Other lives

[shewhomust]

We went last night to the Lit & Phil for a double book launch: two new collections from Flambard Press (William Radice's Green Red Gold and Peter Bennet's Goblin Lawn. I had already enjoyed - and described - Peter Bennet's reading with Gillian Allnutt: reading his poems is like trying to stitch together scraps of dreams, follow the narrative of films from a projection of out-takes, remember the stories behind the pictures in a gallery - but with pleasure, rather than the frustration that implies. Here, with his permission, is an example:

OGRESS

You think I only cook, and clean, and launder?

I used to yoke the oxen, and the elephant,
to pull his wheelchair to the height
through veils of rain, so he could watch
the playful mountains throwing rocks
until the valleys shook their sides
and all the beasts ran from the woods.

He has been known to curdle frost
on winter mornings with a look, and yet
that spectacle could sometimes make him smile.

Your little world would no doubt condescend
to laugh at this, and at our oddity -
his size, my warty skin and single eye ~
but no one comes here now, and laughter,
so unbecoming in the well-brought-up,
is never heard in these grey vastnesses.

He should have recognised his own good luck.

I did not need him to inform me
how well I suit my situation
by virtue of monstrosity,
when I considered it a privilege
to serve him while I could, unstintingly.

His punishment is now to drag his body
up marble stairs alone, night after night,
each riser higher than the last, each step
with what he owes me carved into the tread.

From Goblin Lawn, © Peter Bennet
Reproduced with permission

I love the way the apparently simple language conceals vivid images, and the metrical verse masquerades as everyday speech. I enjoy, too, Peter's insistence that this poem is not autobiographical.