Here are a few poems from my first collection…
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Black Dog Ode
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Late that evening, I came upon a stray dog
Waiting at the river, each hair upon its great form
Seemed to me as black as the deepest water
Resting in the silt.
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Although I am not one for superstition
There was an undeniable, uncanny thrill;
Death is said to accompany such creatures.
I put out my hand
.
Half in dread that it would find nothing but air.
Shocking it was for me, then, when the sure touch
Objects alone possess was all my fingers
Met, more terrifying
. ..
Than any insubstantial shade could be.
For what is more spectral than matter shorn of
Reflection, and felt without feeling? The ghost?
It is but a thing,
.
Dumb in its solidity. Why else is Shuck content
Only to stare and be still? My hand had stretched
Out beyond the want in which all life is steeped,
Grasped I know not what…
.
Look! I bring it forth that you might see. Shake it.
Can you feel the cold fire? For such a far flung thing
It is interesting how soon it comes upon one,
Carpal close at times.
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Here I take my leave. Care should be taken when
Walking at night, by rivers especially. The
Nub of our world should not be felt: it is a
Great black dog. Fare-well.
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A Cold Term at St. Pats
.
i
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In my father’s garden,
.
Under the water butt
and the bench,
The ground is
Granular,
Wet and black
.
And the witch hazel,
Thin and black
Against the snow,
Jumps like a bird.
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ii
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A boy, his trousers hitched
To his belly,
Thrusts his legs apart;
This is his game and I am not to play.
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A door opens violently
Against my shoulder.
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Two boys laugh.
Foul words are spoken
In the dormitories
At night.
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iii
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On a spring day,
Out on the boundary,
I minutely examine
The grass before me.
.
A little way off now I see
A snake’s skin
Three overs later
And it is in my hand.
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iv
.
I have made
A further discovery:
The treatment I receive
Is not typical.
Something
Has been seen…
.
v
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In a study,
With a little shelf of books
And water on a stove,
Wheeler’s legs, pulled up in
Warm and laundered uniform,
Set me alight,
.
And I know
With great certainty
That it is not for this
That I am singled out.
.
Rather, it is a question of order.
The pecking order.
I get it, of course,
But – terrible to say –
I see there is a sight
That fails to.
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Imagine
(I am thinking of the snake that got away…)
The beast that sees us
At our ceremonies,
Shorn of the differences
We hold dear.
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vi
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Evensong:
The Headmaster takes as his text
The blind of Isaiah.
I carry the skin in my pocket,
Now fallen apart.
I feel one scale
then another,
At each –
A mystery.
.
Earlier, in the bathroom
I held one to the light
and thought of
pots moving in winter
And clear spring air.
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vii
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Fielding wide once more,
My eyes close
And I raise my face to the sun,
Swearing allegiance
To the cold sight
That curls about the dorms,
Flicking its tail in the library,
Its tongue in chapel.
.
viii
.
I was wrong, of course:
The serpent goes unrecognised –
Ferociously so.
I am met with a blind passion
For I see
With immobilising clarity:
Schoolboys with
Scrubbed and bloody cheeks,
Wide collars
And exposed knees,
Hidden excitations
and doughy, fat-steeped thumbs;
Dorms of steaming wood and wool;
Bathrooms with frozen pipes;
The choir by candle light,
And on the cricket pitch
The distant uniformity of whites.
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This too I know:
Some of them
Will be swallowed whole.
.
ix
I am one of the few to travel home by train.
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My hope is – of course –
That scales might fall:
The garden in frost
Warm to my eyes;
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My head upon my mother’s arm
And my father singing;
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A walk across fields,
The girl I am to marry
riding by
Obby Robinson 