George Szirtes

Fresh out of the sky


Where to begin? Emerging from the plane
into the winter evening in an age
of winters, of strong winds and a sharp rain

that sweeps along the tarmac, a blank page
to walk across with more pages to come
through distances impossible to gauge,

formalities and waiting and a numb
half expectation as we stand in line
or squat on benches with a constant hum

of meaning that our ears cannot define.
We’re fresh out of the sky and here is land,
our very presence part-chance, part-design.

I can’t quite conjure it. I seem to stand
at an angle to my life. I cannot see
myself or tell how much of this was planned.

We’re citizens of nowhere? Yes, maybe,
but of the world? We’re not even quite here.
Outside, the rain. The brief formality

of entering the weather. Then a clear
nothing that is both static and moves on
beyond the moment. So we disappear

onto the bus that fills and is soon gone.


*


Boarding house


Dark corridors, crammed bedrooms, stairs that smell
of cigarette smoke and impermanence.
Long days of waiting. Ringing of the bell

that calls us to our dinner. Shillings and pence
that fill the hand. The wallpaper. The pulse
of other people’s half-heard arguments.

The landlord’s dog. Interminable phone calls
in the lobby. Someone is falling apart,
another’s longing to be somewhere else.

You hold on to the street map of your heart
and make yourself at home. You’re here at last,
whatever ‘here’ now means. Now you can start

your childhood again, the world a mythic past
you’ll wander into by mistake, the joys
of lost performance with a vanished cast

of now imagined names that other boys
might whisper just to put you in a spin.
It is another language that deploys

the tottering edifice that you live in.
Strangers will come and go, are gone for good.
The bedrooms empty. Here is a new skin

for you to wear in the enchanted wood.


*


Dream house


A barely furnished place, half damp, half shade.
Is that your mind at work, an empty shell
you fill with moments, memories you’ve made

from glimpses, as you might of a hotel
that’s so like dreams it must have been invented?
Invention is what you do, and all too well,

a vague half-space, dubiously scented,
designed to fill an emptiness so faint
it can’t even be properly presented.

It’s dark all right, and damp, with peeling paint
or is it wallpaper? Too late to know,
too late indeed to register complaint

or blink it back. It’s simply where you go
when there is nowhere else, an absent year
in absent lives whose absences will grow

to further absence. But let’s mark it here.
We are in Hendon, not far from the station,
in a house already marked to disappear,

in streets now changed beyond all recognition,
at least as you remember them. Assume
whatever self you like, it is all fiction.

Remain just where you are, in that damp room.


*


English rain


This rain, this unremitting stoical drench
that defined everything by fully soaking it
was now home. It was like living in a trench

in a war that never started. Men were smoking it
in offices through rain-blurred windows. They stood
in melancholy doorways, mentally stroking it

as you might a sodden dog. Rain was a hood
you wore in the street and took off once at home.
It was another name for England. It was the good

you lived by for months on end, that would come
on time like buses that once arrived don’t go.
This was childhood in winter, the proper medium

for study and squalor, into which you’d grow
like a plant into soil, putting down your roots.
Each shower was eternity, an endless flow

of sustenance and drowning. Pull on your boots,
wear your raincoat. It’s winter now for ever.
It is time in one of its worn out old suits,

that glorified gentleman inclined to shiver
and grumble. Meanwhile you watch the children run
through puddles, crossing streets and seeking cover

like something ending that has not begun.
 

FRESH OUT OF THE SKY

1  Waking to the Sea
    15     Fresh out of the sky
    16     Boarding house
    17     A cigarette
    18     Waking to the sea
    19     Meet the parents

2  London Calling
    20     Fairy tale
    21     A wasp in the ear
    22     Dream house
    23     Neighbour
    24     Christmas scene

3  Tom Brown’s Schooldays
    25     Russian incident
    26     Diesel or steam
    27     Early Christian
    28     Table manners
    29     Matinee

4  An Age of Heroes
    30     Tame sparrow
    31     The romantic at nine
    32     Romance of Munich
    33     Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future
    34     The cartoon version

5  The Weather Forecast
    35     Peasouper
    36     English rain
    37     Wind of change
    38     Cricket on Brighton Beach
    39     The big freeze

INSIDE THE YELLOW ROOM
    43    The Yellow Room
    52     Migrant
    56     Variations on Leopold Staff
    57     One nation

GOING VIRAL

    61     Uncle Zoltán’s plague times
    61     Virus

Arrival
    62     Cruiser
    62     Crush
    63     Night train
    63     Fragment
    64     Night patrol

Telling stories
    65     Obverse
    65     The dream animals return
    66     Legend
    66     Tradition
    67     Growing wild

Creatures
    68     Dishes and spoons
    68     The pigeons
    69     The parrots
    69     The penguins
    70     The rats

Night Watch
    71     River
    71     Dusk talk
    72     Watchmaker
    72     Like clockwork
    73     The gates

In the streets of a small town
    74     Parchment
    74     Ennui
    75     The streets of a small town
    75     Stopping train
    76     Love poem in plague time

Adding up
    77     Counting
    77     Minutes
    78     Trainspotting
    78     Figures
    79     Where there is sorrow

In wartime
    80     Speech bubble
    80     Wartime
    81     The enemy
    81     Disasters of war
    82     Ministry

In emergency
    83     Emergency guide
    83     Dry hands
    84     The future
    84     Fictions
    85     Science fiction

Uncertain terms
    86     The angel of uncertainty
    86     Addressing the nation
    87     Comic turn
    87     Ozymandias
    88     Anger

After we died
    89     Lush
    89     Bargain
    90     Mouth
    90     Blossom
    91     After we died

The consolations
    92     Gift wrapped
    92     Sylph
    93     Diaphanous
    93     Glory
    94     Unscripted

FIVE INTERLUDES
    97     In praise of breathing
    100     Hen Harrier
    102     Morning song
    103     Bear
    105     Dotage

NINE DREAM SONGS
    109     Dream of the future tense
    110     Dream of leaving
    111     Dream of delay
    112     Dream of townscape
    114     Dream of screaming
    115     Dream of dystopia
    116     Dream of television
    117     Dream of Moldova
    118     Dream of the Danube

BESTIARY
    121     Orpheus
    122     Ass
    123     Lion
    124     Stag Beetle
    125     Fire Lion
    126     Ram skull
    127     Toad
    128     Chauve souris
    129     Owl as anagram
    130     Ant
    131     Ram
    132     Emerging life form
    133     Chained beast
    134     Tortoise