Nativity

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nativity 

Nottingham, 1965

There were three shepherds. Everyone knows that.

But one of them was lame and that was me,

They said. I didn’t like the sound of it.

White sheets were what shepherds wore in those days

And, what was more, tea towels wrapped round their heads

But one had a bad foot and had to limp

Or, at the very least, pretend they did. 

 

It was a chance to ‘method act’, immerse 

Oneself in such a part, become someone 

That one was not. Instead I made a scene 

Off stage, not wanting to be handicapped, 

Just like the spoilt diva or - Jesus Christ -

The superstar I didn’t want to be.

 

--

They come not single spies but in battalions. Well, three anyway. Having picked up a useful saying yesterday and turned it into a poem that might prove passable, maybe I should spare one for here that was once, a long time ago, intended to be about my poems.

It's been for decades that I've thought I hardly wrote poems but on and off they have continued to arrive and this year now safely reaches the long-established average output of four a year. I think this passes the test of adequacy - by my own standards and in my own judgement- but quite how many of the folder of about twenty pieces since The Perfect Book really justify print and being included in an ISBN number, thus to be kept until kingdom come in a copyright library, is less clear. Even the three or four masterpieces (by my standards) aren't necessarily on course for the Oxford Book of All-Time Greatest English Verse.

Nonetheless, I'm glad to still be a 'poet' if I can be such on my own somewhat begrudging terms.

Portsmouth Poetry Society's December meeting featured 'Contemporary Christmas Poems' but those such that I'm aware of or found were a bit too 'Christmassy' for me and if one wants a job doing properly one had better do it oneself. Being three days old by the day of the meeting, it was at least contemporary.

--

The stockpile of books of corse still had Stevie Smith's Over the Frontier which looks to be as idiosyncratic as her other two novels and thus more impressive than her poems and very welcome. Like something that you acquire a taste for just before it runs out, I'll miss her when they are gone. She defies categories as a novelist and does it her own way which is entirely a good thing although if she does so as a poet it's not quite such a good thing then.