Ivan Head: Four Poems

Death of the Library

A library washed ashore

on the long sands this morning.

Caught on the low tide

all green-minded were unable to save it.

 

No intellectuals could push it back to deep water.

A few dealers came at the death knell

and offered to cut it up,

cart it off free of charge.

 

They did so in a frenzy of flensing.

 

Anatomists from the museum

came and boiled down remainders

until most vanished into
a pile of boned cartilage.

 

Trucked off, the schematic outline

was reassembled

so children marvelled

that such beasts once lived.

 

A bulldozer buried the rest.

 

 

Willow in Late Winter

 

I can understand

why people planted the willow,

though now it blocks creeks and rivers

and is castigated as foreign weed.

 

Just look at the sunlight

on those lithe pre-leafed strands

that hang down like giant mandolin or flamenco

strings wired as some great instrument

 

that catches the music of the sun or perhaps

combs out the long beauty of her glory.

Ivan Head

 

The English Reformation as Body Armour

 

It’s when you see

Henry VIII’s suit of armour

for the King approaching fifty

 

that you realise

the tension between

something and nothing.

 

That you’d need a jumbo

pulley and hoist, a big crane

to get that mass of flesh to horse

 

and joust. And now he’s gone,

the ghost isn’t in the machine.

Just the carapace remains

 

and what the commentator

gawks at for the screen

is the gigantic iron cod-piece

 

with nothing in it.

The King’s prerogative.

Poor horse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Marble Track

 

For this game

You need to be a child.

 

It must be summer (around 1960)

When the garden hoses are warm

 

You need as much garden hose

As you can get, preferably from neighbouring homes.

 

You lay garden hose side by side across the garden

Sometimes doubling it back, pliable.

 

The tracks must be on a slope of sorts.

This makes grooved lanes or tracks.

 

One then gets the bag of marbles

And races them; run to get them back

 

Ivan Head