Four times I faced the test
and was found wanting.
Four times into battle
with legions, commanders,
galleys and slaves,
with poets and tables and days.
Decimated by centurions,
laid waste by marauding hordes,
without the aid
of a mother's sister's pen,
all I could muster
was an F in O-level.
OK, you didn't do any better than I did at Latin. The title means 'I don't know nothing' [sic].
It was on Saturdays like this—
the sun high in the afternoon,
the lane to the carefully mown field
heavy from the white cones of privet,
my dad and the others in whites—
I sat at a card table
in front of the scoreboard
making marks in a green book.
My mother and 'the ladies' were inside,
making tomato sandwiches.
The big kettles boiled on the hob.
For each unscoring delivery I place a dot
until with the last ball of dad's over
an edge off the bat to the slip.
I join the dots in the book with a large W.
Even the scorebook is long gone
but not the scent of privet on warm Saturdays.
A thousand films I saw that student year.
The first three months passed in the screening room
As every image left a mark or smear—
Absorbed, like Truffaut, in the flickering gloom.
Abruptly, with the spring sun, radical
And unexpected transformation bit.
Departure, not renewal. Musical
Weird happenings: the Ufo Club was it.
The city walls were shaken when the mode
Of music changed, as blinking from the dark
I stumbled. Life had caught me unawares.
My g-g-generation struck the motherlode.
But I, not it, was outta sight (black mark)
When Jimi Hendrix called on friends downstairs.
In my last year at school, when fashion
Gave our sensibilities a thrashing,
My contribution was to wear one day
A simple waistcoat of pale grey.
It wasn't so much that we were trendy.
We thought the dress-code might be bendy.
But the head announced a change of rule:
Waistcoats were banned for wear in school.
With money from my first pay packet
I bought myself a brand new jacket.
Fashioned from black corduroy,
It marked a step to man from boy.
My editor, a Scotsman, when he saw it
Suspected I might be a poet.
This challenge to pretentiousness
Enhanced my arty consciousness.
A year on and again a student,
I thought I ought to be more prudent.
So from Millets, Oxford Street,
I bought a garment more discreet:
A donkey jacket, like a navvy.
I assumed this made me savvy,
Getting in the street-wise fast-track,
With space for 'Wimpey's' on the back.
That lasted me through several seasons
Until I bought, for doubtful reasons,
A suit of velvet, bottle green,
(Or was it what's called velveteen?)
From a small Kings Road boutique.
I had, those days, the right physique
But nonetheless I found it very
Hard to outclass Bryan Ferry.
Next came my girlfriend's cast-off—
A shaggy job I saw the last of.
No longer smart as J Paul Getty,
I bore a close resemblance to a yeti.
Since then my tastes have been more sober
A new coat every fourth October.
They may not have so much finesse
But you can rely on M&S.
A man throughout his life may change his jacket
But none assures that he can hack it.
The peak arrived in sixty-nine:
My fashion ways she guided.
Sartorial elegance was now all mine:
No one had style like I did.
In Kings Road shops she found the stuff
That couldn't be more trendy.
One set of kit was not enough
To turn me out a dandy.
A dove grey suit that showed the dirt
And one in dark green velvet,
A subtle chocolate brown silk shirt,
And scarves! Yes, scarves! Believe it.
There's something I can now disclose
(In chinos and a jumper):
I may have let her choose my clothes
But she never let me hump her.
'I will not submit to the arrogant oligarchy of those who simply happen to be walking around.'
– G K Chesterton
Who is in and who is out?
Those who whisper? Those who shout?
Shoppers on their mobile phones?
TV's talking head who drones
To represent the chattering class?
The proletariat en masse?
It isn't me, I'll tell you that.
It must be every other prat.
The late news warns us of a coming storm.
A map with arrows shows the wind's intent,
With following clouds to chart the heavy rain—
No word of when the power will be spent,
When trees will cease to wave their angry arms
At this disturbance to their winter sleep.
So I shall go tomorrow in my buttoned mac,
Lean hard into the wind and breathe in deep,
Conflating inner turbulence with driven air.
But come the dawn
There is no wind.
My inner turbulence
The only storm.
I long since forgot how
on a sunny and showery
afternoon of a teenage
springtime I went on a bus
to the centre of Sheffield
to wait in a shopping centre
to meet someone I fancied
and failed to recognise her.
I hope she has forgotten too.
I left my heart
under the pillow.
The heart fairy
took it away
but left no sixpence.
I never had a bike.
I never rode a bike to school
Or to the swimming pool;
That's not what my young days were like.
I do not drive a car.
This much must freely be confessed:
I never passed the test.
That did not get me very far.
Nor can I drive a train.
An engine driver may have been
A boyhood wish, a keen
Ambition, yet I could abstain.
I cannot fly a plane.
For me to earn a pilot's wings
Remains one of those things
I could not ever hope to gain.
And so I go by bus.
A practicality applied.
I like the park and ride
And catch it at the terminus.
One claim I can derive:
I do my bit to save the Earth.
But now, for what it's worth,
I rather wish I'd learned to drive.
This year I have known the garden
more from memory than from life.
Unmown, uncultivated, watered only by the rain,
left to run to seed, to lie fallow, to be itself,
it has had freedom to regain some of its old secrets,
allowing me the later thrill of re-discovery.
The jasmine, then laburnum flowered yellow
without help. Then lilies choked the pond
where dragonflies, electric blue, still flitted in pairs.
Apples plumped, though never winter-pruned,
and I collected plums in unused flowerpots
and sat them in the fridge to chill their sweetness.
There was no urge in me to impose order,
my order, a gardener's orthodoxy.
This sloping site was never meant for tidiness.
Let rank grasses consume the strawberries
and ivy cling to raspberry canes.
Caterpillars strip the gooseberry leaves anyway.
This winter, a bonfire will consume the dead
and dying branches lopped from buddleia and elder,
lilac and holly and stags-horn sumach.
Paths and steps will be repaired, sprayed against weeds.
The soil will once again feel spade and hoe.
Then merciful spring will cover the scars.
Romance is dead, long live romance
Do I ever write romantic verse?
You ask me that?—whose universe
Is filled each morning, noon and night
With happy hours of such delight
I must write poetry to capture
All the ecstasy and rapture
Overflowing through my life,
Especially now without that wife
Who put the kibosh on my writing—
And my love life—with her fighting.
Well, no, as far as romance goes
There's been no call for verse—or prose—
For quite some time. When I was young
(Much younger than today) I'd strung
Together words a time or two
To try to tart up 'I love you'
In sonnet form or villanelle.
But did it work? No, did it hell.
The bloom goes off, romances fade,
The poems start to be clichéd.
And as for poems as seduction,
That's been tested to destruction.
It's just a myth. No girl's impressed
Enough by poems to get undressed.
Perhaps a Byron could have charmed
The pants off women, first disarmed
By hearing readings from Don Juan.
So, could I identify with Ewan
McGregor, awed by Nicole Kidman
In Moulin Rouge? Maybe I did—can (can).
Would I still write romantic verse?
Perhaps I would. I could do worse
(And often do). With inspiration,
Who can say what lucubration
May yet produce? But writing's hard;
It's not just churned out by the yard.
The effort's out of all proportion
(And best not done without precaution).
I'd better not go on too long—
I'm quite prepared to be proved wrong!
© David Fisher 1962-2019