Bensley - Finding a Leg to Stand On: New & Selected Poems

Further back still, there was the cream gteau And, penetrating deeper layers of the past, The lamb, the trout, the soup, And, with each, a subject briskly explored, To right and to left, With eye contact and ego projection. In the prehistoric, previous world I was still here, Empty and chattering over gin, And smiling winningly into unfamiliar faces. But, unlike some younger people, I can still remember the world outside, And I know that one day we will all go home And find rest, and the cat waiting to be fed.

The hard light, the sudden knife-like breeze, The grey pallor of those strips of skin So tentatively bared. The tender vulnerability of the pale buds in the hedge. Dig up the garden And stop your mind with your transistor. This dangerous change will soon pass.

Theyd like to pretend Theyre in the buffet at Kings Cross Waiting for the 6.15: But more serious matters are at stake: Life insurance; or life itself. The nurse is their mother here, Her smiles flow out Bright and inexhaustible as conjurors bunting. The cleaner is having a mysterious mid-morning clean. Dont move love, she says, Dont move. I can dust round you.

They are fat Beyond the merely Rubenesque. Corseted in folding chairs, Armoured in synthetics; Their considerable legs stretch forward in unison. In the East, they would be collectors pieces. One has a striped umbrella Over her head. She suffers with the sun. Another has the thermos, which shes handing on to Flo, For Flo gets parched; and all of them are kind.

Indeed, if you were lost if you had missed the path That led back round the hill Theyd help you; they would hem you in And wall you round with helpfulness. Such a stockade: No harm could penetrate. Youd be safe there, Safe, and in clover.

It clams to the plastic. No one answers my call. What can I do but order stones and piping, Get to my garden, build a waterfall?

Its something about your sporty build, The way you seem to be counting the people in the caf With a view to lining them up in teams. Its quite set me in the mood for the evening, And I follow you alertly through the door, Hoping youll turn and snap at me To pick my feet up, and not to slouch.

Unfortunately I overdid the practical work: Became immersed in my theories, Testing, tasting wasting my spirit In a lust for pasta, Becoming, at last, a compulsive eater. Youre trying to fill a void, they said, And sent me up to the Tavistock. But somehow my problems made the analyst hungry. We took to cooking ourselves bijou meals And lying down to discuss them, Whiling away whole nights In psychogastric speculation. That man has really taught me a thing or two, And his light touch with a souffl Has quite made me forget my academic career.

Twisting my neck on the pillow I can see the coast, And that inlet the grey shading into the shallows Where the village was. My mother wore blue serge Down to her boots. The yard had a sunflower, so high It looked in at my window. There is the river where I used to fish And never thought of time. Here, all our times paid out in tiny sips And clocked by pills, and wiped away with gauze. Yesterday they propped me up in bed.