The Patron Saint of Rank Outsiders


He sleeps like drunkards, snoring off

the celebrations from his last

arousal, dreams shocked faces

 

of the rich and sure; waking,

scratches his arse and casts his eye

beyond the laws of probability.

 

The old men in the betting shop

have heard him cough and spit

and felt his fingers on their shoulders,

 

Remember Cassius and Sonny,

Sunderland and Leeds, Foinavon

a hundred to one. Go on, a quid.

 

And so, improbably, a tumour

vanishes from someone's gut;

a man falls from an aeroplane

 

through thunderclouds and storms,

and lives; a pretty girl will love

a man with neither wealth nor looks;

 

a child will surface, breathing,

after twenty minutes in the freezing

waves; it will rain frogs in Hertfordshire.

 

 

The Patron Saint of Compulsive Hoarders

 

I've grown to one of those old girls

who wrap each empty sardine tin in newsprint,

 

build them tenderly like dry stone walls,

who wash out jam jars, pile them

 

to the ceiling, glinting in their pent-up

usefulness. I store discarded children's

 

board games, milk-teeth, crusts, soft toys

(gathering faint grey of dust, an extra

 

fluff of plush) in case time should swing

open like a door and find us lost in past

 

without that very thing we loved the most;

or helter-skelter to a future where it is

 

the only thing we need to save the world;

or just to raise defences against loss:

 

that sharp twist of regret, the small black doll

with beaded skirt, I gave away too soon…

 

 

The Patron Saint of Country Dancing

(Miss Olive Tache, 1940)

 

The frost comes down as hard as grief,

Mums queue for food which can't be found,

whole streets leave comfy beds each night

sleep sardined, airless, underground.

Arm left, arm right, cross hands, straight hey,

Fall back, cast off, cast up…

 

Young teacher with her London kids,

head full of tunes and English soul,

shipped to a mountainside in Wales

with schoolroom boiler out of coal.

Arm left, arm right, cross hands, straight hey,

Fall back, cast off, cast up…

 

She sends the big boys out for wood

and piles the desks against the wall

to thaw the rest with country dance

she'll play and sing and clap and call:

Arm left, arm right, cross hands, straight hey,

Fall back, cast off, cast up…

 

Weave Shrewsbury Lasses, Buttered Pease

transported to a pre-war dream

Sir Roger de Coverley leads

them home, All In A Garden Green.

 

 

The Patron Saint of Sunday Morning

 

A sky of milk and grey-pearl

droops to the streets, close

enough to touch, fine mizzle nets

my hair, damps cheeks and clothes;

 

lost clouds drift through the streets

like Sunday people: three fishermen

well-spaced on the old wharf, watching

the slow progress of the water;

 

one smudged-make-up girl shivers

in her red frock and high heels, walks

the walk of shame; an old street-sweeper

pockets Saturday night's dog-ends;

 

an earphoned jogger passes, intent

on muscle and thud; a dog-walker waits

by this morning's fifteenth tree; a woman

lights a candle in the cathedral, slow

 

over the flame; a man hunches in pain.

Each of us thought-wrapped, dressed

in a patina of drizzle, tenuous as ghosts.

This time, before clocks, before tea and toast,

 

before conversation has stretched itself

awake, is time to hear the sound

of our own footsteps echoing, unbroken

in the world. A paper boy heaves his load

 

of supplements, yawning; three blokes

in a white van light the first fag

of the day; I step round the pungent

droppings of the night-fox, the vomit

 

of revellers. A dumpy Indian woman

in a track-suit, carrying a bottle of water,

wishes me Good Morning and it falls

like a promise, a blessing on the day.

 

 

The Patron Saint of the Birds and Bees

 

I never write of sex, recalling earnest poets

both un-lovely and un-young who flashed

unwelcome images of heaving, sweaty, hairy,

wobbling flesh upon the mental retinas

of helpless listeners. Best draw

a minimum of seven opaque veils.

 

And yet I write now of the birds and bees

with total ignorance of insect

or avian reproduction - the where,

the how - but still with quiet gratitude

to their patron saint, who (without the help

of DVDs or books) instructs each tiny beating

heart how to proceed, to give us prickly

buzzes of desire, the sticky-sweet of honey,

rising notes of song and ecstasy of flight.

 

 

The Patron Saint of Naps

 

I'm going where the poker players go,

the night owls, bar maids, croupiers,

call girls, DJs , doctors, nurses,

all-night newsmen, anxious students.

 

I hear the sigh of bed springs over Spain,

Flamenco dancers kicking off their shoes,

the gentle snores of dreaming matadors

sleeping off Rioja drunk at noon.

 

I'm learning from the tabbys, Persians, mogs,

seeking out a sunny patch to curl,

indulge in wicked waste of working hours.

I'm going for a nap. Do not disturb.

 
 

And finally, a non-Patron Saint poem:

 

Whitstable 2010

 

I'm down the beach among the Kentish

geezers with their shaved-head kids

who hurl rocks into shallow waves

and at their brother's heads.

 

Mums hunker by the seaweed-festooned

groyne with beer and plastic bags

of sandwiches, spurn sun-cream,

tattooed backs and meaty cleavages

 

broiled red-raw, ignore the screams

of tough small girls in polkadot

pink swimsuits; nan teaching them

to fish for crabs off the breakwater.

 

I doze, secure as if I fitted in their world

as oysters in their shells, safe among families

from One End Street, echoes of terraces

where my dad grew up, voices from the 30's,

 

50's, 1890's, accents sharp as lathes,

dropped t's and h's littering the shore.

A whelk-weaned family, aspiration-free,

can stick two fingers at the rest,

 

sit back to watch the dinghies tack

against the wind, seagulls hang

effortless in the sky, the sea creep

forward up the shingle - as it was,

 

is now and ever shall be. Half in a dream

I hear them laying bets: if the incoming

tide will wake me first, or the nose

of their traditional wet dog.