What You Are
you are the cat’s paw
among the silence of midnight goldfish
you are the waves
which cover my feet like cold eiderdowns
you are the teddybear (as good as new)
found beside a road accident
you are the lost day
in the life of a child murderer
you are the underwatertree
around which fish swirl like leaves
you are the green
whose depths I cannot fathom
you are the clean sword
that slaughtered the first innocent
you are the blind mirror
before the curtains are drawn back
you are the drop of dew on a petal
before the clouds weep blood
you are the sweetfresh grass that goes sour
and rots beneath children’s feet
you are the rubber glove
dreading the surgeon’s brutal hand
you are the wind caught on barbed wire
and crying out against war
you are the moth
entangled in a crown of thorns
you are the apple for teacher
left in a damp cloakroom
you are the smallpox injection
glowing on the torchsinger’s arm like a swastika
you are the litmus leaves
quivering on the suntan trees
you are the ivy
which muffles my walls
you are the first footprints in the sand
on bankholiday morning
you are the suitcase full of limbs
waiting in a leftluggage office
to be collected like an orphan
you are a derelict canal
where the tincans whistle no tunes
you are the bleakness of winter before the cuckoo
catching its feathers on a thornbush
heralding spring
you are the stillness of Van Gogh
before he painted the yellow vortex of his last sun
you are the still grandeur of the Lusitania
before she tripped over the torpedo
and laid a world war of american dead
at the foot of the blarneystone
you are the distance
between Hiroshima and Calvary
measured in mother’s kisses
you are the distance
between the accident and the telephone box
measured in heartbeats
you are the distance
between power and politicians
measured in half-masts
you are the distance
between advertising and neuroses
measured in phallic symbols
you are the distance
between you and me
measured in tears
you are the moment
before the noose clenched its fist
and the innocent man cried: treason
you are the moment
before the warbooks in the public library
turned into frogs and croaked khaki obscenities
you are the moment
before the buildings turned into flesh
and windows closed their eyes
you are the moment
before the railwaystations burst into tears
and the bookstalls picked their noses
you are the moment
before the buspeople turned into teeth
and chewed the inspector
for no other reason than he was doing his duty
you are the moment
before the flowers turned into plastic and melted
in the heat of the burning cities
you are the moment
before the blindman puts on his dark glasses
you are the moment
before the subconscious begged to be left in peace
you are the moment
before the world was made flesh
you are the moment
before the clouds became locomotives
and hurtled headlong into the sun
you are the moment
before the spotlight moving across the darkened stage
like a crab finds the singer
you are the moment
before the seed nestles in the womb
you are the moment
before the clocks had nervous breakdowns
and refused to keep pace with man’s madness
you are the moment
before the cattle were herded together like men
you are the moment
before God forgot His lines
you are the moment of pride
before the fiftieth bead
you are the moment
before the poem passed peacefully away at dawn
like a monarch
from The Mersey Sound, 1967
when I first read this poem in 1978 I was too young to let go associations enough to get the metaphor; after a lifetime of being obligated to associations which stood idly by while I wildly floundered without ground, I can let them go with glee and relish and relish the metaphors to the portrait’s content (… still not sure about the ‘lost day of the child murderer’, however, and I’m still not sure why I’m not sure, but I’m not; but I can’t think McGough just slipped up over one couplet … (and I can’t find any discussion of this line in the pages-that-proliferate-like-spores-wafted-across-their-own-private-amphitheatres))
————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–
books & love wormhole: `whappn’d!
buildings wormhole: cowled
city & windows wormhole: moon- // washed
clouds & green & silence & time & wind wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
curtains wormhole: ‘the Bat-Signal …’
dawn wormhole: between
death wormhole: beguiled / desire
eyes wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
feet wormhole: ‘oh my girls and muse …’
glasses wormhole: … the underleaves show
hands & water & world wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
leaves wormhole: sufficiently away
library wormhole: two profiles
mirror wormhole: DANSE RUSSE by William Carlos Williams
morning wormhole: TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE by William Carlos Williams
mother wormhole: granny
power wormhole: I
Spring & sun wormhole: SPRING STRAINS by William Carlos Williams
trees & voices & yellow wormhole: TREES by William Carlos Williams
walls wormhole: both modern and en-slaved / to life
war wormhole: to arms, then;
waves wormhole: Khandro Tsering Chodron
winter wormhole: where did the silence go
mlewisredford 