Three Poems by Paul Batchelor
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Secret Papers
Something has splayed
the oak trunk in a dozen knotted tongues.
Nobody heard
the sound it made: would its song,
pure air and fire,
have split the ear?
Or might a tree
slip from its bark
quietly
as a girl steps from her clothes
to stand, stripped to the skin,
secret papers burnt?
Everything conspired.
A singling-out occurred.
First published in The Sinking Road (Bloodaxe, 2008)
The Oxen
So fair a fancy few would weave…
Through gritted teeth I listen
to our Gav doing his bit
for the carol service:
his sing-song reading voice
thrills like the skirl of a fife
as he takes the noun ‘fancy’
for an adjective,
descriptive of the ‘few’ —
the happy few —
who get to ‘weave’.
Now he pauses at the line-break
for a pat on the head —
as a summoned man might pause
and nod to the prison guard;
as I heard him pause,
practice run
after practice run,
his earnest falsetto
piped into the ghetto
blaster & played back —
and now the poem plays him out.
First published in The Love Darg (Clutag, 2014)
The Buttoned Lip
Surely thou also art one of them; for thy speech bewrayeth thee
****************************************************Matthew, 26: 73
Wise child, with an ear for condescending tones, an eye
for patronage, how did you come so far with it intact:
the last — no: latest — vestige of native dialect to betray
itself when you were drunk, unbuttoned in mixed company,
leaving you to stand, for all your la-de-dah, corrected?
O patron saint of little piggies that should’ve stayed at yem,
how does it feel to hear your words fly up, die of shame,
and then resume their station in the afterlife; to lie
awake in the wee, wee hours convening your symposium
(that double-barrelled Communist and this Tory derelict
mouthing off on regional-identity-as-fictive-construct:
‘perhaps we may conclude the poet’s prime responsibility
must be to language rather than to place…’), only this time
for the record raise your hand & open your mouth to speak?
~
Paul Batchelor’s first collection of poems, The Sinking Road, was published by Bloodaxe in 2008. He has won the Times Stephen Spender Prize for Translation and the Edwin Morgan International Poetry Prize, and he writes criticism for the Guardian and the TLS.
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Éphémère is a concept; two visions of the same sphere. Both are multidisciplinary Mauritian artists—designers and illustrators—influenced by nature and culture. They attempt to convey a part of their dream-like, somewhat playful world through their art and products. (Photo credits: Céliliphotographies)
