Glyn Maxwell Poems

Sundays, like a stanza break
Or shower's end of all applause,
For some old unexplaining sake
The optimistic tread these shores,
As lonely as the dead awake
Or God among the dinosaurs.
...

Something was done and she ran from a town
and I'm glad it was done or she wouldn't have come,
but she wouldn't have gone and she's long gone now,
so I'm wondering why and remembering how.

Her hair was the various colours of leaves
in the fall in a heap as we watched her asleep
and we stood there like words with the ink still wet,
as reminders of something she'd likely forget,

or read in the morning and scrunch in a ball.
Her eyes were so wide that they had a seaside
and a faraway sail in one eye then the other
till I envied my brother and I've not got a brother.

Her mouth had his shape that it made and you can't,
we tried it all week and our lower lips ached
as we pointed this out and she didn't know how
she was doing it. I'm sort of doing it now.

Her hands were so delicate delicate things
were careful with them and the length of her arm
was an hour when I saw it at rest on a sill
with a twig in its hand that's in my hand still

Her body was everything nobody knew
and discussed in the dark till it wasn't that dark
but her feet were so callused they made it clear
We two will be getting her out here.

Something was done and she ran from a town
and I'm glad it was done or she wouldn't have come,
but she wouldn't have gone and she's long gone now,
so I'm wondering why and remembering how.

You all have your tales and we too have a tale
in the form of a play that we stage in the day,
it's a play of the Lord, it's a play of the Word:
if it had to be written it has to be heard.

And we opened the barn for the costumes and sets
that have always been there and the dust on the air
would set us all sneezing and telling old jokes
of old times and old shows in old years with old folks.

And one was the Maker and one was the Man,
and one was the Angel and one was the Stranger,
and all the old lines were as fresh as cold beer
in a morning in March in that field over there.

But she was so puzzled her mouth did that thing
and her eyes were a mist and her hand was a fist
that she held to her chin till our play was complete.
Then she started to laugh. She was right by that gate.

It isn't for laughter we play in our show,
it's not at all funny. It isn't for money,
it isn't for love. But she laughed and her eyes
were the fog as it shrugs in the face of sunrise,

and her ribs were the sea in the shirt she wore:
we were sickened to follow its suck and its swell,
she was out of our reach, she had always been,
but that was our choice, if you see what I mean.

Something was done and she ran from a town
and I'm glad it was done or she wouldn't have come
but she wouldn't have gone and she's long gone now,
so I'm wondering why and remembering how.

Why are you laughing, we wanted to say
till one of us did and wanted to hide,
and her glistening eyes had no answer to that,
so we waited like birds for her swallowing throat

to be still and it was, and she stared at the ground
like a book of her own to be counted upon.
Everything here is made out of card.
Take light from the World and you're left with the Word

which she seemed to be trying to show in the dust
as we crowded to see and could never agree
what she said after that - that our Maker was sick
of his word? That our souls could be drawn with a stick?

That our Man was a rainbow, our Angel should hang?
Or the other way round? But whichever way round
there was nothing to do but the next thing we did,
which was take it in turns to repeat what she said

having tiptoed unnoticed away on our own
to the elders and olders who had to be told
what a creature she was and how little she knew
and how hard she was laughing and what she should do.

But I was among the ones crowding her light
so her shadow was gone but I wasn't the one
who asked her to tell us what should have been done,
in a voice with arms folded and uniform on.

Something was done and she ran from a town
and I'm glad it was done or she wouldn't have come,
but she wouldn't have gone and she's long gone now,
so I'm wondering why and remembering how.

And she asked her to say what the Maker would say
and a few ran away. I did not run away
but I want to have done, so I sit on this gate
where there's nothing to wait for at all and I wait.

And she looked at who'd said it and looked at who'd not
and she stood and she started to speak from her heart
what the Maker would say. I can say this to you.
For who lives in this shell of a town but we two?

The elders assembled like stones in a boat
but it sailed as it could, while it could, when it could,
and then I saw nothing and now I see all
and I wait and there's nothing to wait for at all.

And the wind caught the fire with the last of its strength,
the fire they began for what had to be done,
but the fire caught the town and it burned in my eyes
till my eyes were the desert an hour from sunrise.

And I talk of we two, but it's me on this gate,
with an echo of wind when the song has an end,
but the wind didn't do what I too didn't do,
and we won't breathe a word till there's reason to.
...

Flags line up an hour before they're chosen,
wave back along the row at others like them.
Candles sit in boxes or lie still,

sealed, and each imagines what will happen.
Flags will not accept the explanation
of why they were not needed as they are now.

Candles feel they're made of stuff that's soft
for a good cause, though maybe not their own cause.
Tall flags love all flags if it's their flags.

Small flags are okay about immense flags.
Candles doze in xylophones of colour,
Thrilled their purpose maybe merely pattern.

Flags are picked out one by one. The others
muster in the gap and say Gap, What gap?
Candles dream of something that will change them,

that is the making of and death of candles.
Flags don't dream of anything but more flags.
The wind is blowing; only the landscape changes.

Candles have the ghost of an idea
exactly what the wick is for: they hope so.
Flags have learned you can't see flags at nighttime,

no way, not even giants in a windstorm.
Candles learn that they may do their damnedest
and go unnoticed even by old candles.

When I wave flags, flags think it's the world waving
while flags are holding fast. When I light candles,
candles hold the breath that if it came

would kill them; then we tremble like our shadows.
Flags know nothing but they thump all morning.
Candles shed a light and burn to darkness.
...

MR D

the doctor was my doctor
the doctor was
there was the different doctor
the different doctor there
the different
he had the best results
he had the best results
he had the best
they never come the same
people never come here
people come here
two ladies held the picture
of the boy beside the seaside
to be beside
to be beside I
buy him the ice-cream!
buy him the ice-cream
beside the side I
said I have the things
I have the things
there's money in the land
to buy the things but no
beside they say no
they fold the boy away
in the white ice-cream book
in the white book
the different doctor closing
time in the white book
the doctor is my doctor
where is my white doctor
who comes who came before
no one ever
comes who came before
...

Granted that your guess is as good as mine
Here's mine. It happened like this in a vale in sunshine
Or moonshine. What it was was one was gone
...

When a poet leaves to see to all that matters,
nothing has changed. In treasured places still
he clears his head and writes.
...

Test for the Old Smile, they're going to roast it—
it'll have to keep its ends up all night,
for the secretary says she finds it creepy,
and the golfing partner says you got that right,

and the rival says it's fake, and the ambitious
junior makes his point with a few slides,
and the protege the Smile was always sweet to
walks up and says it turns his insides.

They harp on it, the bosses and the buddies,
and things get even better by these lights,
which is to say it's shredded like a secret,
which is to say it's one of the great nights;

and folks are saying so while they're still roasting:
they cry out to the Smile and it smiles back,
like something huge is burdening a hammock,
or is until you hear a frightful crack.—

And then you better run like you saw nothing.
And then you better run like you weren't there.
There is a line, it's long and isn't smiling.
You won't believe me when I tell you where.
...