracting then expanding even as it freezes,

for the disciple whom Jesus loved, Clausius watching a kettle cool,

for Pilate finding no water the influenza virus floating between the stars,

to wash away the stain upon his hands, the nothing that became everything,

for Caiaphas convening a new kangaroo court the undivided

to condemn those who condemned who poured himself out into our human clay,

the birth of love into the world. the love that may not be named,

for to name is to limit,

For life flourishing in the desert, and the limitless became man

for dewdamp sweet under sundried rocks, so we could imagine him with us,

for stones which cut our feet, one love,

for the green mirage one eternal,

of promises yet unfulfilled, one at the beginning,

for the black chill one at the ending,

of stars marching across our tent-sky, one in your arms,

for the warmth of bodies one in the space beside me where you are not,

one in all the faces of the ones I love, Notes

in the faces and names I can no longer remember, Though there are autobiographical elements in nearly all these

holy holy holy, pieces, readers should beware of trying to identify the ladies

whole, depicted alongside me. Almost all the stories are all fictions.

indivisible by zero, The poems and songs, however, are all true.

infinity to the infinite power,

small as the dewsweat between your breasts, Songs of a wanderer

large as the caverns I find between your thighs, I composed the first section when Gloria first became

round as the clocksweep, my beloved. The remainder tell the story of my

high as the curlew cry, wanderings since then. The tune is original.

deep as the roseleaf raindrop, The haiku lady

one, Haiku (hy-koo) is a seventeen-syllable verse form,

the loneliest number, arranged in three lines of five, seven and five syllables.

yet three: The Japanese characters are a haiku by Basho, one of

you the originators of the form:

and I

and I, yoku mireba nazuna bana saku kakine kana

Jah love. looking carefully,

So mote it be. a shepherd’s purse is blooming

February 26-March 1, 2000 under the fence

The joke

I started writing this story at the beginning of a love

affair, but it became rather academic as the love

progressed. When it ended (for her, at least) I took it up

again and finished it. The ending was as I originally

planned it, at the very beginning of the affair.

Song: A blessing

Originally composed for the wedding of my friend John

Dunnet, and subsequently sung at the weddings of a Magdala

number of friends (and of one ex-lover). After meeting with a rather fine semi-pro soprano,

Tobe not whom I really admired, I was inspoired to begin

A chapter from a prose poem, which I began with no composing this song cycle for her, which would have

idea what it was or where it was going. I only knew I been my first attempt at a “classical” piece. I think she

was trying to invent a new kind of syntax for my was a bit put off by my enthusiasm, and we lost touch. I

writing. It was composed entirely on the first version of have only written music for the first part, and never

the Nokia Communicator pocket computer & mobile started on the accompaniment.

phone. This particular section was composed when a “Why not?”

lady I was attracted to gave me a very nice “no”. I went The inspiration for this was an actual incident in a Nice

back to my hotel room and wrote it, and read it to her toilette in Nice in the South of France. The rest is

the very next day. But she didn’t change her mind! fiction.

Song: The Lady from the West Moonshadow

A true story, given a mythic setting, inspired by Jessie The Interchange writers’ network suggested we should

L. Weston’s From ritual to romance (a copy of which is observe the August 11, 1999 solar eclipse from Shipley

on Kurz’s bookshelf in Coppola’s Apocalypse Now Glen and compose something in commemoration. This

movie). It also inspired Eliot’s The waste land, one of was my result.

the most profound influences on my earliest juvenile

poetry. The wedding picture

The second newest piece in this publication. I was

Songs from the mountains reading William Gibson at the time, which seems to

A literary agent asked me to write a novel about Cecil have influenced its style. The time is the near future. A

Sharp and the early 20th Century folk revival. This, the friend, reading it, wanted to know what happened next,

second chapter, tells of Sharp’s expedition to the US and why The Boss wanted his daughter killed. But

Southern Appalachians in 1916, and what he was doing that’s another movie, which you can compose in your

when his friend George Butterworth was killed on that own head.

very day on the Western Front. The agent didn’t like Song: Fair Annie and Lovely Johnny

what I’d done, so that was an end to it. I dreamed this song, which might well be dismissed as

a bit of pastiche. I rushed to write the words down as life of Christ set in present times (Roman soldiers

soon as I awoke, but by then I’d lost the melody. Every toting sub-machine guns, the Wise Men professors at

tune I tried to fit to it seemed to be more of a pastiche the local university, the birth in the shadow of the Post

than the words. In the end Rahel Guzelian found a tune Office Tower, etc). Although the common identification

for it. I’ve never sung it in public, but she does, of the woman taken in adultery with Mary Magdalene

sometimes. Ryan McGovern has also. He changed the is un-Biblical, I have adopted it here. Since the

first line, which I don’t approve of, but that’s his reformed whore is a bit of a cliche, I have made her

choice. into a male prostitute, which upset Mary Whitehouse.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t find a publisher who wanted to

A Death

bring it out.

Another story inspired by a real incident, when I was

nearly run over by a crazy driver on a hill road above The Thirteenth Hour

my wife’s house. I wasn’t too keen on living at the The clock is still chiming.

time, hence the welcome the hero gives to his own

The wedding at Cana

death.

On April 18, 1996, the Lebanese village of Qana (believed to

A sad dance be the site of Cana, where Jesus turned the water into wine),

“Isn’t life a terrible thing, thank God!” (Polly Garter, was attacked by Israeli rockets. Around 800 Lebanese

Under Milk Wood) civilians had taken refuge there to escape the fighting, of

whom over 100 were killed and 300 were wounded.

The heart songs

Apologies to Edgar Allan Poe Into the War Zone

I wrote the first part on my trip to Palestine in 2002,

Song: On the banks of the moorlands

and the second in Iraq in 2003. This second part was

I gave my love a B-flat whistle and then she ditched me

recited by the cast at the end of my play about the

for a fiddle player. The traditional song whose air I

Human Shields in Iraq, which took its title from the

have used uses phallic symbolism, but not so obvious

poem.

as mine. But subtlety was never my strong point.

Born to live

Magdalene

A true story, which I read about in Haaretz Magazine

A chapter from Witnesses to Glory, a re-telling of the

while I was in Jerusalem, in August, 2004.

Crushed by a wheel Cante Hondo

Rachel Corrie (April 10, 1979–March 16, 2003) was a I have always loved flamenco. When I was still at

member of the International Solidarity Movement school, before I started composing songs, I was singing

(ISM) who was killed by an Israeli army Caterpillar D9 to myself a musical version of Lorca’s Somnambule

bulldozer in a Palestinian residential area of Rafah, in Ballad. This is an attempt to write the previous story as

Gaza. The bulldozer deliberately ran over her twice a series of three “deep songs”. More pastiche? Possibly.

while she was trying to prevent a house demolition.

The goodbye

Note to verse 2 (“Oh, you leader of women . . . ”): The

I borrowed the name of the hero of this tale from Joyce

name Rachel (in Hebrew Rahel, raw-kale’); stems

Carey’s Trilogy. But then I always saw Gully Jimpson

“from an unused root meaning to journey; a ewe [the

as Stanley Spencer.

females being the predominant element of a flock] (as a

good traveller): —ewe, sheep.” (Strong’s Dictionary of Song parody: Dolly the Sheep

the Hebrew & Chaldean Language). In Arabic, I met Mandy Miller when she starred in the film

however, it means “breath of God”. Mandy, long before she had a number one chart hit with

Nellie the Elephant. She must be an old lady now.

A funeral

Dolly was the world’s first clone, but she had a short,

Two chapters from an unpublished novel, The fourth

painful life. Rahel Guzelian said I should write more

step, describing the funeral of the anti-hero’s son, who

funny songs like this one, but then this is really quite a

has died of a drug overdose. Though there are

serious story.

autobiographical elements in the story, all my children

are alive, grown-up and well. The return

I have often told the story of how we have moved from

Funeral song

“womanly times” to our present predicament, and how,

A dance of death perhaps, we might "get ourselves back to the garden"

There’s a lot about death in this collection, which may (Joni Mitchell). This is the newest piece in this

be a reflection of my age. But funerals don’t have to be collection.

sad affairs.

One Love

That woman The final four words are the traditional end to a magic

What a wife might think of her husband’s mistress.

spell, and I suppose that’s what this is. I first performed

this piece in the Monkey Bar in Wakefield



Who is the man who has written

all this stuff?

I was born on Thursday, January 29, 1931, named Karl

Frederick after Marx and Engels and enrolled in the

Independent Labour Party on the day I was born. I still have

my membership card. I was baptised a Christian in 1983.

I started writing stories when I was eight, graduated from

Hotspur/Champion-style adventure stories to rather soppy

romances when I entered puberty, began writing poetry about

the same time, influenced by Mayakovsky, Paul Éluard, Paul

Potts, T.S. Eliot, Pablo Neruda and Stephen Spender (in his

pre-war, social realist phase). My ambition was to perform my which will be apparent from most of these stories.

poems in public, but when I read an anti-war poem at a The picture (above) was taken in Baghdad when I was singing

conference protesting at the Korean War, it went down like a to kids in the street. I wonder how many of them have

lead balloon. survived?

A friend introduced me to the songs of Woody Guthrie, and I I produced a Declaration of Principles which was signed by

got a guitar, taught myself a few chords, and Ewan MacColl most of the Human Shields in Iraq. Its last point quoted W. H.

recorded the second song I wrote as a result. Auden: “We must love one another or we die”.

When I was invited to sing at an International Women’s Day When I wrote in the Daily Worker that the most political

demo in Baghdad in 2003, I protested that I was not a woman, songs I knew were lovesongs, I was hauled over the coals by

but was told that they considered me an honorary woman. I the head of the Communist Party’s cultural committee, but I

suppose it’s true, because all the men were away at the war still believe it’s true.

when I was growing up and my mother was one of six sisters.

Most of my writing is an attempt to understand what the hell

Women have always been the authority figures in my life,

is going on in my life, but I don’t expect I ever will.

Published by October Press, 15 Church Green, Bradford, West Yorkshire, BD8 7QN, UK. Tel: +44(0)1274 823949.

Email: karldallas@blueyonder.co.uk

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