Seeing Stars

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright © 2010 by Simon Armitage

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada, Limited, Toronto.

Originally published in Great Britain by Faber and Faber in 2010.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Armitage, Simon, 1963–
Seeing stars : poems / by Simon Armitage.
p.    cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-59943-8
I. Title.
PR
6051
R
564
S
44 2011
821’.914—dc22                    2010052918

Front-of-jacket photograph © William Wegman Jacket design by Carol Devine Carson

v3.1

For Sue

I am a sperm whale. I carry up to 2.5 tonnes of an oil-like

balm in my huge, coffin-shaped head. I have a brain the

size of a basketball, and on that basis alone am entitled to

my opinions. I am a sperm whale. When I breathe in, the

fluid in my head cools to a dense wax and I nosedive into

the depths. My song, available on audiocassette and

compact disc is a comfort to divorcees, astrologists and

those who have “pitched the quavering canvas tent of their

thoughts on the rim of the dark crater.” The oil in my head

is of huge commercial value and has been used by NASA,

for even in the galactic emptiness of deep space it does not

freeze. I am attracted to the policies of the Green Party
on

paper
but once inside the voting booth my hand is guided

by an unseen force. Sometimes I vomit large chunks of

ambergris. My brother, Jeff, owns a camping and outdoor

clothing shop in the Lake District and is a recreational user

of cannabis. Customers who bought books about me also

bought
Do Whales Have Belly Buttons?
by Melvin Berger

and street maps of Cardiff. In many ways I have
seen it all.

I keep no pets. Lying motionless on the surface I am said

to be “logging,” and “lobtailing” when I turn and offer my

great slow fluke to the horizon. Don’t be taken in by the

dolphins and their winning smiles, they are the pickpockets

of the ocean, the gypsy children of the open waters and

they are laughing all the way to Atlantis. On the basis of

“finders keepers” I believe the Elgin Marbles should

remain the property of the British Crown. I am my own

God—why shouldn’t I be? The first people to open me up

thought my head was full of sperm, but they were men, and

had lived without women for many weeks, and were far

from home. Stuff comes blurting out.

—— and I both agreed that something had to change,

but I was still stunned and not a little hurt when I

staggered home one evening to find she’d draped a

net curtain slap bang down the middle of our home.

She said, “I’m over here and you’re over there, and

from now on that’s how it’s going to be.” It was a

small house, not much more than a single room,

which made for one or two practical problems.

Like the fridge was on my side and the oven was on

hers. And she had the bed while I slept fully

clothed in the inflatable chair. Also there was a

Hüsker Dü CD on her half of the border which I

wouldn’t have minded hearing again for old times’

sake, and her winter coat stayed hanging on the

door in my domain. But the net was the net, and we

didn’t so much as pass a single word through its

sacred veil, let alone send a hand crawling beneath

it, or, God forbid, yank it aside and go marching

across the line. Some nights she’d bring men back,

deadbeats, incompatible, not fit to kiss the heel of

her shoe. But it couldn’t have been easy for her

either, watching me mooch about like a ghost,

seeing me crashing around in the empty bottles and

cans. And there were good times too, sitting side by

side on the old settee, the curtain between us, the

TV in her sector but angled towards me, taking me

into account.

Over the years the moths moved in, got a taste for

the net, so it came to resemble a giant web, like a

thing made of actual holes strung together by fine,

nervous threads. But there it remained, and remains

to this day, this tattered shroud, this ravaged lace

suspended between our lives, keeping us

inseparable and betrothed.

When James Cameron was a young man, this happened

to him. After his eighteenth birthday party had come to

an end and the guests had disappeared wearing colourful

hats and clutching cubes of Battenberg cake wrapped in

paper napkins, James’s mother sat him down at the

breakfast bar. The smell of snuffed candles and

discharged party poppers floated in the air. “James, I’m

not your mother,” she told him. “What?” he managed to

croak. “I work for the government and my contract

comes to an end today.” “Does dad know?” asked the

bewildered James. “He’s not your father. Don’t be cross

with us, we’re only doing our job.” James felt like a gold

tooth sent flying through the air in a fist fight. “What

about my brother, Peter, and all the family?” “Actors,”

she said, very matter-of-factly. “I don’t believe you. Not

auntie Madge.” “Especially her. She went to drama

school. She was always a tad Shakespearian for my taste

but some people like that approach.” The small tear in

James’s eye, like a baby snail, finally emerged from its

shell. “Will you leave me?” he asked. She said, “There’s

a taxi coming in half an hour. I’ve left a chilli con carne

in the fridge and there’s a stack of pizzas in the freezer.

Pepperoni—the ones you like. We’re opening a bed and

breakfast place on the east coast. Actually it’s a safe-

house for political prisoners—I can tell you that because

I know you won’t repeat it.” Suddenly she looked like the

meanest woman who ever lived, though of course he

loved her very being.

James went outside. His best friend, Snoobie, and Carla,

his girlfriend, were leaning on the wall with suitcases in

their hands. Carla was wearing sunglasses and passing a

piece of chewing gum from one side of her mouth to the

other. “Not you two as well?” said James, despairingly.

“ ’Fraid so,” said Snoobie. “Anyway, take care. I’ve been

offered a small part in a play at the Palace Theatre in

Watford and there’s a read through tomorrow morning.

She’s off to Los Angeles, aren’t you, Carla?” “Hollywood,”

she said, still chewing the gum. James said, “Didn’t it mean

anything, Carla? Not even that time behind the taxi rank

after the Microdisney concert?” “Dunno,” she shrugged. “I’d

have to check the file.” James could have punched a hole in

her chest and ripped out the poisonous blowfish of her heart.

He walked heavily up to the paddock. If he’d been a smoker

who’d quit, now would have been the time to start again. If

he’d been carrying a loaded firearm in his pocket he might

have put that to his lips as well. Then a bird fell out of the

sky and landed just a yard or so from his feet. A cuckoo.

It flapped a few times and died. However tormented or

shabby you’re feeling, however low your spirits, thought

James, there’s always someone worse off. His mother had

taught him that. It was then he noticed the tiny electric

motor inside the bird’s belly, and the wires under its wings,

and the broken spring sticking out of its mouth.

Back in the early days of the twenty-first century I was

working as a balloon seller on the baked and crumbling

streets of downtown Mumbai. It was lowly work for a

man like me with a sensitive nature and visionary dreams,

but at least I wasn’t moping around like a zombie,

tapping the windows of taxis and limousines with a

broken fingernail, begging for biscuits and change.

Besides which, these were no ordinary inflatables, but

gargantuan things, like gentle, alien beings. To drum up

business I’d fill one with air and slap the flat of my hand

on the quivering skin, the sound booming out among

passing tourists, reverberating through body and soul.

It was a sticky and slow Thursday in March when he

crossed the road towards me, that man in his seersucker

suit, and chose a purple balloon from the bag, lifted it

with his little finger like evidence found at the scene of

some filthy crime, and said, “How much for this?” We

haggled and he bargained hard, drove me down to my

lowest price, which was two rupees, then he said, “OK,

but I want it blowing up.” “No, sir,” I said, “that price

is without air.” “Blowing up, buddy, right to the top, or

I’m walking away,” said the man in the seersucker suit.

Trade had been slack that day. In fact in ten sun-

strangled hours this was my only nibble, and to walk

home with empty pockets is to follow the hearse, so they

say. So I exhaled at great length, breathed the air of

existence into that purple blimp, and to this day I wish I

had not. For with that breath my soul was sold, and all

for the price of a cup of betel nuts or a lighted candle

placed in the lap of the elephant god.

And his lazy daughter danced with me once and left me

to slouch and gag in the stinking womb of my own stale

breath. Then his fat boy bundled me straight to his room,

and when I wouldn’t yield to his two-fisted punches and

flying bicycle kicks, all the spite of puberty coursed

through the veins in his neck, and the light in his eye

shrank to a white-hot, pin-sharp, diamond-tipped point.