Poetry Gallery
John Clarke modestly presents four of his own poems for general perusal. Please enjoy these poems and don't forget to check out the prose pages as well.
In Summer a house in Station Street
heats up. The windows are swung wide,
the blinds are drawn and the loft door left open.
At number 2 Mrs Hussain fries bhajis in her kitchen.
Sumitra turns somersaults on the lawn,
flying her silk shalwar kameeze,
shouting broad Yorkshire.
Barnsley Road traffic roars.
Kettlethorpe Cabs and four by fours
jostle for position, baying at amber.
Voices are raised in the hot night air
and shouted down,
We’ll have a better season this year.
A moot point,
the Castle serves food till nine.
The punters spill outside.
I know you don’t like
all that sailing through the night stuff,
hate easy rhymes on balloon and cocoon.
You with the strength to pull and drag
the earth’s seven tenths,
seek stronger nomenclature:
peeled peach, polished hubcap chrome.
But yours is a heavy load to bear,
myth maker, symbol and focus
of half formed desire.
How would the man in you feel
without the naked dances of obeisance,
assignations in your milky glow,
monthly waxing of your cheesy self?
Where then your titled aspirations?
Since my baby left me
I’m standing all alone.
Now I know we’re through,
and moon, oh moon,
you bastard,
I’m blue.
Dusk slips its warm blanket
around the cast iron table and chairs.
On the terrace garden, replete
we sip a demitasse of strong, black coffee
and brandy warmed, praise again
the goat’s cheese on bread,
the confit de canard.
The mingled peach aroma in the night air
honeysuckle thick, invites confidence and confession.
Our country has such problems.
Smiling, the perfect host
picks out words like slugs from salad.
Immigration.
A magnificent World Cup win
but not a Frenchman in the team.
The chatter of crickets momentarily dies.
Beneath a hanging moon
we smile in our compliance
hearing now across these gently rolling hills
the baying of a distant dog.
Three winter dead trees
stand sentinel
in this sepulchral valley mouth;
this fog bound, life squeezed valley
where sleet slants across
a dozen disconsolate cows
treading and re-treading
the shit pocked field.
No chattering sparrows now
just chasing black-flap crows.
A sprawling garden border
unkempt,
is flaming yellow ablaze,
like some mistake –
a brilliant forsythia in bloom.
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