Mr. Home

Mr. Home appeared in 14 Poems, a typed and photocopied set of A4 sheets, sometime in the early 80's that was reviewed in crazy little places as generously as its reviewers could, wasn't for sale as far as I can remember but free to anybody who wanted one. As poems still should be really, whoever you are. I like it to be an amateur pursuit and its pricelessness is augmented by the fact that you don't put a price on it.
I did say, in an interview with Daniel Parsons once -possibly no longer available on the interweb- that I had 'forgotten where the bodies were buried' with regard to when and where I had lifted ideas and 'influences' from other C20th poets. Well, I've dug some of them up here.
Of course, I could never resist the seven-syllable, 'syllabic' , line of Gunn's My Sad Captains in those days but Martianism was all the rage then, too, and the first stanza was my one and only attempt at it. I had forgotten that Mr. Home was married but now see how that compounds his misery but 'that endless air' is obviously taken from Larkin's Broadcast.
It really is shameless, isn't it, all this hommage to the giants of poetry. But, on the other hand, if there weren't such examples that we admired, learnt from, imitated and then tried to leave behind, I don't know how much poetry there would ever have been.

So, with apologies, I give you-

Mr. Home

Suddenly it is morning
and still quiet, the traffic
hums softly by. And local
residents file into church
to examine the nature
of their own clapping.

Mr. Home sips tea and waits
to read the paper, drumming
soft, unhappy rhythms on
the table-top while his wife
swats another household fly
with the News of the World.

He compares an angry wasp,
lifesize and buzzing, inside
his glass, to a distant plane
hanging like a miniature
mobile in that endless air,
all blue, going to America.