David Cooke Poems

The closest my dad ever got to poetry
was when he savoured some word
like pugilist, or the tip-toe springiness
he sensed in bob and weave,
...

There are times your dancers annihilate
the humanist in me. In that northern
Cockaigne you viewed with a realist's eye
their heartiness tramps to raucous tuning.
...

Old photos soften the lines on their creased
faces, the indelible imprint of seasons.
They are ranged before me, The Bird People,
in a phoney pose for tourists, well used
...

for my grandfather

When I first came on a visit
to your limewashed house
...

From compartment windows
they were fake, too far away
to be real. Friesians, shorthorns,
angus: painted cows
...

So long abandoned, their house and garden
lay caged in the tangle of briars. As a child
I looked for secrets, creating new lives
each visit from what they had left behind -
...

A lustreless
black, it slept all night
in a shed with the relics
...

Her hand at the door, my aunt
said quietly: He's going
then urged me in to speak.
Why? for I found him there
...

With sturdy jowls Brother Athanasius,
who back then we knew as Beef, chomped great slabs
of Virgil, which he digested for us,
struggling with the English in Brodie's cribs.
...

In a windowless room they had laid you out
in a crisp white bed of linen.
Packed tight in a huddle around you,
...