Robert Leach : poetry pamphlets

Cats Free and Familiar

Ballantrae

In India

Every Time

Dustprints

Journey Flags

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	Cats Free and Familiar Published by The Keepsake Press; with illustrations by Warwick Hutton; 10pp. ‘I do not know Robert Leach’s work, but his new book (Cats Free and Familiar) left me wanting to read more ... (The book) is a cut above the average and worth looking into.’ – Grapevine (from Cats Free and Familiar) DOSTOIEVSKY Our cat had gone When we returned from holiday. A week forgetting him, Browning our pallor miles away, And he was gone. Walked out on us. His alert, delicate contempt had suggested Dostoievsky, And so I’d called him: The name satisfied my intellectual vanity. The kids called him Dusty And profligated the love of youth On him. He ignored them, preferring To snap wasps with his red mouth, Eating them, stings and all. He was like that – A baroque destroyer, researching A library of garbage with taloned eloquence, Minutely secret as a professor. When we came back from the seaside He was gone. No goodbye, Merely an absent wish And something to remember him by – A pillow’s worth of feathers And two deads birds on the living-room floor, Guts spilling from the half-open corpses like Underclothing from a dowager’s boudoir drawer. Among the intestine clots A million maggots wagged, Bulbous whitey things, wriggling, squirming, gorging In half-gone carcases stiff like crags. The children missed him, Dusty, they searched and called. He didn’t come. This indifference Was once for all. I’d only called him Dostoievsky Out of intellectual pride; When Dusty went The children cried.
	Ballantrae Published by Selkirk Lapwing Press; with linocuts by Joy Parker; 8pp. ‘Robert Leach’s excellent Ballantrae ... has a frosty touch to it, in its instamatic observation, in its almost dispassionate emotional quandary and above all in its clarity.’ – S.B.Kelly, The Eildon Tree (from Ballantrae) THE ROOKERY Oblivious of appearances, These black tatterdemalions Swoop and swarm, and swamp The intricate twig-hatched fretwork. Its tracery is interrupted By their nest blotches, As the rain-spattered morning is Ripped ragged By their awful, awkward squawkings And cawings. They chatter matters of fact, And call from dawn all day, Sway and shake the boughs, play And work and shirk, and always All together. And when an enemy approaches, The rooks rise rowdily, A cloud of cawing and bawling Black, flapping busters Making their cause common. The intruder high above’s a buzzard, Outsider playing the wild winds Against the azure sky, Wheeling, gliding, circling, Incomparably admirable and imperious. The rooks round on it, Stab-flap at it, Croak and spurt And swerve and skirt and scuff. The gasconading bird of prey is Baffled, bemused. Like a cow assailed by flies, Like a tourist encircled by Locals yearning for his trade, It bucks and dodges, Ducks and sways, and disengages. The rooks raucously Make more nuisance, cause Inconvenience till the bird emperor Fights shy, feints And flies away. The rooks return To their chaotic kibbutz, Resume Their scurrilous, backchatting scuffles. Who knows who is Whose partner, brother, spouse? Are there matrimonies, social niceties, Fraternal phantasmagorias to be kept up? Are these hip-hopping hobbledehoys Possessive of their property, Are the ragged nest-homes built For partners only, siblings, A nuclear family, And walled-off to keep out the rest? Is each one a single, life-long nest? Look again at this Sprawling, unaccountable crowd, With ragged legs and jerky heads. Every one who brings more nest makings Jams it in somehow anywhere, Each ungainly hover-lumping down Into the nearest scrimmage Of untrimmed sticks. Surely they are what they seem – Each for all, whatever the weather, A happy-go-lucky, Flapping and mucky, Jumbling, tumbling, rumbling sprawl Together.
	In India A Poem in Seven Parts Published by Selkirk Lapwing Press; with linocuts by Joy Parker; 18pp. ‘... the variety of language adopted (descriptive, purely lyrical and sometimes almost mystic) leaves the reader wondering what more you can ask from poetry.’ – Joao Henriques, Chapman (from In India) ON THE ROAD The camel-road to Agra, morning. Smutty fog Damps hope. The drivers yawn, Hood their heads in blankets, Whack their beasts. The cart wheels Groan. We’re all misfits. A hut beside a muggy cricket patch Provides two rupees’ worth of sweetened chai In little cocktail glasses. We sip, huddle up To wizened logs, where slips of smoke drift upwards Grumblingly. The fog sags, our spirits sap. Footsteps slap the roadway. Two young men Emerge, point, squat beside us, Knees in armpits. Then another, Older, beard hairs white and wavy. We all sip chai, hug ourselves, and shiver. Friendliness urges bashful smiles, sudden Looks away. Till one young man Removes his sandal, holds his toes just off The whitening embers. We smile. He wiggles them. We laugh. For just a moment we are one. Then the young men in a hurry Gulp their chai. A lorry beeps. They’re gone. Our little commune Is broken up. The smog weeps. God is What is. Dream belong to sleep.
	Every Time Selkirk Lapwing Press; 21pp. ‘I think that ‘My Wife’s Eyes’ by Robert Leach is so beautiful. I found myself wishing that I had a husband who would write something as lovely for me.’ – Ann C.Harris, Quantum Leap (from Every Time) MY WIFE’S EYES My wife With her beautiful eyes Drinks jasmine tea And watches the rain Batter the thin tin roof And tap dance On a hundred cork-in-the-storm umbrellas. Her eyes Are raindrops, Shiny as the crow’s back Which glints each time It cocks its head Questioningly, protestingly At the heavens. My wife’s beautiful eyes Watch the rain From the shelter Of her thick dark brows.
	Dustprints Notes Towards the Presentation of an Affidavit Published by QQ Press; 15pp. The witness in the poem is Tatyana Sergeevna Gomolitskaya-Tretyakova, ‘Tanya’, daughter of the radical poet and playwright, Sergei Tretyakov, who with his comrades Rodchenko, Eisenstein, Mayakovsky and others, imagined the Bolshevik Revolution would change the world. During the Great Purges of the 1930s, Tretyakov was arrested and committed suicide in prison, and his wife was incarcerated in a labour camp, and not released till after Stalin’s death. But she died, leaving Tanya alone in the desperate last days of Communism. When Yeltsin supplanted Gorbachev, she was full of radiant hope ... (from Dustprints) THE THIRTIES June 1937: Papa Is in hospital, ill With exhaustion. Mama Works in the kitchen, while Tanya holidays in the south With the Komsomol. Swimming, table tennis, dormitories Are arranged for the young citizen. Then in a letter, in mama’s Writing: ‘Something’s arisen. Come home, please, Immediately.’ No reason. And for hundreds of kilometres The brown train chuffs And clanks. Flies buzz. An old man sleeps, his mouth Wide open. Tanya Clutches her handkerchief. Water clouds Mama’s glasses In the steamy kitchen. It runs down the lenses Like tears. ‘They seized him – Papa. He’s arrested.’ No reason. THE FIFTIES On the day Sergei Prokofiev died The orchestras of the Soviet Union were quiet. Factory hooters never blew, The feet of marching men were mute. But not for Prokofiev, no crows croaked, Clanky trams and circus clowns Stood dumb as fog. Not for him, All Russia exhaled like a punctured tyre. Wind over versts of steppe dropped, Trans-Siberian engines died. Party conclaves muffled whispers. Russia: and silence sighed. Koba was gone. But if you listened hard enough, You might have caught that day The squeak of a gulag gate Opening ... very faint, very far away. (NB: Koba – nickname for Stalin.)
	Journey Flags Published by Selkirk Lapwing Press; book design by Joy Parker; 23pp. These poems record incidents in a journey on foot through the lower slopes of the Himalaya. (from Journey Flags) The Myna Bird In Tibet The Chinese language Has been awarded precedence Over Tibetan. A wire-made birdcage hangs From a drooping branch of the village peepul. A myna bird Flutters and hops on pale yellow feet From perch to bar, Bar to wire mesh floor, Floor to perch. Sometimes It whistles softly. ‘It can speak,’ We are told. Behind the myna’s tree Steep steps to a new school Rise, are lost In a shrubbery of shadows. A man in earth-smeared trousers Torn at both knees Pokes a stump of stick Through the wire bars. He wants To make the myna talk. Its few whistled syllables are soon Lost in the afternoon.