Two Poems

Summer School

in memory of Michael Longley

The Antrim Glens: you,
Edna, Seamus and Ovid
Teaching us summer.

Sum

in memory of John Burnside

One offered us his yellow teapot, then later fell into a Japanese volcano.
One always had a twinkle in his cigarette.
One motorbiked in leathers on poebiz through central Paris.
One carried a dog in a cage.
One wrote in fountain pen with a label poking above his sweater’s neckline.
One never blotted out a line.
One drove a hired car through a pedestrian-only mall.
One, applauded by her audience, said to a latecomer, ‘Oh, hello, Mum.’
One with a pigtail had a taste for pibroch.
One inquired, ‘Do you mind if I sew?’
One wore a fob watch in a tweed waistcoat pocket.
One excused himself for a toilet break during his own long poem.
One snuggled in an armchair on a pier.
One had a contract specifying his tipple.
One spoke breathily through protruding teeth.
One denounced the girning of a coffee machine.
One was mangled in a car crash.
One, stuffing a rucksack with unsold copies, sighed, ‘Ah, the books, the books …’
One pointedly requested a babysitter.
One asked his bullied son, ‘Would you like me to show you how to really hurt someone?’
One offered a business card.
One fell asleep, drunk on the floor, at his own gig.
One tripped and turned his elbow to dust.
One was mistaken for a bag lady.
One walked, bent double, down a subterranean tunnel.
One contemplated a yoghurt pot.
One studied nude mice in a lab in Prague.
One said, ‘Burn something, then use the ash.’
Add them up. The answer is one.