12 Days Before Christmas Poems

Mr Fergy

(after Larkin)

This was Mr Fergy’s room. He stayed

The whole time he was a teacher, at CV, till

They retired him. Decorated walls – posters now splayed –

Stand like the poor largesse of a teacher’s last will

And testament: windows look out to land

Still goal-posted; littered, Mr Fergy took

This view to be a great bird in one hand,

And in the other, words from any good poet’s book.

Behind the class door are ghosts: work in students’ bags;

The offering ‘I know the answer sir’ or an obvious lie;

A view of the far corner of the field and smoke from fags;

Then the echoes of those who would always try.

Toughing it out with teaching year after year to drown

The jabbering of ignorance egged on by

Those who, intending to build, only tore down,

His sufferance was to always ask why

He kept on plugging at the days and days,

Likewise the tugging down from this good job’s yolk.

It was always more than for the summer holidays

And Christmases when his Stocking Fillers spoke.

But if he stood and watched the December wind

Tousling memories, listened to what its blowing said,

Telling himself this was all there really was, and grinned,

And shivered, without shaking off the dread

That how he lived measures his own nature,

And at his age having no more to show

Than a collection of red printed volumes should make him sure

He warranted no better than what such words bestow.

- 2008 -