Max Porter - Grief is the Thing with Feathers

A howling sorry which is yes which is thank you which is onwards.

My little book on Ted Hughes did well enough. It got reviewed in the TLS :

‘In its point-blank refusal to be constructively critical either of Hughes or his poems, it will certainly delight true fans of both.’

My scruffy Manchester-based publisher took me for lunch.

I told him my idea for a complete works of Ted Hughes annotated by Crow.

‘How about a book on Basil Bunting?’ he said.

I explained that Crow would violate, illustrate and pollute Ted’s work. It would be a deeper, truly wild analysis, a critical reckoning and an act of vengeance. It would be a scrapbook, a collage, a graphic novel, a dissolving of the boundaries between forms because Crow is a trickster, he is ancient and post-modern, illustrator, editor, vandal …

‘Shall we get the bill?’ said my publisher. ‘You have to move on. How about a little book on Piper and Betjeman?’

So I went home to talk to Crow about parting company.

I couldn’t find him. I did find that the boys had flung wet balls of toilet paper onto the bathroom ceiling, which pissed me off because I’d told them that it stained the paint, and by the time I’d cleaned it up and cooked their dinner and put them to bed I realised, of course, that Crow was gone.

Permission to leave, I’m done.

Shall I final walk the loop, the Boys/Dad boundary, hop/look/hop/stop.

Shall I final follow hunches, mourn hunt with pack lunches?

I dreamt her arm was blue when I found her,

Red where I touched, reacted, peck-a-little, anything?

Nonsuch matte podginess gave way to bone,

Accident in the home.

She banged her head, dreamed a bit, was sick, slept, got up and fell,

Lay down and died. A trickle of blood from an ear.

Hop/look/sniff/taste/better not. Total waste.

Lifeless cheek, lifeless shin, foot and toe. Wedding ring. Smile.

The medics arrive, the kids at school are learning, learning.

As you were, English widower, foliate head,

The undercliff of getting-on, groans, humps, huffs and puffs,

Wages, exams, ball-drops, lies and ecstatic passages,

All dread dead as the wildflower meadow. Starts again in proper time.

Some dads do this, some dads do that. Some natural evil, some fairly kind.

Pollarded, bollarded, was-it-ever-thus. Elastic snaps, a sniff and a sneeze and we’re gone.

Coppiced, to grow well.

Connoisseurs, they were, of how to miss a mother. My absolute pleasure.

Just be good and listen to birds.

Long live imagined animals, the need, the capacity.

Just be kind and look out for your brother.

Dad said it was high time we sprinkled Mum’s ashes.

He phoned the school in the morning to tell them we had a sick bug. I’m in a plague house, he joked with the secretary, it’s bad in here, they’ve got it both ends if you know what I mean.

Gross. We laughed.

Out you hop kids. Coats on, hats on, let’s do it.

We went to a place she loved. I told them in the car on the way that I realised I had been an unusual dad since Mum died. They told me not to worry. I told them that all the nonsense about Crow was over, I was going to get a bit more teaching work and stop thinking about Ted Hughes.

They told me not to worry.

We parked the car and walked diagonals into the wind.

We pissed and the wind blew our wee back against our trousers.

While the boys were digging in the shingle I dozed off and when I woke up they were asleep, next to me, like guards, with their hoods up. I was warm.

I didn’t wake them. I walked to the shoreline. I knelt down and opened the tin.

I said her name.

I recited ‘Lovesong’, a poem I like a great deal but she never thought much of. I apologised for reading it and told myself not to worry.

The ashes stirred and seemed eager so I tilted the tin and I yelled into the wind

I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU

and up they went, the sense of a cloud, the failure of clouds, scientifically quick and visually hopeless, a murder of little burnt birds flecked against the grey sky, the grey sea, the white sun, and gone. And the boys were behind me, a tide-wall of laughter and yelling, hugging my legs, tripping and grabbing, leaping, spinning, stumbling, roaring, shrieking and the boys shouted

I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU

and their voice was the life and song of their mother. Unfinished. Beautiful. Everything.