John Muckle


 
FOR TOM AND VAL
 

I remember when I first met you
In a room above a pub, preparing
A poetry reading. I arrived early
Straight from work, to find
 
A neat man, almost dapper
Attired from the early seventies
Glowing yellow timberlands
A shirt of immaculate buttons
 
Are you Tom Raworth? Yes, that’s me
Standing at a shelf perhaps
Of dark old pub wood
Drawing on a set of new white cards
 
A set of precise doodles
You would later pick up from a table
And hold up one by one
Oblique illustrations, I’d guessed
 
For a long poem shuttering through
Glowing shards of our own era
Back in the Margaret Thatcher years
Of fun and empty nostalgia
 
A phone call from the Midwest
Just quickly from a friend’s office
A whole year’s worth of CDs
Falling through my letterbox
 
How to say anything about it all
A blind sense of something shared
An affinity group of self-styled mind guerrillas
Had nothing much to go on
 
Correspondent of the almighty
They gave you a pig’s heart to keep you going
You are you no longer, you
Are among our belongings
 
What a tragedy life becomes
When we’re all jumbled together
At the bottom of the slope
Simply waiting for the next
 
Surgical hand to be dealth
Trying to give the impression of life
Much as a stone might
Pretend to be a mountain
 
I can no longer remember anything
An eye, a hand on the shoulder
Skating grandchildren winging
The remnants of pandemonium
Copyright © John Muckle 2017
John Muckle's most recent books are Little White Bull: British Fiction in the 50s and 60s, and the novels London Brakes, My Pale Tulip and Falling Through. Many years ago he published an English edition of Tom Raworth's Tottering State (Paladin 1988). He lives in London and works as a teacher and freelance writer. His work appeared previously in Molly Bloom 10.