The Wave Hennets: People
SUMMER BATHERS
In the summer waves, bathers: child, water-winged;
boy with a snorkel erect, stiff from his head;
swim-capped grandmother, rubber-flowered; blue-ringed
toddler not out of his depth; standing father
with his eyes on the distance; legs outspread,
yielding to rise and fall, smooth girl; and, rather
far, the boldest, with arms claiming speed and space,
or, on wallowing lilo, the most relaxed;
a fat woman in tight costume, given grace
urging and urged; tall young man walking in, taxed
by the surf and the shingle, crashing, clocking.
All are rising and falling, swaying, rocking.
CHILDREN AT PLAYTIME
See the children at playtime. Watch that boy swing
out with the plastic bag and swirl it round him
till he wraps himself up with his arm, flinging
round again back like a watch-spring. That girl jumps
down the steps one by one. Watch that other swim
crawling through air. Another eager one thumps
on the bag on her lap to a friend dancing.
Lost to the crowd, this boy skips in a circle.
On the hopscotch the feet tap stone, advancing
scores by stiff jerks. Some link hands in a graceful
ring of changes. At playtime they are all free,
but these children are showing how one can be.
IN THE PARK
All at leisure, quite free to do as they wished
in the park in the afternoon. Lovers held hands.
In the bandstand the drum-major's baton swished
with precision. Applause was automatic,
all the audience obedient to the band's
stiff-necked deference. Dogs chased balls erratic
through the crowd to bring back to centre the loose.
On the see-saw each child outdid the other.
They committed themselves to slides. Hair kept spruce
in a perm, on one who wore slacks. A young mother
followed pram wheels. A fountain stored its spraying.
A child was dancing while the band was playing.
THE GIRL AT THE WEIR
On the bridge there was standing a girl looking
down at the weir — forgotten something, I thought.
We came back — might have been ten minutes shopping —
there she was still, still, as intent as before.
I looked down at the weir. With what was she wrought?
Nothing was odd down there: I heard the shared roar
of the smashing of blades, of the struggling foam,
metal of air trapped in thrusting javelins
under hawsers that ran mad, a goring comb
shredding the drifting lucent calm into skins,
eyes, bones, fingers, as water fought with wild air —
No, no, nothing at all that was odd down there.
STUTTERING
Was the one word the child was now stuttering —
"I-I-I-I." Was like trying to pick up
a dropped coin when your nail sends it sputtering
down to its flatness again, or a button
that refuses to fit, or like a hiccup
startling you, knowing that what is overdone
is from you, or like having to run farther
if you trip up, just to regain your balance —
you are forced to a rhythm that you would rather
not be drawn into, obvious evidence
that all language is trap, and yet right from the first —
and that 'I' is a word that's one of the worst.
TICS
There a finger uncurls a lock and curls it
up again solely in order to uncurl.
Here a finger is tapping without respite,
signalling silently for rest. A dull dance
has that foot, never stopping, for there's no girl
there who is giving place to the toes' advance.
There are eyelids that blink not one speck away
so many times there must be some grit somewhere,
and wet lips that get licked wet just in case
time should catch dryness on them. There's a prayer
on a wheel always turning through decades
of a rosary, thinking that it persuades.
MICHAEL JACKSON IN CONCERT
All the heads of the crowd were like foam, twenty
thousand, with arms opening and closing like wings
of a vast flock of gulls. Safety and plenty,
jouissance, phallus. On stage the symbol
held another, took leaps to improve, put springs
under its walking, a luminous idol
in a radiant circle, pointing up with nose,
hands, and a miniature mace, and pistoning
to the music, from flat on ground to tiptoes,
voice in caress become thunder, sweetening
all the faces to tears. Final erection:
on a levitator, a resurrection.
SHRIEKS OF LAUGHTER FROM TEENAGE GIRLS
Hear girl-teenagers' shrieking laughter. A sob,
high-pitched, that punctuates the rattle of pans
boiling over, each triggering a repeat
squeak overlapping, outdoing in higher
scream the scream it must rival in longer spans,
keeping sufficient distortion, a liar
in a Brechtian mode that is shrieking for
my or just anyone's careful attention.
For my silence must prove I aim to ignore
so they must scorn me the more. Only a mention
that this poem is on them subdues the riot,
makes the laughter subside to a thoughtful quiet.
STARTLE REFLEX IN A CROWD
Looking down on that crowd packed so close across
Grosvenor Square, I saw, when the thunderflash
hurled its bang and surprised them, all the heads toss
forward, but not all at once: the Startle Reflex,
hunching shoulders and twitching arms, snapped its lash
over them all, and out travelled a convex
widening wave made of men, as swift as the sound.
None of them knew how they had bowed to that wave,
even though each one had bobbed as prompt as a hound
whipped into cringing, as a machine, a slave.
Each one obeyed without thought, each one unknowing,
automatic in acts that formed a flowing.
LIVING REPETITIONS
Hear the crunch of that horse's jaws at its oats?
See the incessant pecking of those pigeons?
Or the stalk of those starlings, thumbs-in-waistcoats,
heads cocked to this side, then that, at their work
catching worms? Or take human occupations:
sawing to saw deeper; digging with a jerk,
then another, another; if you hammer,
one blow has rarely struck the nail home — one more,
and one more, and one more for luck! The grammar
locked in your tying or your typing is lore
hidden well. It's designed to free volition,
giving time to avoid mere repetition.
BOGGLING
Hum and haw, shilly-shally. The waverers,
how we must hate them! They can't make up their minds.
We are good at making them up. No comforters
they, when it's obvious unity's the thing.
The word 'doubt' comes from double. It only blinds
you to think twice. We call it 'vacillating'
(yes, and that means to wobble about). A plain
resolute single-mindedness! Hot and cold,
fast and loose, off and on must give way to rain
or shine, neck or nothing, heart and soul. A bold
self is one. There's no wave to weaken his pride.
Individualism doesn't divide.
JUGGLER
We all gasp at the juggler. Balls are planets,
satellites, bubbles that fly up and down,
always missing each other, blurred to rosettes,
figures-of-eight, marble whorls, ornamental
knots reflected in Arabian fonts, crown
made out of loops and lassos, elemental
molecule magnified, its eternal reel
grossly impossible — we ask where the hands
are that catch them and lift them. Orbits conceal
nothing at all but themselves, their ampersands
are conjunctions of zero. Don't ask for cause.
It's enough that what's juggled wins our applause.
OLYMPIC SKATERS
What presenting he does! She is held aloft,
triumphal swan, as his crown. With wide gesture
he displays her as his, just as though he doffed
her like a hat or a cloak. He lets her go
in mock freedom the distance of one finger
stretched sentimentally far, only to show
she must orbit around him faster, faster,
he standing matador-sure as the power
of her glory as their own breeze lifts the glitter,
flaring the thighs, the stamens of the flower,
as they rise and point to what is but his,
all in honour of him whose creature she is.
CLOTHES ON A CLOTHES-LINE
On the clothes-line the wind makes Michelin men,
women and children. How they wriggle and puff
to get free of the pegs! A sleeve like a hen
stretches a neck like an orator's. A leg
tries to kick but hits nothing. There, by the scruff
collars take necks. Here, two passionate arms beg
for release. Some are bloated motorcyclists
buzzing ahead in the same place; others shrink
anorexic. Conformists and cartoonists,
those who adapt, those who resist with a kink
they can't straighten or wish to, all must utter
their identity. Here's one in the gutter.