Collected Poems (14 page)

Authors: Alan; Sillitoe

BOOK: Collected Poems

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NOAH'S ARK

(On 12 January 1987, at 2230GMT, I took down an Italian news agency message in morse sent out specially to ships. The text said that Noah's Ark was no longer to be found on Mount Ararat, and gave details. The report originated in Tokyo, and the following lines are based on it.)

Earphones fed a message to the hand,

Hurried writing came through pat:

NOAH
'
S ARK IS NO LONGER FOUND ON MOUNT ARARAT
.

Words in Italian, sparks of Aaron's Rod

Rained across the page in morse

Like intelligence from God:

NOAH
'
S ARK IS NOT FOUND ON MOUNT ARARAT
.

Morse flowed like splintered glass

The text unfinished, rattling on:

BUT IN ALL PROBABILITY YOU WILL FIND NOAH
'
S ARK

ON A HILL FIVE HUNDRED METRES HIGH

ON THE BANKS OF THE TIGRIS BETWEEN SYRIA AND TURKEY
.

Rome International Radio informed all ships

Swaying the emerald Atlantic waves

Urgent news of Ararat,

And Marconi operators wrote the gen

And typed it with the morning news,

Sailors with shocked eyes and lips atremble said:

L
'
ARCA DI NOÃ NON SI TROVA SUL MONTE ARARAT
!

Perhaps Noah's Ark had been not lost

But one dark night dissected

And put on donkeys for a secret destination.

Hot-footed morse did not originate from God:

A Japanese expedition from an Electronics Firm

Led by
YOSHIO KOU
had combed

The scrub of Chaldees with a Bible and a map

Finally concluding that

NOAH
'
S ARK IS NO LONGER ON MOUNT ARARAT

Kids at school threw down their pens

Church and Synagogue were worried

And the Zurich bourse was flurried.

But fact and inspiration tell

How the Ark came on to Ararat because

The navigation of the Pilot was spot-on.

A dove and olive twig to guide the rudder:

And travelling all night above Lake Van

The snowy light was not one cloud of many

But glinting Araratic glaciers in the dawn.

Anchored by a terminal moraine

Noah ordered animals and humans to disperse.

God camouflaged the Ark from archaeologists

Who scour the land with lamp and map.

What
YOSHIO KOU
found by the Tigris

Was not an Ark but a canoe,

Though matters Biblical led him to state

NOAH
'
S ARK IS NO LONGER BEACHED ON ARARAT
.

The story in the Bible's better:

Of how the Ark on Day Seventeen

After the flood that God begat

Bumped against the banks of Ararat.

The Ark, in spite of
YOSHIO KOU,
lies under rocks

On tufic Ararat, below a Turkish post

That looks on Persia.

I saw it in a dream, and sent a message back

By telegraphic key

Feet tapping to its rhythm on the mat:

NOAH
'
S ARK'S STILL HIDDEN ON MOUNT ARARAT
.

A Biography of Alan Sillitoe by Ruth Fainlight

Not many of the “Angry Young Men” (a label Alan Sillitoe vigorously rejected but which nonetheless clung to him until the end of his life), could boast of having failed the eleven plus exam not only once, but twice. From early childhood Alan yearned for every sort of knowledge about the world: history, geography, cosmology, biology, topography, and mathematics; to read the best novels and poetry; and learn all the languages, from Classical Greek and Latin to every tongue of modern Europe. But his violent father was illiterate, his mother barely able to read the popular press and when necessary write a simple letter, and he was so cut off from any sort of cultivated environment that, at about the age of ten, trying to teach himself French (unaware books existed that might have helped him), the only method he could devise was to look up each word of a French sentence in a small pocket dictionary. It did not take long for him to realize that something was wrong with his system, but there was no one to ask what he should do instead.

So, like all his schoolmates, he left school at fourteen and went to work in a local factory. Alan never presented himself as a misunderstood sensitive being, and always insisted that he had a wonderful time chasing girls and going with workmates to the lively Nottingham pubs. He also joined the Air Training Corps (ATC) where he absorbed information so quickly that by the age of seventeen he was working as an air traffic controller at a nearby airfield. World War II was still being fought, and his ambition was to become a pilot and go to the Far East, but before that could be realized it was VE Day. As soon as possible he volunteered for the Royal Air Force. It was too late to become a pilot or a navigator, but he got as far as Malaya, where as a radio operator he spent long nights in a hut at the edge of the jungle.

The Morse code he learned during this time stayed with Alan all his life; he loved listening to transmissions from liners and cargo ships (although he never transmitted himself), and whenever invited to speak, he always took his Morse key along. Before beginning his talk, he would make a grand performance of setting it up on the table in front of him and then announce that if anyone in the audience could decipher the message he was about to transmit, he would give that person a signed copy of one of his books. As far as I remember, this never happened.

In Malaya, Alan caught tuberculosisâonly discovered during the final physical examination before demobilization. He spent the next eighteen months in a military sanatorium, and was awarded a 100 percent disability pension. By then Alan was twenty-three years old, and it was not long until we met. We fell in love and soon decided to leave the country, going first to France and then to Mallorca, and stayed away from England for more than six years. That pension was our only reliable income until, after several rejections, the manuscript of
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
was accepted for publication. Afterward, Alan would say that during those apprentice years he had been kept by a very kind woman: the Queen of England.

It is said that an artist must choose between life and art; sometimes Alan would tell whomever questioned him that after his first book was published and he became a recognized writer, he stopped livingâthere was not enough time to do both. I hope that was not entirely true. But writing was his main activity: He would spend ten to twelve hours a day at his desk, reading or answering letters when he needed a break from working on his current novel. And there were poems, essays, reviewsâand scripts for the films of his first two books,
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
and
The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner
, and later others. He was extremely productive. But certainly he also enjoyed social life with our friends and going to concerts or the theatre. This was the heyday of the young British dramatists at the Royal Court Theatre.

Now, in the 1960s, there was enough money for what we enjoyed most: travel, and although in the first few years our son was still a baby, we would spend up to six months of the year away from England. Alan's books were translated into many languages, which meant that he was invited to many other countries, frequently to literary festivals, or sometimes offered the use of a villa or grand apartment for generous periods of time. I remember a stay at a castle in then-Czechoslovakia, where we were awoken every morning by a scream from our son, who had managed to get his head or hand caught in some part of the rickety crib that had been put in our room for him. We also spent months in Mallorca, in a house generously lent by Robert Graves. During our four years on the island we had become good friends with him and the Graves family.

Time passed â¦ the sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties.â¦ Every year or two a new book, a trip to another part of the world. Japan, India, the United States, Mexico, and Latin America: the range extended. I usually went with him, and as by then I also was having work published, sometimes the invitation was to me, and he would assume the role of consort.

Looking back, I realize what a wonderful life we had then. But a year or two before his eightieth birthday, Alan told me he was not feeling well. It was always hard to persuade him to see the doctor; this time he suggested it himself. There were many hospital appointments for investigations and testsâthe National Health Service was as excellent and thorough as everâand a few weeks later the diagnosis came: There was a cancer at the base of his tongue. His suspicions were confirmed. Although he had continued to smoke his pipe (and the occasional cigar), now he stopped at once. The tragic program of treatments started, and the inevitable oscillations between hope and despair. Twice it seemed that he was cured; then it all began again. In April 2010, not long after his eighty-second birthday, Alan died. We had hoped he could die at home, but he needed the facilities of a good hospital. Months later, on a cupboard shelf in his study, I found the manuscript of
Moggerhanger
.