AMONGST THE CIRRUS CLOUDS
Peepal Tree PressJuly 2019Selected by Jeremy Poynting
Roger Robinson’s A Portable Paradise won the 2020 T.S. Eliot Prize not just because it is a superb collection that displayed the work of a poet of great craft and imagination, but also because it unerringly speaks to a nation yet again facing the reality of a heartless ruling class, exemplified by the Grenfell Tower disaster; the call to arms of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations; and a nation’s reawakening to the crucial importance of the NHS in the time of the pandemic. Robinson’s poems both sharpened a necessary anger and offered the equally needed sustenance of consolation. — Jeremy Poynting
“The MissingFor the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire disaster”
As if their bodies became lighter,ten of those seatedin front pews began to float,and then to lie down as if ona bed. Then pass down the aisle,as if on a conveyor belt of pure air,slow as a funeral cortege,past the congregants, some sinkingto their knees in prayer.One woman, rocking back and forth,muttered, What about me Lord,why not me?
The Risen stream slowly, so slowlyout the gothic doorsand up to the sky, finches dartingdeftly between them.
Ten streets away,a husband tries to hold onto the feetof his floating wife. At times her forcelifts him slightly off the ground,his grip slipping. He fallsto his knees with just her high-heeled shoe in his hand.He shields and squints his eyesas she is backlit by the sun.
A hundred people start floatingfrom the windows of a tower block;from far enough away they could beblack smoke from spreading flames.A father with his child on top his shoulders;men in sand-coloured galiibeas; a womanwith an Elvis quiff and vintage glasses,a deep indigo hijab flapping in the wind;an artist in a wax-cloth headwrap:all airborne, these superheroes,this airborne pageantry of faith,this flock of believers.
Amongst the cirrus clouds, floating like hair,they begin to look like a separate city.Someone looking on could mistake themfor new arrivants to earth.They are the city of the missing.We, now, the city of the stayed.
“Grace”
That year we danced to green bleeps on screen.My son had come early, just the 1kg of him,all big head, bulging eyes and blue veins.
On the ward I met Grace. A Jamaican senior nursewho sang pop songs on her shift, like they were hymns.“Your son feisty. Y’see him just ah pull off the breathing mask.”
People spoke of her in half tones down these carbolic halls.Even the doctors gave way to her, when it comesto putting a line into my son’s nylon thread of a vein.
She’d warn junior doctors with trembling hands: “Me only letting you try twice.”On her night shift she pulls my son’s incubator into her room,no matter the tangled confusion of wires and machine.
When the consultant told my wife and I on morning roundsthat he’s not sure my son will live, and if he lives he might never leave the hospital,she pulled us quickly aside: “Him have no right to say that – just raw so.”
Another consultant tells the nurses to stop feeding a baby, who will soon die,and she commands her loyal nurses to feed him. “No baby must deadwid a hungry belly.” And she’d sit in the dark, rocking that well-fed baby,held to her bosom, slowly humming the melody of “Happy”by Pharrell.And I think, if by some chance, I’m not here and my son’s life should flicker,then Grace, she should be the one.
“Black Olive”
I am introduced to a white woman at a literary party. I’m introduced to her as a writer and she is introduced to me as the director of a literary company. She picks up a black olive and says Black olives are better than the rest aren’t they. I love me some black olives and she pops it into her mouth and suddenly I am in her mouth bouncing off the soft trampoline of her tongue. I have become miniaturised to the size of an olive floating on a wave of saliva skimming the tops of her teeth and tucked in to her cheek. Before I can get my bearings, from behind her cracked molar a voice says Hi. He is as dark as me and he says, Don’t tell me you’re a writer, a novelist? No, poet, I reply. The black olive line? I nod slowly. A wave of saliva nearly makes us lose our footing and another guy, darker skinned than both of us, comes sliding on his bum. He stands up. We all say Hi.
“A Portable Paradise”
And if I speak of Paradise,then I’m speaking of my grandmotherwho told me to carry it alwayson my person, concealed, sono one else would know but me.That way they can’t steal it, she’d say.And if life puts you under pressure,trace its ridges in your pocket,smell its piney scent on your handkerchief,hum its anthem under your breath.And if your stresses are sustained and daily,get yourself to an empty room – be it hotel,hostel or hovel – find a lampand empty your paradise onto a desk:your white sands, green hills and fresh fish.Shine the lamp on it like the fresh hopeof morning, and keep staring at it till you sleep. ◉