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    Armada
    Armada
    Armada
    Ebook82 pages40 minutes

    Armada

    By Brian Patten

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    About this ebook

    Through the fads and fashions of the last thirty years Brian Patten has remained true to his own personal vision of poetry. Whether composing lamentations to the terrible beauty of human love, or writing his outstanding popular verse for children, he has continued to articulate and illuminate the joys and sorrows of the everyday world.

    His reputation has been enhanced progressively by each of his collections, and now with translations into numerous languages including Italian, Spanish, German and Polish he is acknowledged as one of Europe's foremost contemporary poets. Through his performance work he is certainly one of Britain's most popular poets.

    This new book of poems is Patten's eighth for adults. With its powerful opening section interweaving poems about the death of his mother and memories of his childhood with her, it is at one and the same time his most personal and universal collection. It is a book of remarkable poems offering sharp insights into life and the human condition.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateJan 30, 2014
    ISBN9780007440177
    Armada
    Author

    Brian Patten

    Brian Patten was born in Liverpool in 1946 and is now recognised as one of Europe’s leading contemporary poets. His work is translated into many languages worldwide, and his collections (available in Flamingo) include ‘‘Grinning Jack’, ‘Love Poems’, and ‘‘Storm Damage’. He is also well known for his children’s poetry and novels, and is the editor of the ‘Twentieth Century Book of Children’s Verse’.

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      Book preview

      Armada - Brian Patten

      1

      the armada

      Cinders

      You never went to a ball, ever.

      In all your years sweeping kitchens

      No fairy godmother appeared, never.

      Poor, poor sweetheart,

      This rough white cloth, fresh from the hospital laundry,

      Is the only theatre-gown you’ve ever worn.

      No make-up. Hair matted with sweat.

      The drip beside your bed discontinued.

      Life was never a fairy-tale.

      Cinders soon.

      The Armada

      Long long ago

      when everything I was told was believable

      and the little I knew was less limited than now,

      I stretched belly down on the grass beside a pond

      and to the far bank launched a child’s armada.

      A broken fortress of twigs,

      the paper-tissue sails of galleons,

      the waterlogged branches of submarines –

      all came to ruin and were on flame

      in that dusk-red pond.

      And you, mother, stood behind me,

      impatient to be going,

      old at twenty-three, alone,

      thin overcoat flapping.

      How closely the past shadows us.

      In a hospital a mile or so from that pond

      I kneel beside your bed and, closing my eyes,

      reach out across forty years to touch once more

      that pond’s cool surface,

      and it is your cool skin I’m touching;

      for as on a pond a child’s paper boat

      was blown out of reach

      by the smallest gust of wind,

      so too have you been blown out of reach

      by the smallest whisper of death,

      and a childhood memory is sharpened,

      and the heart bums as that armada burnt,

      long, long ago.

      The Betrayal

      By the time I got to where I had no intention of going

      Half a lifetime had passed.

      I’d sleepwalked so long. While I dozed

      Houses outside which gas-lamps had spluttered

      Were pulled down and replaced,

      And my background was wiped from the face of the earth.

      There was so much I ought to have recorded.

      So many lives that have vanished –

      Families, neighbours; people whose pockets

      Were worn thin by hope. They were

      The loose change history spent without caring.

      Now they have become the air I breathe,

      Not to have marked their passing seems such a betrayal.

      Other things caught my attention:

      A caterpillar climbing a tree in a playground,

      A butterfly resting on a doorknob.

      And my grandmother’s hands!

      Though I saw those poor, sleeping hands

      Opening

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