Three Poems by Richard Price

Total concentration

when he is almost on his own
playing on the rocks
and he’s singing-humming
(I’m not sure how you’d classify it)
total concentration
and his body is moving too
(fluently) he’s dancing

when it’s him and me
we’re watching an anime
and we both feel the shockwave
the parents have been turned into pigs
serves them right but even so
and the last train moves through shallow water
incremental inundation the end of the world by seepage
“I’d love to be on that train, Dad”
“Me too” “Can we?”

when it’s all the family
what’s left of it
a wedding or a Sunday front room
and there he is dancing again
everyone knows he has that gift
celebrate him celebrate us all life
because everyone had something of that that gift once
no still does

or so what keep dancing

The absence

I tell close friends at an evening out
and there’s affectionate teasing,
growing your own football team?
and I know it’s early days and have I jinxed it
but joy is joy uncontained
and then the next time I say nothing,
it’s not for a group conversation,
they must know from me not talking,
and I remember the news

of no heartbeat and the necessity
of the end, and holding each other,
and the week or so of blood
and the quick sorrow, we hoped,
but it wasn’t quick, isn’t, and my job
is to be supportive, this is
physical trauma
smack right on top of mental trauma
trauma I am there, I am supportive trauma

because this shock this grief
is asymmetrical, right,
‘be the strong silent type’,
this grief can’t be real grief,
full grief, even I’m thinking that,
get over yourself,
my role is [ ]
and I am: look,
how strong, how silent.

Children are wild

Children are wild and make dens with coats and a folding table
in one-room bed-and-breakfasts.

There are kids’ homes in the condemned woods.
Black polythene flaps like a wood-gatherer in a glimpse of distance.
One lean-to has the wet weight of silver birches for structural timber.
There’s stolen ply, too, orange as ‘just a little milk in tea, thanks’, and neat handwriting.
An ex-soldier has settled in the shelter of a tree-house with its car-door shut. All autumn
he lays high but now everything’s gone bar the cut leaf of a SIM, two turquoise sandals, and an empty
holdall.

Richard Price’s poetry collections include Lucky Day, Rays, Small World, and most recently Moon for Sale and The Owner of the Sea: 3 Inuit Stories Retold. All these collections are published by Carcanet. Richard is the Head of Contemporary British Collections at the British Library, and he teaches at the Poetry School.