COLLECTED POEMS Read online

  Then, suddenly, a whistle blows,

  And all the human dynamos

  (with outstretched arms and just-bent knees)

  Skid to a halt, fall silent, freeze.

  They stand in a trance, their hot breath steaming;

  Rub their eyes as though they’ve been dreaming,

  Or are caught in the bossy whistle’s spell,

  Or simply weary – it’s hard to tell.

  A few of them shiver, the air feels cool;

  And the thought sinks in: it’s time for school

  A little while later, observe the scene,

  Transformed by a whistle and Mrs Green:

  The empty playground, white and wide;

  The scruffy snow, the silent slide.

  Inside, with a maths card just begun

  And his thoughts elsewhere, sits Denis Dunne.

  His hands are chapped, his socks are wet,

  But in his head he’s sliding yet.

  He sits near a window, he stares through the glass.

  The teacher frowns from the front of the class.

  Can this boy move! Can this boy skate!

  ‘Come on, Denis – concentrate.’

  Yes, nothing changes, that much is true,

  And the chances of sliding in classrooms are few.

  So Denis abandons his speculation,

  And gets on with his education.

  Some plough the land, some mow or mine it;

  While others – if you let them – shine it

  The Famous Five-a-Side

  The early morning sun beams bright

  Into our uncle’s cottage kitchen.

  Uncle himself researches in his study,

  Our parents are conveniently absent.

  We breakfast well on eggs and toast

  Get changed into our freshly laundered kit

  Pick apples in the sunny orchard

  Pack boots and buns and lemonade.

  The village street is oddly quiet

  Anxious faces at the bread-shop window.

  There is a rumour of strange goings-on

  Burglaries… a missing necklace.

  The pitch upon the village green

  Still sparkles with its morning dew

  Except, that is, for one mysterious patch.

  We fasten Timmy’s dog-lead to a bench.

  Descending from a battered van

  The opposing team are not what we expect.

  Older and scowling, oddly kitted out

  Their goalie has an eye-patch and a beard.

  The ref too has a sinister air

  Arriving out of breath and with a limp.

  He keeps the ball clutched closely to his chest

  And seems unwilling to relax his grip.

  ‘This lot aren’t Barford Rovers, that’s for sure,’

  We whisper as we line up on the pitch.

  Julian pretends to tie a bootlace up

  And tells the rest of us he’s got a plan.

  The game begins. Their strategy is odd.

  They crowd around the ball and hardly move.

  The referee limps slowly up and down.

  The bearded goalie smokes a cigarette

  Then suddenly we hear a sound

  A hollow croaking voice beneath the grass.

  A trap door in the turf begins to rise

  And reaching up around it comes… a hand!

  George boots the ball now high into the air

  It ends up in the smoking goalie’s net.

  His team mates oddly chase it in,

  The hobbling referee not far behind.

  ‘This is our chance, chaps!’ Julian cries.

  We charge then at the crowded goal,

  Unhook the net and drop it on them all:

  The spurious players and the bogus ref.

  Meanwhile up from his dungeon cell

  One plain-clothes CID man stumbles forth.

  ‘Well done, you fellows – excellent!’ he gasps.

  (This was more ‘undercover’ than he’d planned.)

  ‘This is the Melford Mob,’ he says.

  ‘Been on their trail all year.

  I shouldn’t doubt there’ll be a big reward.’

  ‘We knew they were suspicious,’ George declares.

  Another van appears: the Black Maria.

  The losing side are bundled in.

  ‘You blasted kids!’ the captured goalie growls.

  Brave Timmy barks as they are driven off.

  That little dog now trots towards the ball,

  He sniffs and scrabbles at it with his paws.

  ‘He wants to tell us something,’ Anne explains.

  Yes – have you guessed? – the necklace was inside.

  Back home to Uncle’s cottage, time for lunch.

  There’s sausages and chocolate cake and squash.

  ‘Good game?’ says Uncle, peering round the door.

  ‘Oh absolutely yes!’ cries George. ‘We won!’

  Dog in the playground

  Dog in the playground

  Suddenly there.

  Smile on his face,

  Tail in the air.

  Dog in the playground

  Bit of a fuss:

  I know that dog –

  Lives next to us!

  Dog in the playground:

  Oh, no he don’t.

  He’ll come with me,

  You see if he won’t.

  The word gets round;

  The crowd gets bigger.

  His name’s Bob.

  It ain’t – it’s Trigger

  They call him Archie!

  They call him Frank!

  Lives by the Fish Shop!

  Lives up the Bank!

  Who told you that?

  Pipe down! Shut up!

  I know that dog

  Since he was a pup.

  Dog in the playground:

  We’ll catch him, Miss.

  Leave it to us.

  Just watch this!

  Dog in the playground

  What a to-do!

  Thirty-five children,

  Caretaker too,

  Chasing the dog,

  Chasing each other.

  I know that dog –

  He’s our dog’s brother!

  We’ve cornered him now;

  He can’t get away.

  Told you we’d catch him,

  Robert and – Hey!

  Don’t open that door –

  Oh, Glenis, you fool!

  Look, Miss, what’s happened:

  Dog in the school.

  Dog in the classroom,

  Dog in the hall,

  Dog in the toilets –

  He’s paying a call!

  Forty-six children,

  Caretaker too,

  Headmaster, three teachers,

  Hullabaloo!

  Lost him! Can’t find him!

  He’s vanished! And then:

  Look, Miss, he’s back

  In the playground again

  Shouting and shoving –

  I’ll give you what for! –

  Sixty-five children

  Head for the door.

  Dog in the playground,

  Smile on his face,

  Tail in the air,

  Winning the race.

  Dog in his element

  Off at a jog,

  Out of the gates:

  Wish I was a dog.

  Dog in the playground:

  Couldn’t he run?

  Dog in the playground

  …Gone!

  The Match (c. 1950)

  The match was played in Albert Park

  From half-past four till after dark

  By two opposing tribes of boys

  Who specialized in mud and noise;

  Scratches got from climbing trees

  Runny noses, scabby knees

  Hair shaved halfway up the head

  And names like Horace, Archie, Ted.

  The match was played come
rain or shine

  By boys who you could not confine

  Whose common goals all unconcealed

  Were played out on the football field.

  Off from school in all directions

  Sparks of boys with bright complexions

  Rushing home with one idea

  To grab their boots… and disappear

  But Mother in the doorway leaning

  Brings to this scene a different meaning

  The jobs and duties of a son

  Yes, there are errands to be run.

  Take this wool to Mrs Draper

  Stop at Pollock’s for a paper

  Mind this baby, beat this rug

  Give your poor old mum a hug.

  Eat this apple, eat this cake

  Eat these dumplings, carrots, steak!

  Bread ’n’ drippin’, bread ’n’ jam

  Mind the traffic, so long, scram.

  Picture this, you’re gazing down

  Upon that smoky factory town.

  Weaves of streets spread out, converge

  And from the houses boys emerge.

  Specks of boys, a broad selection

  Heading off in one direction

  Pulled by some magnetic itch

  Up to the park, on to the pitch.

  Boys in boots and boys in wellies

  Skinny boys and boys with bellies

  Tiny boys with untied laces

  Brainy boys with violin cases.

  The match was played to certain rules

  By boys from certain streets and schools

  Who since their babyhood had known

  Which patch of earth to call their own.

  The pitch, meanwhile, you’d have to say

  Was nothing, just a place to play.

  No nets, no posts, no lines, alas

  The only thing it had was grass.

  Each team would somehow pick itself

  No boys were left upon the shelf

  No substitutions, sulks or shame

  if you showed up, you got a game.

  Not 2⋅3⋅5 or 4⋅2⋅4

  But 2⋅8⋅12 or even more.

  Six centre forwards, five right wings

  Was just the normal run of things.

  Lined up then in such formations

  Careless of life’s complications

  Deaf to birdsong, blind to flowers

  Prepared to chase a ball for hours,

  A swarm of boys who heart and soul

  Must make a bee-line for the goal.

  A kind of ordered anarchy

  (There was, of course, no referee).

  They ran and shouted, ran and shot

  (At passing they were not so hot)

  Pulled a sock up, rolled a sleeve

  And scored more goals than you’d believe.

  Slid and tackled, leapt and fell

  Dodged and dribbled, dived as well

  Headed, shouldered, elbowed, kneed

  And, half-time in the bushes, peed.

  With muddy shorts and muddy faces

  Bloody knees and busted laces

  Ruddy cheeks and plastered hair

  And voices buffeting the air.

  Voices flung above the trees

  Heard half a mile away with ease,

  For every throw in, every kick

  Required an inquest double quick.

  A shouting match, all fuss and fury

  (Prosecutors, judges, jury)

  A match of mouths set to repeat

  The main and muddier match of feet.

  Thus hot and bothered, loud and nifty

  That’s how we played in 1950

  A maze of moves, a fugue of noise

  From forty little boiling boys.

  Yet there was talent, don’t forget

  Grace and courage too, you bet

  Boys like Briggs or Tommy Gray

  Who were, quite simply, born to play.

  You could have stuck them on the moon

  They would have started scoring soon

  No swanky kit, uncoached, unheeded

  A pumped-up ball was all they needed.

  Around the fringes of the match

  Spectators to this hectic patch

  Younger sisters, older brothers

  Tied-up dogs and irate mothers.

  A mother come to claim her twins

  (Required to play those violins).

  A little sister, Annabelle,

  Bribed with a lolly not to tell.

  Dogs named Rover, Rex or Roy

  Each watching one particular boy.

  A pup mad keen to chase the ball

  The older dogs had seen it all

  The match was played till after dark

  (Till gates were closed on Albert Park)

  By shadowy boys whose shapes dissolved

  Into the earth as it revolved

  Ghostly boys who flitted by

  Like bats across the evening sky,

  A final fling, a final call

  Pursuing the invisible ball.

  The match was played, the match is over

  For Horace, Annabelle and Rover.

  A multitude of feet retrace

  The steps that brought them to this place.

  For gangs of neighbours, brothers, friends

  A slow walk home is how it ends,

  Into a kitchen’s steamy muddle

  To get a shouting at… or cuddle.

  See it now, you’re looking down

  Upon that lamp-lit factory town.

  It’s late (it’s night) for Rex or Ted

  And everybody’s gone to bed.

  Under the rooftops slicked with rain

  The match is being played again

  By two opposing well-scrubbed teams

  Who race and holler in their dreams.

  AFTER WORDS

  if you write children’s books, one bonus is you get children’s letters, generous letters that conclude, often as not, with love and kisses. Letters, in my case, that praise me for my ‘poems’, promote me to a poet. Well, there could be a poem in here, somewhere, but I suspect it’s mostly light verse. Yet there it is on the cover, ‘Collected Poems’. For children, if it rhymes or sits on the page in short lines, it’s a poem. Verse rarely gets a mention… which I thought I’d mention.

  The poems/verses here have been sifted from five books written over a period of twenty-five years. I have not included picture-book texts, Each Peach Pear Plum, for instance, or Cops and Robbers. Somehow they were just too wrapped up in and around Janet’s pictures. Excluded also are a number of more recent efforts, although this one nearly got in:

  Uncle Edith

  This poem, I regret to say,

  Is quite untrue.

  Uncle was really Auntie, of course,

  And Edith, actually, Hugh.

  I wish to thank the Superintendent of Parks and Cemeteries for Oldbury in the 1960s, Mr McGibbon. I was employed then, in one of his cemeteries, as a gravedigger. Eventually, Mr McGibbon persuaded me up and out of my hole in the ground and propelled me off to become, in the fullness of time, a teacher. Mr McGibbon was my Good Samaritan. I owe him.

  Yes, and Harry and Dennis too, my fellow gravediggers, who taught me that all work has its skills. The graves they dug were ten feet deep, neat and perpendicular and coffin-shaped. They did not move one spadeful of earth more than was needed (mitred corners, tapered ends). My graves, ragged-edged and sloping, were not a patch on theirs. The digging I do now is with a pen. It is a trade – prose, poetry or verse – I’m better suited for. No dog with a bone, but a treasure-hunter, maybe. Love and kisses.

  A. A. Bath, 2008

  INDEX OF FIRST LINES

  About a mile North of Preston, 149

  Approach with ball, 163

  Bags I the dummy, 84

  Billy McBone, 120

  Boys will be boys, 115

  Dear Mrs Butler, this is just a note, 89

  Derek Drew, 21

  Do a project on dinos
aurs, 16

  Dog in the playground, 243

  Dream football is the harder game, 135

  Emma Hackett? 14

  Here is the rule for what to do, 212

  I – am – in – the – slow, 192

  I came from Battersea, 262

  I did a bad thing once, 86

  I remember him clearly, 103

  I see a seagull in the playground, 8

  I’d like to tell you what they are, 124

  I’m getting up for school, 91

  I’m playing in this big game, 160

  I’m standing on the touchline, 178

  I’ve got the, 27

  I’ve writ on the wrong page, Miss, 5

  In an ordinary house in an ordinary room, 169

  In friendly matches, 181

  In London Town some years ago, 33

  In the cloakroom, 25

  In the fabulous year of ’66, 173

  In the last week of the holidays, 211

  Lads, believe me, 158

  Let the children in our care, 191

  Marcus, don’t argue with the ref, 152

  Marcus, what did I say? 155

  May we have our ball, please, 81

  My friend, 116

  No charming chatty Prince for him, 95

  Nobody leave the room, 203

  Not I said the owl, 177

  Not now, Nigel, 19