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Home>>Poetry>>Poetry Collections>>Other Passports>>Adrian Henri Wants to Write Poems

Adrian Henri Wants to Write Poems

Picture

Remembering the day I walked five miles in my short trousers
To draw a picture of a plover’s nest
And found out when I got there
That my pencil was broken and I had nothing to sharpen it with
A Heinkel one-eleven flew overhead looking for Liverpool
Or was it a Zeppelin, it’s hard to remember how old
you are when you’ve been working on a youth image this long
cranes in the dockyards foghorns on the water clouds in the sky
lying on my back in grandad’s allotment discovering Mallarmé
seeing the world for the first time flowers earth grass weeds
a sad young poet needing something to bring the brilliance of his 
perceptions
into focus

EUNICE tall dark schoolgirl breasts like fairy cakes you show me
yours running up the sand hills sudden flash of knickers
illuminating
a young poet’s mind and showing him his future
SHARON small fair schoolgirl transforming herself at night into a 
ponytail teenager pressed up against me dancing to Guy
Mitchell
breast knickers breast knickers knickers
SHARON’S MOTHER love-starved scolding horror screaming at
the sad young poet saying what have you done to my Sharon
playing
hospitals realizing with a shock that Sharon’s mother wears
knickers
too

on a bus to London
reading Leopardi in the Heath-Stubbs translation
getting off at Victoria with an air-force holdall
full of spare cuddle-pie pea jackets, horn-rimmed glasses
and four thousand seven hundred pages of single-spaced manuscript
Pete Brown running towards me inspired liberated cute
yelling hey Adrian the whole poetry-reading circuit is opening up
the way Eunice used to and me yelling back
watch out for that bus
too late
in the Royal Free hospital Pete with all four limbs in traction
a splint up his nose and his mouth wired together
and the sad young poet sitting beside his bed
reads the whole manuscript Pete signalling gratitude
with his left eyebrow

Edinburgh Festival lights fame repression
streets full of scotsmen Royal Mile chips haggis
Traverse theatre lunchtimes reading with Roger McGough
girls packed along the walls drinking in every word
knickers knickers knickers knickers

then you happened
middle aged woman with body of a schoolgirl
lying all night on top of you like Moby Dick in dry dock
reciting Mallarmé to the rhythm of your loving
saying are you really twenty years old and hearing you sob
no thirty-four

then she happened
girl beautiful as cupcakes frilly-edged knickers
lying all night on top of her reciting Leopardi
saying are you really twenty years old and hearing her sob
no eleven

In Wormwood scrubs the sad young poet reads Rimbaud in the 
library
working on the autobiography Cape yelling for more instalments
dreaming of schoolgirls in cell at night
warm young bodies under blue gym slips open mouths questing
hands
rain slanting down past the barred window
Brown making a million writing lyrics for Cream
got to get out of here, back in amongst it
fame knickers wealth adulation wealth knickers fame knickers
knickers
sad young poet writing on into the night


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  • Home
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    • North Face of Soho
    • The Blaze of Obscurity
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    • Cultural Amnesia
    • Play All
    • A Point Of View
    • Flying Visits
  • Essays
    • Visions Before Midnight
    • The Crystal Bucket
    • Glued To The Box
    • The Metropolitan Critic
    • At the Pillars of Hercules
    • As of This Writing
    • The Meaning of Recognition >
      • Introduction
      • Polanski and the Pianist
      • Fantasy in the West Wing
      • Pushkin's Deadly Gift
      • Great Sopranos of Our Time
      • A Memory Called Malouf
      • Bing Crosby's Hidden Art
      • Larkin Treads the Boards
      • The Iron Capital of Bruno Schulz
      • Criticism a la Frank Kermode
      • Fast Talking Dames
      • Rough Guides to Shakespeare
      • General Election Sequence 2001
      • Primo Levi and the Painted Veil
      • A Big Boutique of Australian Essays
      • Cyrano on the Scaffold
      • A Nightclub in Bali
      • Aldous Huxley Then and Now
      • A Man Called Peter Porter
      • Philip Roth's Alternative America
      • The Miraculous Vineyard of Australian Poetry
      • Save Us From Celebrity
    • The Revolt of the Pendulum >
      • The Question of Karl Kraus
      • John Bayley's Daily Bread
      • Kingsley and the Women
      • Canetti Man of Mystery
      • Camille Paglia Burns for Poetry
      • The Guidebook Detectives
      • Zuckerman Uncorked
      • The Flight from the Destroyer
      • Saying Famous Things
      • Insult to the Language
      • The Perfectly Bad Sentence
      • Happiness Writes White
      • All Stalkers Kill
      • Best Eaten Cold
      • White Shorts of Leni Reifenstahl
      • Made in Britain, More or Less
      • Movie Criticism in America
      • Show Me the Horror
      • The Measure of A.D. Hope
      • Robert Hughes Remembers
      • Modern Australian Painting
      • On Diamond Jim McClelland
      • The Voice of John Anderson
      • Niki Lauda Wins Going Slowly
      • Damon Hill's Bravest Day
      • Jonathan James-Moore
      • Ian Adam
      • Pat Kavanagh
      • Starting with Sludge
    • Guest Writers >
      • Zoe Williams
      • Russell Davies
      • Bryan Appleyard
      • Marina Hyde
      • Bruce Beresford
      • Michael Frayn
  • Poetry
    • Poetry Collections >
      • Fin de Fiesta
      • Injury Time
      • Sentenced to Life >
        • Japanese Maple
        • Sentenced to Life
        • Procedure for Disposal
        • Leçons des ténèbres
        • Driftwood Houses
        • Event Horizon
        • Neuland
        • Echo Point
        • Change of Domicile
        • Holding Court
        • Too Much Light
        • Nature Programme
        • My Latest Fever
        • Nina Kogan's Geometrical Heaven
        • The Emperor's Last Words
        • Winter Plums
      • Nefertiti in the Flak Tower >
        • Whitman and the Moth
        • The Falcon Growing Old
      • Angels over Elsinore
      • The Book of My Enemy >
        • Recent Verse
        • Verse Letters
      • Opal Sunset
      • Other Passports >
        • Recent Verse >
          • The Book of My Enemy has been Remaindered
        • Parodies etc.
        • Earlier Verse
        • Verse Diaries
      • Fan Mail >
        • To Russell Davies: a letter from Cardiff
        • To Martin Amis: a letter from Indianapolis
        • To Pete Atkin: a letter from Paris
        • To Prue Shaw: a letter from Cambridge
        • To Tom Stoppard: a letter from London
        • To Peter Porter: a letter to Sydney
    • Epic Poems >
      • The River in the Sky
      • Gate of Lilacs
      • The Divine Comedy >
        • Hell - Cantos 1-3
        • Purgatory - Cantos 1-3
        • Heaven - Cantos 1-3
      • Poem of the Year
    • Books About Poetry >
      • Somewhere Becoming Rain
      • Poetry Notebook >
        • Listening for the Flavour
        • Five Favourite Poetry Books
        • Velvet Shackles
        • Meeting MacNiece
        • The Donaghy Negotiation
    • Poetry Readings
    • Articles on Poetry
    • Back from The Web
    • Guest Poets >
      • Daniel Brown
      • Liane Strauss
      • Les Murray
      • Peter Porter
      • Alan Jenkins
      • Stephen Edgar
      • John Stammers
      • Simon Barraclough
      • Isobel Dixon
      • Christian Wiman
      • Olivia Cole
      • Judith Beveridge
      • Peter Goldsworthy
      • Kapka Kassabova
  • Lyrics
    • My life in lyrics
    • Selected Song Lyrics >
      • Dancing Master
      • Faded Mansion
      • Have You got a Biro I can Borrow?
      • I Have to Learn to Live Alone Again
      • Hill of Little Shoes
      • History & Geography
      • I See the Joker
      • Laughing Boy
      • My Brother's Keeper
      • National Steel
      • Nothing Left to Say
      • Sessionman's Blues
      • Song for Rita
      • Stranger in Town
      • Sunlight Gate
      • The Egoist
      • The Eye of the Universe
      • The Ice Cream Man
      • Femme Fatale
      • The Master of the Revels
      • Thirty-year Man
      • Winter Spring
  • Video
    • Talking in the Library >
      • Series One
      • Series Two
      • Series Three
      • Series Four
      • Series Five
    • Postcards
    • CJ on YouTube
  • Radio
    • A Point Of View
    • Book Talk