Tom Roder      Poetry
  1962 - 1997                         << Back

Special Weather   [1990]

ANGLES

1. Wad of Thrushes
2. Bagpipes
3. Like / Unlike
4. Triangular Epiphany
5. Topiarist
6. Lightbulb
7. Window Howl
8. Death and the Maidens
9. Pistolling Father
10. Interlayered
11. Jonathan's Last Day

MAINLY LOVE SONGS

1. Hungarian Songs
2. Sorrow and Love
3. Two People
4. Shopping Trip
5. Long Clay Pipe
6. Twelve Ordinary Passions
7. Time Of Fevers
8. The Net
9. Suppose there is something wiry and excellent about her
10. Her Hair (& Eagle Kiss)
11. Because
12. Natasha's Chair
13. Oval Table
14. Knot and Bend
15. The blue yard buzzes
16. Miracle
17. Bad Wish
18. Horror Film
19. Even Marat
20. Lines from a Hospital bed
21. Nothing Unreal
22. Throbs And Avalanches

ANGELS

1. Archangel
2. Tabernacle
3. Edmund Blunder, his soul
4. Decided to Rain
5. Ship
6. Erection Cream
7. Free

to the memory of Walter Melville Chopin
'Bob'

to the memory of Edna Furniss nee Primrose
'Liz'

ANGLES

Wad Of Thrushes

A wad of thrushes
landed on my lap,
it seemed to devolve
itself, unravel itself.

In those days it
was neither polite
nor helpful to
appear interested or
concerned so

I hardly noticed
that the wad stirred,
a wing made an angle,
a thrush was alive.

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Bagpipes
for the sculpture Caius Gabriel Cibber

Its hard
to carve
bagpipes
out of
stone.

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Like / Unlike

Words fill a page like
rainwater fills a glass;
if the paper breaks
the words drip to the earth.

Love pumps the heart like
air pumps the car's tyre;
if the love runs out
lovers skid on glass shards.

Cacti stand still like
boys in corridors;
if polished well
cacti can slide along.

Crazy horses neigh like
whiskey kicks old men
when their wives are porched
the horses neigh again.

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Triangular Epiphany

There was this poet and
suddenly he saw three
currants set in a lemony
bun - they stopped him
in his tracks.

They described an
equilateral triangle
on the surface of
the fusty bun.

And for a moment,
remembering that he
was in Egypt with its
pyramids and happened
to be wearing his
tricorner hat, he

sighed at the
symmetry and beauty
of it all -
his hands on his
hips - his arms
making triangles.

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Topiarist

And each step has to be
bigger than the last;
a terrible strain
on the knee joints

For this is progress;
zooming on tip-toe
round dishevelled gardens
our hearts free-float.

Topiary is a
sort of way out;
you jitter up ladders
snapping at privet.

As you make your shapes
a view is afforded;
through the peacock's tail
hesitate couples.

Over there the maze
breeds polite confusion;
slap-stick dreams in a
world of hedges.

I'm amazed that some
nudge nervously at
flower beds, "Is it
all right to admire?"

The green-house poses
another question;
does a house of glass
lend pornography?

Frond upon frond upon
frond - the wildedrness
encroaches - my job
is safe, at least.

At evening-meal work
is not discussed;
a token rose weaves
its abstruse promise.

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Lightbulb

How many country-and-western singers does
it take to change a lightbulb?

Seven. One to actually change it and six to sing
about how good the old one used to be.

There was no lightbulb when
Laforgue cried out in agony
in the garden over a
misplaced kerchief.

When Emily first had the idea
of lightbulbs as ear-rings
a thousand crows found their way
to Tennessee.

Two lightbulbs proud of
their penumbras
cavort in misery on
their flex.

A lightbulb hid under
a night of snow;
an unknowing poet
shattered it.

A lightbulb buried
itself in the prairies;
it wasn't much use
without its flex.

A conceited lightbulb
almost thought the
power station was just
for it.

Lightbulbs on Christmas
trees chatter with the
cold; or anyway
tinkle.

We grow old
we grow old
fifteen billion
lightbulbs sold.

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Window Howl

Window howls up hillside,
our love froze in the
space of a clock.

If we were farceurs
it would be different,
laughter would heat boredom.

Whispers of dust
in a French garden
collect without reason.

A dagger or pistol
could excite death-thoughts,
neither available.

Japanese rest heads
against paper walls,
it is not our life.

God built this kingdom
with bricks, sinews, kisses,
I once read.

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Death and the Maidens

Poor Schubert in 1828
was eclipsed by a pair
of giraffes; those
crazy Viennese.

The maidens wouldn't
glance at Schubert, at
thirty-one, syphilitic,
consumptive, he

lightened his mood with
The Last of the Mohicans,
lit a last pipe and
passed on.

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Pistolling Father

I pistolled my father
a shiver of water
tweaked across the kitchen
and filled, filled his soft ear.

And this was before he
took the hedge-trimmer and
zoomed it up and down leaving
bits of hedge and dust on me
where I leaned on a rake.

I am twenty-six.
I wondered what it would be like
to watch a spider with patience.

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Interlayered

Here I am packed,
interlayered flesh
and lies:

a drunken smile
without being
drunk,

a juggler's hands
forced into
pockets,

a clown's mind
tilted on one
shoulder.

Twitch of cheek,
rub of finger,
dark wink.

Your lids heavy
butterflies, mine
shutters.

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Jonathan's Last Day
for J. Brookes

i Amazed

You were right to be amazed by the difference
between the middle of Sheffield and the middle
of Derbyshire.

ii Telly

And as we walked from Higger Tor
feeling good and even stopping to look at
the man from Nottingham with the blue hang-glider
you began to talk about your telly-deprived childhood
and how you had been left with a 'fatal
fascination' which you have to fight off,
even now, by not having a telly.

Simple Ian's (or was it Keith's) family had one,
and while you were failing your eleven plus he
ran around screaming "Cheyenne's coming!"

iii The Swimming Pool Café

Even those very strong cups of tea
couldn't stop us jolting when
that Wagnerian maiden with everything
bar the horns marched from
the yellow door to the serving counter
and began her shift.

She was more than equal to the job
when someone ordered four cod and chips.

iv Betrayal

Why did you feel it such a betrayal and lie down
in your labourer's jacket, flat on your back?

I know you would have preferred to perch above the valley
sifting the words 'pre-historic' and 'pagan'
but we did have a bus to catch

v The Last Night (& Drunk With It)

I walked past 'Concept House' with the poet Jonathan.
"You know these accountants, architects, designers Tom?
One day they'll work us out. Then we're fucked!"

Later I hugged him at the bottom of the grave-yard;
it was his last 'official' day here.
 

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MAINLY LOVE SONGS

Hungarian Songs
for Nagyi

I
There was a man
with a curly beard
climbed a tree
fell into the mud

two dogs dragged him
the third savaged him
wrapped in a winding sheet
taken to the cemetery

II
It is night now, late night
shepherds fires are burning in the distance
far, far away across a boundary
to a lower country

quietness lives there
as in a cemetery

III
Walked to Pesterzsebet
the river rolled to Germany
my body itched like mad
walking fighting sleeping

IV
I turned into the kitchen
to light my pipe
or I would have
but it was already lit because
from the pub I saw
there in the kitchen
was a pretty girl

V
Soldier-uncle hop hop hop
give me some of your hard biscuit

if you don't I will break your window,
he who doesn't keep in step
won't have strudel that night
yet strudel is very good
too good for soldiers

VI
I was thinking, a fox and a rabbit,
but it was not a fox and a rabbit,
but a woman and a gentleman jumping
out of a bush.

VII
There are yellow birds' nests
in the poplar avenues.
Dear angel I love you so.
The birds fly up there so easily
but I can never visit your house.

VIII
A wedding in our street,
the nicest girl in the village
gets married.
I have an invitation also,
but I won't go even if they
ask me a hundred times.

IX
Blue lake, you're too much for my heart.
Give me her back
and take this rose instead.

X
The moor gets yellow,
the vagabond gets grey,
the woman doesn't even
look at him.
He doesn't wait for
more summers.
He has nobody,
only his pipe and
a glass of wine.

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Sorrow and Love

My sorrow is as big as a ranch
what use is it that cattle graze there?

My hand is as big as the Pampas
and yellow with Marigold kitchen gloves.

My mother is warm as Mercury
and spins gently to the hospital.

My life is a ledge of soft dust
bearing the imprint of my soul.

Love is the only thing that matters
and this stone in my hand smells of the sea.
 

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Two People

Two people giggling along a path,
they walk towards me.

They're really talking joyously,
I know them! But usually
they're sad and stern …

I'm glad I caught them
off-guard and alone.

I slip behind a tree.
 

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Shopping Trip

I'm glad I have nothing to buy,
this gives me an absolute
freedom between the hack-saws
and shirt-racks to think
about you.
 

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Long Clay Pipe

I touched a car that was a hearse,
with two pine coffins on the front seats
and one of them driving
and one of them looking for signs.

I heard my father on a horse,
he spurred it on into a sunset
and sang an unknown cowboy song.
He wouldn't look into my eyes.

I saw a man smoking a long clay pipe,
he had just got up from breakfast
and when he leaned against the door-jamb,
well, that pipe, it went from room to room.

I found my brother with an angel,
and they played cards at a table,
the angel with its wings unfurled,
Between them was a score-sheet.

I smelled a long road not quite made,
with an old man standing on a pyramid of gravel,
and he reckoned, but might have been wrong,
and the road led to a brewery.

I met my mother with a textbook,
and it held a million meanings,
and they all added up,
but she was without her glasses.

I lived a bride in a cream bridal gown
and she stood on an aisle,
upon an aisle that traversed a hillock,
a hillock that held a blushing groom.

I held my lover in the doldrums,
she was powdering her face
trying to look like Grimaldi
but the face was painted wrong.

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Twelve Ordinary Passions

Twelve ordinary passions
form me, rive me,
melt me down.

In fact, make that
thirteen.

I spade them up,
carry them in a
bucket, or enter

them into a
ledger that has
dog-ears like

the corner of panties being
pulled down.

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Time Of Fevers

So much saintliness
in this time of fevers,
where do they find the
time and the passion?

Our first love was the
grey path which led somewhere
else, it was always our
way to hunt the distance.

The only memory I keep,
a girl disappearing
on a fast train,
I don't want to keep.

If I keep up the charm
at this level its going
to kill me, please let me
jump on you.

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The Net

The hairs on the yellow comb
provide our throne, the mosquito net
marks our kingdom, we're so sure
and proud, our demi-urge sinks
into silence and the ten-thousand
year old man can delight but
not enter.

The games we play go no-where
except when you blush through
your nineteen disguises, then you're
red. I'm smug.
For the rest your teeth are sharp,
your lines are soft and no equation
fits between.

Sometimes a bird will twitter on
a high branch, our faces lift to
frame a meaning. There only seems
one way to look and even if we
stretched to more the pecking
round our hearts would still remain
terrific.

Once we counted so many angles,
broke so many twigs, drank chocolate.
conferred with angels.
A remnant, the foot-bone of St. Mark,
we place on the book-shelf near
Theology; we haven't got the heart
to read much more.

Not far from our net is the
neat dust of ancestors; so many
idiosyncrasies lifted by a breeze;
Samuel's stoop, Sarah's sadness,
Nathan's running nose, Timothy's tic;
the dance of dust brings them
together.

Come on run after me you crazy girl!
Bring the scissors, let's cut the net!
Let's swim, drive the buggy over
the dunes, meet Stanley, eat far too much,
kick the sand in each other's face,
uncork the bottle! What are you
waiting for?

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Suppose there is something wiry and excellent about her

Suppose there is something wiry and excellent about her,
more than that take the word 'atrocity' and bend it backwards
so it rests on a soft 'o', twigged, engulfing, bright, forgetful.
Have you ever shelved yourself on the softest red belly hair,
felt a hand sliding in a tight pool so your eyelid flashes
against another eyelid that means the same thing so gentle?

This began with a dance, a rowing around sort of dancing,
of succulent prows intent to let the flesh articulate
the bones. (It felt like that.) The night melanic, fidgety, fused
when I felt this idea-child, this lovely mouth-news becoming
definite, attachable; she was there sipping lemonade
or something mixed which made her look to me soft, urgent, amused.

Then she left between records, disappeared in a cliff of coats
emerging like soft Susannah, the Moonstone in one pocket.
I wondered what Larry 'I Hate Crime' Kent might have done tonight
and taking the first bush for a flame I fled this tribe of goats,
ran through a nervy tunnel and emerged as Conrad put it
in half-light, twilight, street-light, car-light, singing, buzzing delight.

And she like the tall girl at a party in Copenhagen
who ate the cubes of ham, drifting, before the cubes of cheese, still
fell into an aisling the width of a stream, the height of pines
so that only my 'Hard-Nosed Reality' could mute the lens,
wrapping the elf-breath into a hanky, ready for the kill
or more tentatively, should I say, the killing in my lines?

Slowly, slowly, slowly, clicking, clicking, and for those Moderns
like two tractor feeds ticking out delicate, punch-holed paper,
we moved together. I could see her nubbed and private splendours;
pleats, folds and buttons, weaves and creases, lemons, reds and goldens;
all the intimacies of clothes ruffled and closed but later
unravelling; and then I saw the glisten of the sender.

If you've ever seen the hard green promise of a new acorn
heraldic and bemused, a king of ditch, bad-water, leaf mulch
you'll know what she meant to me in that stone doorway undersky
muffled with sooty eyebrows, orange lips, eyes the tone of dawn,
clasping a stubby lime umbrella, quivering to her pulse,
hoofing on the spot gently for warmth, feeling the night untie.

Have you ever felt entirely wobbly, spinning on the floor
of a strange dark kitchen with one small table, nineteen big chairs?
For that's where I was minutes later in bent mottled armour
with her bending in a fat white gown, now nearer, now nearer.
And the gown began to melt like butter sliding off pears
and I tried to hold the movements of this deliberate charmer.

Tusked and dandy, their toe-nails pared, a million elephants
pranced around the kitchen walls, coagulated on the chairs
and like grey ice-cream drip-dropped on the ornate linoleum
with shrunken trunks and frayed ears, lacking thunder, the size of ants
sapless and afraid; and I shivered to the tip of my hairs:
Fearless lover! A South Yorkshire goof with a six-bore shot-gun!

And this was love, radical, unbecoming, by a fridge's hum.
Up the crooked stairs to a bed the breadth of Argentina
and we divested and rolled like fairy cakes in a sea-storm;
tossed and sticky, younger than our love-ways, having 'lots of fun'.
Suppose there is something wiry and excellent about her
and so ticklish and breathing; love love love love love love sea born.

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Her Hair (& Eagle Kiss)

Her hair whispers water
as she slides around the panelled house,
her soft hilly hair tumbles
with her shoulders. Her hair
buzzing, tinkling in the daylight.
Her heavy golden light hair breaking
this back of poem and I fall close …

I gave you a kiss the size
of an eagle wing and none
the wiser could explain it

… your king cascades of hair.

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Because

Because she loved me
for what I was
rather than for
what I wasn't

I gave her
a painted egg, so
fragile, and well
painted that she

bought me a new
shirt, so white
and fine that
both our gifts

seemed to be
far more than the sum of
their parts.

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Natasha's Chair

This wood is now
still, no longer
waves and bruises and
grazes itself against

September light,
December winds …
In February
the woodman

de-sapped and seasoned
a dozen planks,
cut, bent, planed
and pinioned,

sanded, varnished,
presented them as
Natasha's Chair;
veined legs planted on

a polished floor.
The oak vertebrae
interlaced with yew
invite the back of you

to rest your arms upon
the arms, intertwine
legs with legs and sit
in the veranda

watching waving trees.

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Oval Table

We compose our love round an oval table,
more complex than other loves our
space of love, the oval table.

Your feet meet my feet and the lion's
feet, all of us quiet, poised, urgent,
'Hush baby,' like an engraving on brown paper.

Wonder we're warm and close-textured?
Every grain is my grain, every grain is your
grain. Two green trees. And your warm
dry hand moves down and down.

Near the bed the oval table
and you set down the drinks and your
eyes are suddenly dark and that kiss

held us so silent for long enough
'Say something, say anything …'

But your mind was warm and empty,
my mind was warm and empty,
the candle sucked out its flame
and a million miles held us.

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Knot and Bend

Knot the cool body round the tree
tear off the dripping costume
pull away the red nylon
wrap your legs around the cool bark
sing of the sea;
a madness to plunge
when the emerald leaves lay frozen
trapped in spirals of ice.

So good it was to dip and shiver
your elbows bluing beneath the moon
dark hair-line cutting the neck of you.

A pebble skidded away from your toes
as you wrapped your robe about you
laughing and shivering, bending.

I bend with you
rest my head on your back
squeeze you towards me so we
topple and wrestle on the wet sand
in a hungry crazy way
watching the fishes dazzle the black lapping water
and the small crabs nip moonlight at the edge of rock pools.

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The Blue Yard Buzzes

                             its summer my baby
                   nose is twitching by the garbage cans in the blue-yard
                   mid-day let's move to that strip of grass near where
Deborah pretends to grow vegetables her light hair
descending down her back & you come closer because
I whisper you can't quite hear me I've got you
by the shoulders & you're hardly wearing any dress so
I slide down a little and kiss you plum in the middle of
your back warm and scented like summer & you wriggle

how strong you are

                   I'm glad you're strong wouldn't want
a weak girl. Arm wrestle? Well I won but you were close
No really you were
                   Try the left arm? Only just won

Look there's Pete with a wheelbarrow
he certainly knows how to wheel it well-balanced
                   his tyre's a little flat
                   I'll lend him my pump.

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Miracle

The miracle is she loves you
and you stand there like a wooden toy.
She said she 'loves you'. and her
cool hand is carefully moving closer.
Two children with copper hair
run by and your heart turns
black, you can't say why,
but you're a picador and there's
a bullfight in your head.

Hell! You're so lonely and wish
you didn't know this girl so well

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Bad Wish

When I said you were a violin;
your forehead a fretboard,
your ears bridges,
your hair scroll-work,
I meant it in friendship.

Then I spent a day in the loft,
sprinkled water on the floor and
swept out snakes of dust, sorted wood,
imagined carpets.

You wished clubfeet on me;
that I should walk my days
with perambulators full of dust
so even the rags in passages
would seem clean and firm.
As my wheels jumped the kerbs
puffs of dust would coat my tongue,
darken my shirt front.

Why?

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Horror Film

My heart is a horror film;
God I could stretch out
on your white tiles and wait
among the thudding music for
green woodpecker or other signs
to peck through our window.

The towels are folded stupidly,
damply, heavy. My eyelids bear
your fingerprint.

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Even Marat

The twist of your love
guillotines me so
much I walk around
a purple cushion.

Even Marat with
one arm dripping out
of the tub slants his
dead eyes to my pain.

When I fell on you
gently my arms held
my weight from your face,
and it was all wrong.

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Lines from a hospital bed

It was always like you
to introduce an idea like
lebensraum and
the next day introduce
me to an architect

It was to be a cube
of glass ten by ten by
ten just for you,
adjoining our communal
space of shared brick.

Here you would do whatever
you wanted; have your own
ideas, make your own things
without interferences,
doubt or praise.

You dotted miniature
conifers outside in
neat white pots and grew
geraniums within.
I could see and smell them.

Through the partition I
couldn't help watching you
in a new light living
and working on your new
whatever.

Cleverly I dubbed your
space the terranium
or The Insect House,
You did not seem to mind
but, then, you weren't clever.

Your back, your elbows and
your hands shielded your work.
You made a dark
shadow on the desk and
your ears were transparent.

Only once I managed
to spy your title page
when it was lifted
by a gentle breeze:
'Demolishing The Brick Bit'.

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Nothing Unreal

I'm glass that's tinkled
out of tune. Remember
the loft?

Your long grey dress,
your hair parted, you wet,
me hot, my heart like
a bird in a thin skin.

And the whole of Sheffield
out there like some
miniature delight.

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Throbs And Avalanches

Throbs and avalanches,
we stand in a pine village
saying the snow is
pretty and dangerous.

Horst can flick five
beer-mats and when I,
a girl, look at him
I blush.

Blush, blush …
against the snow. "Now
my cherry," says Horst.
We both stand at the peak.

Horst knows Mathilde
naked in her cabin;
I am a young girl
here for the snow.

Nothing happens;
I am a virgin
standing at the peak
learning to ski.

I blush and blush.
Throbs and avalanches.
Horst is by my side,
nothing happens.

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ANGELS

Archangel

An archangel in the middle of
well-dressers, for strange
things happen.

And they're arguing despite
the archangel, tussling with
tuberoses.

Why? From my car window
its hard to say; I step out,
walk forward.

Everything changes - a small
girl has grazed her knee.
That's all.

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Tabernacle

Our feet are trapped in
nonchalance and
our hands can hardly
find business to do.

Under the goat
we heave our destinies;
a minuet in lead
for the Brass Section.

When we have pared
every motion to the
study of the lily's
root we might kiss

worms longingly and
break our eyelids
in a tabernacle
of dust.

No wonder our
major-domo bends
round a quietude of
pillows, sobbing.

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Edmund Blunder, his soul

Edmund Blunder, his soul
as big as an anchovy
crashes among crockery
reading Isiah, 'Howl,
O gate; cry, O city'.

How has God prepared him
for two wayward children,
a spit-and-polish wife?
'Seek unto wizards that peep.'
Where are the wizards that peep?

The terrain of the sideboard
includes a hump-back clock,
its hands like finger-bones,
'the burden of the
valley of visions.'

The moon fingers the
window-pane. A cup
of moonlight balanced
on your tweed skirt hung
in a howling kitchen.

The stars clunk and clink
over the drawbridge;
Edmund's eye glimmers
A feathered silence.

'For it is a people
of no understanding
therefore he that made them
will not have mercy on them.'
A bad show.

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Decided to Rain

It decided to rain,
or did 'it'?
Wasn't it rather the
heavens that tilted
their brimful pouches
and cups haphazardly?

Anyway we were
below with a picnic;
the heavy drops fell
through the oaks; hit
our porcelain, our
outstretched legs
and made our bright straw
basket darker.

A friend and colleague
stumbled up, his pockets
jangling and said,
"I've had enough;
let's head for that
church and lunch on
the pews."

The lightening was
frightening;
it lit up the church
and made our golden
chicken legs silver.

When the thunder came
the prayer-books seemed
to hop heavenwards and
our knees vibrated on
the cushions.

Humbolt wound up the
car and soon a dirge
of umbrellas made its
way home.

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Ship

We built a ship
to hide our scars
out of scented timber.

A thousand of us
carried it down the
street - our heads askance
behind the funnels.

Against the mopped deck
one thousand partings
caught the sun so
white and straight like
A-roads after salt and snow.

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Erection Cream

"Where's the erection-cream?"
screamed Frumilla as if
that was the only problem
in this house of pine.

My eyes on the ceiling rose,
my body a great fat whiteness;
Frumilla scurried over the cabinets
with her one, contorted problem.

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Free

Gone are the days of need;
astrolabe & pudenda,
dividers & penis-point,
other erotic cosmologia.

Now we have an infinite freedom
to project our end whether
sautéed by mushroom cloud
or writhing with poisons.

"Free,"
he licked his lips.

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