Tony Harrison

Turns

I thought it made me look more ‘working class’(as if a bit of chequered cloth could bridge that gap!)I did a turn in it before the glass.My mother said: It suits you, your dad’s cap.(She preferred me to wear suits and part my hair:You’re every bit as good as that lot are!)All the pension queue…

Your bed’s got two wrong sides. You life’s all grouse.

Ah can’t stand it no more, this empty house!Carrots choke us wi’out your mam’s white sauce!Them sweets you brought me, you can have ’em back.Ah’m diabetic now. Got all the facts.(The diabetes comes hard on the trackof two coronaries and cataracts.)Ah’ve allus liked things sweet! But now ah pushfood down mi throat! Ah’d sooner do…

When the chilled dough of his flesh went in an oven

I thought of his cataracts ablaze with Heavenand radiant with the sight of his dead wife,light streaming from his mouth to shape her name,‘not Florence and not Flo but always Florrie.’I thought how his cold tongue burst into flamebut only literally, which makes me sorry,sorry for his sake there’s no Heaven to reach.I get it…

Bottomless pits. There’s on in Castleton,

one day thought its depth worth wagering onand borrowed a convict hush-hush from his warderand winched him down; and back, flayed, grey, mad, dumb.Not even a good flogging made him holler!O gentlemen, a better way to plumbthe depths of Britain’s dangling a scholar,say, here at the booming shaft at Towanroath,now National Trust, a place where…