Seven poems about growing up in Coventry
Grandmothers
No one told the women in my family
they were the weaker sex.
My grandmothers, worn by the century,
were beautiful, resilient and humane.
My English Gran survived
both husband and the Blitz
and treated those disasters
much the same.
One daughter asked:
'If Hitler comes, what shall we do?'
'Leave him to me,' she said,
'I'll sort the blighter out.'
Mrs Kelly's Miracle
Outside the church, the sweep of playground laughter,
while inside, Mrs Kelly took us round the stations of the cross.
The weekly repetition never softening the narrative's brutality
that ended at the altar rail, and Mrs Kelly's Miracles.
Sundays, the stand up sit down keep moving
of the mass. Dominic was coming with the biscuits
and I was waiting to eat a missare est,
but caught up in the rhythms of the congregation,
chanting the poetry of 'Trespasses',
'Melchisedech', I'd surf the loneliness
of hymns, the wintry elegance of carols,
towards whatever was kept hidden on the altar.
Widdershins
Stephen Morgan swore upon his mother's grave
crossed his heart and hoped to die:
he'd seen a soul ascending into heaven.
A puff of smoke. But then he was an altar boy.
And Gaffney said she went all cold before
the blessed virgin's statue talked to her.
But she was nuts. We met before the church,
eight years old, experts in the supernatural.
If you run widdershins three times round,
the devil will be waiting at the porch.
But we weren't daft: the implications
of his non-appearance were not worth the risk.
The Man in 27B
The blackened kettle front ring right.
Cracked mug beside the biscuit tin.
Remote sits on the right arm of the chair.
Table, bottom left hand corner, TV guide.
For twenty years. Tracks worn into the carpet,
grooves carved by repetition in the air.
My name's the first thing he's misplaced.
His years unravel. A shelf of paperbacks
their titles faded, plot lines mingle, characters migrate.
Dialogues he knew by heart dissolve to nonsense.
A memory of purpose cobwebs the millennia
between phone calls, shopping trips, Christmas cards.
Tolerance
Good will is soon abraded, where
tolerance is theorised indifference.
Their welcome, frail as washing in the dirty air,
or a concrete playground seen
from a fifth floor window. Where
the once bright railings circle
childhood in containment and exclusion.
The menace of broken swings, creaking
in isolation. This is your space.
Don't ask for more, or try to leave
Is it any wonder for our children
resentment's an hereditary disease?
He was a Rock
He was a rock, he was an island. I'd visit
like a Catholic at a Church of England service.
The same passion but his was turning inwards.
His books and