Jim Murdoch's Blog

All good things come to an end, and all bad things, too, one supposes, and, as a matter of course, the noncommittal and the inconsequential… The More Things Change, Jim Murdoch 

This will be my last post. The last for a while in any case. A good while. Maybe forever. I’ve been doing this for ten years now—my first post was on 6th August 2007 following the death of Ingmar Bergman—which is a long time by anyone’s standards. Few things in my life have lasted longer than ten years: my childho...

The North Sea

It's strange
how such a cold and formidable thing
reminds me of you,
its icy breakers failing
on a beach we've never walked on
nor likely ever will.

And yet perhaps that is it.
That after all these miles of travelling
defeat should come
at the final moment.


Aberdeen, 29 February 1995
 
 
This is the only poem of mine where I’ve felt the need to record the place it was written. I lived in Aberdeen for six months and it was probably the worst six months of my life. I’ve sworn I...

The Dawning

(for Cilla)

Albeit far away I still sense you –
a silent warmth that stirs me to life –
I know you're behind me and it's time.

The shadows of my past stretch before me.
Should I turn around they'll still be there –
I know that – but ask me; say the words.

Light blinds us but by light we both see and live.

Shine on, my love.

Shine on.


26 October 1994
 


Many years before I wrote this I wrote a poem called ‘The Eyes of the Blind are Upon You’ (#476) which opens with the following sta...

Sticks and Stones

They say lots of things
and some of them are true.

They say love is blind
but it's them that can't see.

We're real but all that's
left of them is words

and words can't hurt us.


12 October 1994
 
 
What happened with J. and me? People happened. It’s people that usually happen in my experience. When F. and I broke up she got all the friends. I didn’t want any of them anyway. Well, maybe one or two but they came as a set. J. was, as I’ve mentioned before, on the periphery...

Blindness

(for Cilla)

They say love is blind to truth
so tell me the truth:
what is it you see?
Let me hold the words.
I need to touch them to know them.

Help me.

I'm finding my way in the dark –
it's like coming home,
whatever "home" really means,
a real word, one that
you can feel and live and lose.

Like "love."


10 October 1994
 
 
I’ve not been home in a long time, almost twenty years. Of course I call where I live now, where I’ve lived for some fifteen years, “home” and I think of i...

Souvenir

(for Cilla)

Was it with words or a kiss
we tossed it away,
that part inside us both
that's gone for good?

Or did they rob us?

You know where I am of course:
I'm apart from you.
But what is it you see
when our eyes do meet?

What do they reflect?

I have a present for you,
there's not much left,
call it "love" if you will;
it's just a word.

But it might be enough.


9 October 1994
 

Poems #748, #749 and #751 and unique in my oeuvre in that they were written to order. This is not something...

The Visitor

(for J.)

He said he was a ‘visitor.’
She didn’t know the expression
but then there was no one to ask:
her world was empty.

It seemed he had come
a long way to see her.

He called himself ‘Love’
and had strange ways
but there was only the past
to compare him with.

He looked out of place
like truth in a bedroom.

Then he spoke of things
called ‘loyalty’ and ‘trust’
and strange rites of passage
but couldn’t stay long.

Her world way dying;
it was time to go.


15 July 1994

 
This is the last po...

The burden isn’t that everything has to be a book. It’s that everything can be a book. And doesn’t count as life until it is. – Philip Roth, The Anatomy Lesson

 “The Anatomy Lesson is about the imprisonment of self-absorption, of inscribing the guilt in the flesh; it is also about hurting fathers and needing their blessings.” So wrote Alan Cooper in Philip Roth and the Jews . He’s not wrong but it’s about much more and being Jewish at the end of the twentieth century is certainly a focal p...

The Secret Place

(for J.)

Though not too far
it is difficult to reach.

I sent my eyes
but they misread the signs.

And then my tears
though they broke down on the way.

Now it's just me
and I'm not going away

till you let me in from the cold.


15 July 1994
 
 
J. never opened up about everything. She told me stuff she’d told nobody—or at least not many bodies—before but not all. It’s a mistake we often make. We learn something shocking about someone (or at least something that shocks us) and...

Holding On

(for J.)

She cradled the receiver
like an extension of him
hanging onto the moment

and wrapped her arms around herself –
a surrogate embrace –
while his gentle words warmed her.

Someone out there loved her.


10 July 1994
 
 
Mobile phones existed in 1994. The Nokia 2110 was available then and the Ericsson EH237 but I never had one. I didn’t even have a landline where I was staying; I had to use a public telephone. Kids nowadays won’t understand what that was like. It sounds horr...