\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/i>\u2018Here the heart
\nMay give a useful lesson to the head\u2019
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/i>— William Cowper, The Task<\/i>, Book VI, ll85-86<\/p>\n
Horsehair. In the 70s in a one-up-one-down
\nshared with George (upstairs), who ironed
\nhis curly hair straight and favoured the cravat
\nof Edward Fox in The Day of the Jackal<\/i>. Back-
\nto-back on the side of a hill so steep the sheep
\nhad short legs on one side. An arm
\ndropped down for a sleeping friend.
\nA room with a cooker, fridge and sink
\nand plank and brick shelves for reading round
\nthe subject, so many declarations and
\nDelusions Etc<\/i>, St Exup\u00e9ry, The Cantos<\/i>,
\nGauloises tobacco, tea in china. That was
\ncycling the towpath to the Poly or walking
\nthe other way with a book. A priest
\nI never thought I\u2019d think of again
\nfrom the retreat, the weir trees and a pylon
\nleft over from his own college days,
\nlike Robert Lowell lodging on the canal.
\nHis age now, here I am on the same sofa
\nan hour by hired van away and three decades
\nfurther in just two moves, so much
\nfor Paris and New York. Sofa. Settee.
\nHere it still is, though worn out really
\nin the room I call my room. Remember?
\nFive Pints powdered milk, Angel Delight.
\nRegulation spaghetti bolognaise and running
\nround with the hoover. Patchouli cheesecloth,
\nDon Juan\u2019s reckless daughter, chipping the ice
\nfrom an idea or forming the ice
\nwith an office electric golfball typewriter.
\nClearing the snow by climbing the slates
\nto turn the aerial. A bird in the chimney
\nand Brian Ferret in the cellar. Playing darts
\neight hours a day to find I couldn\u2019t play.
\nTrivial Pursuit when my wife before
\nshe was my wife got 23 questions right
\nin a row, but married me anyway.
\nAt every question we laughed more.
\nThen teaching in my teacher\u2019s room at the Poly.
\nI sat at his desk for an hour just sitting,
\nunder the Twa Corbies poster, when verse
\nlet you look forward from the past,
\nthe endless possibilities of Edwin Morgan.
\nThe college library was a gift and to cap it all
\nthey asked me to update the poetry. Then there was
\nthe staff bar, and booking poets, and listening,
\nand starting a magazine and knowing
\nyou had to know when to stop. Also the workshops
\nthose sun-struck evenings, all of us
\nin it together. There was the Zetland after,
\nand poetry parties at Linda\u2019s and at Trevor\u2019s,
\nhis hurt eyes sleepless like a panda. Yes, and
\nGill Rennard and Duncan and his laugh
\nand Craig Smith, The Whole of The Moon<\/i>.
\nThere was snooker at Cambridge Rd Baths,
\nthe walk up under the railway bridge
\nwe called Poets\u2019 Walk. That winter I wore two shirts
\nbecause I didn\u2019t have a jumper. I remember
\nSimon the composer, what became of him,
\nand the other Simon taking off his jumper,
\ntoo hot reading The<\/i> Burning Perch<\/i>. I know
\nthe miners united will never be defeated and that
\nwe are back in the grip of those bastards.
\nAnd then there was the Hand of God World Cup.
\nI have started shouting at the radio. I bought
\na stereo cassette which, when it packed in
\nso far in the future, my daughter
\nbought me again from a vintage site.
\nThere it is, by the gnawed arm of the sofa.
\nI put a tape in and go back further.
\nOn this sofa, go-kart, rowing-boat
\n(not train or gondola) I scoot down a ginnel,
\nthrough a scattering game of three-and-in,
\nlamp post and gate post the flood-lit goals;
\npulled on by oars and by the current,
\na lake in the Lake District, and the wide
\nriver in France, with its tiny island of a tree
\nthat we bulls-eye beached up on
\nin just this kayak, to just this song. We laugh
\nabout the hooting applause but I know
\nthat night you almost drowned in the river.
\nHalf a lifetime later I came to at the back
\nof a plane over the Alps, cradling
\na bottle of oxygen. I remember the cord
\nround the baby\u2019s neck, it came free
\nand her heart beat again. And then
\nthere was Mum, even in a home, not sure
\nif she was tired or just lazy. A watchword,
\ncareful what you wish for, this wall-to-wall
\nof yellowed intent unread or forgotten,
\nand times\u2019d by ten since, by fifty.
\nThe window is drizzle, my favourite,
\nand the ash tree just coming good. This is
\na forest I\u2019ve walked in. Among these trees
\nhours are moments, the forest\u2019s midnight
\nmoment, a way of being when you
\nstumble into a clearing bright as day
\nand where you mislay your name
\nor mistake it, the person you were,
\nno better, no worse. Dear Sofa, retreat
\nand dog-house in living memory,
\nthese slow, accelerated days are work
\nwith someone else\u2019s work. I power-nap
\nthrough Haydn and the radio, as rich
\ntoday as yesterday with the spores
\nof a million joss sticks. Breathe in.
\nDear sofa, when did you stop being a settee?
\nNot you but the pattern I remember
\nwaking with my face printed with,
\nthinking it would stay. The earliest settee,
\nmy sister\u2019s because for the first seven years
\nmy sister was my mum. How could I
\nnot know that at forty?\u00a0 They told me
\nin the small hours in a hospital cafe
\nlike a play. Mum on her death-bed,
\nnow it can be told. Settee, sofa, settee.
\nWhy should I tell you? Only back.
\nBack there was a picture window
\nabove the valley, it mattered when we moved,
\na hoarding on the wall of our end-terrace
\npaid the mortgage one month in three
\nand we were both writing, what could stop us.
\nA tractor was always getting in that field
\nand the canal ran by not lifting a finger, the same
\nfive miles west with the rattling trains,
\nthe hot air balloons and glider club
\nthe canoeists on the canal and a dozen
\nambiguous notes for the milkman,
\nlast thing at night the double decker lit up
\nlike a ship wound its first-gear way
\nunder Scapegoat Hill. Then it was all
\nmidnight walks, the backwards running
\nrace, and apple on the road. Also the day
\nthe frog appeared, the three cats
\nup against the hearth, waiting for us
\nto do something. You took it out
\nand down the path, little Buddha on a coal shovel.
\nThe kids knew Nuns on the Run<\/i> by heart.
\nWe were young while they were young.
\nSofa you fit so snugly between then and
\nthese corner fitted bookshelves, the Oxfam lamp
\nand two-vol Oxford Shorter. For the excursion,
\nsometimes I climb the eight-foot ladder
\ncarried home through town from a junk yard.
\nWhich is how I got to be here, shifting it round,
\nfrom Colne Bridge to Linthwaite to today,
\nat random the high Cs because, no wiser
\nin my purpose, I love to crows-nest
\nwithout vantage in Clare or Clarke or Coleridge,
\nCook or Corbett, William Corbett my old friend
\nwhom I\u2019ve never met, I read you too,
\nand then there\u2019s Cowper. Seven Cowpers from
\nThe Centenary Letters <\/i>to the Poetical Works<\/i>,
\nsome I\u2019ve never opened and not one of them in years,
\nand I\u2019m not going to start again now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2018Here the heart May give a useful lesson to the head\u2019 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 — William Cowper, The Task, Book VI, ll85-86 Horsehair. In the 70s in a one-up-one-down shared with George (upstairs), who ironed his curly hair straight and favoured the cravat of Edward Fox in The Day of the Jackal. Back- to-back on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":4787,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[320,322],"tags":[324],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n