The Literary Review
DEAD POETS’ QUARTER
After he died
they named a street after him.
A brief ceremony.
His ex-wife
did the right thing
and put in an appearance,
as did a handful of friends,
drunk and unhappy,
and some neighbourhood kids,
their game interrupted,
and their dog,
a forlorn little mutt.
A couple of former mistresses
hovered on the edge of the gathering.
keeping a weather eye on each other.
And, like them, the weather was wintry,
so proceedings were
held to a minimum
with a few words
from the chairperson
of the local arts department,
‘He did so much for poetry.
He made it accessible
to ordinary people,’
which was more
than could be said
of the street,
one of a series
of gaps between houses
in a new development
at the end of a bus route
where the grey blocks march
in the middle distance,
given names
to guide the visitor
through the grid-plan maze.
They’d run out of explorers
and nineteenth-century statesmen.
so they dubbed it ‘the poets’ quarter’.
It was the turn of the poets.
Surprised at so much attention,
they turned in their graves.
One of them
was even overheard muttering,
‘It’s almost worth being dead for.’
- Donald Gardner
WAYLAID BY NOSTALGIA
On holiday in Rome,
waylaid by nostalgia,
I said let’s go to the writers’ café.
It’s just round the corner,
Rosati’s, Piazza del Popolo.
Alberto Moravia and Elsa Morante
used to sit there,
glamour couple of the 1950s,
and Pier Paolo Pasolini swung by.
Once I saw Tennessee Williams,
with a young flame
screech to a halt before the tables in his Maserati,
fresh from the festival in Spoleto,
his gaze raking the café terrace,
white suit blazing in the six-o’clock sun.
Today, forty years later,
the café has a clean scrubbed look,
plenty of gleaming chrome.
Cloths draped over their folded arms,
the waiters stand at the entrance,
making sure that the customers
get a good wait for their money.
The latter rather thin on the ground –
just a few of the not-so-young
looking a little lost
and a handful of backpackers,
heads in their guidebooks
that tell them something
about where they are sitting.
Nowhere a writer in evidence.
‘Although,’ I say,
‘what does a writer look like anyway?
Would you know one if you saw one?’
- Donald Gardner
AT MANOR KILBRIDE
I’m hopping from stone to stepping stone,
slick green algae on the boulders
and the foaming stream around.
It’s not deep,
but those rocks are lethal.
Late spring, sharp Irish cold.
On the far shore, so I dream,
is a lean saint holding a palm branch
and a Chinese poet, porcelain-white belly, sunk in contemplation.
An idealized landscape.
On the far shore
is a muddy footpath
winding past low alder scrub.
Your voice at my shoulder,
‘we’ve forgotten the sandwiches.
We’ll have to go back.’
The hardest part is negotiating the turn.
- Donald Gardner
EVERY DAY
Every day is a different day.
I tell myself this, to give myself courage.
I’ll return to writing – poetry of an eighty-year old.
No disgrace, you do what you can.
Like Goya’s painting of the dog. Drowning or swimming?
Or just keeping abreast,
never mind the giant wave looming.
I’m sitting on the Haarlemmerplein in the June sun.
There are children bobbing and weaving between the fountain jets
or tilting their faces upward
to let the water explode over them.
I bend over my notebook, putting my trust in words
as a swimmer does in the sea, a new poem:
‘Love is the door and love the key’.
Heaven knows what my second line will be.
- Donald Gardner
MY HONEYMOON WITH MYSELF
Under the stars of Naples
Alone at last!
In the hotel I booked the queen-sized matrimonial suite.
Friends and family gave me a great send-off.
My aged mother, tears in her eyes, waving goodbye:
‘I’m glad to see you finally settled.
You weren’t exactly the easiest person to live with.’
‘Great, mother,’ I say, ‘finally I’ve found someone you really approve.’
Yet after all the excitement I don’t know what to think.
Is it love that I feel?
or did I just talk myself into it?
Won’t I get bored?
And, indeed, next morning at breakfast in the hotel dining room
the atmosphere is a little subdued,
Everybody smiles at they look at me.
What must they be thinking?
Suddenly I’m a stranger, even to myself.
I look at myself, my downcast eyes.
Will conversation always be this hard?
And I wonder:
did I make the right choice?
Will I make myself happy?
Should I have spent more time surveying the field?
But as the mist lifts from the sea,
like a curtain opening on distant islands,
perhaps there is hope.
A stroll along the cliffs might cheer my spirits.
Still the nagging doubt:
I wasn’t quite sure if I was a virgin.
- Donald Gardner
