Poems 1960-2000 (31 page)

Read Poems 1960-2000 Online

Authors: Fleur Adcock

BOOK: Poems 1960-2000
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  • ‘Oblivion, that’s all. I never dream,’ he said,
    141
  • Odd how the seemingly maddest of men,
    131
  • Offerings
    ,
    263
  • Off the Track
    ,
    94
  • On a Son Returned to New Zealand
    ,
    44
  • Only a slight fever,
    72
  • On the Border
    ,
    136
  • On the curved staircase he embraced me,
    272
  • On the Land
    ,
    177
  • On the School Bus
    ,
    169
  • On the wall above the bedside lamp,
    204
  • On the Way to the Castle
    ,
    210
  • Our busy springtime has corrupted,
    94
  • Our throats full of dust, teeth harsh with it,
    108
  • Our Trip to the Federation
    ,
    85
  • Outside the National Gallery,
    105
  • Outwood
    ,
    168
  • Over the Edge
    ,
    76
  • Paremata
    ,
    259
  • Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow
    ,
    27
  • Pastoral
    ,
    182
  • Paths
    ,
    120
  • Paua-Shell
    ,
    110
  • ‘Personal Poem’
    ,
    175
  • Peter Pan
    ,
    276
  • Peter Wentworth in Heaven
    ,
    255
  • Piano Concerto in E Flat Major
    ,
    138
  • Pink Lane, Strawberry Lane, Pudding Chare,
    141
  • Please Identify Yourself
    ,
    61
  • Poem Ended by a Death
    ,
    97
  • Poetry for the summer. It comes out blinking,
    276
  • Poetry Placement
    ,
    276
  • Polypectomy
    ,
    278
  • Post Office
    ,
    187
  • Prelude
    ,
    88
  • Proposal for a Survey
    ,
    90
  • Pupation
    ,
    70
  • Purple Shining Lilies
    ,
    39
  • Queen Caroline, I think, planted these chestnuts,
    276
  • St Gertrude’s, Sidcup,
    166
  • St John’s School
    ,
    69
  • Salfords, Surrey,
    167
  • Samuel Joynson
    ,
    240
  • Sandy
    ,
    277
  • Saturday
    ,
    45
  • Scalford Again
    ,
    170
  • Scalford School
    ,
    166
  • Scarcely two hours back in the country,
    116
  • Script
    ,
    66
  • Sea-Lives
    ,
    110
  • Send-off
    ,
    95
  • Settlers
    ,
    112
  • Shakespeare’s Hotspur
    ,
    132
  • She keeps the memory-game,
    77
  • She’ll never be able to play the piano,
    222
  • She writes to me from a stony island,
    64
  • Showcase
    ,
    76
  • Shrimping-Net
    ,
    111
  • Slightly frightened of the bullocks,
    92
  • Smokers for Celibacy
    ,
    215
  • Snow on the tops: half the day I’ve sat at the window,
    123
  • Somehow we manage it: to like our friends,
    214
  • Somehow you’ve driven fifty miles to stand,
    247
  • Some of us are a little tired of hearing that cigarettes kill,
    215
  • Someone has nailed a lucky horse-shoe,
    137
  • Somewhere in the bush, the last moa,
    205
  • Spilt petrol,
    110
  • Standing just under the boatshed,
    111
  • Stepping down from the blackberry bushes,
    35
  • Stewart Island
    ,
    44
  • Stockings
    ,
    261
  • Strange room, from this angle,
    101
  • Street Scene, London
    N2,
    185
  • Street Song
    ,
    142
  • Sub Sepibus
    ,
    245
  • Suddenly it’s gone public; it rushed out,
    211
  • Summer in Bucharest
    ,
    266
  • Swings and Roundabouts
    ,
    254
  • Syringa
    ,
    99
  • Tadpoles
    ,
    159
  • Tarmac, take-off: metallic words conduct us,
    15
  • Tawny-white as a ripe hayfield,
    129
  • That can’t be it,
    250
  • That’s where they lived in the 1890s,
    234
  • That was the year the rats got in,
    261
  • That wet gravelly sound is rain,
    70
  • The accidents are never happening,
    177
  • The barber’s shop has gone anonymous,
    186
  • The Batterer
    ,
    203
  • The Bedroom Window
    ,
    157
  • The bee in the foxglove, the mouth on the nipple,
    43
  • The Breakfast Program
    ,
    208
  • The Bullaun
    ,
    60
  • The Chiffonier
    ,
    158
  • The concrete road from the palace to the cinema,
    78
  • The Drought Breaks
    ,
    70
  • The events of the
    Aeneid
    were not enacted,
    39
  • The Ex-Queen Among the Astronomers,
    93
  • The Fairies’ Winter Palace,
    276
  • The Famous Traitor,
    65
  • The Farm
    ,
    212
  • The first spring of the new century,
    238
  • The first transvestite I ever went to bed with,
    261
  • The four-year-old believes he likes,
    22
  • The French boy was sick on the floor at prayers,
    166
  • The Genius of Surrey
    ,
    164
  • The Greenhouse Effect
    ,
    204
  • The hailstorm was in my head,
    82
  • The High Tree
    ,
    173
  • The Hillside
    ,
    129
  • The hills, I told them; and water, and the clear air,
    115
  • The Inner Harbour
    ,
    110
  • Their little black thread legs, their threads of arms,
    159
  • The janitor came out of his eely cave,
    268
  • The Keepsake
    ,
    162
  • The landscape of my middle childhood,
    164
  • The Last Moa
    ,
    205
  • The little girls in the velvet collars,
    169
  • The Man Who X-Rayed an Orange
    ,
    23
  • The maths master was eight feet tall,
    171
  • The Monarch caterpillars were crawling away,
    278
  • The Net
    ,
    77
  • Then in the end she didn’t marry him,
    130
  • The ones not in the catalogue,
    179
  • The other option’s to become a bird,
    87
  • The Pangolin
    ,
    32
  • The Pilgrim Fathers
    ,
    258
  • The power speaks only out of sleep and blackness,
    118
  • The Prize-winning Poem
    ,
    136
  • The queue’s right out through the glass doors,
    187
  • There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public,
    87
  • There have been all those tigers, of course,
    32
  • There is no safety,
    148
  • There they were around the wireless,
    165
  • There was a tree higher than clouds or lightning,
    173
  • There was never just one book for the desert island,
    184
  • There were always the places I couldn’t spell, or couldn’t find on maps,
    113
  • The Ring
    ,
    130
  • The room is full of clichés – ‘Throw me a crumb’,
    27
  • The Russian War
    ,
    235
  • These coloured slopes ought to inspire,
    121
  • These winds bully me,
    107
  • The sheets have been laundered clean,
    77
  • The Soho Hospital for Women
    ,
    101
  • The Spirit of the Place
    ,
    121
  • The strong image is always the river,
    109
  • The surface dreams are easily remembered,
    50
  • The syringa’s out. That’s nice for me,
    99
  • The tadpoles won’t keep still in the aquarium,
    132
  • The Telephone Call
    ,
    179
  • The Three-toed Sloth
    ,
    49
  • The three-toed sloth is the slowest creature we know,
    49
  • ‘The time is nearly one o’clock,
    206
  • The trees have all gone from the grounds of my manor,
    255
  • The underworld of children becomes the overworld,
    143
  • The Vale of Grasmere
    ,
    121
  • The Video
    ,
    270
  • The Voices
    ,
    267
  • The voices change on the
    answering-machines
    ,
    267
  • The Voyage Out
    ,
    62
  • The Wars
    ,
    244
  • The Water Below
    ,
    30
  • The weekly dietary scale,
    62
  • The worst thing that can happen,
    193
  • They are throwing the ball,
    34
  • They asked me ‘Are you sitting down,
    179
  • They call it pica,
    73
  • They give us moistened BOAC towels,
    80
  • The young are walking on the riverbank,
    182
  • The young cordwainer (yes, that’s right),
    240
  • They set the boy to hairdressing,
    242
  • They serve revolving saucer eyes,
    93
  • They suggest I hold court in the Queen’s Temple,
    276
  • They thought he looked like Gregory Peck, of course,
    260
  • They will wash all my kisses and fingerprints off you,
    97
  • Things
    ,
    87
  • Think Before You Shoot
    ,
    31
  • Think, now: if you have found a dead bird,
    29
  • This darkness has a quality,
    24
  • This house is floored with water,
    30
  • This is a story. Dear Clive,
    92
  • This is the front door. You can just see,
    185
  • This is the time of year when people die,
    200
  • This tender ‘V’ of thighs below my window,
    264
  • This truth-telling is well enough,
    100
  • This Ungentle Music
    ,
    129
  • This Winifred Nicholson card for my mother’s birthday,
    278
  • Those thorn trees in your poems, Alistair,
    122
  • Three Rainbows in One Morning
    ,
    119
  • Three times I have slept in your house,
    28
  • Through my pillow, through mattress, carpet, floor and ceiling,
    107
  • Ting-ting!
    ‘What’s in your pocket, sir?’
    213
  • Toads
    ,
    196
  • Today the Dog of Heaven swallowed the sun,
    135
  • ‘To Fleur from Pete, on loan perpetual’,
    162
  • Tokens
    ,
    77
  • To Marilyn from London
    ,
    116
  • Tongue Sandwiches
    ,
    257
  • Tongue sandwiches on market-day,
    257
  • Too jellied, viscous, floating a condition,
    204
  • Train from the Hook of Holland
    ,
    63
  • Traitors
    ,
    252
  • Trees
    ,
    47
  • Tricks and tumbles are my trade; I’m,
    145
  • Trio
    ,
    269
  • Tunbridge Wells
    ,
    172
  • Turnip-heads
    ,
    202
  • 227 Peel Green Road
    ,
    236
  • Under a hedge was good enough for us,
    245
  • Under the Lawn
    ,
    197
  • Under the sand at low tide,
    110
  • Unexpected Visit
    ,
    20
  • Uniunea Scriitorilor
    ,
    156
     
  • Variations on a Theme of Horace
    ,
    103
  • Viewed from the top, he said, it was like a wheel,
    23
  • Villa Isola Bella
    ,
    139
  • Visited
    ,
    100
     
  • Water
    ,
    243
  • We are dried and brittle this morning,
    71
  • Weathering
    ,
    124
  • We awakened facing each other,
    89
  • We bought raspberries in the market,
    266
  • ‘We did sums at school, Mummy,
    166
  • We give ten pence to the old woman,
    108
  • We three in our dark decent clothes,
    189
  • ‘Wet the tea, Jinny, the men are back,
    66
  • We weave haunted circles about each other,
    40
  • We went to Malaya for an afternoon,
    85
  • ‘What are you looking at?’ ‘Looking’,
    119
  • What are you loving me with? I’m dead,
    247
  • What can I have done to earn,
    203
  • What is it, what is it? Quick: that whiff,
    206
  • What May Happen
    ,
    193
  • What shall we do with Granpa, in his silver,
    234
  • What was the creepiest thing about him,
    276
  • When I came in that night I found,
    38
  • When I got up that morning I had no father,
    194
  • When I went back the school was rather small,
    69
  • When Laura was born, Ceri watched,
    270
  • When the Americans were bombing Libya,
    193
  • When they were having the Gulf War,
    244
  • When we heard the results of our tests,
    265
  • When you dyed your hair blue,
    161
  • When you’re fifteen, no one understands you,
    259
  • When you were lying on the white sand,
    19
  • Where They Lived
    ,
    234
     
  • Which redhead did I get my temper from,
    242
  • Wildlife
    ,
    201
  • ‘Will I die?’ you ask. And so I enter on,
    21
  • Willow Creek
    ,
    268
  • Witnesses
    ,
    189
  • Wren Song
    ,
    198

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