Jacob Polley

That's the way the money goes . . . Trad.


Up and down the London Road
blinder by the hour
I spent as much
again as we owed
white winter flowers

Crowds and crowds like fallen leaves
blown between the towers
you came in
with the cold up your sleeves
white winter flowers

Screams and shouts and broken things
now you're fired and cower
under the sheets
when the postman brings
white winter flowers

Who'd have dreamt a little twist
could turn your sweet breath sour
I tasted this
when we first kissed
white winter flowers

For your whole heart is half my heart
my heart is half of yours
so we're neither complete
and lie drunk in the street
white winter flowers
...

You hold it like a lit bulb,
a pound of light,
and swivel the stunned glow
around the fat glass sides:

it's the sun, all flesh
and no bones
but for the floating
knuckle of honeycomb.
...

There's a man in you, his face like melted tallow,
for yours are the old words and yours the old
unusable, soot-grimed things. I spy you tonight,
one night from full, through a pair of cheap binoculars,
hauling up the mountainside your gong of chalk.
If there were a pond nearby upon whose surface
you might lean your subtle silver highness,
I would try to gaff and grapple you, out of courtesy,
for some nights there's more bulge to the seas,
more reflectance from your coal-bright craterscape.
But tonight unreason separates from reason,
as oil from water, dark from light, bedspread
from blackout cloth, your reflection from yourself,
O creamy, scraped-out shell of a king crab caught
off a north-east sea-coal beach, no less a beach
for glittering black, its anthracitic curve laid
down along the length of my occluded early mind
at grandpa's house in Newbiggin where at night
I heard the harbour bell clonk like a bell around
a black goat's neck. O caprine sea! O grandpa dark!
There's a moonlight man with cords of silk who binds
the destined together, but tonight my mind's
undone, great turner-away, O whole of holes,
walnut of night! You turn the tides, so give me blisters,
burn my retinas, break my heart; prove by silence
that the mouth that speaks the moon should whisper.

The night is still. The stars are fixed.
You are the moon, your silver dress,
your disappearing constancy.
The night is still. The stars are fixed:
we move through phases of the flesh.
...

Although a tide turns in the trees
the moon doesn't turn the leaves,
though chimneys smoke and blue concedes
to bluer home-time dark.

Though restless leaves submerge the park
in yellow shallows, ankle-deep,
and through each tree the moon shows, halved
or quartered or complete,

the moon's no fruit and has no seed,
and turns no tide of leaves on paths
that still persist but do not lead
where they did before dark.

Although the moonstruck pond stares hard
the moon looks elsewhere. Manholes breathe.
Each mind's a different, distant world
this same moon will not leave.
...

the first trees were felled
and sailed in, wrecked, then slept
an age in the northern sun, blackening
to iron were found by horsemen
leading their horses and raised as
cloud's axles, rafters of night, a god's gates
were passed through, seen
from miles off, rolled the sun
and moon along their lintels, rooted,
put out leaves for a second time
creaked, tasted the rain, held
the wind to their hearts while
the horsemen streamed like
their horses' manes
into the dark, their fires
black smudge in the subsoil, their bridles
of gold underground

lived long, grew great
were a second time
felled, dressed were sharpened to stakes
and raised as a fort
by farmers who'd followed their ploughs
to the treeline for fuel
to bake the pots
their ashes were buried in
with a scattering of grain
like stars each small clay
heaven still hangs in the earth

were overgrown,
steered clear of
called dragon's ribs
devil's cot were nested among, rotted
down beside
harbored foxglove, eggshell
owl pellet, primrose, honeycomb

were glazed, split
put out buds of malachite, blossoms
of salt, grew again, put out
small translucent fruits named
by the women who prized them
teardrops, ice apples, clarities
were offered bread,
dolls of woven grass, plaits of hair, coins
with the obverse ground smooth, beads
of  turquoise

twisted, straightened, filled
with rooks, held again
the wind to their hearts, creaked, scraped
off the sunlight's scales with their leaves, were
a grove, grew
manes of lichen, were murmured
under, gave counsel on still nights
of open doorways the dead came through
on horseback or shouldering flails or bearing chimes
of ice apples gave shelter
were felled for it, their roots
ripped up by a legion's engineers
and left like brainstems
rucked on the earth

were timber but the pit saws
snarled in their rings of iron
broke teeth on the flints
that welted their sapwood
were good
for nothing, stacked, fired, marched
away from, sucked up the flames,
hissed, smoked, glowed blood-
black, were tempered, twice-
forged bided
on site as battle-stain,
in story as Head Wood

lay half-buried, grown over, still hot
were stumbled upon
by navigators, hit
with hammers and rang
until they were made lock gates
to slam
shut on the slow wet
grew green, slime-
faced, knew runoff, weird particulates,
held fast against drizzle's
tonnage, the nudge
and bonk of a bloater were left
stinking when the water died

stood strange in currents
of deep grass, open wide
flexed, hungered once more
for the light, bulged, branched, rived
out of their lacquer, unfurled
leaves of oilskin, shook down clots
of blossom lived
long, grew great
weren't felled but walled in, roofed
over, giving span
to a farmhouse, hanging
a hall from their outstretch, bracing floor
after floor on their inosculating
joists, which sang
to a barefoot tread and were called
home of shadows heart of the wind
Lamanby
...

I wanted bed, roast beef and rain,
to wear the clothes I'd left behind
and have them make me think again
steadily, with a civil mind.

There were my trousers, leather belts,
my ironed shirts and rank of shoes.
Those things I heard and saw and smelt
were over there, beyond the news.

I had hot water, stuff to buy
and, when I checked, the groove impressed
around my head and over my eyes
by armour borne so long was less.

On orange nights I stood outside
and listened to the city roar.
I liked the way peace brutalised
yet no one asked what peace was for.

If they had, I wouldn't have said,
though not because I didn't know:
sheep and shearing, cows and sheds,
honeybees and hives of gold -

on desert time I'd read old books
while sand blew through and sagged the tent.
But back here all those combs and crooks
no longer meant what they had meant,

as if the words I strove to taste
through dust were sweeter for their age
only when being bordered waste.
I'd shake my torch for one more page

and when it died into the dark
I'd lie awake inside the hiss
until my waking came apart
and aimless dreams undid my fists.

Home: I'd thought I'd held the place
through firestorm and sneak attack
while all the time I'd fought to lose
any hope of coming back.

My mind made home somewhere else,
and so my strangeness strikes me down
while wearing clothes I'd left on shelves
for some return far from my own.
...