Selected poems
Samuel
He's not difficult to find. Black men stand out in rich
barrios. He'll be standing outside the supermarket,
smiling, a self-appointed doorman selling a magazine
nobody buys. I've known him for a few weeks in each
of several years. His name is Samuel. He's from Ghana.
His father is dead. He sends what money he can to
his mother. He has no papers and no work because
he has no papers. Madrilenos offer small change after
shopping. Passersby sometimes approach with a euro
or two. Many dally to talk. He knows them, his clients,
various small and large details of their lives, what
to ask, friendly, without ever being thought a friend.
Before I fly home I hand him my leftover Euros and
he always asks god to bless me. I don't belabour him
with agnostic doubts for fear I'll debase his frangible
currency of gratitude, He gives me all he has to give.
I give him a few crumbs swept from a table of plenty.
Mm
So alive in death is how Juan Ramon Jimenez described the poet Antonio
Machado. We might say as much of Marilyn though it's not her words that
inform the imaginings of admirers fifty years post mortem. A giant plaster
statue in Rosalind Park models her scene in The Seven Year Itch, pleated
white dress billowing in updraft from subway exhibiting legs and underwear
while she blazes that ain't-this-wonderful grin. An image DiMaggio hated
so violently, demeaning for any woman of his, far too much whore and no
madonna whatsoever. Today they're shooting selfies between her legs. She's
also strung from light poles in View Street wearing a gold lame halter neck
gown plunging to her navel, her head tilted back just a little, her hands behind
her back, eyelids ultra lashed, heavily mascared, lowered so you can barely
see her eyes. Her lips scarcely part in an I-could-be-so-good-for-you smile.
Somebody said when she entered a room with Miller every woman hated her –
and every man hated him. With gratuitous nastiness to both the press labelled
them the egghead and the hourglass. Hers is a made up kind of life. Neither
blonde nor Marilyn nor Monroe. Mother in and out of mental hospitals. Foster
care for Norma Jeane. Abused. Believed Clark Gable to be her father for most
of her life. Relationships tricky. Three divorces. Got mixed up with Sinatra, the
Kennedys and assorted trouble. Difficult on the set. Late, moody and unlearned
of lines. According to Wilder an endless puzzle without any solution. Years
later, Clive James sneered She was as good at playing abstract confusion in the
same way