Drinks with Dead Poets

The homeward bound and the outward bound,

The beautiful lost swimmer, the ennuyee, the onanist, the female

that loves unrequited, the money-maker.

The actor and actress, those through with their parts and those

waiting to commence,

The affectionate boy, the husband and wife, the voter, the nominee

‘Anything take your fancy, professor?’

Not today, Mrs Gantry.

‘We had some zombies in on Monday, they got snapped up pretty sharpish.’

Shame, don’t have any zombies.

‘There’s a robot left.’

Fuck him. Sorry, Mrs G.

‘I’m used to it, professor.’

What I need is a pack of cards.

‘Aisle two in the yellow box. Everything’s in its right place.’

It was, but I didn’t mean cards, I meant blank cards and I found some. The lady had everything. With an hour to go before the Cross Keys and my one-to-ones – I’d no idea whose turn it was and felt too low to be of any use – I headed up the east road to the Library. No one was there as usual, though a thoughtful soul had left behind one last smudged soaking handout from the Compass Walk last week, which Spiritus Mundi soon had me forlornly leafing to the crumpled amber:

IN THE WEST it is always autumn, and we hear a lost stream running. All you can see is fading, and your mind is full of memories. It’s afternoon, it’s middle age, it’s knowing all and nothing. It’s love ended, it’s perspective, the fallen leaves, the last light. It’s wry and philosophical, caves in to tearful grins, smiling sorrow. It’s dusk, it’s the wind, both forgiveness and forgetting.

All we can speak while we dwell in the West are memories of what was, or dreams of it, and the soft crumbling of the difference.

I had to read it to the end, it would seem a heresy not to, time being Lord and so on, but I drew weird consolation that I was somehow netted in my own contraption. I would leave the damn thing in the Borrowing Hut, but when I opened the door to do so – there’s that bearded portly man in a hat I always see, he’s drawing a little picture.

Sorry, man, didn’t see you there.

‘What is the difference between a hen and a kitchen maid?’ the fellow enquires without looking up. He’s actually drawing a hen, now I see. His brown beard dabs the page as he works.

I, well, no what is the difference between a hen and a kitchen maid. ‘One is a domestic fowl, the other a foul domestic.’

Yep, I’ll just – leave this colourful leaflet here. In the, the bin. There. ‘I’m a sad fellow for disliking parties.’

No you’re not, sir. I don’t like them either.

‘There’s no help for it. Goodbye.’

Goodbye, sir. See you later.

I tramp a perpetual journey,

My signs are a rain-proof coat and good shoes and a staff

cut from the woods,

No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,

I have no chair, nor church nor philosophy,

I lead no man to a dinner-table or library or exchange,

But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,

My left hand hooking you round the waist,

My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents, and the public road.

I met Samira on her way out of the Cross Keys, clipping up her briefcase.

Am I late? (I wasn’t)

‘It’s pure hell in there.’

(It was, we stood there at the dark door of the pub and rock was playing loud enough to dement every bunny in the neighbouring fields.)

Where do you want to go then? Saddlers? Maureen?

Samira looked away down the lane, west towards the Green and the student halls, ‘I’m afraid I’m double-booked.’

You are? Okay (off she went) another time (she nodded as she walked).

Fine. I backed into the pub and turned, it was loud and dark in there. Low-lit, crimson, as if for some club night, yet it was lunchtime on a Thursday. Odd no? Anyway skipping Samira meant a precious deafening half hour to myself.

‘Small or large.’

SURPRISE ME. ACTUALLY DON’T. WHY’S THE MUSIC SO LOUD?

‘Not bloody likely.’

WHAT? WHY’S IT – forget it. Thanks, Norman.

What was odd was there was no one there. I went with my wine and peered round into the red booths expecting Kornelia or Niall or Molly Dunn, all of whom would sometimes sit there reading, but this time there was no one. It was only when whatever deathless string of soft-rock oldies had subsided in the juke-box, that three young men emerged in mid-trivia from the other bar and hung around the silvery nickelodeon till the same chain of songs began again, again.

ON A DARK DESERT HIGHHWNY

This is absolutely dreadful (I cried, lost in the volume)

They must have heard something from me, they all turned and grinned together as if on cue. None of them was Mike, but I thought I’d seen them with him. The tall one was called Lance, the blonde one I call Blondy, and the one in the parka was called Parker or he fucking well is now.

Sorry, Mrs Gantry. Sorry Norman. Sorry fairies.

Evil re-engendered, they went sniggering back to the small bar and I went on waiting, to the tune of Piano Man, Hold The Line, The Final Countdown, In The Air Tonight and I Want To Know What Love Is.

I tried to remember who I was waiting for. Whom, I whispered from the bottom of the ocean.

Dear Walt, it is said that you are the father of free verse. But I think you are above all a fermalist, sir! In fact I think you

If poetry is formed from the body in space and time – which is all I learned on my journey – you are a formal poet too, Mr Whitman; I mean

It was Niall I was waiting for, but he didn’t come for me. He came to dance, he was suddenly there, he’d stolen in so quietly I missed it, he had wended his way to the dead centre of the saloon bar and simply started dancing.

Christ.

You couldn’t call it dancing. It wasn’t dancing to the music. It was dancing despite music. It was making the most of it being too loud to think. They were steady jolting spasms, he meant it all, I sat there, I was too alarmed to stop him.

IF YOU WANT MY BODY

AND YOU THINK I M SEXY

Norman watched him gloomily from the till, hope gone for civilization, and soon the jukebox guys were into it, gathering at the bar-stools, grinning and shouting in each other’s ears.

When the trio ventured on to the floor and started idiotically doing what Niall did I was quickly in there too, arm around him, saying stop, stop, no more, no more, withdrawing him from view.

I sat him down in my booth, and went up to the bar. I asked Norman to switch the jukebox off and he said he wasn’t allowed to by the leasing company.

I turned to the three young men and asked them to quit putting songs on.

IT’S A PUB NOT A LIBRARY,’ said Parker.

I TEACH HERE, MAN, EVERYTHURSDAY, RIGHT HERE.

‘YOU DON’T,’ said Lance, ‘YOU NEED TO TALK TO THE DEAN.’

I DON’T HAVE A DEAN.

‘YOU NEED TO TALK TO THE DEAN,’ the blond one stated, as if a blond man saying exactly the same was what would do the trick.

YOU’RE NOTHING BUT A PACK OF CARDS (was all I could come up with. Pig-ignorant of Wonderland they trotted to the bar) ‘IT’S THE DEAN YOU NEED TO TALK TO,’ Parker turned, trying out this ingenious new syntax – only then, as chance would have it, the last of their rock songs faded.

I looked at the machine, they looked at the machine.

It stood there guiltily beaming Not my fault guys, obeying orders here.

I had absolutely no idea how this was going to go.

I felt that if they put more songs on I was going to pretty well lose it, outnumbered or not, but instead I summoned up that cheek-turning meekness that’s half cowardice half strength.

Put some Tom Waits on at least.

They didn’t, but they didn’t put anything else on either, they just huddled and chortled like it was all part of the plan.

In the red-vinyl booth Niall was dancing where he sat.

Man, slow down, slow down,

‘Can you see me?’

Yes, slow down (I actually put my hands on his arms and tried to look him in the eye) are you taking something? have you come off something?

‘It won’t find me here,’

What?

‘It’s on the other side of town,’

What is (I suddenly felt I knew) you mean the white space, you mean the thing that’s eating your lines away,

‘All gone, yum yum,’ he said, looking pleased, ‘it’s for the best, it’s for the best that’s yet to come,’ (now a familiar intro came from the jukebox, but I couldn’t place it, the guys were there again in the silver glow, giggling at their deed)

On A DARK DESERT HIGHWAY

Lance and Parker and Blondy smugly glancing in red light, it made them seem both brazen and blushing, like it was the most aggressive thing they’d ever done in their dumb lives.

YOU’RE PIECES OF SHIT (was all this Oxonian could summon) NIALL, NIALL MATE,

‘I’VE COMPLETED THE COURSEWORK!’

GOOD GOOD, SO NOW RELAX, TERM’S ALMOST OVER, ENJOY YOURSELF EH,

‘DISTRIBUTED HANDOUTS!’

THAT’S THE WAY TO GO, MAN,

‘THEY’RE SILVER HANDOUTS!’

WHAT?

‘THEY’RE VERY BRIGHT SILVER SO NOBODY CAN READ THEM!’

NLALL MATE,

I HEARD THE MISSION DELL
AND I WAS THINKING TO MYSELF
THIS COULD BE HEAVEN ON

Heath Bannen had walked in during this verse. He’d gone to the bar, said something to Norman, heard something back, strode over to the jukebox and yanked the wire right out of the wall. It reared like a snake and expired on the carpet.

Silence. Then he said what you’d expect him to say to the three young aficionados and they did what he requested of them really pretty sharpish. As he sighed and muttered and led the beaming Niall from the place the only loud sound left was slow handclapping. Then that stopped too: Norman closed his eyes and basked in glorious peace and quiet.

In terms of what you say – love everyone and everything, all, any, every, all – you rise beyond-all other poets, writers, statesmen and philosophers, and you leave the zealots of your day and mine all babbling from their mill-ponds. You leave the

What?

‘Talk of the devil!’

Jeff Oloroso was standing by Student Services, zipping up his brown leather jacket. But he was on his own, so his comment made no sense. Then again it was cheerfully made, and he was holding the door open, so in we went together.

Kerri was typing silently at her desk. Someone had splashed out on a slimline laptop for her, and she wore pink tiny earphones which were probably advising her to Ignore Professor Maxwell, for ignore him she very capably did.

Jeff eased behind the desk and said: ‘Pull up a chair, my friend,’ then, as I was doing so, his friend, he sought in his hard black briefcase, ‘I haven’t really had a chance to say that I very much do like your work, that formal technique of yours!’

Formal technique of mine, okay, you ever read the stuff out loud?

‘Now now, are you giving me homework?’ he grinned, ‘I’ll make a note. Didn’t really have you down for a performance poet.’

I didn’t say I was, I said read the stuff out loud. I don’t come to your house and do it for you. The poetry’s in the voice, on the body, in the echo,

‘Indeed, indeed, now we’re going to make this easy, we’re all of us very busy, you can’t teach here any more, we all like you, we admire the work, New Formalists do dwell among us! but, shall I just run through it all, shall I?’

Knock yourself out, Jeff, I’m only dreaming anyway, it’s my New Form,

‘Ah now I’ve heard that said about you,’ and he implicated Kerri without looking at her, ‘can I call you Glynn?’

If I can call you Jefff.

‘You see, as it goes I’m only dreaming too. . .’

Are you, go on,

‘In my dream I teach Contemporary Literature at a fine Academy, I teach all my favourite texts, and everything goes swimmingly but for one intractable visitor who sets up his gatherings so they clash with ours,’

Is that right.

‘And whose coursework is playing-cards, felt pens and toy soldiers, and who uses our support staff to summon various eccentrics from the fields hereabouts, and who gets them intoxicated, and his students moreover, on Academy property, who sends them all out intoxicated to their classes just last week, and who demands that they, where is it, here, all “touch one another”, and who, having successfully applied for an Adjunct Position in the Academy, proceeds to, well, do we know where this is going?’

Some adjunct position, I suppose,

‘On Academy property. Were you aware the person in question is married?’

No, mate. Was the person aware she was?

‘The person was very much aware she was.’

Is this in your dream or mine?

‘In my dream, mate, letters are going out to your students this afternoon. If they wish to continue attending your – events -they’ll be required to cease their studies in the Academy. We’ve also informed the readings agent that we do not need a visit from Mr, where is it, Mr Walter Whiteman,’

In my dreams you’d know his name. In fact you’d sit in on my classes.

‘In our dreams we’re all happy, the whole world sits in on our classes. . .’

Well. You got me there.

‘No hard feelings.’

Absolutely none.

‘Then we’re good here.’

What?

‘Then we’re good here.’

I think your dream got stuck.

‘Maybe your dream got stuck.’

Walt Whitman sir, your lines are the utmost reach of your breath as it praises all it finds, recalls, imagines. You rise to what’s there, you say it till it’s song, you sing it till it’s gasping, you gasp it to its final ebb. Then the breath is over and the white space washes in, and the hush is dumbstruck wonder, as the next surge of praise begins to form, because it can do no other.

There’s more Life than there is Art, your poems seem to say, and the glory is in the reach, the stretch, the straining ever upwards, like plant-life in the sunshine. Your ecstasies won’t wait in the shade to get themselves in order. Order is not theirs to bestow. There’s too much light to meet, there’s too much warmth to oh in the bin we go, my friend. . .

There’d been two hours to kill before class. I decided I would go to class as if nothing had happened, that was a skill I was skilled in, I would go at the appointed time, I would see if anyone came. Perhaps they hadn’t received their letters yet. Perhaps there’d be farewells to say. I’d want to be ready for those.

In the meantime I went home. I stood in the dead centre of my humble digs. Contained multitudes, contradicted myself, decided not to pack. No one had told me to leave. They could stop me teaching but I was free to dream a fortnight’s holiday. I made a pile of Browning and Byron books why not, I read for pleasure, then I went for a long walk.

On my long walk I said hi man to Jake Polar-Jones in his huge gold headphones crossing the road by Saddlers – Saddlers looked closed for something, the blinds were all down –

I said !hola amigosl to Heath and format sipping coffees outside Benson -

And hello there to the little girl McCloud as she wheeled her bike along the lakeshore. I was reciting,

The smoke of my own breath,

Echoes, ripples, and buzzed whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine,

My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood

and air through my lungs. . .

‘Is that by W B Yeats?’

No Fiona, it s by W Whitman.

‘I didn’t say to stop.’

Thank you. I won’t.

‘I have to go home now. O revoir then!’

The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-coloured sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,

The sound of the belched words of my voice, words loosed to the eddies of the wind,

A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms. . .

Peter Grain was walking trimly along by the village green in a suit. I saw him see me, I saw him blanch and veer into the first shop – Mrs Gantry’s – and decided I’d mess with him by following him in. Bells jingled for him, bells jangled for me, and there he was all downcast in his three-piece suit.

Hey Peter, got a promotion did we.

‘I – no, oh the outfit, well – no.’

Come on man, think of something, jeez.

‘I – kind of a whim.’

Yeah really. So, my term is over, but then, you knew that.

‘I – no I didn’t. It’s, a pity.’

Yeah right. Those Academy guys don’t half know a lot about my private life.

‘I – don’t know anything about that, professor.’

Okay. Fair enough. Do your shopping, mate. She’s out of zombies but you might snag the last robot.

The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag, The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hillsides. . .

‘Is this how you teach now Max, sort of shouting in the road.’

(Mimi Bevan and Roy Ford were sitting on two lopsided swings in a ragged garden near the halls. They both had glasses of red wine, like they’d spilled from an all-day party. Roy doffed his trilby. Some bloke was crashed out on the grass.)

No. I’m teaching later.

‘Not what I heard, Max.’

What did you hear.

‘Heard you were quitting.’

‘Hey no!’ said Roy, ‘that true?’

No it’s not. I’m not going anywhere. Not till the end of term.

(Roy raised a genial fist in approval. Mimi shrugged.)

That alright with you, Ms Bevan?

‘Not my circus,’

Not your monkeys. Thanks for caring.

‘Who’s caring.’

My mistake.

‘No harm done.’

It’s prose because it’s to hand, and it’s verse because it rises and falls in the meadows of the lungs. The rhyming/metrical/stanzaic poet is formal, yes, balancing the freedom of imagination with the constrictions of breath and pulse and synapses and footfall – but you are too, you are no less, it’s just that there’s nothing set between your heart and the sky.

Now I see what Father Gerard saw. You are the great unstinting protestant to his gauging catholic splendour – catholic, small c for a poet, I’m rowing my heart out too in that little painted coracle with all the well-intentioned schemers. Yours, his, both are praise of life. Both are cries of vivid loss, lovelorn black upon speechless white, but the white of all the lasting poets is what in the end? – awe, gratitude, thanks that pass all understanding, for we don’t know who were thanking. . .

They came, they all came, as the bell was chiming three. They all did except Peter Grain.

Heath
Niall	Caroline
	Barry
Samira	Ollie
Lily	Iona
moi

You okay Niall? (he’s giving two thumbs up)

‘He’s cool,’ Heath said, ‘right mate?’

‘I’ve had a chemical reaction.’

Don’t have it again, all right?

‘No. It’s finished.’

I’m glad, I have an exercise for you. Yes! Please, please, control yourselves, your spontaneous outpouring of joy is overwhelming, it’s – touching, I’m here, you’re here, wherever we are, I have an exercise for you,

‘Hell yes,’ said Lily sadly, pulling out her notebook.

Put away all your notebooks.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ sighed my London friend.

This is the Postures exercise. Put away everything. Hello Peter, very smart.

‘I’ve been asked to distribute these letters, if I may, just,’

Bit late for my birthday, man. Bit keen for Christmas eh? (nevertheless I let him, it was his day-job in this galaxy, they went round and they were opened. Read, re-read, folded, stared at, put away, frowned at, filed and I listen to all of ’em breathing. I decided not to be stopped) So! The Postures Exercise. . .

Caroline Jellicoe rose first: ‘It’s been an interesting class, lots to get your mind round,’ and she tucked her chair in with a scrape and was gone through the open door.

At the count of three, I want you all to assume a posture. It doesn’t matter what kind of posture, as long as it’s something relatively comfortable that you can hold for a few seconds. . .

(They were staring either at each other or the table.)

It doesn’t have to be natural to you, for example. Do you have another clash, Samira?

‘I do, I’m sorry, it’s my funding, it’s been memorable. Good luck though.’

(Samira left, Lily glared at her but she didn’t look back, Peter had backed out discreetly at some point, and now Orlando somehow sagged upwards: ‘Look they kind of have us over a barrel, man,’)

Oh you can fold your arms, put your head in your hands, you can lie back and look at the ceiling. You can lean forward open-mouthed, you can put your hands behind your head, you can bow your head, you can shut your eyes, you can stroke your chin, you can hold your nose,

(Ollie shrugged a doleful shrug and Iona said softly ‘Thank you for everything, Glyn,’ then they were gone, heads bowed, and Heath was stirring)

So remember, my friends, at the count of three,

‘Time’s up, mate,’ Heath went, ‘it’s been real,’ and he took Niall Prester with him, Niall raising a V for peace,

At the count of three you assume a posture, I won’t tell yet you why,

‘Laters at the Keys, chief?’ said Lily, not beating them joining them, but I just ploughed on:

You can pray with your hands, you can lock your hands, you can hide your eyes, you can plug your ears,

‘We’ll be there, chief, oh and look this belongs to you,’ Lily said, pressing a plastic toy into my palm, ‘adios, Baggs the Monkey,’ (and she was gone with a wave while Barry sat there troubled),

‘It’s like musical chairs, se’or,’ he said, ‘but more like the other way round in a way.’

One, Two. . . Three! Assume the posture!

		Barry
Baggs
	moi

Er. What’s your posture, Barry?

‘It’s just sort of, well now, it’s like this.’

That’s – just how you were sitting.

‘Well I liked how I was sitting.’

O-kay. . . What’s your posture, Baggs?

Don’t be shy, Baggs. Take care, Barry.

‘You take care, teacherman, you take good care.’

I’m waiting, Baggs. You just gonna sit there like that all day – what’s that? Sorry what did you say, Baggs?

Not my shircush, not my humansh.

Very sharp, Baggs, very sharp. Let me give you your money’s worth.

The Posture Exercise

One, two, three. Assume the Adjunct Position!

That’s good, Baggs. You’re seated, cross-legged, on the table, looking quite comfortable, with your right hand curled around your knee, and your left hand outstretched as if to make a point, and yet resting its elbow on the left knee. Your expression is mild, civilized, open-eyed, you are weighing up opinions. Dare I say — cautiously optimistic?

All the rest of the creatures would have their own. Were they present.

We would all look around at everyone’s posture. We’d go clockwise round the room, discussing the meaning of each one. How relaxed or how tense? How engaged or disengaged? How conscious how unconscious? How thoughtful or observant or focused or vague? What does it mean to be sitting in that shape? At the start, in the middle, at the end of an emotion? of a mood? a thought?

We would each of us choose three of the postures.

And we would seek the three that tell a story.

Let’s start with mine. I have my head in my hands, or rather it’s resting on four fingers, the index and middle of each hand, with the thumbs at my cheekbones. It’s not despair, it’s more like thinking through anxiety. Posture One.

Let’s say in Posture Two I sit back like this – watch me, Baggs – now I’m draped backwards looking skywards and my arms flop down beside me to the earth.

I have disconnected from thought. My body has called time on it, and now I’m slung back disinclined to go on. I hold this second posture like you’re still holding yours.

Ask yourself: what grew the second posture from the first?

Ask yourself: what grows a second line from a first line?

What if I do yours next? Yours is my third and final posture, Baggs, I’ll sit cross-legged on the table like you, look I’m climbing up and doing it, I open my eyes and engage with the world, I rest one arm and hold the other one out. A half-smile comes to me. I’m one thoughtful monkey.

In those three postures I’ve journeyed from – let’s say – anguished thought to wry resignation to renewal of hope. Do you understand me, brother?

We would write three lines that do that, three lines with breaks between them, for example, top-of-the-head (I mean really top-of-the-head)

There was now no moment left he could foresee [sit there]

so he ceased to see, he let go all the moments [lie back]

until time set them ticking like old toys it found [sit up again]

Whatever. Lines, or stanzas, two-line, three-line, it’s all about the progress between them and through them.

Do it yourself, Baggs the monkey, you fail too, fail better. I’m going to sit here on this table and write a letter to Walt Whitman, if it’s all the same to you, and then I’m going home.

Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?

Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,

Talk honestly, for no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then, I contradict myself.

I am large – I contain multitudes.

I concentrate towards them that are nigh – I wait on the door-slab.

Who has done his days work and will soonest be through with his supper?

Who wishes to walk with me?

Walt Whitman, old captain, I am so happy you will never see this letter:

Its about my fortieth effort! I’m at peace with that oblivion.

And sir, I am so happy you cant see your poor country at this moment in its history, because I love and revere the nation you describe, the land you exalt, the beautiful high bar you raised for it:-No god is its hope, no law – you are, ¹ my captain, your work is its hope – what it says, not how it says it, but what it says, what your poetry actually SAYS — love everyone and everything, love ANY, EVERY, ALL!

You tried to sound America to the bottom of its soul.

But don’t look now, my dear – Look away, you rolling river ’

Most who followed, they fell for how you said it. As if your freedom were freedom from praising, freedom from the heart and the face of the sky, whether one infers a kind attendant Magus or a blind spiralling Nature – what can pertain but praise?

What one can hope is Heaven – what one can see through Hubble – what can pertain but praise?

But they will scuffle to their freedom. As if your freedom were freedom from oxygen, blood, skin, hair, spit; bone, enamel. As if it were freedom from time. As if the space between your lines were anything but Intake, the common trembling inhalation of humankind.

The obscurantists of my day have no time for praise. And yet they leave the gaps forms to flounder in, wondering What’s meant here? Am I good enough toget it? Can I give up my breath to a thing that’s got its back turned? But isn’t that just what the dead gods made us bleat out loud? Is it not what the lost white Lord insisted on our howling? WHANS MEANT HERE? AAi I GOOD ENOUGH TO GET IT? CAN I GIVE UP MY BREATH TO A THING THAT’S GOT ITS BACK TURNED?

To steal away from human form, to back away from questions, to hide out in The Book, how the children love that game these days, oh, zealots all, disciples. . .

Sir, my captain, my friend, my brother, your poetry is no less than a blueprint for earthly survival. And it gets studied for style options. I myself oh sod this my hand’s tired

Something just slid under the door, Baggs.

Thash jolly intreshting profesher.

Go and see what it is.

Not my shircush profesher.

Tosser. Fine I’ll go.

Dear chief, change of plan, swing by
the saddler’s so we can buy you drink’s
and give you your thank-you gift etc

I walk, gladly, I see the pale sun battling westward home through clouds. I see the flat far grey of the lagoon between the houses, I think of the wooded island and the hut and McCloud’s little blue bike and Rowena. I turn my face to the south and think of the Coach House, I think of that girl and another girl, and all the girls and one girl, I turn to the east and think of that lone portly fellow at work on his hen with his worn old pastel crayons, I turn to the north and my bed and its tartan blanket and its books re-reading themselves on the desk.

Most things aren’t there, or there any more, and now I think – the Saddlers was closed for something, there’ll have to be some other place, some other place to say goodbye -

But no one’s waiting outside on the pavement. No one is anywhere.

Till I reach the front of the Inn and there’s no mystery on earth – for -

There’s the church and there’s the steeple, open the door and there’s the people, standing, sitting, laughing, getting jokes, sharing secrets, listening and explaining and insisting and demurring, over candles being touched alight on three great long tables.

Look if you’ve no truck with sweet endings just don’t follow me in here, friend, you go home and sketch a cool ironic take on your general disenchantment while I stumble through this door into memory and fantasy, made lovely and inexorable by all that I’ve forgotten – that it was the last Thursday in November in our village, and Nathan Perlman hailed from Massachusetts and was dressed up to the nines, with Peter Grain beside him, suits matching very proudly, and plates and drinks were everywhere and over reception they’d hung a huge great banner in reds and blues and whites that said

HAPPY THANKSGIVING WALT WHITMAN!

Because why, because of Peter.

Peter didn’t think it was right, when he heard it all from Kerri. He thought it wrong that Tina had had to go, and wrong that my students should be barred from my classes. Perhaps it was pure selfishness, as he did enjoy my classes. And because he was an employee he knew the number of the readings agent, and when they cancelled the invitation he went in after hours to the village’s locked-away landline and he dialled and invited Mr Whitman after all, but not to read or perform or lecture, just to join some forty strangers for Thanksgiving, which he and his new Yankee partner Nathan proposed to host at the Saddlers Inn. And the readings agent listened a while and agreed why not, sounds crazy.

Of course the thing grew as word got around (this all came out over the butternut squash soup and the pumpkin bread and this New World white with its tones of passion-fruit) Peter had seen the letter to my students on the system, so they all knew about it the day before my class. They didn’t like being told what classes they could go to.

Lily said let’s make a game of it, let’s agree, let’s pretend to be that lame, let’s see what that would feel like, guys, they can’t chuck us all out!

And so, one by one, they opened their letters and play-acted the thing, taking up their bags, walking bleakly from my class. . .

Steps quickening round to the Saddlers, to dress up, Gentlemen and Ladies, in pristine guest-rooms, Bluebell and Oleander, to glide downstairs arm-in-arm to the tables, seek and spot their names on the great Seating Plan, and wait for their professor to get with the programme. . .

And to think how Nathan had nearly blown the secret this morning, looking so smart in the Saddlers at breakfast – he couldn’t help it! habit he said, but I’d not bothered to ask him more, being so taken then with the arc of my sorrows.

Oh and Peter had lost his job, he was helping out at Mrs Gantry’s.

I was the second shabbiest man there. The shabbiest was in a long coat and hat, he was entering conversation, tearing off bread, I heard his brimming and barrelling laughter at some crack somebody made, I saw the crust-crumbs sprinkling the grand white beard. I took my seat right opposite, shyly, couldn’t speak a word. I’d written so many to him that day, not one of which he’d ever see. I didn’t know where to start. Except not to start. And instead to range my eyes about the crowing and chattering multitude, at all the ones I knew and loved or loved and didn’t, it all felt the same, friends and strangers, the various helpers who’d been summoned from all the hostelries and halls of the place to cook and carry, uncork and uncover, to set down and serve, and the mostly elderly puzzled ones Barry must have swept up on his lonely rounds towards the great hearth-fire of the autumn.

	Blanche	Mimi	Molly	Nikki P	Gough
Roy					Claude
	Bella	Syrie	JPJ	Kornelia	format

	Ollie	Iona	moi	Lilly	Niall
Caroline					Heath
	Kerri	Peter	Walt	Nathan	Sami

	small girl	old lady	portly man	old bloke	Mrs Gantry
Rowena					Barry
	McCloud	small boy	Maureen	Mrs that	Mrs this

Before the much-trumpeted turkeys arrived there was the not-insignificant matter of the Iroquois Thanksgiving Address, which Nathan and Peter did from memory, and in which all living things were thanked – in person, it felt like after a while – and everyone chanted Now Our Minds Are One whenever there was a gap, until it seemed as if they were, though not in a good way. And when it was done and everyone turned to bless a neighbour – ‘Sorry, chief, our minds are one,’ Lily warned me – Mr Whitman set his napkin aside, then rose and took the floor.

‘Thanksgiving!’ he began and there was hush. ‘Thanksgiving goes probably far deeper than you folks suppose,’ and he turned a wide angle to include the lot of us attendant limeys: ‘I’m not sure but its the source of highest poetry. As in parts of the Bible. Ruskin makes the, the central source of all great art to be – praise to the Almighty for life. And the universe, with its, its objects and its play of action.’

There was a whole lot of nodding going on, whatever we believed, I was nodding for Old England.

‘We Americans devote an official day to it every year,’ said Whitman with brisk pride, and he clapped his hand on Nathan’s shoulder, which turned the young man gold, yet I – I sometimes fear the real article is almost dead or dying in our self-sufficient, independent Republic. . .’

‘U-S-A,’ ventured someone in a cautious English voice,

‘Gratitude,’ he went on solemnly, ‘has never been made half enough of by the moralists. Gratitude,’ he said again, ‘is indispensable to a complete character – mans or womans – the disposition to be -to be appreciative, thankful.’

A starting ripple of applause and ‘That’s the main matter!’ he called out over it till it subsided, ‘the element, inclination – what geologists call the, the, the trend. Of my own life and writings I estimate the – giving thanks part,’ now he beamed all around, ‘with what it infers, as, essentially the best item. . .’

I was nodding so hard he looked down at me, so I calmed into it a vague accord directed at my soup.

‘The best item. I should say the, the quality of gratitude – rounds the whole emotional nature. I should say love and faith would quite lack vitality without it. There are people/ and his eye sort of twinkled at this, ‘there are people – shall I call them, even, religious people, as things go? – who have no such – such trend to their disposition.’

‘Hear hear!’ said someone and I resumed my rapid nodding.

Whitman lifted his glass and beseeched, ‘Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you!’

We were all so hungry we buried this in clapping and cheering, and he sat back down, a shabby ancient in his might, to our tumultuous acclaim.

I raised my glass to his, and he clinked with Iona and Peter and me and my old pal Ollie Faraday and with everyone else in reach, and then everyone out of reach, for here came Heath Bannen and Roy Ford and Kornelia Nowak and Barry Wilby bringing one of his old gents with a large dog-eared volume to be signed. . .

And there young Nathan Perlman stands, toasting the perfected thing in fire-lit splendour, because now here come the silver trays with the golden glistening birds upon them, and I hear the young man helplessly cry out, as if a moment only dreamed of has come true in every detail. I watch him staring now it’s passing by, I watch him look down a moment, as on life goes, with the lord knows what revealed to him hereafter.

And the rest of that November day? Is what I can remember of what Walter could remember.

I don’t recall his ever moving from his central station in that flickering firelit hall made so rich for one night only, but I do remember the slow piecemeal westward movement of the rest of us, the polite villagey scrape of chairs, the waving at waiters to serve me now I’m moving here, as we settled and formed our hemisphere of listeners.

Fair Isabella always seemed to reach the seat she wanted, and there she soon was beside him pouring elderflower, getting him started on the old days.

‘Living in Brooklyn I went every week – in the mild seasons – to Coney Island – at that time a long, bare shore – which I had all to myself! Loved to race up and down the hard sand, declaim Homer and Shakespeare to the seagulls..

‘Did you see plays in New York, sir?’ Nathan asked and Whitman smiled: ‘As a boy I’d seen all Shakespeare’s dramas, reading them carefully the day before. . . One of my big treats was The Tempest in musical version, at the old Park. Castle Garden, Battery, splendid seasons of the Havana musical troupe, the fine band, the cool sea-breezes. . . It was there I heard Jenny Lind,’ he told beaming Iona, who could listen like a child. I found my voice at last:

What did you read when you were young, Mr Whitman? ‘Everything I could get,’ of course, but the poet had still more to say about the old dream-city we both adored, the mention of which will always cast a spell: ‘I should say – an appreciative study of the current humanity of New York – gives the directest proof yet of successful democracy.’

‘The friendliest place I ever was,’ I offered from the heart.

‘Not only the New World’s but the world’s city,’ he proclaimed, to general satisfaction.

‘Did you see famous people in New York?’ Lily demanded, jerking her thumb at Ollie next to her, ‘this guy wants to know,’ and Ollie gaped and spluttered as the old man thought about it,

‘Andrew Jackson, Van Buren, the Prince of Wales, Charles Dickens, the first Japanese ambassadors, lots of other – celebrities of the time. Remember seeing Fenimore Cooper in a court-room in Chambers Street, carrying on a law case.’

‘Last of the Mohicans,’ I said helpfully, and my drunken soul flitted far to a library long ago – in an old boarding-school where we had some summer holidays – the scent of polish and the bygone – twelve years old? I would turn the ochre pages and breathe the illustrations – Sykes and his dog at the end of Oliver Twist – the eyes again! — frightful Struwelpeter, poor joyous Edward Lear – I could smell the ancient soil of the books, I was moonstruck then as now. Some journey had begun there and here I was still marching through the fields, how could that be? The length of my life had so gently disarmed each moment of its strangeness.

Walt proceeded with his memories: ‘I remember seeing Poe -having a short interview with him in his office, second storey of a corner building – Duane? or Pearl Street?’

‘Poes crazy!’ Bella cried, ‘did you like him?’

‘He was – very cordial, in a quiet way. I’ve a – pleasingremembrance of his looks, voice, manner, matter – very kindly and human. Subdued.’

‘Drunk!’ hissed Molly Dunn and he indulged her: ‘Perhaps a little – jaded.’

‘Do you admire Lord Byron?’ Bella wondered, merrily ignored the groans.

‘A vehement – dash,’ said Whitman, ‘plenty of impatient democracy,’

‘But?’ she anticipated, rightly,

‘Lurid and introverted! amid all its magnetism. . .’

‘Hey Bell, you can tell him yourself,’ Mimi jabbed from the next table.

‘What d’you reckon to Poe’s work, Mr Whitman,’ Heath questioned, flushed with wine and ha! starstruck.

Whitman smoothed his unsmoothable beard: ‘An – incorrigible propensity to. . . nocturnal themes. A demoniac undertone,’

‘Tell us about it!’ yelled Molly,

‘I want for poetry,’ Walt said, ‘the clear sun shining, fresh air blowing. The strength and power of health, not delirium. . .’

‘But what if you’re, y’know, delirious?’ Heath tried.

‘Even among the stormiest passions,’ said the old man firmly.

I wondered if Heath was thinking of Niall, whom I noticed was long gone.

From the other end of our table Caroline with her notebook open queried the poet on Form. He turned, responding simply and firmly: ‘The day of conventional rhyme is ended.’

‘Tell that to him,’ Heath muttered my way, but when I glanced up he was grinning, not quite at me, but still.

‘The truest and greatest poetry,’ Whitman proclaimed, ‘can never again, in English, be expressed in arbitrary and rhyming metre.’

He said more but I was murmuring beneath, as if I thought this might get relayed somehow to Master Bannen:

I’m allowed to think beyond what I wrote, you know. . .

Nathan was raising up his Leaves of Grass for signature, ‘Would you do the honours, sir?’

‘My chief book,’ cried its creator, unrhymed and unmetrical, has as its aim. . . to utter the same old – human critter!’

Jubilant Lily cried ‘Our teacher says poetry should be creaturely but now it can be critterly okay guys?’

She raised her pint of cider to ‘All critters small or large!’ as the old poet scrawled his name and Nathan’s, blew on the drying ink, checked it, closed the volume.

‘The song of a great, composite, democratic individual – male or female. The poem of average identity – yours, whoever you are,’ which in fact he said to me, as I was in his eyeline, whoever I was. . .

And he’d caught me at the strangest moment, thinking life could be strange no more. . .

I was at my place of work, it seemed, in Angel, long ago, or soon or now, or once again. I was sitting at my small black desk in the utterly quiet hours of the night.

Seven candles I’ve lit, as I do when I begin, and out there on the dark canal I see the green lamps under the bridge, they’ll go blue next, then maroon, I see the single amber streetlight above, below I see a soft dwelling glow emanating from a houseboat, and behind me in the long dark room I’ve coffee burbling on the hob. . .

Was I wishing for this or remembering this? The poet’s voice roared and rippled, he was riding horse-drawn taxis down the spine of Manhattan,

‘Night-times, June or July, in cooler air, riding the whole length of Broadway listening to some yarn. I knew all the drivers then, Broadway Jack, George Storms, Pop Rice, Yellow Joe. . .’

Then he was hearing the news of Abraham Lincoln – ‘that dark and dripping Saturday, that chilly April day. Little was said. We got every newspaper. Not a mouthful was eaten.’

Then he was telling us of his place of work, perhaps it was that that had set me dreaming of mine, or am I stationed now at mine, helplessly recalling his? What was beginning – the end of term was beginning. Was I beginning to depart?

‘The upper storey of a little wooden house near the Delaware,’ hes saying, ‘rather large, low-ceilinged, like an old ships cabin. A deep litter of books, papers, manuscripts, memoranda, two or three venerable scrap-books. Two large tables – one of St Domingo mahogany with immense leaves. . . Several glass and china vessels, some with cologne-water, some with honey, a large bunch of yellow chrysanthemums. . . Many books, some maps, the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare, Walter Scott, Emerson, John Carlyles Dante. . . A strew of printer’s proofs and slips, and the daily papers. Several trunks backed up at the walls. . . Three windows in front. At one side’s the stove, with a cheerful fire of oak wood, a good supply of fresh sticks, faint aroma. . . On another side – the bed, white coverlid, woollen blankets. A huge arm-chair, yellow, polished, ample, rattan-woven seat and back, and over the latter a great wide wolfskin of hairy black and silver, spread to guard against cold, and draught. A time-worn look – and scent of old oak – attach to the chair. . . And the person occupying it!’ he roars and raises his palms to the happy company, and it’s only then, as twenty faces dip back and forth, candlelit, unlit, in and out of laughter, that I realize I spent the entire length of that account staring at someone who is staring right back.

Patiently, blankly, like a game she’s never lost at. Then irritably what? what? then as I muddle to respond to that she’s sparking up her roll-up, cheeks colouring, whatever.

* * *