Ted Hughes coming out of the radio

I have been wondering recently if the world of the poem (the one that is currently not-here, just out of reach, and made up of sub-audible groaning noises), and the world of dailiness (the one that is here and includes timetables; reports; meetings; phone calls and groceries) are not after all the same and may well never be.

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I have been wondering if ‘See you later’ is in any way something that can be found in the process of writing a poem whose primary site of attention is to sub-audible groaning noises; or if it only belongs in a commonplace note of farewell at the end of a phone call to my sister.

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And I have been wondering if the new lights on the roundabout over the motorway at Tiverton is part of this.

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Or if switching the radio on by accident in the car and hearing Ted Hughes coming out of it is a sign that the universe is telling you something. Or Langston Hughes.

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And how this links somehow, most definitely in a strong way, but not too definitely either, to Peter Sansom’s line at the end of ‘Distance Learning’ about students being required to write poems about the moon.

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And how many great poems there are (or should be?) with the word ‘moon’ the last line. The moon is not a nice man, for example.

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and whether this means a poem is about to start brewing or am I just more than usually tired

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?

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And it makes me wonder (I have a feeling someone else got there first…)

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that possibly the only answer is to sit in silence till it hurts, or with a pad or back of an envelope, to abjure the radio, eat radishes for a week, speak only with my plants, and wait, until it (or nothing), or even another poem (the ghost-poem that is often more real than the intended, desired poem) begins to materialise in what looks and sounds like another language that may take me years to understand

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not to mention if I will ever know whether the wait was worth it.