THREE POEMS

William Matthews 

saw Mingus fire his pianist 

mid set, the smoke curling from 

the bassist’s cigar; saw Mingus’ 

redemption amid spotlights  

and the hush, and memorialized 

Mingus’ death as like the beaching 

of whales. How the horns 

of Brown and Dolphy cut against 

the chords, and felt the tune 

haul them against it; the clarity 

of the recording such, it is 

the bassist who comes across most clearly. 

The Pedestrian 

To reach out along the road, 

to walk it having found it 

was there, the windsock limp 

against its post, the day open 

across the place and the people 

working in it, become the body 

and its puzzled lines, is to become 

the child’s voice in it, the world 

and its indwelling, is to know 

the road as it crosses all 

the receding intersections. 

Phlox 

Perhaps it really was like that, the guitars 

dancing, the strings, necks, sound holes, 

all dancing, though we might not always 

want such sounds, or the wall that leads you 

away from the house, past the phlox and 

bougainvillea stuttering in the breeze, 

and the wall that leads you back to the house, 

to eating with them, on trestle tables 

with white linen cloths, the supplication 

of sandwiches, apples, an enamel tea pot. 

Ian Pople wrote his PhD on Roy Fisher. Pople's Spillway: New and Selected Poems is published by Carcanet. 

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