Four Poems by John Greening

In Texas

Before any of the guests can say
they love my accent, I am asked
by the breakfast receptionist
Are you with the firefighters?

I seem to have arrived in time
for this swaggering convention
of overweight men – all white,
except for the shoeshine in the lobby.

But also it’s the anniversary
of David Koresh’s inferno
which has never quite gone out (a Netflix
series starts tonight) in Waco.

The day I leave, they’ll celebrate
a different guy, who’s here to light
the fuse on his own cult. And no,
I’m not a firefighter, sadly.

Waco, March, 2023

In A&E

Two people here that I know, although
it’s three in the morning. Behind us

a young couple sit shivering and
remembering what they still can’t quite

except they hadn’t done nothing wrong
when they found themselves aquaplaning

into a ditch out in the Fens, phones,
bags, clothes, rising water, and lucky

to escape alive. There is the cough
that never stops, the bruised bloody nose

and those who stare vacantly and won’t
admit anything. This woman’s lived

ninety years in our village and says
I’m the poet, she loves poetry,

how that science teacher somehow strayed
into a field, fell over, lucky.

The old ones can recite Accident
and Emergency, as will these two

who just survived the floods in Dubai,
and we the hobblers and totterers

on whom no bomb has fallen except
our own mortality: straining round

so we can see the news, as if it
might tell us how long we’ll have to wait.

St Simeon

saint of ventriloquists
and puppeteers

he tries not
to move his lips

even in prayer
so cannot say

if you are heading
the right way

across that desert
to his monastery

or help the thirst
that has your throat

or offer a word
of comfort such as

bottle or water
but only utter

again and again
the sound of sand

grain against
sand grain

Louis MacNeice’s Astrology

found in Boscastle, 2004

I bought it just weeks before that flood tore through
sending parked cars out to sea, removing the
tourist office and witchcraft museum, rocks
that destroy then record. If I had paid more
attention I might have read what was coming.

Look, here at the back are some notes I scribbled
on ‘the ascendant’ and sidereal time,
the very hour and minute (did I consult
my mother?) of my birth. Yet all I know
is what I knew two decades back. Fish swimming

in opposite directions. The poet who
doesn’t believe his words but needs the money
and goes on down the pothole oblivious
to what is written. Clouds darkening and no
need for anyone to cast a horoscope.

2024

John Greening is a Bridport, Arvon, and Cholmondeley winner, whose latest poetry book is A High Calling or Where Do You Get Your Ideas From? He has published editions of Grigson, Blunden, and Crichton Smith, and Fanthorpe – plus several anthologies, notably Contraflow (with Kevin Gardner). His Goethe appeared in 2022 and this November sees a Rilke New Poems from Baylor UP who also publish Gardner's recent selection from over twenty of his collections, The Interpretation of Owls. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Greening_(poet)