Poetry by John Greening
Chessmen
for Gerður Kristný
And not a Fischer or Spassky among them –
delightful, light-hearted, cartoonish, clean-cut
fruit of the walrus or the whale, whose final
unanswerable move at time’s hand was to
checkmate on a beach in the Isle of Lewis
when England (of course) claimed eighty-two pieces,
leaving Scotland just this eleven. The knight
on his oss oss wee oss like a prop from a
scandi panto; the bishop boggle-eyed at
a sheela na gig or green men in his choir;
a warder rook, shield against chin, still afraid
vikings might raze the board; and then the kings, who
are taking it one step at a time, sceptres
decommissioned, but scowls active, two of them,
who’d guessed that after seven hundred years they
might well be rescued, only to be chosen
for the B-team… And no time, any of them,
to turn and even notice how those three queens
were simply shocked by it all, each touching their
unwrinkled cheeks with a fine-bred, distant look
that stared down the future, saying: one of us
at least could have taken that flight to Iceland.
Teasel
for the baize of a
billiard table, or
other evenly
raised pile, but
today what I pick
is one that pricks
me out of a habitual
nap – not silver
for Christmas as we
used to arrange,
or as hedgehogs
and hairbrushes, no.
But seeing them in
their natural state,
a procession up
the aisle and through
to this shortest day,
kings of the year
they tease again
that smooth chin.
John Greening is a Cholmondeley & Bridport winner: his recent books include To the War Poets,(Carcanet), editions of Blunden and Grigson, Heath (with Penelope Shuttle), an Egypt memoir and the anthologies, Accompanied Voices and Ten Poems about Sheds. The Silence (Carcanet) appears in June 2019.