German Interlude (With Detours) 23 Poems

1.Ahrweiler Cemetery The leitmotif of my childhood's Peeling stucco. The adults I knew are as stuffed parrots now Alive in memory only How quick are the dead forgotten! In the graveyard in Ahrweiler, Two gravediggers siesta in their van The lemon sun, strong on their workman's caps A pile of fresh dug soil's on the tarpaulin Near to the van's left wheel Heinrich, Jakob, Carl, Hubert, Otto Lie under low black crosses labelled ‘soldat' 1914-18's inhuman harvest Ludwig & Fritz, two rows across the grass Culled, like the Johns and Jacks across the sea War makes comrades of enemies in the dust 2.Market Town (Ahrweiler) From the sluggish stream of shoppers, Women nibble at bargains like rising trout A ponderous carp of a Fraulein Tugs at a belt, nudging a motley trail Of scarves aside. A pike of a German farmer With ponderous white whiskers Circles the shoes, then drifts away uncaught Children, out in a party, Are a feeding frenzy of tiddlers Snap swallowing chips and pasties Weighed in the scales of wanting versus needing Cuckoo clocks perform their pop-go trick Candles flare ‘Buy now…repent at leisure.' 3.Flat lands Hobbema-like, tall avenues of cypress trees Are framing a still canal, . a silent farm A goat, a horse, a donkey, share a paddock Two fields away a herd of Friesians graze In the parallel world of the high-speed motorway Night falls like a Van Gogh sky Brilliant stars of traffic endlessly pouring 4.Old Otto's Proverbs Take heed of friendly enemies Barking dogs don' bite One log doesn't burn alone Old foxes are hard to trap Good swimmers often drown A steady drip carves stone Just as one callas to the forest So it echoes back Deep calls to deep, ochone Don't sell the bear's fur Before it has been killed Sweep first, your door at home 5.Rhenish Inn Four steps up from the road, Vine leaves hang from the roof, a god's bandana Within, crossed halberds, Pinned to a white washed wall Heavy clumsy, ancient, wooden carvings Oil paintings rough in theme and execution By plodding craftsmen taught by a lesser muse Under the beams, ten German painted beer mugs Recall calamitous tragedies, love tales, battles Four hundred years of history Nobody here remembers. In the corner, a sheaf of sticks A witch's broom? A harvest ritual? It's open to conjecture. Why would you ask? Vintage customers, their noses sherry red Sit brittle as last night's frost Watching a flickering candle wick burn down A waitress, apple-strudel fresh and sweet Plonks down four foaming pints like a Roman offering Night drips from darkening hills A home-made waterfall dribbles in a pool Watched by a baleful frog on a stone ball A rotting wine-press leans on rusty legs A sliver of amber liquid, pools on the table Complicit in the ancient rites of Bacchus 6.Pigs Ten fat pigs sprawl sleeping Drumskins of stretched pink skin Their nipples are seams of tight rose buds Their long white lashes are sealed Dreaming of porcine idylls Forests of acorns Fabulous boars with tusks like corkscrews Could rip a man's soft belly with one thrust 7.Letter to a Dead Father Brambles sweeten the ditch Dying wasps put the sting In summer's fox-fire tail Moss thatches rooves and paths Round ancient lawns. Clouds lie like ships at anchor The season has tuned the first page of October Shorn rowans rattle crimson shriven berries Yellow horse chestnut leaves Hide conkers polished deep As the shining lids of classical grand pianos Two blanketed horses graze In a pool of sun, their breath Like mist, rising from steaming nostrils The Bens are showing petticoats of grey Dead father, This is the land that begat you Here, speech was set in tracks For Gaelic carriages That train long gone, the lilt In your voice remained Keeping the tongue in the groove Scots with a Highland burr 8.Bus Trip, Stirling-Callander This mild day of September in the Trossachs A youngster with a chest as big's a skip Dreadlocks pinned like crampons up the Eiger Yatters in Yardie to her blinged-up beau A workman's raining chips across the pavement Too tired to cup the cardboard box together Two mingers kiss and cuddle on a wall Proving beyond all doubt that love is blind Chantelle, Leanne and Kylie whoop and giggle Their fingernails are sparkled pink and green The sun comes sneaking low past thunder skies Dunged Ayrshires nuzzle clover, flick flies off The burnished corn, circles a resting combine On cloudy braes, far off, a wind farm turns A wood lies felled, raped like the Sabine women Its resin bleeding on the forest floor Sheep, white as bleach stand sheepishly together First frost has lit a fire amongst the rowans 9.In a Handbag, Darkly A very plebeian vole with no credentials An aspadrille from a phone booth A cellophane love heart Three grapes from a Delft dinnerplate A right old Pussy Riot A farewell gesture A rusting precentor Three guffawing toads A phalanx of chewing gums An extinct harmonica A Freudian Chinese urn An ancestral larynx A nest of tongues A very excited avocado A Byzantine penis A processional of bedbugs A clarinettist's jockstrap A mother of pearl urinal Five Confucian slippers A buzzard's Rhapsody A republican seagull Death, dressed as a cucumber A necklace of wasp stings The scent of a plastic daisy A dried turd on a horseshoe The sound of two hens clucking A horizon of hyenas from Troon The tattoo from a barmaid's breast A rag-mat in progress Three hairs from a spiritual cat A counterfeit catkin 10.The Cabinet of Curiosities A derailed train carriage Two rooks in parenthesis One grass wellington The shutter-click of a snuff movie A Cornish conundrum A colt revolver purchased by a horse Chopin's favourite teddy An ampersand's love story The bed socks of a serial monogamist Charlotte Bronte's keyhole A figurine of Keats as the Infanta's dwarf Suetonius's spitoon A slice of Scythian lamb Montezuma's underpants A mermaid's scratchcard 11.Pawns The fall of the World Trade Centre Brought one particular Scot to early dust A Lewis man who'd studied at St Andrews, Classics, philosophy, not politics Intelligent, funny, loving an argument He liked the American life, its spirit of optimism The tragedy being he nearly survived the attack Six weeks after, his body was identified On the second floor of the building, Along with some New York fire fighters, Killed by falling masonry Three days before he died He called a friend, to tell her of his wedding Excited, looking forward to settling down The marriage planned for October A date he'd never keep His funeral was held back home in Lewis Where Gaelic and English meet under windswept skies And Eagles live alongside gleaming otters Here, in the summer months, folk still cut the peats Sundays remain a very special day For centuries in the sands of this quiet island Walrus ivory chessmen lay at rest Pawns in the Viking power games of the past Where church towers toppled, licked by flames of hate 12.The Lark Person I'm a morning person. When others rise with their tongues all fur And curse and stumble and grunt and gurr With fallen arches and brewer's droop As snappy's a bite of shark's fin soup I'm up with the lark, unbearably bright Having slept the sleep of the just all night But after work, when the daylight's done And others jig on the party run I'm scratchy, crotchety, limp, half dead Let the world go hang! I'm off to bed! 13.Father A white umbrella-shaped cloud You floated over my childhood Occasionally, you became a stallion's back Charging me off to whinnyings of joy At night, you were a ball of unravelling wool My fingers tangled up in, keeping me safe At the last, I could not hold you back From your rendezvous with our ancestors Now I repeat your lessons Like catechisms, father's runes for being 14.Hanky Panky Hanky panky, slap and tickle Bertie the Prince was fat and fickle He had a room in La Chabanais The bawdy house for that old roué The prince had a tub where he'd often pour Prime champagne on his favourite whore And a love seat built for his weight and girth To rest the buttocks of Royal birth The rooms were designed like Old Pompeii Moorish and Indian, Japanee Where the famous came to get in lather And pay for a session of ‘how's your father' Dali the artist, bought that tub From Madame Kelly's most infamous club Where the dwarf, Lautrec and Maupassant Were often among the frolicking throng Dietrich, Bogart and Goring came To visit this house of dubious fame Hanky panky, slap and tickle Mony's a mickle makks a muckle 15. What the Dickens My childhood memories all belong in books Charles Dickens' world of orphans, heroes, crooks Dombey and Son, Bleak House, The Haunted Man Scrooge, Fagan, Little Nell, Miss Havisham The Uncommercial Traveller, Little Dorrit Barnaby Rudge and Martin Chuzzlewit Oliver Twist and Nich'las Nickleby A Christmas Carol, Pictures from Italy The Cricket on the Hearth, Pickwick, The Chimes Tale of Two Cities, Household Words, Hard Times Mystery of Edwin Drood, Our Mutual Friend Great Expectations…Treasures without End All the Year Round, Old Curiosity Shop Adventures for a lonely child non-stop With David Copperfield, Uriah Heep Mr Micawber made me laugh and weep Bill Sykes and Mr Gradgrind, Magwitch too The poor, the rich, sketched vividly and true These creatures stepping from Charles Dickens'days They are my oldest childhood memories 16.October Journey The sun, forgotten friend, beams bright and high Over the rain-sogged fields where Friesians graze In their spilt shadows. Swirls of starlings fly Through ragged storm clouds. A heraldic blaze Of pheasant, postures, pegged on wooden gate A badger gruff-grunts off into herbage Behind Dinwoodie Mains on grassy knoll Sheep crop the grass in their short span of life Each brute face black and wizened as a troll On a tree's veins, cow and his sooty wife Enjoy small nests of sun blinks on bare boughs The wind has stripped elm clean's a carving knife The rain returns, pit pattering, parts the leaves Wetting the crimson leaves on ancient eaves 17.Europort Holland The shipping lane's a float of fairy lights Strung out along the Channel's chilly waves The Pride of Rotterdam flings Shetland shawls Of delicate white foam beneath her bows I am out of my element, Trying my sea legs briefly. Europe's lights are studs of steely stars Where Hans and Pierre, Monique and Ludwick Rise to begin the grinding round of work We pass the Cosco, silent sullen city Its seamen sleeping under crates of tin It ploughs a steady furrow to our stern Cranes like tall giraffes await its cargo Inexorably, the ship slides into berth Wind turbines wheels in giant chorus lines And then, a desolation of machines Apocalyptic landscape bare of life A building site of mud, the bones of roads A landscape bleak as any battlefield Of cranes and giant silent storage tanks 18.Germany Forest and copse and glade and dell Germany grows them and grows them well Motorways, pathways, lined by trees Traffic and trade, with boughs and leaves Strongest muscle in Europe's arm Lacking in Greek or Spanish charm The old, old tale of cricket and ant Germany prospers where others can't. Fenceless fields, no waste, no muddle Efficiency breeds in every puddle 19.A Proverbial Poem He could tie the devil to a pillow Though that herring does not fry here He who eats fire, craps sparks But to sit on hot coals, how queer! An old roof needs much patching up Like pissing against the moon A fool will gnaw on a single bone Cracked walls must fall down soon He'll bang his head against a wall And find the dog in the pot If blind leads blind both fall in the ditch Fear makes old women trot Where the carcass is, there's always crows To the wind you should hold your cloak Leave at least one egg in the nest Warm yourself at another's smoke What is the good of a beautiful plate When there is nothing on it? Horse droppings are not figs, nor are Two fools beneath one bonnet 20.Along the Rheine A hare, meticulous as a Durer drawing Whiskers twitching German puppet-like Savours the Northern breeze, its pulses tingling Trains, precision-timed, shoulder Processions of cars, a long death rattle Cormorants' round dark eyes seem unable to pierce The impenetrable rolling currents of the Rheine, Hanging their shaggy wings out wide to dry On perilous rocks mid-stream, in khaki water Ferries glide unmolested past shops of cuckoo clocks Cafes serving bread, cakes, goulash, soups Castles rise like ghosts from morning mist Leaves are burgundy, cinnamon, lemon, coffee coloured A lorry with its carapace of steel veers off to Ludwigshafen The ubiquitous graffiti is edgy Like tattoos on the hips of flyovers Suburban streets are drenched in plane and linden leaves Statues wear speckles of rain Sycamores launch their peaceful parachutes Dawn dissipates down gullies drenched with dark A eucalyptus bares its brittle bark Cattle raise their heads from nonchalant chewing Day goes rollicking off to beer gardens, a ganglion of grapes The shores are invaded by tourists, loose cannons Eyeing Gothic script, Lutheran churches Firing off euros with guttural schoolboy phrases Dobermans bark sharp as pistol shots Like broken angel bones white pebbles roll in the water The roiling Rheine roisters between the mountains Rough rocked, gold seamed in the sun On the ferry, a baby squeals, three louts Spit into the waves. Stiff jointed grandparents Watch ducks skitter over the current Sturdy taciturn bargees tether their boats Vineyards arise each side like an amphitheatre Dizzying slopes, where the goat's-foot pickers toil At night the sun will sink like a concert hall Grown quiet at the end of a Wagner opera 21. Ferry Philippino workers toil in teams Dispensing coffee, butter, jams and creams Channelling chaos to an ordered queue Of folk plate-piling past, now one, now two Just one seat madam, what no friend with you? Sit by the window then, where there's a view! Passengers press drinks from hissing pipes Arthritic, apoplectic, thrifty types The perishable cargo, humankind Must watch the sea by thick portholes confined Thus fewer suicides jump off the boat Less paperwork, a castle with no moat The cabin door shuts tight, a coffin lid Dishevelled guests from peeping toms are hid The tidal swell rolls over, high and wide The ship, tilting the world from side to side 22. Moselle Rapunzel Castles loosen their hair of mist Goat-nimble workers tend steep terraced vines Sheer as dry-ski slopes, the wine rich hills The Goethe on the khaki coloured Rheine A paddle steamer follows a coal-barge wake Winningen's timbered houses circle the Wine-witch fountain. A dusting of thin rain Sprinkles unfolding umbrellas. Clouds increase Near Alken, two swans and four pigeons Nuzzle the waves. A jetty cormorant Plunges into the tumult of the water Bobbing up behind the rocking ferry Echoes of Brothers Grimm are in the air The rocks, gigantic, gnarled trees, enchanted. 23. Gretna At Gretna, the anvil of trade is white hot Fingers palm out pounds Crowds pick over bargains A squint eyed cat blinks From the scrap stuffed bin On its plinth of trodden cheese And smears of gravy Here comes Scotland, eyes Peeled to the main chance The right side of a bawbee Coaches slide in and out Sighing like shuddering whales Disgorging loads of Jonahs From Perth to Pittenweem