LIDIA VIANU

Alan Brownjohn and the Desperado Age

A SHORT SELECTION OF ALAN BROWNJOHN’S POEMS
 

‘In this city...’

In this city, perhaps a street.

In this street, perhaps a house.

In this house, perhaps a room

And in this room a woman sitting,

Sitting in the darkness, sitting and crying

For someone who has just gone through the door

And who has just switched off the light

Forgetting she was there.

Peter Daines at a Party

Oliver Cromwell and Beethoven both

Died in the middle of thunderstorms, Ruth

Didn’t know this, but knew Kierkegaard’s Dad

Curse God from a hilltop, or so it was said.

Yet none of these things was at all familiar

To Mary, or Nora, or Helen, or Pamela.

But Pamela knew of some laws of Justinian’s,

Helen listened to Schutz and had read The Virginians,

And Nora and Mary liked Wallace Stevens,

So in general terms it worked out evens

 – Except that none of them, only Amanda,

Knew that Oliver Cromwell died during thunder.

Still, here were these women with items of knowledge

Picked up in one and another college

 – And here am I with not quite all their gaps

In my knowledge of all these high-powered chaps,

Doing well with the female population

And their limited but charming conversation.

Ballad for a Birthday

I cleaned up the house, and moved the telephone;

I had a look to see if the plant had grown;

I put Tiddles outside, and sat on my own:

            I feel the same, but I wouldn’t want to call it love.

I arranged my dresses on laundry hooks;

I pulled out the table and set out my books;

I went to the window for just one or two looks:

            I feel the same, but I wouldn’t want to call it love.

I wanted coffee, so I marked the page;

It should have been over when it got to this stage;

Can I be the same girl at a different age?

            I feel the same, but I wouldn’t want to call it love.

What if he phoned, and I heard the bell

With my feet on the bath-tap, and I couldn’t tell...

Well, I heard it...should I answer it as well?

            I fell the same, but I wouldn’t want to call it love.

If he wrote a letter, saying Could we meet,

Or if we met by accident, in the street

 – When something’s finished, is it always complete?

            I feel the same, but I wouldn’t want to call it love.

If he drove round here and knocked on the door,

Would I answer his questions, let him ask me more,

Or could I tell him I was absolutely sure...?

             — Oh, I feel the same, but I wouldn’t want to call it love.

The Packet

In the room,

In the woman’s hand as she turns

Is the packet of salt.

On the packet is a picture of a

Woman turning,

With a packet in her hand.

When the woman in the room com-

Pletes her turning, she

Puts the packet down and leaves.

On the packet in the picture

Is: a picture of a woman

Turning, with a packet in her hand.

On this packet is a picture: of a woman,

Turning, with  a packet in her hand.

On this packet is no picture.

— It is a tiny blank.

                               And now the man waits,

And waits: two-thirty, seven-thirty,

Twelve.

At twelve he lays the packet on its side

And draws, in the last packet in the last

Picture, a tiny woman turning.

And then he locks the door,

And switches off the bedside lamp,

And among the grains of salt, he goes to sleep.

White Night

I did not dream it, no I was

A t. v. screen left on shining, and

Insensately vibrating, and

Blank, in a shop at night: like a

Flat yet restless pool.

I could picture nothing; but

I was alive and was shivering and

Wanting to hold more and think more

Than grey, sudden flecks and bleak dots

Momently repeating.

O nice insomnia, fastidiously

Beckoning the abrasive dawn, and tuning

The mind to that first, drab

Water-table where, out of such cold depths, came

Monsters on which the hurtful body rode.

Palindrome

            We used to be some self-absorbed people living

In a compromised age about twenty years ago. We hated it, it

Was a terrible age, and underneath we liked it in a way, it

            Was because it gave us the chance to feel like that.

            Now it has all changed, and we are older,

And we hate the age completely, not nearly so

Entranced with our hatred. But now there are lots of younger

            People entranced with hatred of this terrible age,

            While underneath they like it in a way, because

It gives them the chance to feel like that. We ourselves feel lost

Because we can’t tell them they are compromised like us,

            That being hard for the self-absorbed to see.

            And all the time the ages are getting worse and worse.

Ruse

Lastly my turn to hide, so

The other children instantly

Scattered  among the scrubland grass,

Blanked their eyes, began

To count aloud.

                         Away downhill,

The traffic thundered less

In the hazed streets, the orange

Street-lamps suddenly lit in

A necklace of twilight mauves. I was

Expected home from this game, to eat,

And read myself to sleep. Besides,

There were so many ruses more

I wanted to devise.

                              Before

They counted out my time, came

Running to look for me, I ran

And left them there, I ran back home

And left them.

                       Turning today

A tower-block corner, I saw them

In the gathering dark, bemused

And middle-aged, in tattered

Relics of children’s clothes, still

Searching even now in the glittering

Scrubland of my Precinct, for

What had deserted them, what had

Cast them there; blank-eyed, and

Never to tell what I had built,

What I had left them with in forty years.

The Leap

One Xmas in the High Street, the Rotary Tree

On the traffic island by the underground Gentlemen’s

Concealed a plenteous amplifier, bawling

The sound of music as if from down below.

Rotarians were shaking boxes for children

Too far away, too heathen, or too poor

To have this kind of Xmas; and two lovers

Looked out upon this scene from where they sat

—  On a cushion of white noise which they could not hear –

At the cotton-wool-snow-dotted window of

A little formica restaurant, threading hands

And picking at green salads between interlacements.

That deep hum of noise from the near deep freeze

Lulled all the sounds around them, held them fast

From the clamours of the Xmas street, kept off

This world altogether, more than they would have guessed.

All they could know was a happy avenue

Stretching away in front of them and on

Into uplands of opportunity; and they thought:

Of all the times, this time we have  it right!

— When suddenly a sneaky thermostat

Cut the droning freezer out to the starkest stop;

And with a squirming chill down every back,

The whole room took a leap into a ghastly

Stillness and vividness. Their hands disjoined,

And to their eyes came nervous, separate smiles,

Much less certain than before: that wicked cold

Went through their empty fingers to their hearts,

And froze out words. So when the shaken room

Relaxed, and the seething copper urn

Spilled out once more its rasping twists of coffee

Into trays of passive cups, they had this instinct

Of a string having somehow snapped in the distant air

—  Until the traffic moved, and the tree again

Stood and ritually glistened, and everyone

Went deaf as usual with the chime of coin.

A Witness

            Did something drop down and move out over the shore,

Just now? In front of, then lost to sight in, the mist?

The colours in the perspective tell me nothing.

Did something occur that the light would not yield up?

            — That was the final question of the day,

The seascape as usual resigned to dull entropy,

No spaced-out clouds forming up into glowing processions,

No cinematic gloriousness and hope.

            — It might for a moment have been something falling there.

The day had begun, and was ending, blank. But at four-

Fifteen was there an unobserved low-tide success?

An Icarus landing on sand, getting up and running?

What She Required

   No use imagining better things to do,

The chance of finding those will have gone already.

   Is a gale blowing up? It certainly is.

It lifts the tiles off the roofs and breaks

   The casements open. Were they so unsteady,

The walls of this romantic pledge you knew

   Might never be fulfilled? Something that always takes

Huge luck and costs you tiresome agonies

   Over all the trivia which might be turned

Into golden keys . . . ?

                                    No, look! Today

   Is the day you waited for. Though in fifty years

The wind has howled each sheltering grown-up tree

   Into contortions, you at least can say

There are leaves growing on them, and the grass has earned

   Those deer now chewing it contentedly.

It is a summer when she reappears, 

   And you, waiting statue, see her move back again

Into your field of vision, walk towards this place

   From a direction only you were free

To imagine, on a path only you two share,

   Her dress and purpose your own choice, her face

Whatever shape you hoped it might retain

   — Yet entering not by a ceremonial stair,

But by a side-door and quite silently.

Sonnet at Sixty-Four

You think of the various things you've never done,

Like going to Greenland, or riding a horse

— Which is unlikely now, though you confess

That if well paid to play Kutuzov . . . And wasn't there one

Great idea you used to have, now of course

Too late to try for: a dignified progress,

Serving an honourable government,

To the House of Lords, relaunched with a different name?

Only yesterday I thought, Come to that, you've never spent

A few measly quid to have an epigram

Or a picture done in the form of a tattoo

On . . . some suitable organ. So I stopped on a yellow line

And scanned the small shop-window. And read this sign

— At last, the AIDS-free needle – here – for you!