The Golden Mean Read online

  It isn’t just at night the moon sheds its skin. All day

  you can watch white dust catch the light as it settles

  on the world, turning distance the watery blue of faded

  colour photographs. How long can this go on?

  Each year the moon grows lighter while we grow heavier.

  Can you not feel it as you walk the streets, how gravity deepens

  and there always appears to be more to us than we know there is?

  Each new step more arduous. Have you not noticed

  how year by year the tides abandon us? Each month

  the blood less eager to flow; each month the pain more distant,

  more unreal. The day might come when you will forget

  your suffering, and reach out to it.

  Windfall

  What is love if it is not an unravelling

  against the dark? In the moonless field

  between house and river, remember

  how you stood with your arms

  wide to the night, under every tumid

  star, waiting for one to drop.

  The Darkroom

  im WK

  If I am the one who is said to be

  alive, and you the other, how come it’s me

  who ends up trailing along behind

  as you stride ahead, humming

  to yourself, crossing from shade to shadow?

  Every morning I wake

  longing for you to long for me again;

  to dawdle, to loiter, and then – to hell

  with the cost, I say – look back.

  My Mother’s Favourite Flower

  This world is nothing much – it’s mostly

  threadworn, tawdry stuff, of next to little use.

  If only it could bring itself to give us back

  a portion of the things we would have fallen

  for, but always too busy living, overlooked

  and missed. So many small things missed.

  So many brief, important things.

  It is my intention never to write about this.

  Elegy

  and now that

  his song is done

  open your hands

  there can be no

  harm in that

  let the notes go free

  let them become

  ash in the wind

  gone back

  not to nothing

  no

  to everything

  The Walkers

  As soon as we had died, we decided to walk home.

  A white tatterflag marked where each journey began.

  It was a slow business, so much water to be crossed,

  so many dirt roads followed. We walked together but alone.

  You must understand – we can never be passengers any more.

  Even the smallest children had to make their own way

  to their graves, through acres and acres of sunflowers

  somehow no longer pretty. A soldier cradled a cigarette, a teddy bear

  and his gun. He didn’t see us pass, our light was far too thin.

  We skirted villages and cities, traced the meanderings of rivers.

  But beyond it all, the voices of our loved ones called

  so we flowed through borders like the wind through railings

  and when impassable mountains marked the way,

  soared above their peaks like flocks of cloud, like shoals of rain.

  In time the fields and woods grew weary and the sea began –

  you could tell we were home by the way our shadows leaned.

  We gathered like craneflies in the windowlight of familiar rooms,

  grieving for all the things we could never hold again.

  Forgive us for coming back. We didn’t travel all this way

  to break your hearts. We came to ask if you might heal the world.

  Notes

  Abaton: ‘. . . a town of changing location. Though not inaccessible, no one has ever reached it . . . ’ – The Dictionary of Imaginary Places by Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi.

  The Skylark – the epigraph is taken from the autobiography of John Muir.

  The Ghost Train – loosely based on the lives of the filmmakers John and Roy Boulting.

  The Lost Boy – The poem is based on Sonatorrek (Loss of Sons) from Egil’s saga and is written in the Viking ballad-metre ‘kviðuháttr’.

  The Iraqi Elements – tanur – a wood-fired oven.

  Monster – the epigraph is taken from a letter written by Mary Wollstonecraft to her husband on August 30th, 1797, the day Mary Shelley was born.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Individual poems have appeared in the following publications:

  13 Magazine, BODY, Earthlines, Entanglements, The Lampeter Review, The New Edinburgh Review, Gutter, Heavenly Bodies, Ploughshares, The Spectator, Atlanta Review, Irish Pages, Northwords Now, Transnational Literature.

  Several poems were first published in collaboration with the photographer Alastair Cook in Everything We Have Ever Missed.

  ‘A Pint of Light’ was published by Bradford on Avon Arts Festival.

  ‘Self Portrait in a Dirty Window’ and ‘Primroses’ were commissioned for the The Hunterian Gallery, Glasgow.

  ‘The Flight into Egypt’ was commissioned for the Felix Festival, Antwerp.

  ‘The Skylark’ was originally published as a postcard poem by Alastair Cook.

  ‘The Ghost Train’ was commissioned for the anthology Double Bill.

  ‘The Lost Boy’ was commissioned by the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge for Modern Poets on Viking Poetry and subsequently produced as a filmpoem by Alastair Cook.

  ‘The Big Push’ was commissioned by the Fleming Gallery, London and subsequently produced as an animated film.

  ‘Our Dad’ was commissioned by Kevin Reid for his anthology The Lord’s Prayer.

  ‘The Iraqi Elements’ and ‘The Doldrums’ were translated during translations workshops in Shaqlawa, Iraq, as part of the Reel Iraq 2013 initiative. Many thanks to Lauren Pyott for writing the bridge translations.

  ‘Only a leaf for a sail’ was originally published online in ‘7 Sails’.

  ‘The Walkers’ was commissioned by the Dutch filmmaker Judith Dekker.

  The Golden Mean

  JOHN GLENDAY’S first collection, The Apple Ghost,

  won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and his second,

  Undark, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.

  His most recent collection, Grain (Picador, 2009),

  was also a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and

  was shortlisted for both the Ted Hughes Award

  and the Griffin International Poetry Prize.

  Also by John Glenday

  The Apple Ghost

  Undark

  Grain

  First published 2015 by Picador

  This electronic edition published 2015 by Picador

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan

  20 New Wharf Road, London N19RR

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-1-4472-5393-8

  Copyright © John Glenday 2015

  The right of John Glenday to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Visit www.panmacmillan.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews a
nd news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases