Selected Poems (25 page)
Authors: Tony Harrison
He dumped his bombs in t’park and damaged nowt
missing t’rows of ’ouses either side.
’umane! ’umane! And ’im a bloody Kraut!
And but for him, I thought, I could have died.
So now I celebrate my narrow squeak,
the unseen foe who spared our street in Leeds,
and I survived to go on to learn Greek
and find more truth in tragedy than creeds.
I stroke my shrapnel and I celebrate,
surviving without God until today,
where on my desk my shrapnel paperweight
stops this flapping poem being blown away.
A flicker of faith in man grew from that raid
where this shrapnel that I’m stroking now comes from,
when a German had strict orders but obeyed
some better, deeper instinct not to bomb
the houses down below and be humane.
Our house, thanks to that humane bombardier,
still stands; and those of Hasib mir Husain,
Mohammad Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer.
Thanks are due to the following publishers and periodicals for permission to reprint poems in this book:
London Magazine Editions – for ‘
Thomas Campey and the Copernican System
’, ‘
Ginger’s Friday
’, ‘
The Pocket Wars of Peanuts Joe
’, ‘
Allotments
’, ‘
The White Queen
’, ‘
The Heart of Darkness
’, ‘
The Songs of the PWD Man
’, ‘
The Death of the PWD Man
’, ‘
Schwiegermutterlieder
’, ‘
The Curtain Catullus
’, ‘
The Bedbug
’, ‘
The Nuptial Torches
’, ‘
Newcastle is Peru
’ and ‘
Ghosts: Some Words Before Breakfast
’
from
The Loiners
, 1970
Anvil Press Poetry – for ‘
The Morning After I
,
II
’, ‘
Bye-Byes
’, ‘
Testing the Reality
’, ‘
The Effort
’, ‘
Jumper
’ and ‘
Changing at York
’ from
Ten Sonnets from the School of Eloquence,
1987
Rex Collings Ltd – for ‘
Doodlebugs
’, ‘
Curtain Sonnets
’, ‘
Durham
’, ‘
Sentences
’, ‘
Voortrekker
’, ‘
The Bonebard Ballads
’, ‘
Social Mobility
’ and ‘
History Classes
’
from
The School of Eloquence,
1978
; and for ‘
On Not Being Milton
’, ‘
The Rhubarbarians I
,
II
’, ‘
Study
’, ‘
Me Tarzan
’, ‘
Wordlists I
,
II
,
III
’, ‘
Classics Society
’, ‘
National Trust
’, ‘
Them & [uz] I
,
II
’, ‘
Working
’, ‘
Cremation
’, ‘
Book Ends I
,
II
’, ‘
Next Door I
,
II
,
III
,
IV
’, ‘
Long Distance I
,
II
’, ‘
Continuous
’, ‘
Clearing I
,
II
’, ‘
Illuminations I
,
II
,
III
’,
Turns
’, ‘
Punchline
’, ‘
Marked With D
.’, ‘
A Close One
’, ‘
Blocks
’, ‘
Bringing Up
’, ‘
Timer
’, ‘
Fireeater
’, ‘
Background Material
’, ‘
Self Justification
’, ‘
Divisions I
,
II
’. ‘
Lines to my Grandfathers I
,
II
’, ‘
The Earthen Lot
’, ‘
Dichtung und Wahrheit
’, ‘
The Birds of America
:
(i) John James Audubon (1785–1851)
,
(iii) Standards
’, ‘
Loving Memory
’, ‘
Looking Up
’, ‘
Killing Time
’ and ‘
t’Ark
’ from
Continuous
,
1981
Bloodaxe Books Ltd – for ‘
A Kumquat for John Keats
’ which was published as a pamphlet in 1981; for ‘
Oh, Moon of Mahagonny
!’ from
U.S. Martial,
1981; ‘
The Fire-Gap
’, 1985 and ‘
v
.’, 1985
Encounter
– for ‘
Confessional Poetry
’, ‘
Flood
’, ‘
The Queen’s English
’, ‘
Aqua Mortis
’ and ‘
Remains
’
The Times Literary Supplement
– for ‘
Grey Matter
’, ‘
An Old Score
’, ‘
Still
’, ‘
A Good Read
’, ‘
Facing North
’, ‘
Giving Thanks
’, ‘
The Red Lights of Plenty
’, ‘
The Fire-Gap
’, ‘
The Heartless Art
’ and ‘
Cypress & Cedar
’
Observer
– for ‘
Isolation
’, ‘
Pain-Killers I
,
II
’, ‘
Breaking the Chain
’ and ‘
Old Soldiers
’
London Review of Books
for ‘
v
.’
Poetry Book Society Supplement –
for ‘
Currants I
,
II
’
Quarto
– for ‘
A Piece of Cake
’
Stand –
for ‘
Stately Home
’
Firebird 3
(Penguin Books, 1984) – for ‘
Birds of America
:
(ii) Weeki Wachee
’ and ‘
The Lords of Life
’
PN Review
– for ‘
Dark Times
’ and ‘
Skywriting
’
New Statesman
– for ‘
The Call of Nature
’
Collected Poems
(Viking, 2007) – for ‘
The Mother of the Muses
’, ‘
Initial Illumination
’, ‘
A Cold Coming
’, ‘
Three Poems from Bosnia
’, ‘
Fruitility
’, ‘
Fig on the Tyne
’, ‘
The Krieg Anthology
’ and ‘
Shrapnel
’
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Published by the Penguin Group
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WC2R 0RL
, England
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London
WC2R 0RL
, England
First published 1984
Published simultaneously by Viking
Second edition published 1987
Reissued in Penguin Books 2006
Third edition published 2013
Copyright © Tony Harrison, 1984, 1987, 2013
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
The acknowledgements on pp. 9–10 constitute an extension of this copyright page
ISBN: 978-0-14-195730-2