Andy's poems

Grey Blues


Grey promenade, grey sand, grey day,
Grey road, grey sky, grey rocks, grey clay -
So many different shades of grey !
Like Holyhead on Christmas Day,
Sault St Marie or Thunder Bay,
The deadened rule of grey holds sway
Upon this Headland, locked today
In monochromes of wintry grey.
These welded clouds are here to stay,
Like bunting hung across the bay,
Like dirty clothes on washing-day,
Like tide-marks of the world’s decay.
Ash-grey, slate-grey, rain-grey, steel-grey,
The colours all have drained away
To prismed islands far away.
Grey clouds, grey sea, grey rain, grey day,
This leaden rainbow in the spray
’s a covenant from God to say
That grey will rule the earth one day.

I like this place, I like this grey,
Well-handled, useful, everyday,
Familiar, dull ; I like the way
It flaunts its taste for brazen grey,
And kicks its turquoise shoes away,
Exchanging flaming gold lamé
For army surplus service grey.
But most of all I like the way
This lack of colour seems to say
This disappointing world’s OK,
Not black or white but mostly grey,
And that the spectrum of dismay
Contains no blue at all, just grey, just grey.



Just As Blue


A breezeless, sunny, Summer day
At Brooke House Farm, and I’m just four
Or five, a town-mouse come to stay,
Homesick perhaps, and not so sure
About this world that’s fierce and strange
And full of things from story-books :
The giant oven in the range,
The furnace doors I must not touch,

The home-made broom outside the door,
The baking smells of gingerbread,
And everywhere the friendly, raw
Tobacco smell of Uncle Fred ;
The cellar with its froggy holes,
A fox head stuffed with marble eyes,
The fences hung with rats and moles ;
The piglet wriggles in the sties,

The shippon gloom of dust and straw,
The diesel stink of old machines,
The high-pitched smell of fresh manure,
The dairy’s chapel quiet, its clean
And polished, buttered, sunshine taste ;
The angry, barking dogs on chains
Whose unleashed fury must be faced
If I’m to venture down the lane.

But here, against the haystack sides,
A ladder climbs to heaven knows where,
A stair up which, half terrified,
I slither backwards into air,
Till half way up the clouds unfold
Their magic carpet in the skies,
A square of blue enframed with gold,
A vast and roofless blue surprise.

How close the sky appears from here.
No child could ever paint such blue
As this, an endless, hurting, clear
And lovely, lonely, trespassed view.
Within this blue I’ve built a den,
A musty house of bales of straw
To keep out stupid one-eyed hens,
And hungry wolves outside the door.

How dreamy still and quiet it seems,
As though the giant world is curled
Asleep and I’m inside a dream
Of bean-stalks far above the world,
Where hay bales might be spun to gold,
And happy endings are all true,
Where little pigs do not grow old,
And skies are always just as blue.

As if I’ve had this dream before,
Down tunnels made with itching legs
I reach to find, within the straw,
A clutch of warm and feathered eggs,
Like magic beans which only grow
When all the grown-ups are in bed,
Which lead to where all children know
They grind your bones to make their bread.

The sleepy world below now stirs -
The milking stalls’ electric hum,
A distant tractor’s muddy purrs,
The background mumble of the glum
Suspicious cows, as they’re pursued
By Fe-fi-fo-ing dogs and men.
It’s time to leave this solitude,
The giant world’s awake again.



The Baron Munchausen Bar, Sofia

‘We drink, we sing with recklessness,
We snarl against the tyrant foe,
The taverns are too small for us,
"To the mountains we shall go."’
Hristo Botev

for Bill Herbert


You follow the yellow-brick road through the snow,
Past the topless young girls on the highway,
Through Horrible Valley and Terrible Pass
Till at last you will come to a doorway.

It’s tucked between Schweik’s and Flanagan’s Bar,
Down a side-street of uneven cobbles,
But once you’re inside you know you’re with friends
Who will help you forget all your troubles.

Inside it’s so crowded and smoky and dark
That you can’t tell one hand from the other;
Here a Yes means a No and a No means a Yes,
And the neighbouring sexes mean either.

You hang up your hang ups just inside the door
In exchange for a small token gesture,
Sly Peter will offer to buy you a beer
And ask you to drink to the future.

And after a while you can see that it’s full
Of artists in shades and black leather,
Like talking heads chained in the inferno-dark
They talk of new sins and old lovers.

Here the bar-maids are lovely as Catherine the Great,
And the beer tastes as cold as the Iskar;
On TV the football is never nil-nil,
And the Hristos are wrapping up Moskva.

And the peppers are red as CSKA shirts,
And the vegetable soup is near solid
With the flesh of the Chopski, that gentlest of tribes
Who taught us all how to make salad.

Here the regulars vote for a fairy-tale-king,
Who it’s rumoured supports Barcelona,
He doesn’t like children but comes in to drink
With the tough-looking boys in the corner.

Each night if you want you can drink the bar dry
As long as the Baron has credit,
Though the menu’s as large as the Vitosha hills,
The bill is so small you can’t read it.

If ever you leave here (and some never do)
You will find that the snow is still falling,
In Batenberg Square they’ve forgotten the date,
And the frozen tongued bells have stopped pealing;

And the skate-boarders spin round the partisan dead
In the gardens on Boulevard Levski,
And the tomb of Dimitrov’s been swapped overnight
For an oversize bottle of whisky;

And the past is as clean as the streets under snow,
And everyone’s tired and sleepy,
And the future’s as bright as the man in the moon,
And freedom makes everyone happy;

And the statues outside are stiff with the cold,
And the girls by the road are still topless;
And the children of beggars are sleeping outside,
And the cold constellations are helpless.

The Baron untethers one half of his horse
Which he tied to an Orthodox steeple,
And wishes you all a merry good night
As he flies off to Constantinople.

Some say he’s a con-man, some say he’s for real,
Some say that the Baron’s in earnest,
But don’t take my word for it, go there yourself -
You’ll never believe it all. Honest.


Zoology

Beware the wolves who hunt in packs,
The snake’s insinuating smile,
The low-browed, strong-armed silverbacks,
The sympathetic crocodile;
Avoid the vultures’ scrounging gaze
The tiger playing with his food,
The magpie’s flashy, thieving ways,
The leopard in a hungry mood;
Beware the lizards’ sleepless eyes,
The grizzly dozing in the straw,
The piglets rooting in their sties,
The jungle stink of carnivore;
Stay clear of keepers jangling keys,
The crazy dogs who bark at night,
The laughter of the chimpanzees,
The paws that scratch, the jaws that bite.

But most of all, beware the law
That rattles at the window bars,
The food-chain red in tooth and claw
Of those that hunt beneath the stars,
The moon-lit siren calls of home
Which draw all creatures great and small
To where those midnight monsters roam
That lie in wait, beyond the wall.


An Offer You Can’t Refuse

‘If sharks ruled the world they would teach the little fish that it is a great honour to swim into the mouth of a shark.’
Brecht

for Mike and Anna Wilson


As the actress takes the curtain
They are cheering in the stalls,
Mack the Knife is out of town, dear,
Though his name’s sprayed on the walls.

O the shark has pretty teeth, dear,
And he shows them pearly white,
On the east side of this town, dear,
You can walk home safe at night.

Here the shark is just a story,
Some old song about some teeth,
Though there’s some who think that freedom’s
Just a name for old Macheath.

On the radio, Sunday morning,
Frank Sinatra swings this town;
You had better watch your back, dear,
When the walls start tumbling down.

Now the banks are full of money
And the streets are full of life;
Who’s that sneaking round the corner -
Is that someone Mack the Knife?

All the ladies love a blade, dear,
And the whole world loves a knave,
But he’ll leave you lying bleeding
And he’ll put you in your grave.

You are free to spend your savings
On expensive merchandise,
And you’re free to walk the streets, dear -
Every freedom has its price.

When the shark bites with his teeth, dear,
Scarlet billows start to spread,
On the streets young men are shouting,
Foreign students turn up dead.

Now the knives are coming out, dear,
And the sharp suits cut like glass,
And there’s beggars in the subways
On the razor edge of class.

Unemployment keeps on rising,
While the dole keeps going down -
Oh, the line forms on the right, dear,
Now that Mackie, good old Mackie,
Now that Mackie is back in town.




Too Much

in memoriam, Geoff Croft

You always were too big, too tall, too loud,
The sort of man who took up too much space,
Who couldn’t help but stand out in a crowd,
The kind of Dad who was always on my case,
But as I watched you whittled with each breath,
Belittled by both cancer and its cure,
I needed you still louder than before,
As large as life and larger still than death.

You always were too big, too loud, too tall,
The sort of man who never seemed to stop,
Beside whom other fathers seemed so small,
The kind of Dad I’d call over the top.
But as I watched you lying there so still,
I could not fail to understand the size
Of what I’ve lost in you, to realise
How huge a gap you’ve left for me to fill.


Idiot Snow

for Sergei, Yuri and Olga


This sky’s a foreign language
Whose native speakers know
It takes the earth’s thesaurus
To catch the falling snow.
As well as try translating
The way the weather talks -
In Russian verbs of motion
Snow doesn’t fall, it walks.
It ambles, shambles, gambols,
It sidles, idles, creeps,
It bounces, pounces, flounces,
It pirouettes and leaps,
It does the hokey-cokey,
The twist, the cha-cha-cha
In a silent karaoke
In Snegurochka’s Bar.

Small children play at statues
Outside the ice-carved shops
Till everybody freezes,
And when the music stops
The speechless world is deafened
By the ringing in our ears
Like underwater singing
Or the music of the spheres.
The sound of snowflakes walking
Through Kemerovo at night
Would silence anyone who doubts
That happiness writes white,
The colour of the senses
At ten degrees below,
Where no matter what the question is,
The answer’s always snow.


They Think it’s All Over

And so our first group-game is finished,
Another World Cup tale begins.
With optimism undiminished
We hope that this time England wins,
And that just maybe Peter Crouch is
The man to pin us to our couches,
And end the forty years of hurt
That comes with every England shirt.
And yet there can be few supporters
Who really are in any doubt
About the way this will turn out;
By now experience has taught us
That hope’s a dangerous burden, which
Has no place on a football pitch.

The wrong side of the years of plenty,
We make the best of what remains.
With luck, for me, another twenty -
At least five more World Cup campaigns!
Although I don’t think for one minute
That’s long enough for us to win it,
I’ve long learned how to live in hope
(How else could I have learned to cope
With Englishness?) The generation
That still remembers Moore and Hurst,
Who’ve grown up to expect the worst
Can sometimes fall for the temptation
To mistake England for the fans
Whose tabloid colours deck their vans.

For those who landed on the planet
In ‘56, we chose a time
In which, no matter how you scan it
A word like Victory just won’t rhyme.
Five decades of imperial slaughter
Is quite enough for this supporter;
From Suez Crisis to Iraq
Old England’s never lost the knack
Of picking fights with Third World nations.
A grisly time in which to spend
One’s time on earth. I can’t pretend
That there are many consolations -
At least as far as I can tell -
Except that you were here as well.

I’m probably suffering from depression,
Brought on by turning one more page
In life’s thin book, but my impression
Is that my friends don’t seem to age.
My oldest mates are always youthful -
No, please don’t laugh - I’m being truthful!
Still hanging round in student pubs,
In parties, staff-rooms, classes, Cubs,
In Sunday-school and Party meeting,
On five-a-side courts, clapped-out cars,
In prison, readings, Russian bars -
Though art is long and life is fleeting,
There’s few things that can measure us
The way that friendship’s time-piece does.

I’m glad that you’ve been here to share it.
Without such friends, it would have been
Impossible sometimes to bear it.
A half a century lived between
High expectation and disaster
Is more than any one can master.
The years spent watching England play
And all we’ve won is sweet F.A.
And yet within this summer garden
There is another England here,
Defined by comradeship and beer;
My country’s here, not Baden-Baden,
With you, the friends who’ll cheer me up -
When England exit the World Cup.

June 2006


Song of the Banya

‘Not enough bathhouses, not enough soap.’
(Vladimir Mayakovsky)


In this city of well-dressed ambition
It is hard to peel off from the dance,
But here in the Banya, we say do svidanya
To all of that hustle and hassle and bustle -
For once in the Banya,
You’ve nothing to lose but your pants. Hey!

Hit me with your venik stick,
Hit me! Hit me!

As long as you’re stark bollock naked
You can stay in the Banya all day,
The fat and the skinny, the max and the mini,
The lean and the gristly, the clean and the bristly,
We sit in the Banya
And sweat all our troubles away. Hey!

Hit me with your venik stick,
Hit me! Hit me!

The Banya asks nobody questions,
The Banya tells nobody lies,
You jump in the water, your manhood gets shorter,
You walk in a mobster and crawl out a lobster,
The god of the Banya
Cuts every man right down to size. Hey!

Hit me with your venik stick,
Hit me! Hit me!

There’s only one rule in the Banya,
Enlightened self-interest’s our cause,
You may be quite podgy, you may look right dodgy
Be sick and unhealthy, or virile and wealthy,
But here in the Banya -
If you scrub my back, I’ll scrub yours. Hey!

Hit me with your venik stick,
Hit me! Hit me!

The Banya treats all men as brothers,
The wise man, the fool and the knave,
No matter how ruthful or truthful you may be,
No matter how youthful you were as a baby,
Outside of the Banya
The next place we’re equal’s the grave. Hey!

Hit me with your venik stick,
Hit me! Hit me!

One member one soap is our slogan,
Uniting the whole human race,
Once step through the door you can’t tell the dirt poor
From the man with the itch to become stinking rich -
If the world was a Banya
It wouldn’t be such a foul place. Hey!

Hit me with your venik stick,
Hit me! Hit me!


Metronomic

‘In the morning I go down in the Metro
There my underground life runs away.’
(Valery Syutkin)


Three hundred feet below the ground,
The Circle Line goes round and round,
De-clunk de-da, de-clunk de-da,
Four syllables to every bar.
‘Dear Passengers,’ the tannoy says,
Uncomradely, though polished phrase
In regular paeonic feet
That fits the Metro rush-hour beat
Of workers paid to feed machines.
The male voice on the tannoy means
We’re ticking clockwise round the stain
Of Stalin’s coffee cup again;
An urgent metre, keeping time,
To which we nod our heads in rhyme
And mark the stress for emphasis,
Rabotniks from Metropolis,
Or clockwork soldiers on parade;
A rhythm made to be obeyed
By veterans with medalled chests,
And Moscow girls with perfect breasts,
And Moscow girls with almond eyes,
And businessmen in suits and ties,
And college kids who text and text
Between one station and the next:
I’m on the train, I’m on the train
I’m on the train, I’m on the train…