Old Book
FinsburyParkCarrots
Posts: 12,223
Stretched green cloth,
pulled tight about the board
and gilded at the spine
(and long acquainted with dust and coffee rings,
inkblots and thumbprints,
and the sweat of dreaming pupils' heads
splashed by a clap from the master),
gives this populist codex, this prizegiving primer
A cloak of mock spring in a wintered Empire.
A single volume, portable octavo,
opening to a sepia,
steel engraved portrait -
a plate of the poet in profile,
the bearded Laureate, drawn by Stoddart
(the plate veiled with tissue now aged and spotted, discoloured brown)-
awards this book the imperial air of a first impression,
1894,
with the dedicatory poem to Her Majesty
the first in the collection.
But the title plate says 1920,
the twentieth impression:
octavo top and fore edge folds and cuts
are uneven,
serrated insets jut out at angles
suggesting cheap labour,
stitching whispers brokenly of the Bookbinders' strike,
and in the back of the book is a page of advertisements
selling cheap editions of patriotic verse for a shilling a go.
Young widows in factories after Armistice
cut and sewed the papers
gathering them into a prizegiving book
to teach half-orphaned children
dead imperial whims
as the poppy fields in France
still
grew
warm blood
for the charge
and fall
of the heavy brigade
one long summer
four years gone
in the Somme.
pulled tight about the board
and gilded at the spine
(and long acquainted with dust and coffee rings,
inkblots and thumbprints,
and the sweat of dreaming pupils' heads
splashed by a clap from the master),
gives this populist codex, this prizegiving primer
A cloak of mock spring in a wintered Empire.
A single volume, portable octavo,
opening to a sepia,
steel engraved portrait -
a plate of the poet in profile,
the bearded Laureate, drawn by Stoddart
(the plate veiled with tissue now aged and spotted, discoloured brown)-
awards this book the imperial air of a first impression,
1894,
with the dedicatory poem to Her Majesty
the first in the collection.
But the title plate says 1920,
the twentieth impression:
octavo top and fore edge folds and cuts
are uneven,
serrated insets jut out at angles
suggesting cheap labour,
stitching whispers brokenly of the Bookbinders' strike,
and in the back of the book is a page of advertisements
selling cheap editions of patriotic verse for a shilling a go.
Young widows in factories after Armistice
cut and sewed the papers
gathering them into a prizegiving book
to teach half-orphaned children
dead imperial whims
as the poppy fields in France
still
grew
warm blood
for the charge
and fall
of the heavy brigade
one long summer
four years gone
in the Somme.
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as Poor Tom stakes you
you would have led Blind Gloucester
by the ankles from a rope tied to your beaten mare
the mare your mistress stole from the king
maddened with his daisy chain crown
and you would have laughed
as the old man's head smashed against rocks
as you geed and giddyuped for a prize
but now you're squealing
as Tom - yes, Edgar! - turns the whirligig of time
in the would-be viscera of the gutless pandar.