Stanley Cook: Selected Poems

Stanley Cook

• Publisher: Smith|Doorstop Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781910367155
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

Stanley
Cook (19221991) was much admired in his lifetime but never achieved the
popular audience and critical reputation his work deserved. Cook went his own
way, sanguine about the fashions of the poetry establishment, and quietly
writing some of the most readable, intelligent and vividly achieved poems of
our time.

Portraits 1

Tom

It dealt our childhood first, and he and I

Were much alike: awkward and rather shy,

Getting more fist than we gave. We accepted the fact

He had the better cards: a cricket bat

And stumps from an uncle, with which his one-man side

Beat mine for hours on end; a fountain pen prize

In a handwriting competition; an ear for music

When I was a joke in the choir; a wall to sit

Upon in summer when the stones were warm

And talk of county cricket we never saw;

A better front room with newer easy chairs,

Where I made love to his sister in later years.

Leaving school, he delivered for a grocer;

When war and rationing came, he knew who hoarded

Among the leaders of local society,

But never allowed their greed to make him angry.

Since the war he works as a porter in town.

He hasn’t won the pools; he lives alone

And sees to himself; not even a pen friend

And unlikely to marry except by accident.

If I earn more, it might have been otherwise;

And if I am happier, I apologize.

Mr Elvidge

Change overtook the blacksmith quicker than time.

When I was at school and he was in his prime

The word that Elvidge was shoeing soon got round

And after school we raced each other down

To see him tucking the horse’s leg beneath his arm,

Or we watched him from the half-door, working at the forge,

His hammer driving the sudden cats of sparks

That scratched our eyeballs, from their hiding place in the dark.

Outside, a midden of broken machinery.

Flabby with flakes of rust, made history;

And, growing where they could, the evening primroses

Tied up their timid flowers in yellow bows.

But first the sandhole took away his field,

And next his orchard went to widen the road,

Then no one needed him when tractors arrived

And the empty smithy buried his skill alive.

A Methodist, life in the country had turned his skin

The same, a shade lighter, as his leather apron.

He begged the boys who mulligrubbed each other

Not to fight in good old Austerfield:

The unmown grass now breaks upon his grave,

Brown and purple with seeds of future waves;

Two marble angels our final inappropriate

Reminder of him in the churchyard opposite.

Mr Salt

You read the capital letter of his house

A long way off, with half an acre of land

Flung out in a length behind – black, white and red

Currant bushes and rhubarb like elephant ears

Growing on pig manure or fertiliser

On the side from pilfering farm labourers.

His plums in a good year broke the branches down;

He gave them away for jamming by baskets

At a guess of a price that avoided offence.

Churchwarden, he rattled the wooden collection box

And proud of it at the end of every row

In times when the Buffs turned out on Armistice Day

And extra chairs were needed at harvest festivals;

And interrupted the earliest part of sermons,

When people were still attending, by exploding

The wrapping of a sweet.

A houseful of children and grandchildren ran the

whole range

Of h...

Table of contents

• Prelude
• Austerfield
• Portraits 1
• Sheffield
• from Form Photograph
• School
• Staff Photograph
• Townscapes
• Woods
• Portraits 2
• Roads
• Plants
• Postscript