Cliff Yates: Selected Poems E-Book

Cliff Yates

• Herausgeber: The Poetry Business
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Seitenzahl: 68

Beschreibung

Poets like Cliff Yates only come along every so often, like eclipses or rare migrating birds, and, like an eclipse or a rare migrating bird, Cliff Yates should be gazed at, parked near, and written about. People often talk about poets being fresh, and they mean fresh like bread, likely to go stale. Cliff Yates is fresh like the very first crack of dawn is fresh: unique unrepeatable, full of promise.' — Ian McMillan

Leseprobe

C L I F FY A T E S

S E L E C T E DP O E M S

This ebook original Selected Poems published 2014 by smith|doorstop Books The Poetry Business, Bank Street Arts, 32-40 Bank Street, Sheffield S1 2DS

www.poetrybusiness.co.ukCopyright © Cliff Yates 2014ISBN 978-1-910367-17-9

Cliff Yates hereby asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this book.British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ebook generated by alancoopercreative.co.uk

smith|doorstop Books is a member of Inpress,www.inpressbooks.co.uk. Distributed by Central Books Ltd., 99 Wallis Road, London E9 5LN.

The Poetry Business is an Arts Council National Portfolio Organisation

Contents

from Henry’s Clock (1999)

Tonight in Kidderminster

1959

Waiting for Caroline

Ferret

Visitors

Hank

Apples

Leswell Street

Poem On The Decline of the Carpet Industry

Saturday Afternoon

Henry’s Clock

Oakworth

I’m Sorry, I Didn’t Sleep Last Night

Dance

On the Difficulty of Learning Chinese

Reel-to-Reel

Clara

Playing for Time

Apprentice

Bricks in the Snow

Borth

Telescope

The Day the Lawnmower Caught Fire

from The Pond Poems

Get Me Flowers

Life and Soul of the Party

Meeting the Family

Naked the Philosopher

from 14 Ways of Listening to the Archers

from Frank Freeman’s Dancing School (2009)

Lighthouse

Locked In

Thank You for the Postcard I Read it

Emergency Rations are Tasting Better and Better

Fishing

He Squeezes Tennis Balls to Strengthen his Hands

On the Third Day

Leaves are Just Thin Wood

Summers

The Morning they Set Off it was Snowing

Daglingworth Blues

There Are Mountains but I Can’t See Them

Cross Country

Day Breaks as a Petrol Station

L’Hermitage and a Bird

Hôtel de l’Angleterre

Shoes

Would You Listen to the Safety Instructions Please

At the Smell of the Old Dog

Proportion

Apple Trees in a Gale

Baldwin Road

New White Bike

Hair

Yes

When She Got Back After Her Funeral

Fun

Borneo

Your Limbs Bound and Mouth Full of Cloth

Picking Up Speed

Kidderminster-on-Sea

Climbing the Tree to Pick Fruit he Fell and Lost

Wake Up

Return

Gower Road

Mid-Gallop

Vienna

Rock Cross

Noise

Fireside Bookshop

Knowledge of This Sort Helps Keep Society Together

Still Alive

The Poem

On the Street in Bratislava

Boggle Hole

Fever

I am a Crab

The Science of Predictive Astrology

Snow

Chez Marianne

from Bike, Rain (2013)

Life Studies

Alt St. Johann

Easter

Basque Country

The Chinese Girls Played Cards

Gate

Boat

He Takes Off his Hat and Steps

Chicken

Blackpool North

I Met My Friend

February, Colden Valley

Bike Ride

Shakespeare and Company

fromHenry’s Clock

Tonight in Kidderminster

begins under streetlights and their word is speed.

Two of them, chewing gum with their mouths open,

thumbs in their pockets and feet tapping.

The tall one sees me first, sees the hat. This hat

goes with the hair, the desert boots and jeans,

the shabby raincoat and ripped gold lining.

It goes with the sky before rain and just after,

and with one unforgettable night on Kinver Edge,

eight of us in the back of a mini van.

This hat is my dad’s and I wouldn’t sell it for fifty pounds.

*

They chased me for the hat and lost, turned left

into another story. Fiction.

It begins up an entry, trembling hands

full of someone’s prescription.

Eyes that are needles

sewing the hem on tomorrow’s shroud.

*

Or gramophone needles. The first record

is Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale.

The devil’s guest Private Faust

has forgotten The Silent Princess.

He hums along to the drum solo

and dreams only of the fiddle

he traded for a book, words

he could not read, words he can’t remember.

*

Next it’s 4’ 33’,

a bootleg of David Tudor

live in Woodstock, New York 1952.

The duff tape missed the rain

on the roof, traffic in the distance,

the people angrily rising and leaving

but detected the silence, four years

in the making. Listen. No

sound but the lid of the piano.

Tonight in Kidderminster our audience

is the night. The agitated stars cough less

and less discreetly, by the third movement

programmes flutter like moths. Barely visible

to the naked eye, the devil jigs

to the soldier’s fiddle while The Silent Princess

wheels the plough across the night sky

and the pole star stays where it is.

1959

I have the 1950’s in the palm of my hand.

It is a plastic Austin Seven,

inside my glove with the hand-brake on.

Such a pale yellow, almost transparent.

There’s smog on the way to school again.

My brother holds my hand across the road.

I like American comics: Jughead,

Mutt and Jeff, Sad Sack. What’s a fire hydrant?

I re-read the punch lines. Sometimes

I get it, sometimes I don’t. I even read

the adverts on the back, fill in my address.

There’s a dead hedgehog in the road.

Paul turns it over with his foot - I dared him.

What’s the ‘zip code’ for Birmingham?

Waiting for Caroline

Outside Readings on Blackwell Street,

bikes in one window, jokes in this one:

nail through your finger, Frankenstein,

invisible ink. She looked great

behind the gym at dinner time.

Her friends were in the long jump pit,

out of sight of the dinner ladies,

holding down Andy and giving him love

bites. Outside Fletcher’s, Mr Fletcher

humps potatoes, sings in Italian. She’s late.

I’ve been set up. Like Cary Grant

in North by North West.

I’ll hear it

before I see it: the crop duster –

out of the sun above the multi-storey

dipping dangerously over the Seven Stars.

I’ll make it to the Red Cross on Silver Street,

under the ambulance, hands over my ears…

On the way home the fat man in the black suit

will climb on the Stourport bus with his cello.

I imagine her coming round the corner

by the Riverboat: she’s run from the bus stop

but she’s not sweating, she’s smiling

like the girl in the Flake advert.

I’ll tell John I didn’t turn up

and if Frog says anything I’ll hit him.

Ferret

My ferret is a very British ferret,

shy and retiring unless provoked.

I keep him in a special case, separate

from the snakes, strapped to the petrol tank

of my BSA 500. This gives me

a special feeling, like wellingtons

with a dinner jacket, or pumps.

I tried to feed him sardines but he wouldn’t.

I think he’s got a hormone imbalance.

He chewed through the lawnmower

cable once. If it had been switched on,

it would have served him right.

Then he found the bonemeal in the shed.

I heard him cough from the greenhouse and my wife

nearly fell off the ladder. The river’s flooded.

It hasn’t stopped raining since Christmas.

Visitors

Late at night in the middle of summer

Hart Crane knocks at my door. Water

streams from his hair.

He sits in the kitchen, warming his hands

on a coffee as about his feet a puddle gathers.

Shivering Hart Crane stares

at the floor tiles

as if playing chess, determined

to win before his argosy drowns.

Outside the window, the moth stirs,

raises its wings, settles again. Hart Crane

wipes his mouth with the back of his hand

and the doorbell goes – Captain Ahab,

wiping his boot on the mat. Water

pours from his beard.

Opposite Hart Crane, harpoon

between his knees, he flinches

at the white cup, will not look at the sugar.

Condensation gathers on the windows.

I dim the light, open the back door

to a solitary bat divebombing the lawn.

Hank

(for Brendan Cleary)

Woke up this morning in Arizona,

a filling station on the highway,

under someone’s pick-up, dismantling the gear-box

which is a joke

because I’m the kind of bloke

who starts looking

for the left-handed hammer.

My name is Hank, I smoke roll-ups,

call you Bud and have a wife called Gloria

who hangs endless items of clothing

on the washing line out front

when she’s not in the kitchen

singing along to Country and Western

on the radio.

Men just turn up and say, ‘How’s it going Hank?’