Seeing Stars Read online

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright © 2010 by Simon Armitage

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada, Limited, Toronto.

  Originally published in Great Britain by Faber and Faber in 2010.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Armitage, Simon, 1963–

  Seeing stars : poems / by Simon Armitage.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-59943-8

  I. Title.

  PR6051 R564S44 2011

  821’.914—dc22 2010052918

  Front-of-jacket photograph © William Wegman Jacket design by Carol Devine Carson

  v3.1

  For Sue

  Contents

  The Christening

  An Accommodation

  The Cuckoo

  Back in the Early Days of the Twenty-first Century

  Michael

  I’ll Be There to Love and Comfort You

  The English Astronaut

  Hop In, Dennis

  Upon Opening the Chest Freezer

  Seeing Stars

  Last Words

  My Difference

  The Accident

  Aviators

  15:30 by the Elephant House

  An Obituary

  Knowing What We Know Now

  The Experience

  Collaborators

  Ricky Wilson Couldn’t Sleep

  The Knack

  The Practical Way to Heaven

  To the Bridge

  Beyond Huddersfield

  Cheeses of Nazareth

  Show and Tell

  Upon Unloading the Dishwasher

  Poodles

  The Personal Touch

  The Last Panda

  Sold to the Lady in the Sunglasses and Green Shoes

  The War of the Roses

  A Nativity

  The Delegates

  The Overtones

  The Sighting of the Century

  The Crunch

  Bringing It All Back Home

  Last Day on Planet Earth

  The Christening

  I am a sperm whale. I carry up to 2.5 tonnes of an oil-like

  balm in my huge, coffin-shaped head. I have a brain the

  size of a basketball, and on that basis alone am entitled to

  my opinions. I am a sperm whale. When I breathe in, the

  fluid in my head cools to a dense wax and I nosedive into

  the depths. My song, available on audiocassette and

  compact disc is a comfort to divorcees, astrologists and

  those who have “pitched the quavering canvas tent of their

  thoughts on the rim of the dark crater.” The oil in my head

  is of huge commercial value and has been used by NASA,

  for even in the galactic emptiness of deep space it does not

  freeze. I am attracted to the policies of the Green Party on

  paper but once inside the voting booth my hand is guided

  by an unseen force. Sometimes I vomit large chunks of

  ambergris. My brother, Jeff, owns a camping and outdoor

  clothing shop in the Lake District and is a recreational user

  of cannabis. Customers who bought books about me also

  bought Do Whales Have Belly Buttons? by Melvin Berger

  and street maps of Cardiff. In many ways I have seen it all.

  I keep no pets. Lying motionless on the surface I am said

  to be “logging,” and “lobtailing” when I turn and offer my

  great slow fluke to the horizon. Don’t be taken in by the

  dolphins and their winning smiles, they are the pickpockets

  of the ocean, the gypsy children of the open waters and

  they are laughing all the way to Atlantis. On the basis of

  “finders keepers” I believe the Elgin Marbles should

  remain the property of the British Crown. I am my own

  God—why shouldn’t I be? The first people to open me up

  thought my head was full of sperm, but they were men, and

  had lived without women for many weeks, and were far

  from home. Stuff comes blurting out.

  An Accommodation

  —— and I both agreed that something had to change,

  but I was still stunned and not a little hurt when I

  staggered home one evening to find she’d draped a

  net curtain slap bang down the middle of our home.

  She said, “I’m over here and you’re over there, and

  from now on that’s how it’s going to be.” It was a

  small house, not much more than a single room,

  which made for one or two practical problems.

  Like the fridge was on my side and the oven was on

  hers. And she had the bed while I slept fully

  clothed in the inflatable chair. Also there was a

  Hüsker Dü CD on her half of the border which I

  wouldn’t have minded hearing again for old times’

  sake, and her winter coat stayed hanging on the

  door in my domain. But the net was the net, and we

  didn’t so much as pass a single word through its

  sacred veil, let alone send a hand crawling beneath

  it, or, God forbid, yank it aside and go marching

  across the line. Some nights she’d bring men back,

  deadbeats, incompatible, not fit to kiss the heel of

  her shoe. But it couldn’t have been easy for her

  either, watching me mooch about like a ghost,

  seeing me crashing around in the empty bottles and

  cans. And there were good times too, sitting side by

  side on the old settee, the curtain between us, the

  TV in her sector but angled towards me, taking me

  into account.

  Over the years the moths moved in, got a taste for

  the net, so it came to resemble a giant web, like a

  thing made of actual holes strung together by fine,

  nervous threads. But there it remained, and remains

  to this day, this tattered shroud, this ravaged lace

  suspended between our lives, keeping us

  inseparable and betrothed.

  The Cuckoo

  When James Cameron was a young man, this happened

  to him. After his eighteenth birthday party had come to

  an end and the guests had disappeared wearing colourful

  hats and clutching cubes of Battenberg cake wrapped in

  paper napkins, James’s mother sat him down at the

  breakfast bar. The smell of snuffed candles and

  discharged party poppers floated in the air. “James, I’m

  not your mother,” she told him. “What?” he managed to

  croak. “I work for the government and my contract

  comes to an end today.” “Does dad know?” asked the

  bewildered James. “He’s not your father. Don’t be cross

  with us, we’re only doing our job.” James felt like a gold

  tooth sent flying through the air in a fist fight. “What

  about my brother, Peter, and all the family?” “Actors,”

  she said, very matter-of-factly. “I don’t believe you. Not

  auntie Madge.” “Especially her. She went to drama

  school. She was always a tad Shakespearian for my taste

  but some people like that approach.
” The small tear in

  James’s eye, like a baby snail, finally emerged from its

  shell. “Will you leave me?” he asked. She said, “There’s

  a taxi coming in half an hour. I’ve left a chilli con carne

  in the fridge and there’s a stack of pizzas in the freezer.

  Pepperoni—the ones you like. We’re opening a bed and

  breakfast place on the east coast. Actually it’s a safe-

  house for political prisoners—I can tell you that because

  I know you won’t repeat it.” Suddenly she looked like the

  meanest woman who ever lived, though of course he

  loved her very being.

  James went outside. His best friend, Snoobie, and Carla,

  his girlfriend, were leaning on the wall with suitcases in

  their hands. Carla was wearing sunglasses and passing a

  piece of chewing gum from one side of her mouth to the

  other. “Not you two as well?” said James, despairingly.

  “ ’Fraid so,” said Snoobie. “Anyway, take care. I’ve been

  offered a small part in a play at the Palace Theatre in

  Watford and there’s a read through tomorrow morning.

  She’s off to Los Angeles, aren’t you, Carla?” “Hollywood,”

  she said, still chewing the gum. James said, “Didn’t it mean

  anything, Carla? Not even that time behind the taxi rank

  after the Microdisney concert?” “Dunno,” she shrugged. “I’d

  have to check the file.” James could have punched a hole in

  her chest and ripped out the poisonous blowfish of her heart.

  He walked heavily up to the paddock. If he’d been a smoker

  who’d quit, now would have been the time to start again. If

  he’d been carrying a loaded firearm in his pocket he might

  have put that to his lips as well. Then a bird fell out of the

  sky and landed just a yard or so from his feet. A cuckoo.

  It flapped a few times and died. However tormented or

  shabby you’re feeling, however low your spirits, thought

  James, there’s always someone worse off. His mother had

  taught him that. It was then he noticed the tiny electric

  motor inside the bird’s belly, and the wires under its wings,

  and the broken spring sticking out of its mouth.

  Back in the Early Days of the Twenty-First Century

  Back in the early days of the twenty-first century I was

  working as a balloon seller on the baked and crumbling

  streets of downtown Mumbai. It was lowly work for a

  man like me with a sensitive nature and visionary dreams,

  but at least I wasn’t moping around like a zombie,

  tapping the windows of taxis and limousines with a

  broken fingernail, begging for biscuits and change.

  Besides which, these were no ordinary inflatables, but

  gargantuan things, like gentle, alien beings. To drum up

  business I’d fill one with air and slap the flat of my hand

  on the quivering skin, the sound booming out among

  passing tourists, reverberating through body and soul.

  It was a sticky and slow Thursday in March when he

  crossed the road towards me, that man in his seersucker

  suit, and chose a purple balloon from the bag, lifted it

  with his little finger like evidence found at the scene of

  some filthy crime, and said, “How much for this?” We

  haggled and he bargained hard, drove me down to my

  lowest price, which was two rupees, then he said, “OK,

  but I want it blowing up.” “No, sir,” I said, “that price

  is without air.” “Blowing up, buddy, right to the top, or

  I’m walking away,” said the man in the seersucker suit.

  Trade had been slack that day. In fact in ten sun-

  strangled hours this was my only nibble, and to walk

  home with empty pockets is to follow the hearse, so they

  say. So I exhaled at great length, breathed the air of

  existence into that purple blimp, and to this day I wish I

  had not. For with that breath my soul was sold, and all

  for the price of a cup of betel nuts or a lighted candle

  placed in the lap of the elephant god.

  And his lazy daughter danced with me once and left me

  to slouch and gag in the stinking womb of my own stale

  breath. Then his fat boy bundled me straight to his room,

  and when I wouldn’t yield to his two-fisted punches and

  flying bicycle kicks, all the spite of puberty coursed

  through the veins in his neck, and the light in his eye

  shrank to a white-hot, pin-sharp, diamond-tipped point.

  Michael

  So George has this theory: the first thing we ever steal,

  when we’re young, is a symbol of what we become later

  in life, when we grow up. Example: when he was nine

  George stole a Mont Blanc fountain pen from a fancy

  gift shop in a hotel lobby—now he’s an award-winning

  novelist. We test the theory around the table and it seems

  to add up. Clint stole a bottle of cooking sherry, now

  he owns a tapas bar. Kirsty’s an investment banker and

  she stole money from her mother’s purse. Tod took a

  Curly Wurly and he’s morbidly obese. Claude says he

  never stole anything in his whole life, and he’s an actor

  i.e. unemployed. Derek says, “But wait a second, I stole

  a blue Smurf on a polythene parachute.” And Kirsty says,

  “So what more proof do we need, Derek?”

  Every third Saturday in the month I collect my son from

  his mother’s house and we take off, sometimes to the

  dog track, sometimes into the great outdoors. Last week

  we headed into the Eastern Fells to spend a night under

  the stars and to get some quality time together, father

  and son. With nothing more than a worm, a bent nail and

  a thread of cotton we caught a small, ugly-looking fish;

  I was all for tossing it back in the lake, but Luke surprised

  me by slapping it dead on a flat stone, slitting its belly

  and washing out its guts in the stream. Then he cooked it

  over a fire of brushwood and dead leaves, and for all the

  thinness of its flesh and the annoying pins and needles of

  its bones, it made an honest meal. Later on, as it dropped

  dark, we bedded down in an old deer shelter on the side

  of the hill. There was a hole in the roof. Lying there on

  our backs, it was as if we were looking into the inky blue

  eyeball of the galaxy itself, and the darker it got, the more

  the eyeball appeared to be staring back. Remembering

  George’s theory, I said to Luke, “So what do you think

  you’ll be, when you grow up?” He was barely awake,

  but from somewhere in his sinking thoughts and with a

  drowsy voice he said, “I’m going to be an executioner.”

  Now the hole in the roof was an ear, the ear of the

  universe, exceptionally interested in my very next words.

  I sat up, rummaged about in the rucksack, struck a match

  and said, “Hold on a minute, son, you’re talking about

  taking a person’s life. Why would you want to say a

  thing like that?” Without even opening his eyes he said,

  “But I’m sure I could do it. Pull the hood over someone’s

  head, squeeze the syringe, flick the switch, whatever.

  You know, if they’d done wrong. Now go to sleep,
dad.”

  I’ll Be There to Love and Comfort You

  The couple next door were testing the structural fabric

  of the house with their difference of opinion. “I can’t

  take much more of this,” I said to Mimi my wife. Right

  then there was another almighty crash, as if every pan

  in the kitchen had clattered to the tiled floor. Mimi said,

  “Try to relax. Take one of your tablets.” She brewed a

  pot of camomile tea and we retired to bed. But the

  pounding and caterwauling carried on right into the small

  hours. I was dreaming that the mother of all asteroids

  was locked on a collision course with planet Earth,

  when unbelievably a fist came thumping through the

  bedroom wall just above the headboard. In the metallic

  light of the full moon I saw the bloody knuckles and a

  cobweb tattoo on the flap of skin between finger and

  thumb, before the fist withdrew. Mimi’s face was

  powdered with dirt and dust, but she didn’t wake. She

  looked like a corpse pulled from the rubble of an

  earthquake after five days in a faraway country famous

  only for its paper kites.

  I peered through the hole in the wall. It was dark on the

  other side, with just occasional flashes of purple or green

  light, like those weird electrically-powered life forms

  zipping around in the ocean depths. There was a rustling

  noise, like something stirring in a nest of straw, then a

  voice, a voice no bigger than a sixpence, crying for help.

  Now Mimi was right next to me. “It’s her,” she said. I

  said, “Don’t be crazy, Mimi, she’d be twenty-four by

  now.” “It’s her I tell you. Get her back, do you hear me?

  GET HER BACK.” I rolled up my pyjama sleeve and

  pushed my arm into the hole, first to my elbow, then as

  far as my shoulder and neck. The air beyond was

  clammy and damp, as if I’d reached into a nineteenth-

  century London street in late November, fog rolling in up

  the river, a cough in a doorway. Mimi was out of her

  mind by now. My right cheek and my ear were flat to the

  wall. Then slowly but slowly I opened my fist to the

  unknown. And out of the void, slowly but slowly it