The man sits above the tracks
at Bristol Parkway. He drinks tea,
studies the distance.
He notes the numbers of trains.
With the binocs he picks them out
on the long curve from Scotland,
the hard-driving run from Swindon.
He watches till the grey light fades.
He drinks tea and talks to himself
about the rude girls who serve him.
He takes some pills – perhaps the ones
the doctors make him take.
I note him down,
after my airport poems,
my studies of Sappho, Bathsheba,
and Sylvia Plath.
I ride one of his numbers home
impatient to be undisturbed with a malt
and my rank-ordering of all the available versions
of the Goldberg Variations,
BWV988.
CHRIS SOUTHGATE
Easing the Gravity Field: Poems of Love and Science (Shoestring Press, 2006)
I first heard Chris Southgate’s ‘High Fidelity’ sometime in 2005, when I was lucky enough to be part of a writers’ group with him.
The day Chris brought ‘High Fidelity’ was special, because I had the rare impression of hearing perfect art straight off the cuff as it were. When he finished reading my own response went something along the lines of – there is nothing to change, it’s done.
You can find it in his 2006 collection Easing the Gravity Field: Poems of Science and Love. I don’t think it has changed much, not that it needed to.
I love everything about this poem, from its calculated yet non-judgemental observations to its relish of language, and, by implication, finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. I love its humour – like Chris when you meet him, of the driest and most self-effacing kind, gently poking fun at the enterprise of note taking and writing poetry. I love the twist in the isolated final line, the link it makes to the man at the railway station; I love the community of this, and the silence.
If you do not know Chris’s work, I urge you to get hold of it. His recent A Gash in the Darkness (Shoestring) is just as good: wry, compassionate, and brimming with mystery. I should add that he is a wonderful reader of his work, really taking time to give his words space to breathe: if you have not heard him, you are in for a treat.