Written by
Barry Tebb |
“Remember, you loved me, when we were young, one day”
The words of the song in Tauber’s mellifluous tenor
Haunt my nights and days, make me tremble when I hear
Your voice on the phone, sadden me when I can’t make into your smile
The pucker of your lips, the gleam in your eye.
The day we met is with me still, you asked directions
And on the way we chatted. You told me how you’d left
Lancashire for Leeds, went to the same TC as me, even liked poetry
Both were looking for an ‘interesting evening class’
Instead we found each other.
You took me back for tea to the flat in Headingley
You shared with two other girls. The class in Moortown
Was a disaster. Walking home in the rain I put my arm
Around you and you did not resist, we shared your umbrella
Then we kissed.
I liked the taste of your lips, the tingle of your fingertips,
Your mild perfume. When a sudden gust blew your umbrella inside out
We sheltered underneath a cobbled arch, a rainy arch, a rainbow arch.
“I’m sorry”, you said about nothing in particular, perhaps the class
Gone wrong, the weather, I’ll never know but there were tears in your eyes
But perhaps it was just the rain. We kissed again and I felt
Your soft breasts and smelt the hair on your neck and I was lost to you
And you to me perhaps, I’ll never know.
We went to plays, I read my poems aloud in quiet places,
I met your mother and you met mine. We quarrelled over stupid things.
When my best friend seduced you I blamed him and envied him
And tried to console you when you cried a whole day through.
The next weekend I had the flu and insisted you came to look after me
In my newly-rented bungalow. Out of the blue I said, “What you did for him
You can do for me”. It was not the way our first and only love-making
Should have been, you guilty and regretful, me resentful and not tender.
When I woke I saw you in the half-light naked, curled and innocent
I truly loved you If I’d proposed you might have agreed, I’ll never know.
A month later you were pregnant and I was not the father.
I wanted to help you with the baby, wanted you to stay with me
So I could look after you and be there for the birth but your mind
Was set elsewhere end I was too immature to understand or care.
When I saw you again you had Sarah and I had Brenda, my wife-to-be;
Three decades of nightmare ahead with neither of our ‘adult children’
Quite right, both drink to excess and have been on wards.
Nor has your life been a total success, full-time teaching till you retired
Then Victim Support: where’s that sharp mind, that laughter and that passion?
And what have I to show?
A few pamphlets, a small ‘Selected’, a single good review.
Sat in South Kensington on the way to the Institut I wrote this,
Too frightened even to phone you.
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Written by
Barry Tebb |
It brings to mind Swift leaving a fortune to Dublin
‘For the founding of a lunatic asylum - no place needs it more’.
The breathing beauty of the moors and cheap accommodation
Drew me but the total barbarity of the town stopped me from
Writing a single line: from the hideous facade of its railway
Station - Betjeman must have been drunk or mad to praise it -
To that lump of stone on Castle Hill - her savage spirit broods.
I remember trying to teach there, at Bradley, where the head
Was some kind of ex-P.T. teacher, who thought poetry something
You did to children and his workaholic jackass deputy, obsessed
With practical science and lesson preparation and team teaching
And everything on, above and beneath the earth except ‘The Education
Of the Poetic Spirit’ and without that and as an example of what
Pound meant about how a country treats its poets "is a measure
Of its civilisation". I once had a holiday job in a mill and the
Nightwatchman’s killer alsatian had more civilisation than
Huddersfield’s Deputy Direction of Education.
For a while I was granted temporary asylum at Royds Hall -
At least some of the staff there had socialism if not art -
But soon it was spoilt for everyone when Jenks came to head
English, sweating for his OU degree and making us all suffer,
The kids hating his sarcasm and the staff his vaulting ambition
And I was the only one not afraid of him. His Achilles’ heel was
Culture - he was a yob through and through - and the Head said to me
"I’ve had enough of him throwing his weight around, if it comes
To a showdown I’ll back you against him any day" but he got
The degree and the job and the dollars - my old T.C. took him
But that was typical, after Roy Rich went came a fat appointee
Who had written nothing and knew nothing but knew everyone on
The appointing committee.
Everyday I was in Huddersfield I thought I was in hell and
Sartre was right and so was Jonson - "Hell’s a grammar school
To this" - too (Peter Porter I salute you!) and always I dreamed
Of Leeds and my beautiful gifted ten-year olds and Sheila, my
Genius-child-poet and a head who left me alone to teach poetry
And painting day in, day out and Dave Clark and Diane and I,
In the staffroom discussing phenomenology and daseinanalysis
Applied to Dewey’s theory of education and the essence of the
Forms in Plato and Plotinus and plaiting a rose in Sheila’s
Hair and Johns, the civilised HMI, asking for a copy of my poems
And Horovitz putting me in ‘Children of Albion’ and ‘The
Statesman’ giving me good reviews.
Decades later, in Byram Arcade, I am staring at the facade of
‘The Poetry Business’ and its proprietors sitting on the steps
Outside, trying to look civilised and their letter, "Your poetry
Is good but its not our kind" and I wondered what their kind was
And besides they’re not my kind of editor and I’m back in Leeds
With a letter from Seamus Heaney - thank you, Nobel Laureate, for
Liking ‘My Perfect Rose’ and yes, you’re right about my wanting
To get those New Generation Poets into my classroom at Wyther
Park and show them a thing or two and a phone call from
Horovitz who is my kind of editor still, after thirty years,
His mellifluous voice with its blend of an Oxford accent and
American High Camp, so warm and full of knowledge and above all
PASSIONATE ABOUT POETRY and I remember someone saying,
"If Oxford is the soul of England, Huddersfield is its arsehole".
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Written by
Andrew Marvell |
See with what simplicity
This Nimph begins her golden daies!
In the green Grass she loves to lie,
And there with her fair Aspect tames
The Wilder flow'rs, and gives them names:
But only with the Roses playes;
And them does tell
What Colour best becomes them, and what Smell.
Who can foretel for what high cause
This Darling of the Gods was born!
Yet this is She whose chaster Laws
The wanton Love shall one day fear,
And, under her command severe,
See his Bow broke and Ensigns torn.
Happy, who can
Appease this virtuous Enemy of Man!
O then let me in time compound,
And parly with those conquering Eyes;
Ere they have try'd their force to wound,
Ere, with their glancing wheels, they drive
In Triumph over Hearts that strive,
And them that yield but more despise.
Let me be laid,
Where I may see thy Glories from some Shade.
Mean time, whilst every verdant thing
It self does at thy Beauty charm,
Reform the errours of the Spring;
Make that the Tulips may have share
Of sweetness, seeing they are fair;
And Roses of their thorns disarm:
But most procure
That Violets may a longer Age endure.
But O young beauty of the Woods,
Whom Nature courts with fruits and flow'rs,
Gather the Flow'rs, but spare the Buds;
Lest Flora angry at thy crime,
To kill her Infants in their prime,
Do quickly make th' Example Yours;
And, ere we see,
Nip in the blossome all our hopes and Thee.
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