MOLLY BLOOM IN AUSCHWITZ

Phil Redpath

MOLLY BLOOMIN AUSCHWITZ

Phil Redpath

Molly Bloom in Auschwitz © Phil Redpath, 2009

ISBN 978-1-874778-66-0

Cover image: Anabelle Redpath

Sunk Island Publishing, 7 Lee Avenue, Heighington, Lincoln, LN4 1RD

Acknowledgements: some of these poems have appeared in Iron,

To Isabel.

MOLLY BLOOM IN AUSCHWITZ

yes because they say mandrakessprout from dead mens comethis place should be shoulderhighwith them but nothing grows herethe real sunken cunt of the worldwhere even then his kindnesswould have been ridiculous standing at the gates of hellafter you hed say no after youpoor poldy not much difference hed think between here and therebury the dead and get on with itbut that advert for potted meat that daynext to dignams obituary my stomachroaring like an express train butsomehow feels wrong to think of food herewe build our houses out of bricks calledpain and death although hed have beenferreting about seeing how things workedpoking his nose in making suggestions a practical man but never forgave blazesor me with my lifted skirts whichare getting dusty like my shoesplease god its not those poor soulshis people turned to ashes like woodon a winter fire out of the frying pan intomy but its hot today blistering sunshinewith a greasy sheen in the air feel uncleansky empty no birds fly over this placetoo much suffering and darkness and silencelike a church walking about with bowed headoh lord forgive this guilty curiosity to seehis promised end all screams and whipsand snarling dogs a thing with terrible wingsa huge black kite blotting out the light

whats wrong is the beginning of forgettingoh rocks hed say pull yourself togetherit happens in spite of love or pityyet he could love and pity and carethat’s why when he asked me toyes I said yes I will yes

4pm AT THE FRANKENSTEIN'S

The long trip to teatime is over.The mad scientists (one mad and bad)Sit smugly. The monster is exhausted,He’s been out all afternoon terrorising villagers,Whilst the bride is still in need of a fewFinishing touches. On the tableAround which they sit is a willow-patternedChina pot of Darjeeling and a Victoria sponge.

The monster sips with politely cocked pinkieAnd listens to the cricket scores onA bakeolite wireless. Behind themThe laboratory is a dream of steelAnd coiled ropes of electrical cabling.Later, the monster will go ape-shitAnd blow them all to kingdom come.

Dissatisfaction with his wife who looksPretty vacant with her Marge SimpsonHairdo and freaky eyes could beOne explanation – he didn’t ask for this.But so could England’s dismal192 all-out in the third test.He’ll make it, though, into the sequel,He’ll come through – but only just.

KAFKA'S 402nd LETTER TO FELICE

A bird is in the room.How wonderful! Even though they are dyingThe lilacs drink thirstily.And this maybe is a bulletin From the kingdom.

Summer swarms like sicknessAround me. Convalescent rag doll.I sit with head in hands on knees.The Danube’s cargo of gullsTearing into the numbnessOf my sleepless nights, writing.

Money made from asbestos,But it’s my chest that’s on fire.Frankenstein. The rows of wounds.Empty eyes full of shell-shocked silence.And your silences growingAcross Imperial fields and forests.

Come to me, come to me,But take the long way…..It was you or writing,I had the choice, But finally no choice:I was literature, you my writing.

I mouth unheard words at you,Into the thickening distance, But love is in there somewhere,Love like bitten fresh-baked bread.I strain towards high skies,Limitless blueness like a bruise.

‘I love you’ lost and falling to earth,A burnt-out fireworkIn a starless and black night.The dancer Eduadova, Melina, you,But Hansi was the only one, the whoreWho made me laugh more than Keaton.

I am myself wherever I turn.If I could I’d make it all stop. Now.There is a bird in the room.And this maybe is another bulletinFrom the kingdom.And all the news is bad.

UNREST

Walls move when no one is watching.Mine was eighty feet long, fifteen high,And led to a garden guarded by foxglovesAnd lupins in which bees had throngedSince the eighteenth century,Pollen-drugged and drowsing onThe hot stones with their biscuity smell.But the wall, the wall had crept slowly,So slowly no one could see it,Forwards until its coping stones wereAt least a foot in front of its base.It was a thrill to stand in the shadeOf that wall; its monstrous stonesOf yellow millstone grit teeteringDrunkenly like a stroke victimWhen the weight was somethingYou could feel from a distance, pressingAgainst your body with the pressureOf a slammed book. Water seeped From the surrounding hills and trickledDown behind the wall in earthy moist greenness.It froze at night, grew, and nudged the wall,Slowly elbowing it out of the way.At night you could hear the gentleGrumbling of stone grating against stone,The gnat’s-whine of pressure andUnbelievable weight, the forbiddingCrumbling of foundations.One day the wall will give up its fightWith the perpendicular, surrenderTo the persuasions of gravity and fallIn a slow booming, earth-shakingCascade, bringing down the foxglovesAnd lupins in a mess of millstonesAnd lunar dust. Only the bees still

Mingling from across the EnlightenmentLike a crowd at an accident with no survivors.

SUNLIGHT IN A ROOM

The yeasty smell of old ageAnd talcum powder edgingRound the half open doorsOf rooms with the casualtiesOf time splayed shamelessly On beds or in chairs likeGuys in barrows outside thePost office or supermarket.

Her swollen knuckles hold her hankyLike a drowning man grasping driftwood.She lives in a sometime world.Her mind gone, faces that she knewIn some far past pass before her.Mine is not amongst them.

We do not know the roomsWe shall die in. ButShe will die in this room,These are her last four walls.From down the corridor In another room like this one,Where someone else will die,Comes a yipping like a dogRaging at a universe closing in.

I look out of the smeary windowAnd think of the world extending beyondThis cube like the fingersOf a clutching hand.The empty farm track,Deserted, stillRimed with frostDeep into the afternoon.

My father tries to talk, But she leans sideways in her chair,Asleep or at least detached from all this.Storms form over Canada, China,The pressure in the room inches upwards.Outside, car headlights are reflected in theRain-spattered road like luminous spaghetti.Brollied shoppers barge in and out of doors.But she hears nor knows of these bustling lives.The dead dwell in noiselessness.

And now it’s later in the year,Another visit, the same oriental nursesWho come with food she does not eat, With tablets she will not swallow.Through the window, slumpedIn a conservatory on a variety of chairs,I see other inmates grey and mottled,The defeated dregs of a past become memory,Time’s amputees, battlefield veterans.

Love swung in low under grey skies.Summer comes with a doctor’s healing hands.Somewhere a hare lollopsThrough the watery sunlight of England.Clanging heat bounces from the roofs of barns,A man in green overalls enters The ammoniac smell of cattle,The liquid integument of slurry.

After the frantic phone callsAnd the journey down the motorway,We stand by her bed where she’s dying.She does not know we are there,Her face intent on more important thingsThan visitors whose silence is their helplessness.But my wife strokes her hand which is like marble.Set the soul’s compass to windward,Edge out towards chartless horizons.

Late summer, the saddest of sad times,A rhomboid of sunlight aces through the window,Frazzled leaves whisper on the patterned wall.We lug cases into the room to fill with what’s left, The bed stripped in the middle of the emptying room.And then it’s all gone. After the undertakers’,After the town hall, after the solicitors’,We sit around like a defeated army.Death brings nothing to an end.

A hot September afternoon,The funeral director jumps from the car,Pats on his top hat and struts before the hearse.The coffin is the abiding realityIn this pantomime of the sad dead.Later that day smokeWill billow from the chimneyLike blown saltspray From the tangled sea.

Afterwards, as he passed the coffin, I saw my father in front of usPause in his farewell walk from the chapel.I saw his hand stretch outAnd gently, delicately,Stroke the stained woodWith the limits of his fingers.The knotted doors swung open,His future yawned emptily.

DAFFODIL PICKERS

(i)

Poland is another country.Only the black plastic cratesTo be filled and refilled.To be filled and refilledBeneath a clawing windTumbled from a fierce March sky.They bend and unbend in theSlow rise of the fieldsBetween Lincolnshire villages.

Poland is far far away.A driverless tractor idlesBeside blossoming hawthorn hedges.Wind. Bend and unbend.A tidal edge of ragged scarecrowsEbbing along a cusp of sunshine.Only the black plastic cratesTo be filled and refilled,To be filled and refilled.

(ii)

A leaden afternoon full of granular lightin Lincoln high street –

The run-down end furthest from the castleheaped with minimarts and take-aways

A queue of men and women on the pavementlike they’re waiting for a very late bus

The shop has been turned into a temporary office‘short-term agricultural labour’ it says

He comes out peeling carefully openan envelope of foreign-looking notes

He licks his fingers and countsis this right how much in kopeks

He stuffs the wad into his pocketwhere it burns and bulges pleasingly

The cathedral’s up there on the hilland all those people with cameras

And further down the streetthere’s shops and that new Polish pub

CANNIBALISM: A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION

Seven of us survived the initial smash.The broken tube of the BoeingPiled embedded nose-forward in snow.Seventy-odd died on impactBut the dead were not a problem, They had moved from lifeInto the refrigerator of the North.Keeping ourselves warm was hard.Our eyelashes grew frost.We took clothes from strewn suitcasesAnd wrapped ourselves for warmth.We did not touch the corpses.The wind stacked snow against the aircraftAnd we cowered in that dark tubeSurrounded by the great emptiness that is Alaska.We didn’t speak much. We wereContent to curl up around our sufferingAnd turn ourselves into tortured fleshAnd listen to the wind.Water was a problem by the third day.The water tank in the galley froze,Split and oozed a long icicle to the floor.We tried to bring snow into the torn fuselage,Hoping to melt it, but it was as coldInside as out. That dayTwo survivors gave up survivingAnd most of my fingernails fell out.A week later and four were left, Three men and a woman.Earlier that morning two menHad decided to go and find help.No one was coming to rescue us.If we stayed where we were we wouldSoon join the other frozen corpsesStuck to their seats and glistening.

These two swaddled themselves in coats,Blankets, plastic sheeting and set off.That night the wind dropped,The morning dawned clear white and electric blue.In the sunshine, on the horizon,The frozen shapes of the two menLay like crumpled snowmen. They had walkedA wide circle before they fell.Now snow could be put into plastic cupsAnd melted in sunlight through cockpit glass.When we had drunk we discovered our hunger.I went to the galley, found sandwiches which,When thawed, became inedible paste.On the ninth day we ate the first corpse.It had been one of the men’s idea.We wanted food, right?Meat, right? Protein? We were,He pointed with a glazed fingerAt the rock-hard shapes in seats,Surrounded by meat, all frozen and preserved.The remaining man and woman shook their heads,But I listened. My stomach wasAbout to bubble out of my mouth,I was sleepy, hallucinating, turning to lead.I was going to die on an alien planet.We had to cook the meat and soWe siphoned fuel from the Boeing’s tanksWith a fire-extinguisher hose,Tore seats apart and doused themA few yards from the aircraft.They burnt quickly and belched smoke.That was good, it was a black mushroomStanding in a white field, it was a signal,It could be seen for miles.Armed with a carving knifeThe man went into the aircraft.Luckily he was a butcher from Arkansas

On his way to a conference onThe nutritional value of polar bear meat.That afternoon we ate our first human flesh.It was blackened and charred on the outside, Was red and raw within. We were all sick.The next day we cooked our meatOn a metal tray laid across the flames.It cooked slowly, it was tender, it was good.The man had chosen a child,Had dragged it into the cockpit so we would not see, But the sunshine thawed it, it rotted.So he and I heaved corpses outside,Prising them from their seats, And packed them in snow. Food.That night we were troubled by wolves,Digging and devouring one of the bodies.All morning we watched that red emblemSlowly leaking into the snow.We survived three weeksAnd were then spotted by a light aircraft,A Cessna, making a routine surveillance flight.We looked like fragile dotsAmongst the debris scattered all around.It looked like the latest news From the surface of the moon.An hour later a snowmobile picked us up.The rescue team made a quick searchAnd took us away in grim silence.And then the story broke,The Cessna had taken photographs, The snowmobile team made a report,Teams of crash experts, doctors,Engineers and journalists made their wayTo the crash site. This was easyFor it was less than a mile and a halfFrom the nearest small town. Ironic.And then the headlines:

‘Human Barbecue was Food!’‘Ghouls Survive Air Crash!’‘Cannibals in the Snow!’I expected the worst, jail,Lynchings from streetlamps, psychiatric wards.It didn’t happen. There was an inquiry,We were commended for our resourcefulness.It was not un-American to eat another human being.I found myself giving interviews,The public were hungry to hear about my hunger.I was on the Johnny Carson Show,A priest gave a sermon on the CBS networkCondoning cannibalism. It was only, he said,Taking the eucharist to a logical conclusion.Christ was made, he said, miraculously,To live again in us through our partakingOf his flesh and blood, body to body,Soul to soul. The people we had consumedLived, he said, spiritually within us.After that I started getting the lettersFrom the relatives of the Boeing victims.Some were addressed to the victims themselvesSince they now lived in me. It was eerie.Then I got a letter from this man,His wife was dying in hospital,Would I, when she died,Be kind enough, be Christian enough,To make a meal of herThat she might live again?That was when I left Chicago for New York.And that was when the first cravings struck.My mouth watered at the thought of thighLightly grilled and garnished and seasoned.I got a job in a hospital morgueAnd for a while fed on fatty buttocks,Gristly feet, fleshy forearms, spare ribs.But my appetite got the better of me

And the relatives of a dearly departedComplained when they found most of him missing.I was fired for carelessness and was lucky.Since then I’ve wandered the streetsAt night, slaughtering my own meat.I got a book from the library on it.A mutilated corpse here and thereRaises little suspicion with the police.They see that type of thing every day.Once I almost choked when I ateA heart that had a plastic valve in it.And these are the perils of flying.I hate New York in winter, the cold and snow.There are few people on the streets.I’m hungry. I stare out of the windowOnto the lights below, watching, waiting.I begin to gnaw my fingertips.

THE MAN WITH THE BLUE BANJO

1. The man with the blue banjo is two strings short of a guitar: the blue banjo is a melancholy instrument.

2. The man with the blue banjo is paddling with it in a long canoe: white water roars in the blue distance.

3. The man with the blue banjo thumps a swerving serve inches over the net: it picks up spin from the blue banjo’s frets.

4. The man with the blue banjo holds it close and dances a slow waltz: he is in love with his blue banjo.

5. The man with the blue banjo goes deep into uncharted territory: the blue banjo goes with him, a guide.

6. The man with the blue banjo grew to understand that a blue banjo is not a blackbird and never will be.

7. The man with the blue banjo sits cross-legged, leans and strums a chord: he feels that this has happened before.

8. The man with the blue banjo digs and digs but a blue banjo is too blunt and round for clearing snow.

9. The man with the blue banjo falls to his knees and prays: to its surprise the blue banjo becomes a god.

10. The man with the blue banjo contemplates life without the blue banjo: he finds a rope and ties a noose at the end.

11. The man with the blue banjo dreams a dream of blue banjos: worlds echo to a hillbilly chorus.

12. The man with the blue banjo writes ‘hello’ and ‘welcome’ on the blue banjo: a guitar in an orchestra, a blue banjo in the void.

13. The man with the blue banjo reads the ‘blue banjo rules’: (1) do not play your blue banjo near open fires; (2) do not play heavy metal on your blue banjo; (3) do not treat your blue banjo like a toy; (4) do not take your blue banjo for granted; (5) do not forget (4); (6) do not forget blue banjo’s come from limitless skies and are everywhere and are nothing.

VERMEER'S LEFT EAR

People whose eyes are infected with jaundice … or who are shut up in a room where no light enters … ascribe this colour to all the bodies they look at. Descartes, Dioptrics (1637)

(i)

The letter gathers light.The window casts illuminationUpon unwelcome illumination.

Her face is swollen with news.Her husband dead in the 47th

Year of a 100 years’ war.

A clock tick-tocks slowlyAs time and the advancing armyMove, across fields, this way.

(ii)

The score is blanchedWith late afternoon lightLike underdone fish in a pan.

Glowing ruby, the music master’sWine sits on the tableAs he points to some intricacy.

His arm rests on my chair back,But suddenly you’re there,Looking, and I brim-fill with hatred.

(iii)

The edge of the coin glintsBetween his fingers as he dropsIt into her expectant palm.

His palm cups her left breastAs they fill themselves with wineFrom the light-spangled pewter pot.

Looking on, that small-time painterRaises his glass and toasts us.Soon the farmyard transaction will be art.

(iv)

It’s a drama of lightAs the milk is slowly pouredIn a white thread from the jug.

By the window she’s a chameleon,Her clothes changing shadeAs clouds blot and dab at the sun.

Her arms are used to lifting – Buckets, wood, washing, and the dappledBread that sits on the table, unbroken.

(v)

It sits well on my neck,And grows more lustrousAs the pearls warm from my milky skin.

Believe me, the mirror’s imageIs pleasing. The dark cloakWill show off my fur and ribbon.

The studs on the chair gleamAnd my clothes-brush throws long shadowsWhilst on the wall, that light.

(vi)

This is not how it isIn polite society. With hisEncouragement I’m drinking too much.

But it’s his friend I’d rather have,Who sits bored in sunlight and as interestedAs that snaking orange peel on the table.

The tiled floor leaps in a dangerousGavotte. The napkin’s too nightmarishly white.‘Until you’re sure’, my mother said, ‘keep your legs closed’.

A PENNINE GARDEN

There was this manAnd what he most wanted Was a garden. And soBetween three drystone wallsHe built. First, channels were dugAnd filled with arterial-looking pipes.They would drain the rainThat fell here more than anywhere elseIn the land. Next, boulders,Millstone grit, each one the sizeAnd more of a car appeared.

The benches were a sign ofLimitless optimism that thereWould be summer’s days with Warm winds. Trees were planted, Poplars, cedars, spruce and rowan.Herons from the millstream belowClattered amongst them as they wentTo feed at Widdop. As the year Ground past the garden grew.

By the close of a rain-washed summerThere were flowers buffeting the windsThat were the steel shards of coming autumn.There was slow water trickling into a pond,And mown grass passing from light to darkAs clouds roared across hills towards Blackshaw Head.

I heard the man had died that JanuaryAnd had been buried in ground so hardThey had had to hack at it with picks.That night I lay in bed and thought Of the garden beneath arctic starsCovered in a christmas cake of snow.

The guttering pipes frozen solid,Paint peeled by the cats-tongue windFrom the benches that were never used,And the rowan that fell in the lateAutumn gales, rots.

VIKING

Is the blood’s fireThe antidote for the suburban clerkElbowing his desk and wishing

Viking is the dreamFled from granny’s firesideTo wander the twilight in the still north

Viking floats on the driftBetween curtains of ice and midnight sunHe lingers deep in the insomniac’s eyes

Viking is striding across the fensHis axe sheers the stars brightnessTo the wonder of the paraplege and blind man

Viking is axisSkewering the world from pole to poleAround his nucleus the drugged patient rolls

Viking is the equationGhostly algebra smeared across the blackboardAs he spills the dew from the ferns wet fronds

Viking is iron and steelIn midwinter forests he breathesThe pall standing upon the wrecked aircraft

Viking is the bomb on the cityRiding through the roaring airHis scream wakes the dead from their dusty sleep

At the funeral pyreViking is cherry redWelding his horizons to the sky

KAMIKAZEE HAIKU

A feather fallen from an albatrossIn a deep sky, long ago.

A TRIPTYCH

(for Francis Bacon)

(i) Study after Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X

And let me say againThis is a man in an electric chair.He’s fading, fading fast, Even the scream is sunk in silence.He’s been hit by skitteringBolt lightning and now there’sThe smoky smell of scorched pork.The reverential purple is A useless talisman here.He’s going down the rabbit-hole,Being unmade, unborn. It’s creepy.And here he’ll sit and roast,Half there, half not there,Until someone throws the switchOr the paint crumbles from the canvas.

(ii) Two Figures

Four legs, two legs, three legs….But this one has eight.Puissant flesh on the tumbled sheets:A web for this tangled androgynyWhere love looks like a pin-fall or a submission.

(iii) Fragment of a Crucifixion

The dog just can’t reach the meatWhich hangs there on wing-like arms.All directions are as one, up or down,

But he’s going to place his pawFurther out and stretch – carefully, though,Because that gaping mouth is fullOf teeth in the piranha-like head.Dogslobber spins in a silken skein,And beyond, through what might be windows,Cars hiss by and people come and go.

CONJURING IN THE OWL FIELD(For my daughters)

Saturday dusk. The seasons’Slow gentleness has clicked autumnInto place behind our backs.Clarity is depth across the sheepless field.

But after depth is the depthlessnessOf the bronzed and silvered treesGathering shadows beneath their arms.Only the torn kazoo-cry of the lapwings.

And then, ghosting from the trees,With its pensioner’s spooney-eyed face,A dim shape snug as a feather dusterDraws itself together towards definition.

Like a breeze across blown grassIt flusters over the tares and thistles,Pinions shimmering electrically, big headTurning this way and that as if it’s lost something.

This is an old haunting, each moundAnd dip known, every tussock filed away.There’s a sudden movement to height, andThen a crumpling like a screwed-up

Paper ball. The drop is pure geometry.After, it sits on a fencepost, tearingAt a hookful of elastic bands and fur.It mounts the deepening dusk once more

And, as the air thickens, itSlowly dissolves itself into the shadowsBehind the shadows under the treesAnd is gone with a wave of the magic wand.

MAPS

Planning my route north,I open a map of Yorkshire.So much crammed in Across the Pennines, Its claustrophobic roads and cities,The mouldering remnantsOf the industrial revolution.

Glancing south to Lincolnshire,With its immense emptiness,My AA road map should saySimply, ‘Here be monsters’.

Nothing across five fieldsExcept the crouched mole catcherIn the drizzle amongst the daffodilsAt work setting his traps.

The fields I walk acrossStill have the old savage godsWith their dances and rituals,And men on bareback stallions,Champing and snorting against the reins,Crazed eyes rolling at the sky,Thundering from covert to covert.

MIR DREAMS

(1) Not Not the Man in Black!

Johnny Cash came to play,But it wasn’t the man in black, It was the banjo-playing boyFrom the film Deliverance.

He plucked a few hillbilly classicsAnd I fell asleep. Mountain musicIsn’t my thing. When I woke upIt was snowing heavily from a dark sky.

This was pointed out to Johnny CashAnd he quickly put his banjo awayAnd with what was obviously reliefExited into the crowded street.

We watched him rushing with his banjoTo the blanked-out car park. His carWas an open-top silver sports modelSlowly filling with dancing snow.

(2) Brown Owl on Mir

Brown Owl was playing a symmetrical gameWith half a dozen brownies and a wheeled trolley.

They rumbled slowly but noisily along the streetAnd came to a panting halt by a thicket. There was a door.

The brownies cried ‘Don’t go in! Don’t go in!’ But she didAnd found herself on the Russian space station, Mir.

Aboard it was dark and cold with distant glistering starsAnd the throbbing of invisible fusion engines.

She moved blindly and cautiously down a white corridorNot noticing the door behind her hiss silently open.

Brown Owl was experiencing some problems with gravityWhich made her arms and legs move in a whimsical way.

Through the cavernous door came a huge space-suited figureWith a black visor through which no face or features could be seen.

It approached Brown Owl, but she was occupied with the explosiveBolts on an airlock door. Such things were not in the brownie manual.

The figure stretched out a large gloved hand and lightly touchedHer shoulder and she

(3) 1742

I did not ask for tooth or claw,For moon-mangled mindSpilled in pools across the moonlit floor.Nor for this urgency, this need, this willWhose shrill echoings in my sea-shell skullHeralds this act, this deed, this kill.This scent is hot, I know it well,It drifts upon the wind

As clear and loud as a clanging bell – My brain flames, and we’re ready to begin.On this soft pine-scented night I stealThrough the snow as I hunt for my prey;In a flash and a glint and a hint of steelIt is done: ‘Victim, victim!’ the papers’ all say.And the web-wreathed moonbeams all play in my head,And around my dreams as I lie on my bed.

WIND-UP

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan cameYou, Cochrane, what city sent for him?Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least Mr Bloom ate with relish the inner organsBy lorries along sir John Rogerson’s Quay MrMartin Cunningham, first, poked his silkhatted headIn the heart of the Hibernian metropolisPineapple rock, lemon platt, butter scotch. Urbane, to comfort them, the quaker librarianThe superior, the very reverend John ConmeeBronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringingI was just passing the time of day with old Troy.The summer evening had begun to fold the world.Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus. The Mabbot street entrance of nightown,Preparatory to anything else Mr Bloom brushed.What parallel courses did Bloom and StephenYes because he never did a thing like that before.

And yes I said yes I will Yes.Where?Lower Gardiner street and looked after their lowbacked car.A white lambkin peeps out of his waistcoat pocket.Backpocket. Just you try it on.Cuckoo Cuckoo CuckooIn Little Green Street like a shot off a shovel.Pprrpffrrppff. Done.Almidano Artifoni’s sturdy trousers swallowed by a closing door.Crooked smokes climb to their nostrils from our bless’d altars.Ah, soap there! Yes. Gate. Safe!If the God Almighty’s truth was known.Thank you. How grand we are this morning.Limp father of thousands, a languid floating flower.Poor Dignam!Homing, upstream, silently moving, a silent ship.

Leaves the sun flung spangles, dancing coins.Usurper.

Phil Redpath has written three novels. This is his first collection of poetry. Far more importantly, he is devilishly handsome and

awesomely clever.

ISBN 978-1-874778-66-0£3.50