Spirit Level

Robert & I visited the Bullring 

By coach on an Irish demo 

Contemplated the black bull 

We’d only glimpsed as children 

Bloody Sunday Commemoration 

Marched onto an underpass 

Below an intersection, the faithful 

We sang the Internationale 

Birmingham Six safely in prison 

Your memories are nothing 

Gave it to a kid, a kid’s writing 

About meeting her grandma 

At a Costa, a woman she 

Scarcely knew, for some reason 

Reminded me of my mother, she 

Once got lost there, raging 

Toothache searching for a dentist 

Nightmare job interview 

High heels, laddered stockings 

Dizziness and grey planes 

The polite, baffled dentist 

I wrote all about it and forgot it 

Drawn back to the place 

Where her sister Joan disappeared 

Out when they called round 

The house boarded up, a grim 

Sort of place to drive up to 

Brum the crazy one long gone 

Another dispersal point 

Just for that – that place 

Of crossover, embarkation 

In Birmingham your jokes were 

The place where the earth 

Not in tongues of encouragement 

Spoke about it often, for years. 

Leytonstone Mosaics

Coming up out of the tube there are 

Mosaics of Hitchcock films—this is his birthplace, 

Birds attacking, a crop duster dropping, 

Cary Grant fleeing, that fabulous glowing 

Glass of poisoned milk, and of course 

Janet Leigh getting knifed in the shower scene. 

Psycho, but the mosaics sluice down 

Nicely & on a wall of the leafy Youth Hub 

There is a mosaic imitating them – an 

Allegory for an examination perhaps, 

But everybody, Adam Grotowski, you too 

Gets this one. Passionately clipped out & 

Speedily assembled. Hands reaching up 

Through flames, and joined together. For peace 

Amongst these surging, sinking boroughs. 

I was fined fifty pound in Leytonstone 

For dropping a cigarette on the pavement. 

John Muckle lives in London and has worked as a teacher and editor. In the eighties he was founding editor of Paladin Poetry and The New British Poetry 1968-88 (with Allnutt, D’Aguiar, Edwards and Mottram). His most recent books are Mirrorball (poems), Late Driver (stories) andSnow Bees (novel), all from Shearsman Books.

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