John Whitworth: Four Poems

Cogitations at the Launderette 

 

My shirts spin round and round

As earth spins on its axis.

They make a wistful sound;

It sings of death and taxes.

It sings like piping, clyping birds.

I try to memorize the words.

 

What are the dreams they sell

In paragraphs exquisite?

What is the truth they tell?

What is it and what is it?

The shadow-line of things unseen,

Memorials of what has been.

 

I liked the way it was,

The to-ing and the fro-ing,

The way it was, because

I see it going, going,

The phantoms of my yesterdays,

Gibbering as they slip away.

 

My shirts spin round and round,

The earth is turning, turning,

For this is holy ground

And bushes are a-burning.

Bring up the bodies. Wash them clean.

The Lord of Lies and Fancy’s Queen.

 

This is the ghost in the machine.

John Whitworth

 

Me and My Shadows

(I have a number of poetical akas)

 

We’re old as the hills on our happy pills and we shovel them in like smarties.

We’re woozy and weird with our feardy beards and our psychedelic shirts.

We’re hazy and crazy as oopsa-daisy, to hell with the arty-farties.

We’re cute and we’re clever, together forever in clubbable cymric yurts.

 

We’re sharp as piranhas, we’re rhymers and scanners, the last of the great bullshitters.

We dream so dreamish, so bright and beamishly boozing our booze by the vat,

As brisk as the birds with our whirling words and our doleful, soulful twitters,

Our verses larded with bardic curses and none the worse for that.

 

We’re fat and we’re funny, we’re up for the money and winning the big cigar.

It comes in prizes of different sizes, from tenners to bloody great sacks.

If we’re strapped for cash, and those bardic passions will probably mean we are,

With well-turned verses we’ll stuff our purses and yell to hell with your tax.*

 

Our stretch Mercedes are crammed with ladies as lovely as Dresden china,

From the misty Highlands and islands some, and some from the beach at Bude.

Our Muses Nine are our summer wine, and there’s none so fine or finer,

Since Aphrodite stepped out of her nightie and danced by the sea in the nude.

John Whitworth

*Prizes are tax-free.

 

A New Elegy in a Country Churchyard

 

Far from the frantic city’s busy hum

A country churchyard quite devoid of fuss:

A country poet perched upon his bum

Awaits a desultory country bus.

 

His annals are not purged of all adventures:

The village whore is waiting in the vault.

The village idiot, chumbling to his dentures,

Ponders which village children to assault.

 

The gibbering banshee who was born in sin

Flits through the twilight at the tolling bell.

The rural dean who did his mother in

Dances with skirling devils down to Hell.

 

The whistling ploughboy perished from his poxes.

The squire and his lady died of drink.

Sarcoptic mange infests the local foxes.

There’s more to country churchyards than you think.

John Whitworth

 

 

The Song of the Toad

 

Last night I dreamed a dream. I stood
Inside the margin of a wood.

Before me was a clearing where
I felt a trembling of the air

And knew that I was not alone.
A man as cold and pale as bone

With silver eyes and locks of flame
Stood in the way and called my name.

He was as tall as forest trees.
His face was heavy with disease.

His voice rang out across the grass
As clangorous as broken glass.

Behold what you must surely be.
Join heart and hands to dance with me.

I am the image of your sorrow
And my today is your tomorrow.

Strait is the gate. The way is narrow.
I am the Corpse within the barrow.

 

I am the Death within the Tarot.
I am the Toad beneath the harrow.

 

Grunchle grinchle grobbley greejun.

Gurgle urgle cootchi keejun.

 

I am the Toad. My name is legion.

John Whitworth