Reception
We’ll settle by the bar and watch
the women dance, then split a likely
pair when we think we stand a chance.
I’ve one eye on the bridesmaid with
the skirt that’s riding high – showing
off the daisies, tattooed upon
her thigh.
The groom is still hung-over;
can’t find the pregnant bride. She dodged
into the boxroom – best-man by her side.
Mothers-in-law are screaming,
‘war,’ handbags all-aflail. Uncle
Jack is on his back. George is green
and frail.
So we’ll linger here and
guzzle beer, till the barman calls
the time. Then make a play for a
pair who sway – join the pantomime.
Hope you like the big one with the
bird’s nest in her hair. Because I’m
heading for the bridesmaid, with the
skirt that’s riding high – showing off
the daisies, tattooed on her thigh.
Charlie Gregory
Prifddinas
Cymru
***
Just went away
You didn’t say – just went away
and killed the dream that filled my day.
I really thought I knew you well;
but deep inside you planned to flee
and didn’t tell. You gave no hint
about the end – like … ‘I don’t need
you for a friend.' Neither said we
didn’t care, but suddenly you
were not there. I can’t dismiss you
with a sigh. It matters that you
say, 'goodbye.' So smile, and blow a
kiss before you go. Never run
away – and leave your friend to grieve.
Charlie Gregory
Prifddinas
Cymru
***
Announcement
‘State the fact,’ he tells the board; ‘announce mid-
morning without warning; too late then to
retaliate; say, ‘times change – so on your
way. Redundancy accompanies age.’
Walks easy through his fortress-grounds of trip-
alarms and snarling hounds. Youthful bride is
safely sealed from vengeful pawn and bitter
foe, and waits, consoled by views of vale and
river's flow, gleaned through rail and safety gates.
Mower idle on the lawn; barrow still
beside a wall; jobbing boy holds toil in
scorn. ‘We'll propel the youth to manhood with
a jolt; he'll learn the bitter truth of how
to cope without a job or hope; collect
his due, then face his fate as men must do.’
Holding high the diamond-ring, gift for the
girl with everything – to rent her love and
smile awhile; into the room where hi-fi
croons her favourite tunes then – ‘Christ!’ Mind won't
focus with the eyes; wife on table, lips
apart, hair a-splay, radiant as her
wedding day; boy – a man between her thighs.
Charlie Gregory
Prifddinas
Cymru
***
Natasha
She descends from en-suite and the balcony-shops;
sways down the stairway, leather-mini concealing,
sometimes revealing, lace stocking-tops;
carries her bruises where nobody sees.
In the hub of the foyer the faces are probing,
sharp as the glare of the night-patrol's lamps,
as she sprinkles a vapour of perfume around them.
Where has she been? what has she seen?
Edge ever nearer; want her but fear her.
From the shelters and hides of their devalued lives
the other girls know what she carries inside;
science degree; career that tumbled
when the foundations supporting the Motherland crumbled.
The Westerner sits and weighs up the scene,
wealthy vibrations of pleasure and ease.
'Are you looking for fun?' almost a prayer,
crouching before him, hands on his knees;
smouldering eyes hide the pleading inside;
bleak deserts of poverty stretching before her,
murk of the tenement, queuing and crying,
pauper-line selling, pauper-line buying.
'How much?' he demands. Heart skips a beat;
will he be the one to be swept off his feet?
Will he whisk her away?
New York maybe? Somewhere … D.C.?
'Two-hundred,' she blurts, 'American-bills ...'
She suddenly chills. Pitiless tips of cruel icebergs
drift in from the Muscovite mist
to rip-off the fees she must squeeze
from the floating unfaithful who crawl through her knees.
'Too dear,' he waves her away.
It's me! She's crying inside.
It's me – every man's bride.
‘What am I worth? she wonders aloud.
‘Seventy-five,’ he replies, ‘one of the crowd.’
She rises before him, standing head bowed,
defeated – not cowed.
The girls turn away, back to their chat.
At the bar, double Scotch-on-the-rocks
is served to a rat.
Charlie Gregory
Moscow
At the collapse of the Soviet Union
***
Gifts for Elizabeth
Look into the sky tonight and travel
back in time, where diamonds light forever-
up beyond the Milky Way; and if you
know the stars by name you'll never be alone.
See Lunar, queen of all the nights, a-glide
with silver smiles; lingers while the morning
mist shimmers all with dew, then hides among
the vapour-screens to watch her lover rise.
How mighty rides the Sun King, Midas of
the dawn, transforming leaden sea and sky
to sheets of dazzling gold; red carpets lie
on cloud-scapes of plains and mountain passes.
Purple anvils, forging hailstorms; thunder
clapping; lightning flashing; Buddhas billow
then dissolve in peaceful islands floating
high ... Now yellow skies of driven rain-squalls.
Flooding fields send swollen rivers rushing
to the sea, where they boil and steam in the
tropic-tides, then leap on the wind and flee –
to return in tears to their native hills.
Such glory is the earthly engine – where
sylph-rainbows float on fields of flowers that
mirror back their subtle hues; while starry-
fish flash in inky seas of ever-night.
Deep forests whisper secrets to the fields
and jungle-hedgerows where busy insects
drone. Fisher folk of spiders spin beauty
into webs that find jewels in the frost.
Savours of the planet are bound into
a whole by the pulsing of the hours in
the rhythm of the days, that circle in
the seasons of the spiral of the years.
There's a presence and a theme in the beat
of the never-ending dancing of the
ocean on the shore – where a gypsy wind
croons love songs to the birds that pipe and soar.
To melt into this music is to blend
into the motion, and form again the
beauty of our truth; where minds are laughing
ripples on a stream that runs forever.
Find succour in the knowledge that all of
us are one, and the substance of all things
is the universal essence of the
stars ... and see strife as but a passing phase.
Charlie Gregory
Prifddinas
Cymru
***
Orang Ulu ( pron. Uloo)
collective name for the up-river tribes of Sarawak.
Orang Ulu,
loping through mottle-green light of the jungle-track,
lighter than dawn-mist and nimble as wildcat.
Hunt-hounds around-him are bounding and
wailing a death-hymn, or baying for
deer-spoor or fat-ox or wild boar.
Ulu agape at the edge of a clearing,
proud ebony, ironwood crashing before him;
din of tree-felling and sawing and logging,
plundering into the land of the lair,
filling the air of the woods with despair.
Animals fleeing; no way of escape.
Earth mother, naked and bruised by the rape,
bleeds yellow puss in the pure running river
where bones of the forest now rattle down rapids.
Change; flooding the valley;
drowning the nestling, the gibbon and python;
feeding their life-force into the pylon.
Rain; kissing the forest her final goodbyes.
Lonely in grief, tears in his eyes,
Ulu burying dogs in the shade of bamboo.
‘Sleeping in nature,’ the sandalwood sighs,
‘dreaming forever of hunting with you.’
Charlie Gregory
Sarawak 1996
