And the Soul

    And the soul, if she is to know
    herself, must look into the soul ...
      – Plato

    And the soul, if she is to know herself
    must look into the soul and find
    what kind of beast is hiding.

    And if it be a horse, open up the gate
    and let it run. And if it be a rabbit
    give it sand dunes to disappear in.

    And if it be a swan, create a mirror image,
    give it water. And if it be a badger
    grow a sloping woodland in your heart.

    And if it be a tick, let the blood flow
    until it's sated. And if it be a fish
    there must be a river and a mountain.

    And if it be a cat, find some people
    to ignore, but if it be a wolf,
    you'll know from its restless way

    of moving, if it be a wolf,
    throw back your head
    and let it howl.


    My People

    I come from people who swear without realising they're swearing.
    I come from scaffolders and plasterers and shoemakers and carers,
    the type of carers paid pence per minute to visit an old lady's house.
    Some of my people have been inside a prison. Sometimes I tilt
    towards them and see myself reflected back. If they were from
    Yorkshire, which they're not, but if they were, they would have been
    the ones on the pickets shouting scab and throwing bricks at policemen.
    I come from a line of women who get married twice. I come from
    a line of women who bring up children and men who go to work.
    If I knew who my people were, in the time before women
    were allowed to work, they were probably the women who were
    working anyway. If I knew who my people were before women
    got the vote, they would not have cared about the vote. There are
    many arguments among my people. Nobody likes everybody.
    In the time of slavery my people would have had them if they
    were the type of people who could afford them, which they
    probably weren't. In the time of casual racism, some of my people
    would and will join in. Some of my people know everybody
    who lives on their street. They are the type of people who will argue
    with the teacher if their child has detention. The women
    of my people are wolves and we talk to the moon in our sleep.


    Boxer

    If I could make it happen backwards
    so you could start again I would,
    beginning with you on the floor,
    the doctor in slow motion
    reversing from the ring, the screams
    of the crowd pulled back in their throats,
    your coach, arms outstretched, retreats
    to the corner as men get down from chairs
    and tables, and you rise again, so tall,
    standing in that stillness in the seconds
    before you fell, and the other girl, the fighter,
    watch her arm move around and away
    from your jaw, and your mother rises
    from her knees, her hands still shaking,
    as the second round unravels itself
    and instead of moving forward,
    as your little Irish coach told you to,
    you move away, back into the corner,
    where he takes your mouth guard out
    as gently as if you were his own.
    The water flies like magic from your mouth
    and back into the bottle and the first round
    is in reverse, your punches unrolling
    to the start of the fight, when the sound
    of the bell this time will stop you dancing
    as you meet in the middle, where you come
    and touch gloves and whisper good luck
    and you dance to your corners again,
    your eyes fixed on each other as the song
    you chose to walk into sings itself back
    to its opening chords and your coach
    unwraps your head from the headguard,
    unfastens your gloves, and you're out
    of the ring, with your groin guard,
    your breast protector, you're striding
    round that room full of men,
    a warrior even before you went in.


    A Psalm for the Scaffolders

    who balanced like tightrope walkers,
    who could run up the bracing
    faster than you or I could climb
    a ladder, who wore red shorts
    and worked bare-chested,
    who cut their safety vests in half,
    a psalm for the scaffolders
    and their vans, their steel
    toe-capped boots, their coffee mugs,
    a psalm for those who learnt
    to put up a scaffold standing
    on just one board, a psalm
    for the scaffolder who could put
    a six-inch nail in a piece of wood
    with just his palm, a psalm
    for those who don't like rules
    or things taking too long, who now
    mustn't go to work uncovered,
    who mustn't cut their safety vests
    or climb without ladders, who must
    use three boards at all times,
    a psalm for the scaffolders
    who fall with a harness on,
    who have ten minutes to be rescued,
    a psalm for the scaffolder who fell
    in a clear area, a tube giving way,
    that long slow fall, a psalm for him,
    who fell thirty feet and survived,
    a psalm for the scaffolder
    who saw him fall, a psalm for those
    at the top of buildings, the wind whistling
    in their ears, the sky in their voices,
    for those who lift and carry
    and shout and swear, for those
    who can recite the lengths of boards
    and tubes like a song, a psalm for them,
    the ones who don't like heights
    but spent their whole life hiding it,
    a psalm for those who work too long,
    a psalm for my father, a psalm for him.


    Teaching the Trumpet

    I say: imagine you are drinking a glass of air.
    Let the coldness hit the back of your throat.

    Raise your shoulders to your ears, now let
    them be. Get your cheeks to grip your teeth.

    Imagine you are spitting tea leaves
    from your tongue to start each note

    so each one becomes the beginning of a word.
    Sing the note inside your head then match it.

    At home lie on the floor and pile books
    on your stomach to check your breathing.

    Or try and pin paper to the wall just by blowing.
    I say: remember the man who played so loud

    he burst a blood vessel in his eye? This was
    because he was drunk, although I don't tell

    them that, I say it was because he was young,
    and full of himself, and far away from home.


    The Trumpet Teacher's Curse

    A curse on the children who tap the mouthpiece
    with the heel of their hand to make a popping sound,
    who drop the trumpet on the floor then laugh,
    a darker curse on those who fall with a trumpet
    in their hands and selfishly save themselves,
    a curse on the boy who dropped a pencil
    on the bell of his trombone to see if it did
    what I said it would, a curse on the girl
    who stuffed a pompom down her cornet
    and then said it was her invisible friend who did it,
    a curse on the class teacher who sits at the back
    of the room and does her paperwork,
    a curse on the teacher who says I'm rubbish at music
    in a loud enough voice for the whole class to hear,
    a curse on the father who coated his daughter's trumpet valves
    with Vaseline because he thought it was the thing to do,
    a curse on the boy who threw up in his baritone
    as if it was his own personal bucket.
    Let them be plagued with the urge to practise
    every day without improvement, let them play
    in concerts each weekend which involve marching
    and outdoors and coldness, let their family be forced
    to give up their Saturdays listening to bad music
    in village halls or spend their Sundays at the bandstand,
    them, one dog and the drunk who slept there the night before
    taking up the one and only bench, Gods, let it rain.


    The Messiah, St Bees Priory

    Today, everywhere is covered in snow
    and the priory is a huge mouth
    swallowing the cold, as if the snow
    has come to dispel all memory
    of that day in June, the sudden heat of it,
    the constant call of sirens.

    I was standing on a hill in Barrow,
    looking over the water to Millom,
    knowing the police cars rushing past
    would be too late. The roads
    that brought the gunman there
    would stop them finding him –

    Askam, Broughton, Ravenglass
    and all the tops of Corney Fell between
    and people cutting hedges, riding bikes,
    who hadn't heard the news, who
    would stop and help a passing driver
    without thinking.

    Today, November snow makes us
    more inclined to sit together,
    the violins gathered round a heater,
    the breath of singers caught in air,
    the audience, still in hats and coats
    and scarves, huddle closer

    then lean forward as I call the dead
    to listen. They are singing Hallelujah
    to forget that afternoon when the sun
    was a hand on the backs of their necks,
    when villages, hardly talked about before
    were the names on everybody's lips.


    Hartley Street Spiritualist Church

    The first hymn is Abba: I Believe in Angels.
    No music because Jean has forgotten the tape.
    We sing without, led from the front by a medium
    with long red hair, who announces that a dog
    is in the room, and is, at this very moment,
    sitting next to the tea urn. This means someone

    is ready to be healed. Another medium stands,
    running coloured ribbons through her hands,
    points behind and says a woman is pacing
    up and down, flicking her hair and pouting,
    and will anyone claim her, does anyone
    have a relative who would do such a thing?

    And then the psychic artist stands up, unrolls
    a scroll, a picture he drew many years ago,
    in anticipation of this day, a man in a flat cap
    with a cigarette, a man who used to get back
    from work and watch the sun go down
    from his back porch and smoke and smoke,

    and he says this is your Grandad isn't it
    to a woman who nods vigorously
    and then he starts to draw an old lady
    with short hair who he says is standing
    next to me, and am I feeling warm
    because this is the energy of Spirit

    and do I ever feel I'm being followed
    even though there's no one there,
    because this is the energy of Spirit,
    and come to think of it, I think I am warm
    but that might be because everybody's
    staring, and he's whispering, over

    and over, it's your Grandma isn't it
    and I believe him, I want to think she's there,
    even though in his drawing she has permed hair
    and glasses. He gives me the image
    of this woman. Later on I bin it, but before
    we go we sing I Believe in Angels again.


    Tuesday at Wetherspoons

    All the men have comb-overs,
    bellies like cakes just baked,
    risen to roundness. The women tilt
    on their chairs, laughter faked,

    like mugs about to fall, cheekbones
    sharp as sadness. When the men
    stand together, head for the bar
    like cattle, I don't understand

    why a woman reaches across, unfolds
    his napkin, arranges his knife and fork
    to either side of his plate. They're all
    doing it, arranging, organising, all talk

    stopped until the men, oblivious,
    return. My feet slide towards a man
    with one hand between his thighs,
    patience in his eyes who says you can

    learn to love me, ketchup
    on the hand that cups my chin,
    ketchup around his mouth,
    now hardening on my skin.


    In Praise of Arguing

    And the vacuum cleaner flew
    down the stairs like a song
    and the hiking boots
    launched themselves
    along the landing.

    And one half of the house
    hated the other half
    and the blinds wound
    themselves around
    each other.

    And the doors flung
    themselves into the street
    and flounced away
    and the washing gathered
    in corners and sulked.

    And the bed collapsed
    and was held up by books
    and the walls developed
    scars and it was a glorious,
    glorious year.


    Barrow To Sheffield

    Even though the train is usually full of people
    I don't like, who play music obnoxiously loud
    or talk into their phones and tell the whole carriage
    and their mother how they're afraid of dying
    even though they're only twenty-five,

    even though the fluorescent lights
    and the dark outside make my face look like
    a dinner plate, even though it's always cold
    around my ankles and there's chewing gum
    stuck to the table and the guard is rude

    and bashes me with his ticket box,
    even though the toilet smells like nothing
    will ever be clean again, even though
    the voice that announces the stations
    says Bancaster instead of Lancaster,

    still I love the train, its sheer unstoppability,
    its relentless pressing on, and the way the track
    stretches its limb across the estuary
    as the sheep eat greedily at the salty grass,
    and thinking that if the sheep aren't rounded up

    will they stand and let the tide come in, because
    that's what sheep do, they don't save themselves,
    and knowing people have drowned out there
    like the father who rang the coast guard,
    who put his son on his shoulders as the water rose

    past his knees and waist and chest, the coast guard
    who tried to find him, but the fog came down,
    and though he could hear the road, he didn't know
    which way to turn, but in a train, there are no choices,
    just one direction, one decision you must stick to.

    This morning the sun came up in Bolton and all
    the sky was red and a man in a suit fell asleep
    and dribbled on my shoulder till the trolley
    came and rattled in his ear and he woke up
    and shouted I've got to find the sword.


    Sometimes You Think of Bowness

    and swans on the pier being fed by hand
    and the ice cream shop with twenty-six flavours
    and the wooden rowing boats like slippers

    and how Windermere is one place and Bowness
    another, and just a stretch of road joins them
    together, of the hotel on the hill, the Belsfield

    and Schneider, walking down to take the steamer,
    his butler following with breakfast on a silver tray,
    but mostly you think of the people, drawn to water,

    and how it looks in the rain, as if the shops
    were made of water, of ducking into a doorway
    and carrying the smell of rain inside.