The Museum of Robyn Hitchcock
WHEN TIME ARRIVED
Once I could see time coming:
A speck, a distant puff where the far tracks merged,
A mirage on the shimmering plain,
Time was heading our way
But hadn't reached us yet.Here on the platform the fresh machines
Stood by the stationmaster they would soon replace.
He held his fob watch, in the past, flicked open
To reveal the clockface virgin and unactivated,
Time like Venus in her shell.
I see his face all made of meat
And satisfied, turning to the east,slowly turning.
And you, too young to move, your skin would now seem a baby's
You held my hand.
You could have held it harder.Then time was upon us. Everything unfroze,
Swapped places, jittered as the beast pulled in
Past the white signal box that already housed only tomatoes.
Did time stop then?
Certainly, it slowed down, braked a shrieking steel bray. Up in the cab
The driver's eyes were wired,
His mouth a grim horizon I could see
Till steam embraced us.
Doors opened, expectant figures thawed into motion and vanished through them,
Noone alighted. Thank God you never said goodbye.
The staionmaster blew his whistle, as if he could control all this.Time didn't stop and never will while we are men
And women with seasonal stomachs
Dialed by the moon.
The steam dispersed, to show time accelerating,
Leaving us faster than it came. And time
Grew baldness on the station master
Gave the machines confidence
Took you from me but left your echo;
And time is so remote now in the setting sun
That tonight, as the red moon wobbles over rusty rails,
I fancy it has stopped at last.
DIGESTING MR BISCOTTI
Peace comes hard to the abandoned hotel.
By the lake that harbours telepathic trout
Hither and thither dart the thoughts of God
Signora Biscotti scrapes the offal of her husband Dino
Into the limpid waters flat
It's swallowed
First by the surface
And then by the fish. The peel of his guts
The rind, is funnelled through their yo-yo mouths into their fishy tubes.
They flick away.Next evening, two are hooked and cooked.
With lemon, pepper and saute´ potatoes
Signora Biscotti and a friend, still jittery, devour the fishes flanks
Leaving the heads to stare through floured eyes,
And the spines to pump dead messages past the peas,
Hard to see in the candlelight."Dino loved peas"
Their interlocking fingers, lit by guttering light,
like parchment spiders, rest and pulse before commencing the duel of love,
Beside the lake of stars, of unmovingness;
As Signor Biscotti - Dino - passes through them,
Peace comes slow to the abandoned hotel.
IF DEATH IS NOT THE END
If death is not the end, I'd like to know what is.
For all eternity we don't exist,
except for now.
In my gumshoe mac, I shuffled to the clifftop,
Stood well back,
and struck a match to light my life;
And as it flared it fell in darkness
Lighting nothing but itself.
I saw my life fall and thought:
Well, kiss my physics!
Time is over, or it's not,
But this I know:
Life passes through us like the blade
Of bamboo growing through the prisoner pegged down in the glade
It pierces your blood, you screaming head -
Life is what happened to the dead.
Forever we do not exist
Except for now.
Life passes through us like a beam
Of charcoal green - a golden gleam,
The opposite of how it seems:
It's not you that goes through life
– life is the knife that cuts your dream
Around the seam
And leaves you turned on in the stream, laughing with your mouth open,
Until the stream is gone,
Leaving you cracked mud,
Not even there to be absent,
From the heartbeat of a dying fish.
In bed, upstairs, I feel your pulse run with the clock
And reach your hand
And lock us with our fingers
As if we were bumping above the Pole.
Yet I know by dawn
Your hand will be dry bone
I'll have slept through your goodbye,no matter how long I wake.
Life winds on,
Through Cheri and Karl who can no longer smell chocolate,
Or see with wonder wind inflate the sail,
Or answer mail
Life flies on
Through Katy who was Catherine but is bound for Kate
Who looks over her shoulder at the demon Azmodeus,
And sees the Daily Mail
(I clutch my purse. I had it just now.)
Life slices through
The frozen butter in the Alpine wreck.
(I found your photo upside down
I never kissed a girl so long,
So long, so lovely or so wrong)
Life is what kills you in the end
And I can cry
But you won't be there to be sorry
You were made of life
For ever we did not exist
We woke and for a second kissed.During Robyn's solo concert at Queen Elizabeth Hall on March 2, 2003, Alan Rickman read this poem written by Robyn.