Taking off Billy Collins’s Clothes

It will be morning.
I will ask him to place his second cup
of espresso back in its saucer
as quietly as I know he can
and rise from the typewriter.
I will lead him to another window
where it will be snowing –
this and the horses distract him
while I ease off his jacket,
pull his lemon cashmere sweater over his head.
He will scarcely notice while he listens
for the sound snow makes, slipping away
to a reverie of landscapes he’s yet to visit.
As I unbutton his jeans,
his coffee breath
blurs the glass momentarily.
I cannot tell you everything
but he kicks away the crumpled denim
as if shrugging off something half-remembered
and I feel that he’s stopped himself
from murmuring something wry,
sensing I may prefer silence.

by Katrina Naomi, from Wild Persistence, Seren, 2020

Charlotte Brontë’s Corset

I’m sorry Charlotte for this disservice.

Of course, your corset is discoloured,

these padded cups no longer coral pink.

Strips of whale plunge the depths

of your bodice, the slightly rusty metal

strip grips from breastbone to wasp-waist.

I feel like a tabloid reporter, sniffing around 

the armholes of your life.

                                               I once wore a corset

in my late teens, black PVC over a black skirt,

fishnets and suede stilettos. I didn’t know

a lot of things then, hardly knew who I was,

had barely heard of you. So what gives

me the right to go searching through

your smalls, to lay out your stays

in the library?

                            I don’t have so many scruples,

can’t be tight-laced. I need to breathe

the length of my lungs. And I do know

I’ve made your body so much larger 

than in life. Forgive me, my waist

is so very different to yours.

by Katrina Naomi, first published in Charlotte Brontë’s Corset, (The Brontë Society), 2010

You will, I’m sure, want to read Billy Collins’ poem ‘Taking off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes’, as it is, after all, the starting point for all of this.

You can read it here.

Dover Beach

The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

by Matthew Arnold

Taking Off by Pauline Prior-Pitt

they make it easy for each other
she no longer wears a bra

and he arrives commando
in his jeans

and sock-less

the taking off of socks
is so much bother

the ease of slow undressing
gives such pleasure

you will want to know

the view out of the window
is all of sea and sky

but a drawing down of blinds
adds mystery

later although I cannot tell you
everything

they giggle like two teenagers
up to their tricks

what I can tell you

is that she is almost eighty
and he’s just seventy six

Pauline Prior-Pitt

Acknowledging the wonderful poem by Billy Collins called “Taking off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes”.

Taking off Billy Collins’s Clothes

I’ll pass the notebook
fallen from the ink-stained inside pocket
of the jacket worn for outside gigs.
Advise him that red/grey combo he wears for TEDtalks
negates the idea that poets notice important stuff.
The V-neck sweater tight & tricky for a man of letters
sparks off static setting his hair on end
generating Van de Graff memories from a lab top boyhood.
I’ll negotiate his specs through the black hole of the top,
lost in the polyester dark without them.
The T-shirt printed with Emily Dickinson
will lie below the open-neck shirt.
I’ll ask why he doesn’t wear ties
like Paul McCartney worn mid-slung
in that photo with George Plimpton.
The Y fronts will be a surprise /
Bugs Bunny Boxers the favourite
in the Poets Underwear Handicap Stakes at Amherst.
I’ll ponder on the year from underwear pulled off with teeth
to reincarnation cleaning oil from bicycle cogs like J-cloths.
Even without any clothes
Billy won’t be really naked until I take his specs off.
Unless by this undressing he wears contact lenses:
wider clearer view to focus his writing.

by Steve Harrison

Poet at Home

Andrew Marvell 1621 – 1678

In the queue in the Waitrose Café, I meet my love

The man next to me in the queue is gorgeous.
It starts with him telling me I’ve dropped my pen,

and I pick it up, though it’s not mine.
I’m almost sure he knew that anyway,
so we talk about pens and dropping things.
I ask for a cappuccino, and we’re on to poetry.
As the milk is frothed, he says for him
it’s about what rhymes with daffodils.
I tell him about my rhyming dictionary.
He says, “So you’re a clever girl then!”

I smile, say, “No” then “Yes” to chocolate.
We laugh as I hand over a five pound note.

“If I were fifty years younger, I’d fall in love with you.”

He says this as I hold out my hand for change.
All this in minutes, and I already love him.

He’s eighty-five, but I won’t believe it.
He looks at me from the corner of his eye,
gives a nod of knowing, asks for two cups of tea,

hooks his stick over his arm to pay.
I say, “Lovely to meet you,” walk to a table
past a woman who is smaller than him,

creased into a chair and wearing pink socks.
I look up at them from time to time. 

I see their silence.  It’s just been a long time. 

It’s been a long, long time. 

by Liz Lefroy, from Mending The Ordinary, Fair Acre Press in 2014

A poem found in the contents of ‘Nine Horses’ by Billy Collins (with great thanks and apologies)

When I wrote the night letter to the reader

I was living in the country, outside the velocity

of the town.

Now the radio plays “More than a woman”,

a cry of aimless love. In the absence

of better music

I switch radio stations to see

if Royal Aristocrat has won his race

in Paris.

If he has I  will travel to

Istanbul and fall in love

with langour.

But the obituaries in the paper

bring me back and today I bid

ave atque vale

with roadside flowers, as if

to demonstrate an eclipse of

their lives.

The trompe l’oeil of creatures

on the chapel wall becomes the

tipping point,

as my tears flow for your birthday

which last year we spent in

Albany.

You were a study in orange and white

as you wandered those rooms with the

nine horses.

What a litany of disasters it then became

when the return of the key

was required

First time

She slips the clothes from my warmed body.
Our mouths are dry as they meet.
We stand in the falling half-light of her attic,
she fully clothed, me naked – and getting cold.

I sit, quickly, on the thump of futon,
the duvet feathers my thighs.
I can’t believe this is happening and,
in the same moment, hold, believe, every frame.

I watch her watching me and gather up my dress,
re-occupy myself with its silk, feeling, otherwise,
I am betraying her – being so comfortable with skin.
I slide under the feathers. She sits on the pine boards,

rolls a cigarette, her smooth fingers teasing
out the tobacco. And we talk. Our words
make moist flows in the chill air. Soon
she shudders, even in her jumper.

“Jumpy” she says.
“Lie down with me” I say.

She risks taking off her shoes, her socks.
I am hoping hoping she won’t get cold feet.
Her cheekbones rise a rose brightness,
she won’t meet my eyes.

I lie absolutely still. Her bravery is a physical presence
beside her. She turns, squirms her jeans to the floor,
places her watch to tick beside the pillow, then manoeuvres
stiffly in. She doesn’t appear to be breathing.

We pause.

Then I ask her
gently
if she feels
she can discard
her bra in bed.

By Char March

Two very different poems from Char March – one full of the tenderness, courage and gaucheness of the ‘first time’, and the second? Well – a joyful call to be Scottish, with the tiniest of references to clothes! Way to go, Char!

Balthazar Bakery, Spring Street

Curious how your urge to be up and out of here

supersedes your desire to leave me a note

but as I lie listening to your tip-tap-toeing between

shower cupboards     dresser       and what I call loo

my unwillingness to engage in anything morning-like

with you is overtaken by thoughts of Medialunas and

Galette des Rois down at Balthazar Bakery on Spring Street

where in the miserly hours

we saw men in full-length sky blue aprons

drizzle focaccia and boil bagels and two held

great cream bowls of batter

for hazelnut waffles and buckwheat crêpes and the son Françoise

– dark eyed and already in the street –

leant over to write on the board:

                              Confitures du Jour –

                              Fraise des Bois

                              Grenade et Citron Vert

                              Cerise Noir

I know he’ll smile as I step from the cold in 10 a.m. slingbacks with

my oyster evening coat over uncovered legs and I know he’ll enjoy

the colour filling my face and my hands tearing

a tartine and my eyes holding his

over that first Chocolat Chaud.

by Rosie Shepperd from The Man at the Corner Table, Seren, 2015

Which of us Wears the Trousers

Behind the liberal politeness
You’re dying to know
Instead of the chat about societal attitudes
What you’d really like to ask is
Which of us in this relationship
Wears the trousers.

I’ll tell you
Since you want to know so much
And since it’s really very simple:
I do
And then again
She does
And then sometimes
Neither of us
Wears any trousers at all.

by Maria Jastrzębska

Warming Her Pearls  

for Judith Radstone

Next to my own skin, her pearls. My mistress

bids me wear them, warm them, until evening

when I’ll brush her hair. At six, I place them

round her cool, white throat. All day I think of her,

resting in the Yellow Room, contemplating silk

or taffeta, which gown tonight? She fans herself

whilst I work willingly, my slow heat entering

each pearl. Slack on my neck, her rope.

She’s beautiful. I dream about her

in my attic bed; picture her dancing

with tall men, puzzled by my faint, persistent scent

beneath her French perfume, her milky stones.

I dust her shoulders with a rabbit’s foot,

watch the soft blush seep through her skin

like an indolent sigh. In her looking-glass

my red lips part as though I want to speak.

Full moon. Her carriage brings her home. I see

her every movement in my head …. Undressing,

taking off her jewels, her slim hand reaching

for the case, slipping naked into bed, the way

she always does…. And I lie here awake,

knowing the pearls are cooling even now

in the room where my mistress sleeps. All night

I feel their absence and I burn.

By Carol Ann Duffy,  from Selling Manhattan. Copyright © 1987 by Carol Ann Duffy.  Reprinted by kind permission of the author.

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