Anecdotal Evidence Read online

  WENDY COPE

  Anecdotal Evidence

  To Adèle and Sophie

  Acknowledgements

  Areté, Dark Horse, Eborakon, Eildon Tree, Festschrift for Fleur Adcock, Footnotes, The Guardian, Jubilee Lines (Faber), Mail on Sunday, New Statesman, On Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Bloomsbury), Poetry Ireland, Say Cheese (Rockhurst Press), The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust website, The Spectator, The Telegraph, Times Literary Supplement, 101 Poems to See You Through (Ebury Press).

  The Shakespeare poems (except for ‘On Sonnet 22’) were commissioned by The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. They have been published by Celandine Press in a limited edition booklet. ‘A Wreath for George Herbert’ was commissioned by Shakespeare’s Globe. ‘Lantern Carol’ was commissioned by the Ely Choral Society and has been set to music by Andrew Parnell. ‘A Vow’ has been set to music by Jools Holland.

  Some of these poems were written during a month as poet in residence to the Stratford-on-Avon Poetry Festival. My thanks to Paul Edmondson of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust for arranging the residency and to Sarah Hosking of the Hosking Houses Trust for providing accommodation in the Trust’s cottage outside Stratford.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Evidence

  The Damage to the Piano

  Baggage

  Orb

  1952

  Bags

  Upheavals

  Absent Friends

  Reunion

  An Afternoon

  1972

  Memorial

  A Vow

  To My Husband

  Calculations

  One Day

  The Tree

  Here We Are

  Ely

  March 2013

  Haiku: Willows

  Naga-Uta

  By the River

  Shakespeare at School

  The Marriage

  On Sonnet 18

  The Worst Row

  My Father’s Shakespeare

  At New Place

  Young Love

  If It Be Now

  In Memory of Max Adrian 1903–1973

  On Sonnet 22

  A Wreath for George Herbert

  A Poem about Jesus

  Little Donkey

  Lantern Carol

  Christmas Cards

  In Memory of Dennis O’Driscoll

  In Memory of a Psychoanalyst

  A Little Tribute to John Cage

  A Statue

  Cento

  Where’s a Pied Piper When You Need One?

  On a Photograph of the Archbishop of Canterbury

  Men Talking

  At 70

  Health Advice

  New Year

  Tallis’s Canon

  Que Sera

  Every

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE

  Evidence

  ‘A great deal of anecdotal evidence suggests that we respond positively to birdsong.’

  – scientific researcher, Daily Telegraph, 8 February 2012

  Centuries of English verse

  Suggest the selfsame thing:

  A negative response is rare

  When birds are heard to sing.

  What’s the use of poetry?

  You ask. Well, here’s a start:

  It’s anecdotal evidence

  About the human heart.

  The Damage to the Piano

  You can barely see

  the damage to the piano

  where the new bookcase knocked it,

  but all hell would break loose

  if my mother were here.

  I sit for several minutes,

  pondering the silence

  where I am cast adrift

  with all this furniture

  and no-one to tell me off.

  Baggage

  Two smart porters carry luggage on

  The label from the Nacional, Madrid.

  The one from the hotel in Carcassonne

  Features the fortress. That’s stuck on the lid.

  Some are partly missing. This one here

  Says Vichy, and another Lac de Co …

  Some scraps remain mysterious as to where

  My father travelled all those years ago.

  His sturdy leather suitcase, left too long

  In our damp garage, still looks glamorous

  To me. It calls to mind the handsome, young

  And happy man I’d like to think he was.

  The child of his old age, I close my eyes

  And join him under sunny foreign skies.

  Orb

  An illuminated orb

  against a black background –

  the colour of flesh, with faint

  red lines that could be rivers.

  Not a planet in the night sky:

  my eyeball

  on the optician’s screen.

  It’s beautiful. Just one small feature

  of a mysterious universe

  I’ll never explore, packed neatly

  in this soft container.

  We know so little of ourselves,

  and of each other – the working parts

  we carry everywhere,

  the darkness we scan

  like astronomers, seeking

  the half-forgotten stories of our lives.

  1952

  Sometimes, instead of a farthing,

  shops give you safety pins.

  Can that be right? I’m sure

  it’s what the teacher said.

  I know it was 1952

  because the same teacher, a nun,

  announced one morning

  that the King had died.

  We were encouraged to go

  to the chapel, to pray for his soul.

  A Catholic friend showed me

  what you do with the holy water.

  It was lovely in there –

  white, gold, pastels –

  as pretty as the scenery

  for the last act of a pantomime.

  It may have been the same day

  that I upset my mother

  by asking for a rosary.

  Soon after that,

  as we sat down in a theatre,

  where I couldn’t make a fuss,

  she told me it had been decided:

  boarding school, next term.

  Bags

  After all these years

  I’ve begun using it again –

  the laundry bag embroidered

  by Nanna: W. M. COPE LINEN

  in large, neat red letters.

  There’s another bag somewhere,

  a smaller one, with

  W. M. COPE SHOES

  embroidered in purple.

  I’ve been trying to find it

  to carry my shoes in

  while snow is on the ground.

  I have other fabric bags –

  dozens of cotton ones

  from libraries and festivals –

  but I want the one Nanna made,

  the one that hung in a cold

  cloakroom until it was time

  to pull on wellingtons

  and trudge up the path to lessons.

  I see that little girl

  on an icy morning, with her shoe bag,

  and I think of the grandmother

  who couldn’t prevent her

  from being sent away

  but spent hours making

  things she could take with her

  when she went to a place

  where she didn’t know anyone

  and nobody knew her name.

  Upheavals

&nb
sp; When I was home in the holidays

  I dreaded going back to school.

  On the last day my mother and I

  usually doubled our unhappiness

  by having a row about the packing.

  Once I had settled down at school,

  I was fine. I didn’t long for home

  or for my parents until,

  on a couple of Saturdays every term,

  they came to take me out.

  Sometimes we went to Lympne Airport

  and watched cars being loaded

  on to planes. The nose opened

  and they went in from the front,

  like something being swallowed by a whale –

  a whale that could lift itself

  and its heavy load into the air

  for the short journey to France.

  It was interesting enough to lift

  my spirits a little. And there was tea.

  But I remember those Saturdays

  as heavy with the knowledge

  that they would soon be over,

  with the thought of parting

  and homesickness and tears.

  As I launched myself once more

  into school life with friends

  and teachers, the burden grew lighter.

  I was all right. I wished

  my parents would leave me alone.

  Absent Friends

  ‘The ones we remember are those linked

  with things we do all the time’

  – Katharine Whitehorn

  Roz

  My school friend Roz, who died twenty years ago,

  pulled her cardigan down at the back

  every time she stood up and crossed a room.

  Whenever I glance in a mirror

  and see that my cardigan has ridden up

  I remember Roz.

  She was my rival in English.

  The teachers were so impressed

  by her passion for Tolkien

  that I didn’t read The Lord of the Rings

  until I was fifty-five.

  Julia

  1

  Julia, dear Julia,

  taught me, one afternoon

  in a shop in Chislehurst,

  how to choose a card.

  ‘That one is vulgar.

  This one is too sweet.’

  She’s dead now

  but her taste lives on.

  I never buy a birthday or

  a Christmas card

  without asking myself

  if she would approve.

  2

  She rang me in the holidays

  and told me she was doing

  a chapter of Caesar every day.

  I followed her example

  and passed the exam.

  The last time I saw her

  she was dying, bravely,

  of motor neurone disease.

  She couldn’t speak. She wrote notes

  that made us laugh.

  That’s an example

  I may need to follow one day –

  harder than translating Caesar,

  but, if I think of Julia,

  perhaps I’ll pass the test.

  Reunion

  Fifty years have passed since we first met,

  And forty-seven since we said goodbye,

  Embarking on our adult lives – and yet

  You are the same, it seems to me. Am I?

  Five decades of life, of ups and downs,

  Of love and marriage, work and motherhood,

  And here we are, back in the world of gowns

  And college food and essays – and it’s good,

  It’s very good, my lovely, clever friends,

  To travel to the past and find you here,

  To share just one more evening meal that ends

  In someone’s room – before we disappear

  Into a future, where I’m sad to know

  It’s over. It was over long ago.

  An Afternoon

  The two of them are sitting on the bed

  In my small student room. My second year.

  My parents are both feeling very sad

  After a funeral not far from here:

  My mother’s closest girlhood friend, who died

  Of cancer in her forties. They agree

  They can’t face driving home just yet, decide

  To come and spend an hour or two with me.

  And I, for once, am genuinely pleased

  To see them. I’m depressed. I haven’t said.

  I hope the hugs and smiles I gave them eased

  Their grief. Years later, when they’re dead,

  I will remember and be moved to say

  I never loved them more than on that day.

  1972

  It was the year

  of the hippy librarians from Islington.

  My flatmate met hers first

  and I got off with his friend.

  They had beards. They smoked dope.

  They were very alternative.

  Mine gave me a copy

  of Vedanta for the Western World.

  I wore long Indian dresses

  and tried to like the smell of joss sticks.

  In August we sat in bed

  and watched the Olympics, stoned.

  Late that year I went into analysis.

  Freud didn’t get along

  with the hippy boyfriend.

  We drifted apart.

  It was fun, some of the time,

  while it lasted. You could say that,

  I suppose, about most years,

  about most lives.

  Memorial

  When I got home from Aunty Bob’s funeral

  I began to write a poem about her

  but the man I was in love with phoned

  and asked me out. I abandoned the poem

  and never went back to it.

  Miss Tucker. That was what they called her

  in the shop. She was in charge

  of haberdashery. Customers noticed

  that she got on well with Mr Cartwright

  of men’s outfitting. A match, perhaps?

  They had been married to each other

  for years. He was Uncle Maurice,

  a veteran of World War I, who never

  mentioned it except to tell us, with a laugh,

  that they all said ‘Wipers’ instead of ‘Ypres’.

  They laughed a lot, those two.

  He recited comic monologues

  as a party turn – ‘Yon Lion’s et Albert’ –

  and taught my sister to play pontoon.

  Mummy wasn’t happy about that.

  They loved me and were always kind.

  I loved them too. So, here’s a small

  memorial, three decades overdue.

  The man who phoned? That didn’t work out.

  I wrote a dozen poems about him.

  A Vow

  I cannot promise never to be angry;

  I cannot promise always to be kind.

  You know what you are taking on, my darling –

  It’s only at the start that love is blind.

  And yet I’m still the one you want to be with

  And you’re the one for me – of that I’m sure.

  You are my closest friend, my favourite person,

  The lover and the home I’ve waited for.

  I cannot promise that I will deserve you

  From this day on. I hope to pass that test.

  I love you and I want to make you happy.

  I promise I will do my very best.

  To My Husband

  If we were never going to die, I might

  Not hug you quite as often or as tight,

  Or say goodbye to you as carefully

  If I were certain you’d come back to me.

  Perhaps I wouldn’t value every day,

  Every act of kindness, every laugh

  As much, if I knew you and I could stay

  For ever a
s each other’s other half.

  We may not have too many years before

  One disappears to the eternal yonder

  And I can’t hug or touch you any more.

  Yes, of course that knowledge makes us fonder.

  Would I want to change things, if I could,

  And make us both immortal? Love, I would.

  Calculations

  I have been a non-smoker, now, for longer

  than I was a smoker.

  I have been a published poet almost as long

  as I wasn’t.

  For more than half my adult years, I have earned a living

  without having a job.

  I have been fatherless for nearly two-thirds of my life.

  In the run-up to our wedding I reflect that I will not be

  a married woman for half as long as I was single.

  But, if we are both alive when I am 96, I will have had

  as many years with you as without you –

  nearly a third of my life so far.

  With luck, the fraction will grow, like evening sunlight

  spreading across a field,

  so the view at the end of the day is brighter and more beautiful

  than I could have foreseen in the long, dark hours of the morning.

  One Day

  One day, my love, the good times will be over,