This site gives a sample of Sixties Press Anthology of Gregory Fellow's Poetry.There is a poem here by each of the twelve Gregory Fellows who were among the most talented poets in Britain in the 20^th century. Enjoy the sample, enough I hope to eventually order the book. The price & number of pages are t.b.c.

                                       – Barry Tebb (Publisher – Sixties Press)

GREGORY POETS

© Copyright of all poems remain with the poets.

MARTIN BELL (1918-1978)

Reasons for Refusal

Busy old lady, charitable tray

Of social emblems: poppies, people’s blood –

I must refuse, make you flush pink

Perplexed by abrupt No-thank-you.

Yearly I keep up this small priggishness,

Would wince worse if I wore one.

Make me feel better, fetch a white feather, do.

Everyone has list of dead in war,

Regrets most of them, e.g.

Uncle Cyril; small boy in lace and velvet

With pushing sisters muscling all around him,

And lofty brothers, whiskers and stiff collars;

The youngest was the one who copped it.

My mother showed him to me,

Neat letters high up on the cenotaph

That wedding-caked it up above the park,

And shadowed birds on Isaac Watts’ white shoulders.

And father’s friends, like Sandy Vincent;

Brushed sandy hair, moustache, and staring eyes.

Kitchener claimed him, but the Southern Railway

Held back my father, made him guilty.

I hated the khaki photograph,

It left a patch on the wallpaper after I took it down.

Others I knew stick in the mind,

And Tony Lister often –

Eyes like holes in foolscap, suffered from piles,

Day after day went sick with constipation

Until they told him he could drive a truck –

Blown up with Second Troop in Greece:

We sang all night once when we were on guard.

And Ken-Gee, our lance-corporal, Christian Scientist –

Everyone liked him, knew that he was good –

Had leg and arm blown off, then died.

Not all were good. Gross Corporal Rowlandson

Fell in the canal, the corrupt Sweet-water,

And rolled there like a log, drunk and drowned.

And I’ve always been glad of the death of Dick Benjamin,

A foxy urgent dainty ballroom dancer –

Found a new role in military necessity

As R.S.M. He waltzed out on parade

To make himself hated. Really hated, not an act.

He was a proper little porcelain sergeant-major –

The earliest bomb made smithereens:

Coincidence only, several have assured me.

In the school hall was pretty glass

Where prissy light shone through St George –

The highest holiest manhood, he!

And underneath were slain Old Boys

In tasteful lettering on whited slab –

And, each November, Ferdy the Headmaster

Reared himself squat and rolled his eyeballs upward,

Rolled the whole roll-call off an oily tongue,

Remorselessly from A to Z.

Of all the squirmers, Roger Frampton’s lips

Most elegantly curled, showed most disgust.

He was a pattern of accomplishments,

And joined the Party first, and left it first,

At OCTU won a prize belt, most improbable,

Was desert-killed in ’40, much too soon.

His name should burn right through that monument.

No poppy, thank you.

THOMAS BLACKBURN (1916-1977)

The Younger Son

The crowns return to dust, the sweetmeats vanish,

When the third son with his deliberate eye

Looks coldly through the banquet and the bauble

And proves the witch’s palace is a lie.

But always, as in solitude and silence

He takes his stick and buckles on his load,

He sees the two grey dolmens of his brothers

Beside the deprivation of the road.

They did not understand the glare and music

To which they spurred their horses through the night

Were not the goal itself, but only beacons

To keep their passion of the quest alight,

And when some gaudy woman of the palace

Threw down her handkerchief and made sweet moan,

Each clattered up the stairs into her bedroom

And on the stroke of midnight turned to stone.

The journey was itself their occupation

And not some minion of a torchlit hall;

Of course the heart must beat, the pulses quicken

Or there’s no road or journeying at all,

But still a certain irony is needed.

I mean that when the princess is awake,

The younger son who sought her in the forest

And plucked her jewel from the haunted lake

Is quick to guess, there, at the crux of passion,

The journey was not merely for a bride,

But some new clarity that rinsed his nature

When he cut through the brambles to her side.

But only his obedience to the language

Of birds and suppliant fishes by the way

Can yield the hero that momentous secret

Which topples giants headlong to the clay.

The elder sons exchange such night time murmurs

For the new guide-book of some master hand,

Then take the hopeless turning at the cross-roads

And walk their lives out in a waste of sand.

Now, by the monolith before the castle,

The third son hears the slug-horn fade and die,

Then gasps at the great bastion of those shoulders

A league above him in the punished sky.

No wonder as earth shook and giant fingers

Groped slowly inward through the forest trees,

His brothers, lost within their own phantasma,

Went headlong into blindness on their knees.

For saplings bend, rocks split, the grass is ravished,

When to the urgent summons of that horn

Some passion of the heart rears out of silence

To drench our landscape with its furious dawn.

Then only those whom birds and fish have tutored

Can hold their upright posture by the stone,

Because they know the energies that nourish

The passion of the monster are their own.

This is the younger son’s most precious secret;

And may we also hear the trapped bird cry

And be rewarded by a naked vision

When our appalling manias shake the sky. 

WAYNE BROWN (b. 1944)

The Tourists

The sun works for the Tourist Board’

was a bad joke. But now each noon

the sun toils like a fisherman

with a hard tide to beat,

or a farmer whose wife will drop soon.

And in truth the beach is replete

with strangers. Each one arranges

tenderly his limbs for those brass rays

as a woman, testing each pose, changes

into nothing for her lover’s gaze.

The natives mind their own business.

Some blond types are at it again.

An English anthropologist

praises the texture of a seine.

The sea’s heard it all before.

A scene from a tourist

brochure. Under that sun

all is languid, and those who come

will find nothing unusual, not

one gesture or motion overdone.

But for one parrot-fish which turns

grave somersaults on the stainless steel

spear that’s just usurped its dim

purpose; which was to swim

as usual through blue air, in silence, like the sun.

KEVIN CROSSLEY HOLLAND (b. 1941)

The Wall

I am a desolate wall, accumulator of lichen.

Men made me with flint chippings and, fickle as always,

ignored me; time did not ignore them.

My business is to divide things: the green ribbons

of grass from the streams of macadam; the kitchen gardens

from the marsh acres, garish with sea-lavender;

the copses of ilex and pine from the North Sea,

the bludgeoning waves of salt water where seabirds play.

I stand grey under the East Anglian sky,

glint when the occasional sun opens its eye.

My business is to divide things, my duty to protect.

I am unrepaired; men neglect me at their own risk.

Time takes me in mouthfuls; the teeth of the frost

bit into my body here; here my mortar crumbles;

the wind rubs salt into every wound.

Elsewhere I am overgrown with insidious ivy;

it wound its arms around me only to strangle me.

Relentless, the sea rolls down from the Pole.

It levelled the dunes last year, removed the marram grass,

clashed its steel cymbals over the marsh and macadam.

It attacked me and undermined me; I sway

like a drunkard now; yet it could not gash me

with its gleaming scythes; it was not strong enough.

I stand, sad, and stare at all this estate,

the lawns, the kitchen gardens, copses garrulous

in the wind. I carefully listen, listen and wait

for the fierce outsider to force his way in.

PETER REDGROVE (b. 1932)

Expectant Father

Final things walk home with me through Chiswick Park,

Too much death, disaster; this year

All the children play at cripples

And cough along with one foot in the gutter.

But now my staircase is a way to bed

And not the weary gulf she sprinted down for doorbells

So far gone on with the child a-thump inside;

A buffet through the air from the kitchen door that sticks

Awakes a thumb-size fly. Butting the rebutting window-pane

It shouts its buzz, so I fling the glass up, let it fly

Remembering as it skims to trees, too late to swat,

That flies are polio-whiskered to the brows

With breeding-muck, and home

On one per cent of everybody's children.

So it is the week when Matron curfews, with her cuffs,

And I draw back. My wife, round as a bell in bed, is white

            and happy.

Left to myself I undress for the night

By the fine bright wires of lamps: hot tips

To burrowing cables, the bloodscheme of the house,

Where flame sleeps. That,

With a shallow on the mattress from last night

Is enough to set me thinking on fired bones

And body-prints in the charcoal of a house, how

Darkness stands for death, and how afraid of sleep I am;

And fearing thus, thus I fall fast asleep.

But at six o'clock, the phone rings in – success!

The Sister tells me our son came up with the sun:

It’s a joke she's pleased to make, and so am I.

I see out of the window it’s about a quarter high,

And promises another glorious day.

DAVID WRIGHT (1920-1994)

 To John Heath-Stubbs

My half-blind friend, whom solitary as a crane I first saw awkwardly run

On pavements out of his element, as if behind his sky-scraper back there shone

Glances of Eumenides invisible to everyone but to him; whom I have seen take

Real flight on wings that in the sky seem easy and slack,

I dedicate to him, to this his quarrel and continual love

Of liberty and verse, this verse: to testify of

The gifts he has kept from a bag of money. May his Muse to him

Bend, bend to her lover reading the leaves in a forest of autumn,

Where, overhead, migratory birds are flying, singing, flying and singing.

BACK TO TOP

JOHN HEATH-STUBBS (b. 1918)

 The Timeless Nightingale

A nightingale sat perched upon

     The trellis of a Samian vine

Beneath whose shade Anacreon

     Strung his slight lyre, and drank his wine;

Far in the Asian highlands then

     The corpse of great Polycrates

Was scorched by sun and stripped by rain’

     Stretched on the cross-bars of two trees;

But the nightingale’s lament

     Was for dismembered Itylus:

White-haired Anacreon vainly schemed –

     How could he move Cleobulus.

          The poet took another glass.

Li Po drank his rice-spirit warm:

     Disgraced at court, he sipped alone –

No-one to talk to or make love –

     Himself, his shadow, and the moon;

Above his head, migrating cranes:

     In the wild gorges monkeys howl:

Red-haired, green-eyed barbarians

     Along the utmost marches prowl;

The nightingale (or what bird else

     Chinese convention had assigned)

Fluted of jewelled gardens where

     Drunken immortals ride the wind.

          The poet took another glass.

Upon a greenish sky at dawn

     The sickle of the moon grew dim:

Hafiz still sat there on the lawn:

     A moon-browed Saki poured for him;

Advanced across the Northern hills

     Timur and his crude Turkish band,

To build their pyramids of skulls,

     And fetch the wine to Samarkand;

But the timeless nightingale

     Enamoured of the eternal rose

Cried “Love’s in the dark of the candle-flame,

     And nothing quite what we suppose!”

          The poet took another glass.

The true, the blushful Hippocrene

     Was fairish claret, if you please:

Love a bacillus in his lung,

     John Keats was on those perilous seas;

Into the mills of Yorkshire now

     The Luddite gangs walked stark and grim:

The bourgeois Muse was mousy-haired

     And did not only dance with him;

The nightingale inside his head

     Sang on (at once to him and Ruth)

“You’re better off when you are dead –

     Truth’s Beauty then, and Beauty truth.”

          The poet took another, took another glass.

PEARSE HUTCHINSON (b. 1927)

 Málaga

for Sammy Sheridan

The scent of unseen jasmine on the warm night beach.

The tram along the sea road all the way from town

through its wide open sides drank unseen jasmine down.

Living was nothing all those nights but that strong flower,

whose hidden voice on darkness grew to such mad power

I could have sworn for once I travelled through full peace

and even love at last had perfect calm release

only by breathing in the unseen jasmine scent,

that ruled us and the summer every hour we went.

The tranquil unrushed wine drunk on the daytime beach.

Or from an open room all that our sight could reach

was heat, sea, light, unending images of peace;

and then at last the night brought jasmine’s great release –

not images but calm uncovetous content,

the wide-eyed heart alert at rest in June’s own scent.

In daytime’s humdrum town from small child after child

we bought cluster on cluster of the star flower’s wild

white widowed heads, re-wired on strong weed stalks they’d trimmed

to long green elegance; but still the whole month brimmed

at night along the beach with a strong voice like peace;

and each morning the mind stayed crisp in such release.

Some hint of certainty, still worth longing I could teach,

lies lost in a strength of jasmine down a summer beach.

JAMES KIRKUP (b. 1923)

 The Love That Dares To Speak Its Name

As they took him from the cross
I, the centurion, took him in my arms –
the tough lean body
of a man no longer young,
beardless, breathless,
but well hung.

He was still warm.
While they prepared the tomb
I kept guard over him.
His mother and the Magdalen
had gone to fetch clean linen
to shroud his nakedness.

I was alone with him.
For the last time
I kissed his mouth. My tongue
found his, bitter with death.
I licked his wound –
the blood was harsh

For the last time
I laid my lips around the tip
of that great cock, the instrument
of our salvation, our eternal joy.
The shaft, still throbbed, anointed
with death's final ejaculation.

I knew he'd had it off with other men –
with Herod's guards, with Pontius Pilate,
With John the Baptist, with Paul of Tarsus
with foxy Judas, a great kisser, with
the rest of the Twelve, together and apart.
He loved all men, body, soul and spirit. – even me.

So now I took off my uniform, and, naked,
lay together with him in his desolation,
caressing every shadow of his cooling flesh,
hugging him and trying to warm him back to life.
Slowly the fire in his thighs went out,
while I grew hotter with unearthly love.

It was the only way I knew to speak our love's proud name,
to tell him of my long devotion, my desire, my dread –
something we had never talked about. My spear, wet with blood,
his dear, broken body all open wounds,
and in each wound his side, his back,
his mouth – I came and came and came

as if each coming was my last.
And then the miracle possessed us.
I felt him enter into me, and fiercely spend
his spirit's final seed within my hole, my soul,
pulse upon pulse, unto the ends of the earth –
he crucified me with him into kingdom come.

– This is the passionate and blissful crucifixion
same-sex lovers suffer, patiently and gladly.
They inflict these loving injuries of joy and grace
one upon the other, till they dies of lust and pain
within the horny paradise of one another's limbs,
with one voice cry to heaven in a last divine release.

Then lie long together, peacefully entwined, with hope
of resurrection, as we did, on that green hill far away.
But before we rose again, they came and took him from me.
They knew no what we had done, but felt
no shame or anger. Rather they were glad for us,
and blessed us, as would he, who loved all men.

And after three long, lonely days, like years,
in which I roamed the gardens of my grief
seeking for him, my one friend who had gone from me,
he rose from sleep, at dawn, and showed himself to me before
all others. And took me to him with

the love that now forever dares to speak its name.

 PAUL MILLS (b. 1948)

Brenda

‘Who’s Brenda?’ my bank-manager is asking,

his eyes on the item of £40 a week,

seeing some lavish fantasy on the side

eating the family budget.

When I give him the picture

he smiles – ‘Cut it.’

In spite of the sink, slime on the washed-up

cutlery, we were thriving.

Yet you insisted we get some woman in,

some reliable substitute for you.

We interviewed one person and employed her,

matron in humour and girth, slightly insane,

a prison visitor who had married a murderer.

We found this exotic but she couldn’t cook.

And you with her wasn’t much of a fit,

she with her inbred British fear  of the young,

their awful permissive speech and eating habits,

her policeman-father bringing up kids strictly,

not like ours – echoing neighbours’ complaints.

And what they were saying about them all over town,

waiting by the school gates. She took you aside,

passed it all on. ‘What they need is discipline.

He’s hopeless.’ In other words – Their Mother.

You believed it.

How could you not believe it?

All that expense just so you could hear it –

‘Fathers can’t cope. Especially him.

The children need you. You!’

Music to you.

And this was your only fault in this story,

allowing this woman to tell you your business,

this woman to whom, otherwise,

you would never have given the time of day.

I didn’t need the bank manager’s advice.

I knew the point against her was being proved,

that her white-haired motherly British judgements

would be taken down and not put back,

that our life was seeing the end of Brenda.

But two hundred and forty-five miles apart,

your problem wasn’t solved – how to be a mother

and not a mother – how to make these ends meet.

 JON SILKIN (1930-1997)

A Daisy

 

Look unoriginal
Being numerous. They ask for attention
With that gradated yellow swelling
Of oily stamens. Petals focus them:
The eye-lashes grow wide.
Why should not one bring these to a funeral?
And at night, like children,
Without anxiety, their consciousness
Shut with white petals;

Blithe, individual.

The unwearying, small sunflower
Fills the grass
With versions of one eye.
A strength in the full look
Candid, solid, glad.
Domestic as milk.

In multitudes, wait,
Each, to be looked at, spoken to.
They do not wither;
Their going, a pressure
Of elate sympathy
Released from you.
Rich up to the last interval
With minute tubes of oil, pollen;
Utterly without scent, for the eye,
For the eye, simply. For the mind
And its invisible organ,
That feeling thing.


[from Nature with Man, 1965]

BILL TURNER (b. 1927)

A Tramp Looks Back

She sees me pass her window and she smiles

although she knows I go to no safe bed,

but there's a kind of blessing in her eyes

that cancels all the tumult in my head

the way the moon stays through a brawl of clouds

and stares until the sky is clean and clear.

I feel her wish me well, and then I seem

to will my rags and years to disappear . . .

Was I a pilgrim once, and she a queen?

Was she a prisoner, and I a knight?

She saw me pass her window and she smiled,

and death shrank back from that enduring light.

I have forgotten the battles and the scars,

but I remember her both cool and warm.

We gave each other comfort in duress;

we shared a still place in the howling storm.

Was it in reeds I hid, or else in oaks?

No matter. That was centuries ago.

As wheels go round we cannot count the spokes.

Good night, sweet lady whom I used to know.