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ARTS AND CULTURE

His God was Dylan, Bob

  • 29 July 2008

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