Louis MacNeice in the 'Cock'
Great Portland Street at opening time, at dusk
when the jewellers and rag-traders locked up
and the broadcasters filed to their booze.
He was there most nights when the Third
didn't stick his brilliance in a cubicle
with knobs, buttons, switches and dials
waiting for a red light to flick.
On summer afternoons he watched cricket at Lord's.
Everything about him was dark:
he wore a black leather coat
standing alone at the bar
like a rich romantic French actor
or a matador taking his ease.
I hoped Auden would come in from New York
to break his silence, making
a double flash of glamour
among the clerks and tartan panels.
I never approached him, being nothing much
at the Old Beeb, and he
seemed formidable, with a known flair
for testiness, and a cold-blooded gift
for disdain - leaning back, holding a glass
and looking at the world from a distance
through half-closed eyes. It was an aloof
hooded glance, to keep people away
and his distinction intact. It was what
Spender called a superior head
with lancing eyes sizing you up.
I thought then he did not belong,
that somehow he would not grow old.
He was in life, yet above it -
a shocked observer pretending to be amused.
In the Cock Tavern long ago
his Autumn Journal was inside his head
and his eyes seemed fixed on some debacle:
‘Crumbling between the fingers, under the feet,
Crumbling behind the eyes,
Their world gives way and dies
And something twangs and breaks at the end of the street’.
Page(s) 33-34
magazine list
- Features
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- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
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- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
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- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
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- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
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- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
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- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The