A Meeting with the Senior Poet Who Hated Me

Last night I used up in a dream all

that I had to give

reading out my collected works in

some grimly renovated tube-lit hall.

It took a while, and when it was done

—without a word, without applause— each member

of the audience stood up

one by one

and marched away into a suddenly appearing tunnel.

From where I stood, I could see heel

following heel

in the echoing ardour

of their single file

my wordless goodbye

until

into a concealed turn

the procession disappeared.

I hadn’t moved.

Now only one seat was still

occupied, in that guttered

hall: a stocky mustachioed man. With a bit of caution,

he got up and gave me a pained grin. I knew his face

only from photographs: (I’d made fun

of him in a slightly evil rhyme and

he, angrily, had tried

to take revenge by panning my first book.)

Sir,

I said, casting about for some inoffensive appellation.

I hope you see I never intended malice—I mean, so soon—

It’s okay, he said, cutting me off.

Time evacuates intention.

(Pause.)

But what’s left, I said. Nothing! Just some cartoon

that makes the eyes fall out!

Well, well, never mind,

he replied, warming conspiratorially, fixing me in the moon

of his brow,

I guess it helped us out in the end,

both of us, didn’t it?

Hehe.

Thanks.

I don’t know what got

into me then, but we embraced.

I felt his forearms on

my back and I slipped my fingers through the knots

of his hair.

Okay, I continued,

that rhyme

might have been a little misjudged, but

isn’t it like some

enzyme

leavening us

from within?

All grown up

a tongue between us?

Or, indeed, a mind

far enough to know

—and mourn—

all that was to

and could have been

said...?

It’s teeth

that make a single poetry, echoed he,

looking still forlorn,

still tough.

Anyway, they’ll consign us to the lousy

depths of the database for sure,

said I,

they’ll plant the blandest gardens

on our remains.

And those

that tramp

us down

will follow in turn

into the long

ravine where all

our little victories

vanish:

each dropped planet

in the cry

of its jolted orbit,

the sand of our

languages by

degrees

pulverised

and

bleached

into air.  Well:

we may be aught but minor poets

of the early 21st century, but

dammit,

we have our pride!

Now now, don’t get scared, our dues are paid,

responded he,

Who moves the pen

is moved by the pen.

Huh, I said.

That’s kind of a

“labyrinthine”

line—

I like that!

I knew you bloody would, he said then,

This is your sort of poem, is it not?

And it’s true

that I would have preferred

to be stuck

in some

febrile, living stench than over here.  But listen, if this

tube-lit

two-bit

indoor limbo

is going

to be our home—

and we’re trapped

in this embrace

for all of eternity,

I suppose it’s best

to get comfortable. And then almost as if

our inadvertent words

had released a spell,

the inside became

the outside, a warm

breeze blew against us, fire

mated with air and the earth too

flung about

in damp clods parted

to take us in.