A Habsburg match

1

It seemed ordained.

Both of them God-bestowed round the same time;

No proxies would be needed at the church.

They would be joined when she was tall enough

To fit the dress, diamantine brocaded,

That had belonged to small-pox buried aunt.


Their future prospects too great to be good,

Just one dissenting envoy said. “For he

Is heir to arid plains won by the sword,

To tilled and serried verdant fatherland,

Peninsular gem-cities, guarded isles,

And lordship of the heathen Cherokee.

And she? Will wear the mildest western crown,

Whose soft gold teases out a stream of tax,

Whose malleable sceptre subjects strokes,

Those tyrannied sea-people,

Those slaves who feel so blessed free.


“Sirs, what have you done, what do you do?

You parcel the first reign of all the earth.”


2

They do not care for awkward boundaries,

Not much more than they care not for each other,

Acquainted by inexpert hack portraits.

But they are not impassive. The princess

Gladly awaits her dead aunt Bessie’s dress;

And the prince wonders when the cannon sound.

They stick to expectations and go on.

At the altar they are vague, pleasantly so.


3

She thinks her husband a strange sort of boy,

So many words for everyone, quacking

In a garbled, hasty voice that self-corrects

And stumbles; yet he hardly speaks to her

And sounds like a bad actor when he does.

He wishes they weren’t watched

(She’s used to it. She’s been told dignity

Is always less vulgar than privacy).

He knows no conjugal demand

Can get her on her own; he doesn’t know

If this is under foreign protocol,

Or what she wants.


4

He gets into the habit of talking

To everyone when she has left the room

About love. To young, uninterested courtiers,

Old ones, who find it funny though don’t laugh,

A passing poet, and the queen his mother

(He sails back to his kingdom just to reach her),

Who answers “I don’t think, if your conduct

Is as you have described it, well,

I’d scarcely love you either. Restes tranquil.”


The princess misses him a little though.

She moves their household to a port-town, where

A maid falls dead of plague. She crooks

Her regal lips, and boredly wonders

If, when reunited, in heaven with her lord,

Things will perhaps feel easier than this.

Meeting by d'Overbroeks

1

So I had walked not far short of an hour

In a plodding sort of way, but then I winnowed

Back, a passport left behind, a card withheld,

Jangled again against that real world,

And on home turf as well,

Where the dons threw up quiet piles

For Anglican courtesans,

Where their houses swap for schooling,

And their schools for scholarships.

One of these is d’Overbroek’s.

(This, Dutch I think, has always rhymed with hooks.)


So I lacked card and purpose, and floated along the past,

And thought of a house broad and red,

Recalled the weblocked garden shed,

The fountain where the toad it was that tumbled

Out on a pang of cold, and was eaten by a tender dovish wife.


On the way to Moore Place, to One Hundred and Three,

Where I grew up (though didn’t), where an evacuee

Cousin had once been billeted (we had the ground floor;

Further up lived Ian McEwan

Further still a harrassed woman

Who one peculiar Wednesday was indicted as a whore),


Between Lloyd’s and the garden and the ground-floor flat,

Sold to a Swede called Blog who culled the front,

And on account of wasting north-disease will cop it soon,

As I say, obstructing my meander

Sits the mother of Art but not not of art. Sits d’Overbroeks.


2

I walked under the sign that raised the obscure Hollander

To Oxford’s pantheon, which means learning’s Valhalla

I suppose. I saw a lovely girl going downtown

With a boy who was familiar (I think only as a type),

And felt a bit embarrassed, just as if

I was – let’s say – an uncle. (Let me finish.)

Let’s put my brother and I about twenty odd years snagged back.

He has a daughter – let us call her Clem (a family name),

And he says to me, “Minoo, Clem

Fouled up some exams, but I Think She’s Good At Art.

I’ve put her down for d’Overbroek’s, so not too far

From your college (I get those saints confused).”

Now I’m a Fellow (the First pre-supposed

Which if I read so little it can’t be),

But I’m not good for that much else. I never

Married, though it hardly was my fault, nor was my aim,

It just was allotted, like the flats of Jowett Walk.

Olly hasn’t read my books (as far as I know)

But I’m trusted to keep a cloistered eye on little Clem,

(Who is not, by the way, my godchild. Niece will do.)

So I invite her to tea, and we postpone for a term,

Not meeting, then a year, and then

I see her studying art on some yuppie tyke’s pects.

I am disturbed, and my life of my mother

Is delayed, and Olly doesn’t invite me to revel Christmas

With the family (the college goose is good).


3

Cut. Cut. Enough of real her and him and unreal lot beside them.

That’s not how it will happen nor how it will happen now,

You just don’t like that lad because he is one,

And now they’re gone. I walk past d’Overbroeks

And see someone who doesn’t work there, couched

Beside the bus-stop. He’s eight times taller than me.

I’m dressed in mourning for the night before,

Black coat and trousers, floral shirt beneath,

The other wears a fag-white tracksuit top,

The fag itself unlit, the hair golden,

Hardy and ropey. You could keep things in it.

The colours make the conjunction a bit

Heraldic, like everything else,

And I like to think as my coat sweeps

And billows, that I take a Black Knight role,

But things like him were made to quell me then,

And my smart money would still back them now.

Clegg sets out elderly care plan

Welcome, my friends, and it makes me so happy

To see quite so many of you here,

To remember quite how many of you voted for me,

To survey quite how many of you I have succeeded as

Leader of the Liberal Democratic Party and

Shadow Spokesman for getting elected.

Today I wish to talk about a subject close

To all our hearts (or, in the case of my right honourable

Friend, Sir Menzies, your shiny new pacemaker),

Yes, I want to talk to you about mortality,

Or, as I like to put it, age. I have a dream

That age can be golden. That Britain can be

An old country again; a country for old men.

(Fine recent film by the way. Well, my wife,

Who is of immigrant origin (Latino, well, Spanish), said

It was very good indeed, and now it has been nominated

For eight Academy Awards, which just goes to show.)

I want to talk about age. My age. Your age.

Care for the wrinklies. Surfin’ the silver.

My policy is to treat the old well,

If they vote for us, and if they join the party,

And become Shadow Foreign Affairs Spokesman,

And Leader, I hope to take them firmly by the hand

(Firmly, yet gently), and steer them, gently,

(Gently, but firmly) to beautiful Fife.

Tybalt's Chat-Up Lines

When fair in love are weapons fair in war,

Bring on the gasmasks, jezzails and lies.

Should Venus grace what Mars has shaped before,

Then call reconnaissance her ambling spies.

Court-martials convene behind staggered lines;

Nor traitors, true allies, nor tongues are spared.

Through crimson lands ride scarlet road designs,

Navvied by junkies and the lotus laird.

We, the insurgents, lunge at every clasp,

But ever look to mount the burgeoning bane:

The clouds, the raisins and the preacher’s rasp,

The cleansing of the scented chlorine rain.

Meet me beyond the trench, the coast, the height,

And I will hurt for graven hurt requite.

Droplet trail

When I wallowed in the culvert, I held deep converse

With a synaesthetic slug who loved a snail.

“Sir,” I said, inclining my head, “I intend

To write yet more verse.”

“Orange,” he replied, “and yet, here’s the rub,

She! She is aquamarine.”


When I found her she proved to be a witch

Whose glistening was worn and carried off well.

“My lady,” I gasped, “tell me about Love.”

And she stretched out her shining frame and

Promised me the earth – if I’d only

Net the sea.


Now I once knew an island there.

So I set out in search. I called out her name,

The island’s; seven hundred and eighty-nine

Songs told me that Europe now had her.

“Boy, you don’t need her, you don’t need us,

You don’t need the sea – ‘snot your calibre”


I wondered, true, if it was a question

Of technique. Should I try Moments?

Slug? Witch? Sounds?

“No,” said Dylan and the faculty,

“Keep yourself about you.

What else do you know?”

Is Your Heart Really In This? Mine's In Bits

Chop chop

said your axe as it cut the art

-eries and ventricles and heart

Of Minocher, a scholar, prince and tart,

Transfigured by your gaze's e'er celestial dart

And left to lonely trot out a fool's part

And then at last to wonder why

Your written idiom does not call to mind

Your sonorous voice, so cruel...to be so kind,

And to slump back and listen to Blondie.

Mortifying

‘Bout halfway down some poem’s vent

I missed a writing implement

And so went I to Aime’s sphere

A pen or pencil to adhere:

Retrieved a biro, scarcely chewed,

Hacked out verisimilitude.


We had a working partnership,

You and I, biro, quip and whip,

Yes we got on completely braw,

Me and you, sired out of law,

I kept you folded at my breast

With pads and keys at my thought’s nest


In the grey overcoat I slept

Within extra-collegiate space;

Through the grey overcoat you crept

Into the lining’s carapace.


Do you know those whinnying moments?

- no, biro, I address my friends –

Do you know those whinnying times

With wind in hair and a clear way ahead,

When you speed up and revel in your walk,

And think, damned good am I. Then struck the hawk.


Its bead now drawn upon my (comely) thigh,

The dolorous biro always carves on time,

When I am not, for punctuality

My biro bears in mind. Better, pride’s purge.


A certain Millie, willow celebrant,

I fiercely regarded by Hussein’s.

“You really love me,” remarked erring she –

The traitor stabs. Squeak. She: “Fond as I am…”


Fair’s fair, and scissors could it liberate;

But at my greatcoat’s cost would I baulk fate;

So Aime’s biro, and my wounds, will stay.

The moral compass needle has its say.


Accordingly, I’ve relapsed to typed verse.

2008

How about this for a situation.

I hear insane insane noises in

The basement, put on some clothes, stagger

down to exercise discipline.


I am roundly mocked. I retreat.

As I hurry offstage a hulking figure

Quoth "You're breaking the rules! You can't go there,

You're breaking the Upstairs Rule!"


while this was amusing

and I did like the chance to snap back

I own this place and that kind of thing,

it did make me stop to think. Because


on a deeper level, the most profound level

of life, I am no doubt indeed breaking

the rules. Are we not all breaking the rules,

the rules set up to protect ourselves?


Could not that drunkard's lurching voice

have resonated as the eternal

challenge of the shadow self –

"You are breaking the rules!"?


Then I got tea from this v domesticated

girl with the most absurd hairstyle I ever saw,

like a sort of blue arctic roll superim

posed on a background of porridgey whey.