Paul Farley Poems

How good we are for each other, walking through
a land of silence and darkness. You
open doors for me, I answer the phone for you.
...

Shorter than the blink inside a blink
the National Grid will sometimes make, when you'll
turn to a room and say: Was that just me?

People sitting down for dinner don't feel
their chairs taken away/put back again
much faster that that trick with tablecloths.

A train entering the Olive Mount cutting
shudders, but not a single passenger
complains when it pulls in almost on time.

The birds feel it, though, and if you see
starlings in shoal, seagulls abandoning
cathedral ledges, or a mob of pigeons

lifting from a square as at gunfire,
be warned it may be happening, but then
those sensitive to bat-squeak in the backs

of necks, who claim to hear the distant roar
of comets on the turn - these may well smile
at a world restored, in one piece; though each place

where mineral Liverpool goes wouldn't believe
what hit it: all that sandstone out to sea
or meshed into the quarters of Cologne.

I've felt it a few times when I've gone home,
if anything, more often now I'm old
and the gaps between get shorter all the time.
...

Guardian of the date-stamp and card catalogue,
keeper of knowledge, and a staff notice-board
pinned with drunks and men who lick the atlases,
go with me while I Tipp-Ex-out the bogies
and spray Glade in the newspaper section.
Curmudgeon, teach me how to smile while fining
the sinners who have lately been in hospital,
who were struck dumb by lightning, or forgot.
Teach me to bear their crumbs and bookmarks
with the fortitude for which you are not famous:
the bus tickets, postcards, rashers of bacon
and once - give me strength - a knotted condom.
Gatekeeper, watch over books on loan;
their months of purgatory spent in bath steam
or under beds. Watch over those abandoned
on bus seats or park benches. Heal the torn.
Take them back from houses with the measles.
Inform Environmental Health at once.
And teach me to work with an abrupt demeanour,
And the martyrdom of the index, which was yours;
to speak out in the silence of your feast day
whose widespread celebration is long overdue.
...

Funny to think you can still buy it now,
a throwback, like shoe polish or the sardine key.
When you lever the lid it opens with a sigh
and you're face-to-face with history.
By that I mean the unstable pitch black
you're careful not to spill, like mercury

that doesn't give any reflection back,
that gets between the cracks of everything
and holds together the sandstone and bricks
of our museums and art galleries;
and though those selfsame buildings stand
hosed clean now of all their gunk and soot,

feel the weight of this tin in your hand,
read its endorsment from one Abram Lyle
‘Out of the strong came forth sweetness'
below the weird logo of bees in swarm
like a halo over the lion carcass.
Breathe its scent, something lost from our streets

like horseshit or coalsmoke; its base note
a building block as biblical as honey,
the last dregs of an empire's dark sump;
see how a spoonful won't let go of its past,
what the tin calls back to the mean of its lip
as your pour its content over yourself

and smear it into every orifice.
You're history now, a captive explorer
staked out for the insects; you're tarred
and feel its caul harden. The restorer
will tap your details back out of the dark:
close-in work with a toffee hammer.
...