stage-time left to save
the wretch you’re playing.
Don’t play the ending though the General’s here
for the one line he’s been practising, his mask
is pouting on the shelf, don’t play the fear,
don’t play the risk you take
don’t play what’s next
don’t play it, though the automatic crowds
who saw the light with one almighty click
are milling in the wings, don’t say the words
the dead have picked for Time
to learn by rote.
Go free, don’t play the ending, go free,
as if your final scene is where we meet
at last! with neither prompt nor point nor story,
beyond a greeting nothing
but the open road,
let’s not be fated to, or cursed or blessed
or hinted at, the plot has tried to part us
but the plot is chalked beneath our feet, and dust
has always let us by
without a word.
Let’s not be acted, let’s not be rehearsed,
some fool has tried to mean with us, let’s not
mean, let’s turn our backs and do the rest
out of earshot, eyeline,
out of mind,
Elizabethans then and now, the old crew
finished for the day, in silhouette
beside the river boozing, while the view
turns gold and lets us go
in our own sweet time.
Thinks It’s All There Is
As far as I can see that’s everyone.
So thanks for that but where else would you be.
Whatever came or went has come and gone
without you why would you not turn to me.
Look I too turned to me I’m just like you.
Stuff came and went but nothing really took.
So this became what else there was to do.
This became where else there was to look.
This became the language that is spoken
here and here became the only spot.
Here I sense I’m only silence broken.
Here I sing because I see what’s not
is almost back. It’s frightening, I had plans.
You might have warned me. Hold my hand, both hands –
One Gone Rogue
No one made me, nothing did. I do
get these faces sailing close a while
who seem to see a soul in me like you
and settle their old features to a smile
of all in this together I hate that.
No one made me, nothing did. You can’t
meet some stranger over me I’m what
tinder for you what I’m talking point
I’m no one’s. Clock me and I clock the fuck
right back at you I’ve never been begun.
I was never worked on why would I take work
and who would do it? you with the summer gone
and your book in the dead of night you want to try it?
Or me who knows me hasn’t it gone quiet.
Love Sonnet Left Behind
Brought to light they say I was by one
the maker wanted with him now. Not now
as in at once but when this work was done.
Which meant he had to pass through me somehow
to get to her was it a her? don’t know
my back was turned. The maker was a he
I know for sure though it’s so long ago.
A woman didn’t make me, look at me.
A woman would have lifted me from this
fixture I was nailed to on that day.
Borne me away and set me down in bliss
somewhere he’ll never find me somewhere grey
the many shades of mercy. Somewhere you
who I was made for will be hiding too.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Some of these poems, or versions of them, first appeared in Ambit, Art & Letters, the Guardian, the New Yorker, Poetry London, Poetry Review, Sewanee Review, the Spectator and the Times Literary Supplement.
‘The White’ and ‘The Heyday’ were contributions to The Voice and The Echo, in homage to, respectively, George Herbert and John Donne, performed in 2015 in the Sam Wanamaker Theatre at Shakespeare’s Globe; ‘Pasolini’s Satan’ was a contribution to an evening of poems inspired by the films of Pier Paulo Pasolini, curated by Simon Barrowclough; ‘Song Of Until’ was set to music by David Bruce and performed by primary school choirs to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Voices Foundation; ‘Page Of First Old Book He Read’ was a contribution to Off The Shelf: A Celebration of Bookshops in Verse, edited by Carol Ann Duffy (Picador, 2016); ‘Plainsong Of The Undiscovered’ arose from Connections, a Science and Poetry collaboration with Dr Amber Ruigrok, organized by Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge.
How the hell are you
Glyn Maxwell has won several awards for his poetry, including the Somerset Maugham Prize, the E. M. Forster Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. His work has been shortlisted for the Forward, Costa and T. S. Eliot Prizes. Many of his plays have been staged in the UK and USA, and he has written libretti for several major operas. He is the author of On Poetry, a general reader’s guide to the craft, and Drinks with Dead Poets, its fictional sequel.
A
LSO BY
G
LYN
M
AXWELL
Poetry
The Boys At Twilight (Poems 1990–95)
The Breakage Time’s Fool
The Nerve The Sugar Mile Hide Now
One Thousand Nights and Counting (Poems 1990–2010)
Pluto
Plays
PLAYS ONE: The Lifeblood, Wolfpit, The Only Girl In the World
PLAYS TWO: Broken Journey, Best Man Speech, The Last Valentine
PLAYS THREE: Alice In Wonderland, Wind in The Willows, Merlin and the Woods Of Time
THREE VERSE PLAYS: The Birthday Ball of Zelda Nein, Gnyss The Magnificent, Last Crossing Of Isolde
Cyrano De Bergerac Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde
The Forever Waltz Liberty
Masters Are You Mad? Mimi and the Stalker
Libretti
The Lion’s Face Seven Angels
Travelogue
Moon Country (with Simon Armitage)
Fiction
Drinks With Dead Poets
Criticism
On Poetry
First published 2020 by Picador
This electronic edition first published 2020 by Picador
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
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Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-5290-3774-6
Copyright © Glyn Maxwell 2020
Cover image: © Stanley Greene/NOOR
Cover design: Lucy Scholes,
Picador Art Department
The right of Glyn Maxwell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The verse in ‘Bluebirds Over’ is an extract from ‘There’ll Be Bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover’ by Nat Burton / Walter Kent lyrics © Shapiro Bernstein & Co. Inc., Walter Kent Music Company.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or
