#hugo williams

[protoslacker]

Homesick By Hugo Williams

Homesick

The little scars on their faces are the names of their villages, put there when they were young in case they got lost.

Their faces are maps which they carry with them when they set out across the world for their new lives.

The scars look like the tracks of tears cried for their childhood as they move about their work in our northern hospitals.

When they wake me in the night to give me my medication they shout my name and shine a light in my eyes.

I wake, not knowing where I am. The nurses and I are homesick, crying to be taken home to our lost villages.

Carol Rumens, Poem of the week Poetry in The Guardian (Nov.29, 2021). Poem of the week: Homesick by Hugo Williams

As a patient in a British hospital, the poet observes nursing staff from overseas who may be longing for home as much as he is

[derangedrhythms]

Hugo Williams, I Feel A Little Jumpy Around You: Paired Poems by Men & Women; 'Gone Away', ed. Naomi Shihab Nye & Paul B. Janeczko

[shy-girl04]

Chase Yi

Blindfold Games

It isn’t so much that he loves her

and wants to marry her

that keeps me awake at night

as the thought of them stumbling upstairs together

in a sort of three-legged race.

I only have to close my eyes

and he is taking her by the arm,

pushing her towards the bedroom.

He has left the door half open,

but I can’t quite see what they are doing,

only glimpses from time to time,

the backs of her legs, the scar on her shoulder.

I turn to look away,

but the shock of her pleasure rises in my throat,

the insult of her sweat mingling with his sweat,

her saying certain things,

her throwing out one arm.

Hugo Williams

[comporsilencios]

~ Hugo Williams

[notmanthelessbutnaturemore]

Joy, Hugo Williams

[ardellian]

Bar Italia by Hugo Williams

How beautiful it would be to wait for you again in the usual place, not looking at the door, keeping a lookout in the long mirror, knowing that if you are late it will not be too late, knowing that all I have to do is wait a little longer and you will be pushing through the other customers, out of breath, apologetic. Where have you been, for God's sake? I was starting to worry.

How long did we say we would wait if one of us was held up? It's been so long and still no sign of you. As time goes by, I search other faces in the bar, rearranging their features until they are monstrous versions of you, their heads wobbling from side to side like heads on sticks. Your absence inches forward until it is standing next to me. Now it has taken a seat I was saving. Now we are face to face in the long mirror.

[paper---airplane]

È con me adesso, la mia eterna visitatrice

lei che mi ha fedelmente insegnato 

l’arte della solitudine. Non smetterà

finché non mi avrà rivelato tutto dell’amore

e mi abbandonerà perché memorizzi la lezione.

Proprio adesso si spoglia davanti allo specchio

mentre attendo, sdraiato, ciò che mi insegnerà stanotte

su come sopravvivere senza di lei un’ora di più.

So quello che dirà: “Non guardarmi

Mi sento colpevole, venendo qui così

dopo tanto tempo. E non so che fare”.

Si noti con quanta facilità mi ha convinto

che ogni notte al suo fianco sarà l’ultima.

Angelo impietoso, il tuo compito è stato

insegnarmi finalmente a vivere senza te.

Hugo Williams

[allyourprettywords]

“I Knew the Bride,” Hugo Williams

for my sister Polly 1950-2004

You had to go to bed ahead of us even then, while your two older brothers grabbed another hour downstairs. The seven-year gap was like a generation between us. You played the princess, swanning about the house in your tablecloth wedding dress, till we told you your knickers were dirty and you ran upstairs to change. Your hair was tied up in plaits on top of your head, showing the parting down the back as you marched out of the room.

It wouldn’t be long till we were asking you to dance, practising our jiving for the Feather’s Club Ball at the Lyceum. Nobody knew so well how to judge the turns with perfectly tensed arms, your ponytail flying back and forth to ‘Party Doll’ by Buddy Knox. For my speech on your wedding day all I had to do was read out the words to Nick Lowe’s ‘I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock ’n’ Roll.’

You put yourself together for occasional family lunches at the Brompton Brasserie, appearing coiffed and chic and on time, so that I imagined you going about all day looking like that and even assumed you were getting better. You fought a five-year war with that foul thing which deals in hope and fear, two against one, like the two brothers who tormented you. It wouldn’t be long till you had to go to bed.

You turned your back on us to protect us from your face. You lay on the rack of yourself, murdered by your skeleton. Somewhere towards the end you climbed its rickety ladder to your full height and stood before us one last time. You had ordered a white stetson from a mail-order catalogue. Perched on your coffin, it sailed ahead of you into the flames. I saw the parting down the back of your head as you marched out of the room.