The Number Poems

Matthew Welton

• Publisher: Carcanet Poetry
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781784102203
• eBook ISBN: 9781784102210
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Matthew Welton is a poet enchanted by form and process. Many of the Number Poems abide by subtle patterns or constraints, creating symmetries in the arrangement of sentences, lines, words, or metrical feet. As with good architecture, however, Welton's rules and methods resist exclamation; rather, they are the framework upon which are established localised ambiances, be they of warmth or dazzlement, the home or the dream.Other sequences, such as the mind-altering 'Melodies for the meanwhile', begin with a palette of words and images and recombine them kaleidoscopically. By adding layers of colour and sound, Welton composes a modulating sensory wave. Even in silence, we do not so much read these poems as perform them.

I

The book of numbers

Construction with phrases

ONE

Whatever I was thinking it was almost right:–

literature’s for losers; religion makes us weak;

the mind’s a kind of monkey with its teeth all gone.

I’m sitting in the kitchen with a pile of books

I thought I’d read but can’t remember reading and

I’m wondering what’s for supper ’cause I had no lunch

and when the monkey in the mind pulls up outside

and rubs his ribs and sucks his gums and says Aw shucks,

we need to talk – what else am I supposed to do

but give him coke and coffee till his words won’t come?

The insects in the windows fill the air with thoughts.

The clouds are closing in on us. The sun looks lost.

TWO

I’m living in a lighthouse with a girl so tall

the heavens round her head surround her thoughts with stars.

I’m thinking of the sea-fish. I’m collecting rocks.

The summers last forever here, we like to think,

though when we go on picnics we expect some rain

and any day she’s out of sorts her windfall words

come blurting out in blusters till her breath’s all gone.

The days she takes the car to town my brains feel bruised

from wondering how she’ll find her way, and what she’ll spend,

and who she’ll meet for lunch, and when I’m going through

her underwear the stacks of cards I find come signed

with love and logic, from the monkey in the mind.

THREE

The monkey in the mind expects [no thoughts, no words,

no sound, no speech the made-up rules [no rain, no breeze,

no dust, no sun] he sets out in his notebook as

his plane takes off [no stars, no fish, no rocks, no light]

should some day if he’s lucky and the winds don’t drop

[no pull, no rub, no need] be sure to bring about

[no birds, no clouds, no wind, no towns, no trees, no hills]

a kind of generous light [no teeth, no love, no sense,

no weight, no brains, no breath] like only God could give

[no out, no in, no fit, no feel] where what we want

we get [no means, no moods, no books, no kids, no girls]

and what we get [no when, no what, no who] we want.

FOUR

I’m trying out a treehouse for my girlfriend’s kids

and all my dreams are treehouse-dreams where fraught blue birds

interrogate my motives for trashing her flat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• I: The book of numbers
• II: Melodies for the Meanwhile
• A note on the title
• A note on the note on the title
• A note on the note on the note on the title
• Notes on the poems
• Acknowledgements
• Also by Matthew Welton from Carcanet Press
• Copyright