Jonathan Davidson: Selected Poems

By Jonathan Davidson

Jonathan

Davidson has a loving, observant and wry regard for the frailties of the

human condition. He makes fresh something we thought we knew; writing of the

everyday the way Vermeer might be said to paint it.' — Maura Dooley

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Poetry Business
• Release date: Oct 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781910367216

Book preview

from Moving the Stereo

Six Venetian Glasses

We were forced to do Country Dancing,

Tuesday afternoons at Primary.

I hated dancing but once I’d liked it.

At home we played this record of Greek

folk music; blue cover, warped black vinyl.

I’d dance in front of the gas fire to it,

hair in my eyes, shorts slipping down my waist,

simply running up and down the lounge,

running in circles, falling over, Dad clapping,

getting faster, the glass panelled cabinet

rattling with the six Venetian glasses

my Parents brought back from their honeymoon.

The record became worn. We blunted needles

urging sound from it. But I wouldn’t stop.

At five I was a credible extremist,

studying my Father’s sudden tempers.

I’d end up breaking something, later.

The Cows

They are moving across the high shires.

In two or threes? No, in their hundreds,

and they wear no bells. Hoof by cloven

hoof they are stepping out along once

abandoned bridleways, fording

rivers out of sight of bridges.

They grace the rich pastures, the while

content to chew the cud, to ruminate,

to ferment the radical consciousness

of bovine-kind, to hang a long look

on the passer-by, innocent as clouds.

They are waiting.

A Lady Learns to Cycle

(England, 1917)

They led it round the yard and garden

on a long rein.

They fed it oil.

It was black as her jet black boots,

heavy as a gate.

It ticked, shone.

Climbing on it, she felt it shy,

lunge beneath her,

clatter to earth.

They held her up, old men, serious,

shouldered her round,

gentlemanly.

The guns of Passchendaele bellowed.

They held her, still,

then let her go,

and when they let go she advanced

unaided, unattached,

let out a shout.

The Garden

I stalk the raspberries, feeding myself.

My sister is in the blackcurrants.

In fifteen minutes time she will be sick,

violently sick in the coal bunker.

The coal bunker has lost its coal

to ‘gas central heating throughout’

and we hide in it, it’s our pit,

our mine shaft, it descends deep

beneath the dandelion scrub

of the lawn, beneath the fence

enclosing our small-holding.

It travels to a depth at which

we cannot smell the stink of vomit

or see the legendary blue sky

or feel our grubby hunters’ hands

across our eyes, or hear our tongues

babbling the numbers for the hide and seek.

We only know the sudden shadow-cold,

the wood lice squashed by our sandals,

the red eggs of the spiders