Dannie Abse
A Figure of 8
In Mr Theophilus’s jail
of the sun-striped classroom
the boy half listens to a story
of royalty-loving Christopher Robin.
Then, after musical scales,
(his friend, Fatty Jones, is scolded -
Fatty Jones is sobbing)
sings, ‘Let the prairie echo,
God bless the Prince of Wales.’
Free, at last, arms horizontal,
he jet-roars out of school
into a vigorous sunset,
soars between the Hs
of the Millennium Stadium,
loops the loop, flies to Africa
to see naked women
(whom gently he caresses);
turns left at Albany Road,
farts H2 Ss.
The evening’s shot down in flames
butchers’ reds in the clouds are dark,
smoke is rising from the drains,
someone has bombed the park.
Both the swings are on fire,
the empty see-saw is charred;
the enemy is a brute,
the enemy must be foiled;
blood is streaming down the chute,
the wooden horses are running wild.
There’s a furnace in the churchyard
(a sorcerer has cast his spell)
the mandrake’s screaming and the yew,
the graves are sinking down to hell.
Unseen, a spaceship from another world
flees the heights, drags a spooky trace.
Below, the pond is poisoned and the dew.
Safely the boy comes home to base.
There beneath the night’s first star,
observed by his patient cat,
he chalks across the garden shed
FUCK WINNIE THE POOH.
Then adds for luck and Fatty Jones
FUCK MR THEOPHILUS TOO.
Dannie Abse’s most recent volume of poems Be Seated Thou was published last year in New York by the Sheep Meadow Press. Pimlico will bring out his autobiography Goodbye 20th Century this month.
Page(s) 22-23
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