Country Dancing

by Brian Wake

There is nothing to be frightened of, she said,

but come along and lie here on the bed.

She spoke of country dancing and of how so very sad

it was for one to dance alone; to move in time with no-one’s steps

and music but their own.

There is nothing to be frightened of, she said,

but come, my dear, and lie down on the bed.

For country dancing was the only time I ever moved.

A solitary shuffler, shadow-partnered, I improved.

I danced the days away from wall to wall

and, although I often stumbled, she had taught me how to fall.

There is nothing to be frightened of, she said,

but come along and lie down on the bed.

   And when the dancing ended I could always hear

her voice that told me there was nothing there at all to fear.

There is absolutely nothing to be frightened of my dear.

Travelling Backwards

by Brian Wake

At thirteen forty five our train begins to move, and, late
to board, what seats remain face not toward but from.
I fold my overcoat and sit, do battle with a newspaper
to find a decent page and settle down to read.

Behind me, music hisses from a faulty earphone. A child
describes the passing fields; a city child surprised by space
and countryside, surprised by, look mum, cows and sheep.
Across the aisle a blue-haired lady with an open book
is fast asleep.

From where I sit, my awkward view is of the places
we have travelled through. What views await us are, as yet,
unknown, the present blurred, the past quite clear. I travel
backwards in a crowded train.

I sit with some who seem to travel backwards all their lives;
they sit asleep or read with children counting sheep and cows.
For them and me, perhaps

Visiting Crete

by Brian Wake

Above our bed a salamander, motionless for hours,
is waiting for its prey. To even blink, it knows,
an eyelid would betray its whereabouts and add,
perhaps, another hungry day to when it feeds.

Throughout the night we, half-asleep in candlelight,
keep watch for any twitch or instant of an uncoiled tongue
flicked out to whip a careless insect in. But nothing moves
and only swaying shadows stalk the bedroom wall.

Although we watch and worry that some dropping
of its guard might cause a sudden plunge, or time spent
hanging there unglue its toes, we hesitate. Like it we wait.
Our salamander does not move.

And could it wonder whether we, like it, are there
to prove that patience has its own reward and, waiting
in the candlelight, afford to hope that blinking eyelids
might betray its hiding place, and not as predator
but as our prey.

Visiting Florence

by Brian Wake

Across a crowded bridge the motorbikes
stampede. A siren shrieks stop thief
and stolen prints are floating on the river.
Like frenzied rats, the rumours of a handgun
scuttle through the market place, and the
police are clearing space along the street.

Inside the gallery, a sculptured sentry guards
the precious works of art, a holster angled
for the instant draw. In silver palaces along the river
bank the doors are closed, the heavy gates
are locked, the shutters drawn, all treasures put away.

The sun has set behind the Grand Hotel and waterfalls
of golden lamplight spill from every balcony.
The jewellers on the bridge are stuffing diamonds
into haversacks; and on the wall a young man plucks
a mandolin for coins.

Goethe’s Clock

by Brian Wake

Goethe’s clock is ticking in an empty room.

He sits quite motionless. All art, then peels

a curling strip of wallpaper from a dilapidated

wall, begins, he says, from what we know

and seeks connections everywhere. All poetry

gives probability to our disjointed world.

Goethe winds his clock each afternoon

at twenty five to four. I wind the present on,

he says, the shipwrecked man ashore. I will assert

my part in what, until a moment such as this,

has been concealed. I wind a dawn of flickering

light bulbs into something more meticulous.

Goethe winds his clock against the floodgate

swelling with the pressing weight of all he knows

but fears will forget, the force of instinct, reason

and the privilege of art, the walls of books.

I wind, he says, the unexpected footprints

in the newly fallen snow. I wind the barricades

set up against the odds of never growing old.

I wind the passive consciousness of such

impossibilities. I wind, he says, and pours

a quantity of wine into an empty glass,

the sum of almost everything I ever knew

into a time that, for the life of me, I hope

might never pass.

Walking Stick

by Brian Wake

I cannot, he would rage, take any more these days,
without a stick, than half a dozen steps, and often
these are only where the stick itself would wish to go.

Stuck in the mud, he’d say, and jinxed, that’s me,
and I, for what has seemed like centuries, and without love,
tread dreadful crannies around the points I have to make.

I write, he would explain, in order to maintainan
equilibrium between the very height of passionand
the grey slug moments, awful dog shit of despair.

I write to make the passive consciousness of possibility,
he’d say, to which all values must belong, appear complete.
I drink to make ends meet.

It has been, dare I say, a good deal less than wonderful,
my life, unfair these morbid, mental growths I’ve had to bear,
unutterably sad. But kind, he said, of you to come.

The doctors here are marvelous but mad.