Written by
John Lindley |
“I’d rather make $700 a week playing a maid than earn $7 a day being a maid”. Hattie McDaniel.
I’m the savage in the jungle
and the busboy in the town.
I’m the one who jumps the highest
when the Boss man comes around.
I’m the maid who wields the wooden broom.
I’m the black boot polish cheeks.
I’m the big fat Lawdy Mama
who always laughs before she speaks.
I’m the plaintive sound of spirituals
on the mighty Mississip’.
I’m the porter in the club car
touching forelock for a tip.
I’m the bent, white-whiskered ol’ Black Joe
with the stick and staggered walk.
I’m the barefoot boy in dungarees
with a stammer in my talk.
I’m the storytelling Mr. Bones
with a jangling tambourine.
I’m the North’s excuse for novelty
and the South’s deleted scene.
I’m the one who takes his lunch break
with the extras and the grips.
I’m the funny liquorice coils of hair
and the funny looking lips.
I’m the white wide eyes and pearly teeth.
I’m the jet black skin that shines.
I’m the soft-shoe shuffling Uncle Tom
for your nickels and your dimes.
I’m the Alabami Mammy
for a state I’ve never seen.
I’m the bona fide Minstrel Man
whose blackface won’t wash clean.
I’m the banjo playing Sambo
with a fixed and manic grin.
I’m the South’s defiant answer
that the Yankees didn’t win.
I’m the inconvenient nigrah
that no one can let go.
I’m the cutesy picaninny
with my hair tied up in bows.
I’m the funny little shoeshine boy.
I’m the convict on the run;
the ****** in the woodpile
when the cotton pickin’s done.
I’m a blacklist in Kentucky.
I’m the night when hound dogs bay.
I’m the cut-price, easy light relief
growing darker by the day.
I’m the “yessir, Massa, right away”
that the audience so enjoys.
I’m the full-grown man of twenty-five
but still they call me ‘boy’.
For I’m the myth in Griffith’s movie.
I’m the steamboat whistle’s cry.
I’m the dust of dead plantations
and the proof of Lincoln’s lie.
I’m the skin upon the leg iron.
I’m the blood upon the club.
I’m the deep black stain you can’t erase
no matter how you scrub.
John Lindley
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Written by
John Lindley |
A misprint in a newspaper reported: ‘Auden stepped from the train and was greeted by a small but enthusiastic crow.’
‘Hmm,’ Auden thought when first he saw
the bird, as train came to a stop,
‘I’ll make this image mine before
some Yorkshire upstart snaps it up.’
He drew a notebook from his mac’,
unclipped a biro from his tweed,
stared at the crow, the crow stared back
then recognising him indeed
began to stun the platform crowd,
began to flap, began to sing,
and the poet wrote about its loud
and flattering beak, applauding wings.
Reporters, fans all stood amazed.
It seemed as if all clocks had stopped.
Only Auden stood unfazed.
Only his chin hadn’t dropped.
He pulled a Woodbine from its pack,
pulled out a match and struck a light,
stared at the crow, the crow stared back.
The night mail train pulled into sight.
John Lindley
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Written by
John Lindley |
Wheeling them in,
the yard gate at half-mast
with its ticking hinge,
the tin bucket with a hairnet of webs,
the privy door ajar,
the path gloved with moss
ploughed by metal
through a scalped tyre -
in the shadows of the hood,
in the ripped silk
of the rocking, buckled pram,
none of the dead clocks moving.
And carrying them in
to a kitchen table,
a near-lifetime’s Woodies
coating each cough,
he will tickle them awake;
will hold like primitive headphones
the tinkling shells to each ear,
select and apply unfailingly
the right tool to the right cog
and with movements
as unpredictable as the pram’s
will wind and counter-wind
the scrap to metronomic life.
And at the pub,
at the Grey Horse or Houldsworth,
furtive as unpaid tax,
Rolex and Timex
and brands beneath naming
will change hands for the price of a bevy,
a fish supper
or a down payment
on early retirement
on a horse called Clockwork
running in the three-thirty at Aintree.
John Lindley
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Written by
John Lindley |
In Hayfield I imagine
not just the nuts and bolts of split cockpits
but a Spitfire’s sunk fuselage
has smoked out its entirety unseen
from one century to the next.
At Edale Cross, Birch Vale or Kinder,
in rock, field or peat bog
more than machinery beds down and is lost,
it’s true
but here in this field
with all of the exposed corn,
yellow as scattered light
bubble-packing the soil,
the vanishings are less numerous
but no less strange -
a child here, a dog there,
a stoat whose teeth weren’t defence enough
have become a cache of quiet forgettings,
plucked without fuss
and gone without trace
and a frayed crucifix -
tweed coat, stoved in chest
and stitched neck ruff -
has shrugged his coat hanger shoulders
and pogo’d west from the rising sun.
In the first tatters of light
blameless crows rattle in the wind.
John Lindley
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