David Grubb

Beneath the Barbed Wire Moon

i.m. George Melly

Because the elephant only has one wing

he cannot live with the other specially chosen ones

in the garden of miracles

and the man who feeds the ant eater is no longer allowed

to tell stories about wonder and wounds and thunder

and we are all wondering if there is such a thing as

a left handed umbrella;

none of these things matter of course

when your entire life can be dedicated to changing the lightbulbs

on the Eiffel Tower

or sitting in the hotel at Cromer as Albert Einstein arrives to think

and along the coast there are six churches that will gradually slip into

the sea and for years people will say that they can still hear the bells,

or should we sit up all night with George Melly phoning people who

have all their life dreaded this event?

If you are in charge of the lightbulb situation at the Eiffel Tower

just what is it that keeps you going,beyond history and basic pay

and what may be said of you when you die;does it switch the girlfriend
on,the desk job off,do you ever get a shock? And when the voice on the

phone asks you to share a moment of ecstasy do you reach for the pills
or call for mummy to tell you what to do with the poetry that will at
any moment stagger into your room with its unique propositions?

And all this time somebody has been inventing the automatic hat,

the everlasting raddish,films without endings,the poem that writes itself
and somewhere in Texas in a gentle afternoon an old lady,between
ghosts and invasions and dead rivers and skipping songs and dread,

invents barbed wire,enough to compound the world,enough to keep out

suicidal lovers and those who have never read Tolstoy and keep in the

inventors of soliloquies and grass and collapsing deckchairs. Hey !

The Tempo of Trumpets for Malcolm Arnold

In winter Cornwall like a knuckle

ready to thwack,box,change the shape

of your face and other things such as

stone angels,harbours,hunched hedges;

kettle drums,castanets,dark laugh

of the tuba and play the spoons if

you must,you must,you must.

Tap,tap on the ice of the mind,

the wind spilling gulls and even the

dead do their dancing between

circles of stone and the distant

note of a trumpet calling you

from a freezing tide.Wake up!

In May when they have danced

in and out of lanes,cottages,yards,

old people’s homes,the bigger pubs,

the giant hotel,the school playground,

the posh woman’s patio they slide

towards the bends of evening,the sky

staggering with planets and the poets put

down hot pints and talk of tirades and

how to dance with words and the way

that a phrase can spin into wisdom if

that is what you want a poem to do;

the tide still high in the mind and a

trumpet calling across the distant wood.

September sunrise always a surprise

and skipping songs from the playground;

how do you make a whisper of a hymn

and why not whistle at a friend’s funeral?

I heard the voice of James Turner telling

us about ghosts and weeds and Holy Wells.

He was standing in the orchard and lighting

his pipe and then I remembered that he too

was dead. What does he say to the angels and

how do you set a field to music? Fill it with dancers;

the vicar and the vicar’s wife and the ginger- haired

postman who knows what every letter does not say,

who sometimes plays his trumpet to silence the rooks.

If you play your trumpet on a Sunday you will be

turned into stone. The stained glass boy blows his

trumpet still;you can hear it in your head for the rest

of your life. How many tides does it take to flood the

harbour now;the bookshop,the barber’s,the Gentlemen’s

Outfitters? We saw PC Williams rowing past at three a.m.

What is the sound of a dead trumpet and when you bury it

cover the place with moss and stars. The music that you made

still cascades;sometimes it is a bit of a whistle, or when the sun

marches through the door, or when a carol coils into Advent and

we were beginning to dream as the afternoon gently mosaics into

evening, or there is sea sway on the radio, or when we catch you

again at the Albert Hall reaching into the flames of bravura brass.

Some Words Say It Before It Begins

i.m. Gael Turnbull

Because he could not say the words

they became water,boughs,stars;

and when he did not say them

they became a walk onto the Hills;

because the light is always

and the way that evenings

happen.