READING
At the end of the kitchen, the gas copper
in the scullery by the back door,
and next to the larder, a cramped store-room:
that was where our books were,
piled over the door on shelves aloof,
the rest a chaos of discarded toys,
bundles of clothes, collapsing brooms,
accumulations of dried-up shoes.
By the gardening-trousers on the wall
hung the uniform and truncheon
for my father’s special constable days,
when he’d stand beckoning cars in
to muddy gymkhana fields. I needed
a ladder and less fear of spiders
as I balanced up against the shelves
rifling through dust and disorder,
with old war pamphlets slipping down,
and tried to catch at The Cruel Sea,
or make sense of Pilling Always
Pays, then reached out for the three
heavy volumes of The Science of Life
where apes stood and became men,
blandly bare women showed everything,
and blond children lazed in the sun.
Elsewhere our displayed reading
was a row of cheap dull-skinned Dickens
that nobody ever tried to read;
did I prefer books to be hidden
and involve risk? By the time I fell
clutching in my hand A Tree Grows
in Brooklyn, I’d done with real trees;
and later, the healing scratch and the bruise
yellow as an ancient manuscript
were digested the way words fade
to become the body with no trace
of the deep difference they made.
