A poet called Norrie

A poet called Norrie, published here for the first time

Norrie was from Glasgow.  He lived rough on the streets of Manchester but slept overnight in, I think, various hostels.  This was a long time ago when I was a student and some of the details are a bit fuzzy.  I cannot exactly remember how we met but he probably asked for me for some loose change and I obliged – he continued to tap me for a pound or two now and again, but as often as not would pay me back or buy me a beer.  A bitter drinker back then, he introduced me to the joys of Marston’s Pedigree and Robinson’s, available only in the north of England in those days. 

Our friendship horrified most (but not all) of my friends and flatmates, as he references in one of the poems.  Many of them were students of Management Science, in which I had almost as little interest as they did in my English Literature and Language.  Poetry was a complete mystery to them, a pointless waste of time. 

Norrie was a poet.  He wrote those for me, and gave them to me scribbled on scraps of paper.  I thought and still do think they are superb, nuanced and powerful.  We always had lively discussions and I like to think that different as we were, we learnt from each other.  As he also hopes in the poems, I have never forgotten him and ever since he has come to mind unexpectedly.  Getting to know a fellow Glaswegian over the last few months has made me think of him more.  I wondered and wonder what happened to him.  There was no falling out but no farewell either.  I suspect he simply moved on to another city.  I wasn’t certain I would be able to find the poems after all these years, but fortunately they were exactly where I thought they would be in a box of papers from my student days. 

Norrie was a man of perception and his poems reveal an ear perfectly attuned to the rhythm of words.  He was extremely protective of me, telling me that he loved loyalty more than love, that he loved loyalty more than life.  If anyone touched a hair on my head, he said, “I will break their arms.”

I am publishing the poems now because I think they are worth it, to honour him and thank him for his friendship.

They are all untitled and the numbering has no significance other than to separate them.  The first two lines of the first of them in particular have stuck in my head for decades.

I

Let me die
Gunning down those stars
Which were supposed to nurture
That rarity, me
And like other litter
Litter me
Among all the geniuses
Disguises
That dreamers take
A poet is only a writer
On his make.
Yet in that quiet
When I’ve gone
Turned into worms
In need, let me be
Something you’ll lean on
That you can touch and see.

(For you, having children, as daft as you are and as haunting)


II

Glasgow Tongs
Gang names
And ripping up the flesh
Of circumstance
Instead of face
I could be, now, up in that grey place
The stink of its press
The smell of its aged
Behind steel mesh
And slopping-out my urine
With night’s offal
Endred morning
Contemplated memories
Mailbag-sewing
Surrounded by
Souls which died
In Society’s fires
Which always burn
The weak and sickly
Be working-class
Be guilty
But with contempt
I’m exempt
From treading their mills of money
I try to, follow the road
Endeavour to, live freely


III

The gargoyle
Has wings of stone
He’s alone and feeling
All those things
No mortal creature knows
The clothes of dreams he shows
As though to seem to mean to see
Belief in fantasy, be fact
And acting out its part
The rain wears out his tears
With deadly animosity
Yet he succeeds to be, totality
And passes, temporary, Man


IV

Love’s grey-green pearls tugging at my morning’s
Wake and God’s requiem, my poem, comes there
Haunting at the whisper in my brain
Through sparkling beer, its golden amber
Tickling in a teasing way, my senses
And the child and man I am
The toe-tap music dancing in and out
Sparks the rationalism in me that
I am, all the world and the worlds in me
The human feeling.  The human part
And hearts were made, to sing,
As does mine now in morning’s light
The fiddler’s strings and clarinets guitar
A wandering filled with space and worth
All of empty void now cupped
Or earth, within my palm.


V

You are young
Lithe in your body
Slim in that richness
Of Truth
Which is youth
And so ready
To argue against sameness
In humans
Triteness escapes you
I’m privileged
Not you and your class
School’s gone in
After midnight
No more daylight
And all is ruin
Time has now gone
Absent.
Your friends see me
With yellowed eye
A drunk Scot
I’m everyman
Wholly human
I am, me
I’ve forgot what
They’ve not seen
Moreover, they’re lonely.
I want to drink
Deep in my living
To be loosened
From canopies
Insanities
To be giving
Out of freedom
Last reason
Wealth without end.
Strange person
Your accent assaults
All my remembrance
Of poverty
Unearned, misery
And recalled
Fortune, hinderance
In prison
And my screams.
Don’t let fear
Of your naked flesh
Hide me from you
Or my meaning be meaningless.
I’m not rubbish
I am in view
Of Heaven
When all’s not ‘classified’

(And pardon me my love
I’ve  never stated that I have
A joy in you, for being you
For being what is possible; to love)

For Julian Rota 2.12.82